Sermon Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.
- Introduction
- God Is Spirit
- God Is Invisible
- God Is Alive and Personal
- Worship in Spirit and Truth
- Walk by Faith, Not by Sight
- Trust the Living God
- Closing Prayer
Introduction
Open your Bibles to John 4, if you would. I’d like to read it again. It’s a long passage. Jesus comes to the well. He’s thirsty. He’s having a conversation with this woman about water. He’s really talking about the living water. She’s thinking of regular water. And they get into a discussion about worship. And the woman says in verse 19, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.” Now she perceived that Jesus was a prophet because Jesus had knowledge of her He could not have known otherwise. So she said, oh, He must be a prophet, because He knows things about my personal life. There’s no way that He could know. So she decides to divert the conversation into a discussion about religion. Now if you’ve ever shared the gospel with people, you’ll find they have an uncanny way of diverting the gospel into all sorts of directions away from themselves. You know what I’m saying? So they want to talk about evolution. They want to talk about politics. They want to talk about Jerry Falwell. They want to talk about anything but the gospel. And so Jesus is beginning to put His finger on the issues in her life, and He talks about all her previous husbands. And so all of a sudden she says, well, hey, let’s have a religious discussion. Let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about religion.
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.”
(John 4:20–22)
Now, Samaritans and Jews did not worship in the same place. They had various theological differences. And I can’t think of anything more hurtful to say to somebody than that. I mean, think about what He just said to her. You don’t know who you’re worshiping. Now this is an insult. It is. He says, we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. That is to say that God’s revelation of Himself came through the Jews. We have this in what we now call the Old Testament, or the Old Covenant.
But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
(John 4:23–24)
God Is Spirit
Now, here in this passage, Jesus, who came to reveal the Father to us, to tell us who the Father was, Jesus tells us something profound about God. Something I would say that is essential about God. What He says here in verse 24: God is Spirit. Now, before we unpack that, I want to make a point, and that is this. When we think about God, we have to think about a couple of things. One, that God is, and then we can say God has. What do I mean by that? I mean, when we talk about God, God has a fundamental, essential nature, if you will. And then we have what are called God’s attributes. Now when we talk about an attribute, we’re not talking about parts of God. God doesn’t have a bunch of parts. God is one. And when we talk about an attribute of God, we’re talking about an aspect of His character, the way He is, if you will, something about His character. And theologians like to talk about two categories of attributes, and there’s a lot of different ways they name these. One category is what are called His natural attributes, or incommunicable—but that’s a long word and it’s hard to say, so if I try to say it a couple more times, I’ll probably mess it up. Okay, these are the attributes of God which are not shared with the creature. There’s no affinity, if you will, between what God is in that regard and what we are. And so we think of God being self-existent. Well, there’s no relationship between us and Him in that regard, because we are totally dependent. Our existence is a result of His self-existence. But you take what’s called a moral attribute, like God’s love, and then we see a correlation in how we might love. And so some of God’s attributes, if you will, He possesses in Himself; others are shared with the creature. But when we talk about the divine spirituality, which is what Jesus is talking about here, when He talks about God being a spirit, we’re not talking about an attribute, we’re talking about God’s essence, what He is. Jesus says here, God is Spirit. Some of your versions may say God is a spirit. The Greek language does not have an indefinite article. The definite article would be the in English, and the indefinite would be a. In Greek there’s no a. So it’s just God is Spirit.
God is Spirit. What does this mean? Well, it means a number of things. One thing it means is that God is immaterial. Immaterial. We could say non-physical. God does not possess a body, because He is pure spirit. Not only is He pure spirit, He is infinite spirit. And we’ll talk about His infinite nature at a later time. Now you might be thinking, well, wait a minute. In the Bible, it talks about God sees with His eyes, or the hand of the Lord does this, or the [audio unclear] hands, His arms. I said, really, how big is He? If He’s infinite and He has a body, then His body’s everywhere, right? Think about it. Come on. To be infinite means no limitation. There is no limitation, no boundaries. So if God is infinite and He has a body, He has—so where is it? It’s everywhere. That means you and I are God. To say God has a body and God is infinite leads to pantheism, not Christian theism. So when the Bible talks about the hand of the Lord or the arm of the Lord, these are symbolic phrases which talk about attributes of God, His power and His strength. When it talks about the eyes of the Lord look to and fro throughout the whole earth, to look for the man whose heart is perfect toward Him, it means that God is omniscient. He sees everybody’s heart. Right? So these are human ways of speaking so that we can understand things about God which really are beyond our comprehension. Because as I said before when we began this series, we use the word God as if we understand what we’re saying. But the more you think about God, the less you really understand.
Which is why Paul in Romans, after he summarizes the gospel—and he took a long time to talk about this—he sums up God’s gospel and God’s work in history through the Jews and how the Jews fit into the plan of salvation and all of this, and then Paul sums it up by saying God’s ways are [audio unclear] If we are going to benefit from this study of God’s character or His attributes, we must constantly be in a spirit of prayer. And we must be praying the prayer in Ephesians 1, that God would grant to you and I a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of our heart being enlightened. Because until that happens, the word God is just a word. I heard the word God before I was a Christian. I heard the word Jesus before I was a Christian. And they didn’t mean anything to me. But once the Holy Spirit opened my eyes, then God and Jesus meant everything to me. So when we say God is a spirit, we mean He is immaterial, He does not possess a body.
God Is Invisible
Secondly, we mean that God is invisible. God being a spirit, He cannot be perceived with the senses. Go to John chapter 1, verse 18. We’ll start in 14. And the Word became flesh—we know from verse 1 that the Word is Jesus, who was in the beginning with God and who was God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.’” And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
(John 1:14–18)
John, meaning John the Baptist, bore witness of Him. “He who comes after me”—chronologically—“is preferred before me”—regarding honor—“for He was before me”—chronologically. No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has expounded Him. No man has seen God at any time. Now if you read your Bible, and I hope you do, even the Old Covenant, because the new is hidden in the old, and the old is expounded in the new. If you read your Old Covenant, you see these people have these encounters with God, and they say, I’ve seen God. Well, did they see God or not see God? Here it says no man can see God. Paul says in Romans, in Colossians, another place, He is the invisible God. He’s invisible. If He’s invisible, you can’t see Him. Well, what people are seeing or encountering is often a manifestation of God. For example, Israel saw the pillar of fire. They saw the cloud. They saw the lightning. They saw the thunder. But none of those things were God. They were manifestations of God. So Moses goes out in the desert and all of a sudden there’s a bush that burns that isn’t burning up, and a voice speaks. Was the bush God? Well, of course not. It was a manifestation of God’s presence. So when [audio unclear] the fire came down in the holy place, there’s what’s called the Shekinah glory, and it was a fire, like a fire that hovered over the altar. That fire wasn’t God, but it was a manifestation of God.
And so God revealed Himself in many ways, in the Old Testament and even in the New. He revealed Himself in many ways, but those manifestations were not God in essence; they were manifestations of God. Because God is invisible, no one can see God. No one can, as Paul says, approach the unapproachable light. And so when we see these accounts in the Bible, people seeing God, they’re not seeing His essence. They are not seeing His glory. Remember when Moses prayed to God, he said, God, show me Your glory. Remember that prayer? What did God say back to Moses? He says, you can’t see My face and live. So I’ll go by you and I’ll let you see a little bit from the back. So as we study this, we’re going to get a little bit from the back, right? That’s good. I’ll take that. I’ll take a little bit from the back. But the glory of God and the light of God and what is called the face of God, because God is light, these are God’s very essence, and it’s that which no man can see and live, because God in His essence is infinite and we are finite. It is incomprehensible to the human eye, that which is infinite. And even if we could see the infinite God with our eye, we would not be able to see it with our mind.
God Is Alive and Personal
So God is a spirit, which means that God is not physical. He’s immaterial. He is invisible. Yet God is alive. I want you to think about this. I remember when this dawned on me. You might think, gee, pastor, this had to dawn on you? It’s kind of common sense. But I want you to think with me. The idea of a spirit. When you hear the word spirit, what comes into your mind? A ghost, a force. You know, as I’ve shared many times, when the American public is surveyed, ninety-something percent say they believe in God. A huge number of those would [audio unclear] an invisible energy, energy that connects all things. You have the good side of the force and the bad side of the force. Right? But when we think of a spirit, a spirit is not only not a material substance, [audio unclear] We’re saying He is alive, and we’re saying, fourthly, that therefore He is a person. Because there is no such thing as an impersonal spirit. Now there is an impersonal force. Not only He’s alive, but He is a He. He is a person. And many people say God, and what they mean is the force. They mean an energy. Philosophers use the word God, and they mean an idea, an intellectual construct, a conception. But our God is the living God. Our God is a person. Not a thing, not an idea, a real living person. And so the Bible tells us that God thinks, that God wills, that God grieves, that God loves, that God rejoices, [audio unclear] because God is a spirit—and this is where preaching is [audio unclear] an indicative and an imperative. The indicative is, God is a spirit. That is a fact. What therefore do we deduce? What is the implication, what is the application, what is the imperative from that? Because God is a spirit, we are to worship Him in spirit and in truth. His nature dictates our worship.
Worship in Spirit and Truth
Worship is not for us, it is for Him. Worship is not to be shaped by our preferences and our likes, but rather shaped by His nature. So Jesus makes the application that because God is this way, that is, a spirit, we are to worship this way, that is, we are to worship in spirit and in truth. What does this mean? In some ways, what it really means is that we are to worship with a proper attitude: spiritual, inward worship. Now because of our fallenness, we are ingenious at messing things up. We can get something wrong a million ways, right? And we’re prone to extremes. That’s why you see in the church, in the history of the church, all these fights about things, because people are prone to extremes. So when we say that God is a spirit and we must worship Him in spirit, that doesn’t mean that our worship looks like this. “Hey, what are you doing over there?” “Worshiping.” “Doesn’t look like it.” “I am, in my heart.” Now, if I say to you, lift your hands, can you lift your hands? Carol, you didn’t lift your hands. Can you lift your hands? Can you lift your hands? Now lift your hands in your heart. You can’t do it. Because your hands aren’t in your heart, your hands are right here. Follow me now. So here’s what we do. We say worship is spiritual, and so what we do is disconnect it from the physical. Right? So in other words, my love for God and my worship for God ends up being separated from practical manifestation. But that’s not a good thing, because at the heart of Christianity is that this invisible God becomes visible in the incarnate Christ. So when Jesus says we are to worship God in spirit, He’s not saying the physical isn’t important. He’s not saying that. But that’s the deduction we make. We make a false deduction. We worship God in spirit, therefore I don’t have to put any physical effort into it.
But when you read the Psalms, just read this book of Psalms the next couple months. It’s not that hard. Read a couple Psalms a day. Okay? Read three or four a day. You’re done. You’re done real quick. Now think about this. In the Psalms, what does it say? It says clap. Can you do that, Chelsea? Can you do that? Okay. Allison, can you do that? Anybody else? Can anybody else clap for Him? Not everybody is doing it, but I guess you’re doing it in your heart. Is that right? Who’s clapping in their heart right now? I went to the Blues game last night. Nobody clapped in their heart. Everybody clapped with their hands. So it says in the Word of God, clap with your hands, okay? So can you do that? Can you do that? Okay, now, that is not a violation of Jesus saying worship in spirit, because what you just did is a manifestation of worshiping in spirit. Not a violation, it’s a manifestation. So God is Spirit and I can’t see Him, but then I can see His manifestations. And so we worship in spirit, and no one can see it unless we manifest it. So the Psalms say to clap. They say to shout. Oh my gosh, dare I ask you to do this. Oh no, oh no. Can you say, “Praise God”? Can you say that? Okay, some of you, no. Okay. Psalm says shout to the Lord. Can you shout, “Praise God”? “Praise God.” All right, now you sound like the Blues. We should get the thing—the loudness meter, it’s called. We’ll get the loudness meter up here. And the louder you worship, the more it’s going to go up. So Psalms say, clap to the Lord. They say shout to the Lord. They say bow to the Lord. They say kneel to the Lord. All of these physical manifestations—but those aren’t violations of what Jesus is saying. He’s not saying, because we worship in spirit, we sit real still and don’t show any physical movement at all, and that makes our worship real spiritual. No. Because the worship He’s talking about, the Jewish worship, was extremely physical. They not only bowed and clapped and shouted—read the Psalms, man—they had cymbals and horns and all these instruments. They’d bring these animals in there. And let me tell you, man, this was a man’s religion. Because when you went to the temple, it smelled like barbecue. They’re killing animals. It’s bloody, and they’re cooking it, and they’re praising God. And every sense, their eyes, their nose, their touch, their tongue, everything was engaged in worship. I could get into that. Yeah, yeah. Every time I barbecue, man, I think of worship.
Nevertheless, while engaging all of the senses, God is still a spirit, and the essence of our worship has to be coming out of our spirit. Because on the one hand, the danger is this detachment of the physical, and say, oh, I’m very spiritual, although you’d never know it. To the other extreme is, I’m very spiritual because I do all the rituals. Okay, and so we have high church with all the rituals, and you can go through all the rituals. And that was one of the things that the prophets denounced among the Jews at different times when they were spiritually declined, and that is that you’re still going through this, you’re still doing the sacrifices, you’re still doing the ritual, but your heart isn’t in it. So it’s no longer spiritual. Therefore it’s no longer acceptable to God. That was the problem. Okay, so we can err on both extremes. We can come to church and we can jump up and down and we can scream and shout and say, “Hallelujah,” and it can mean nothing because our heart is a million miles away. Or we can go to the other extreme and say, I’m lifting my hands to God in my heart—which somebody actually told me once, and it took all my self-control not to laugh in their face. So I wanted to say, well, why did God give you hands if you can do it in your heart? So Jesus, of course, is combating a problem which was probably more common in His day. Maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t know. But when He says that God is a spirit and we must worship Him in spirit and in truth, that means that God does not see as man sees, but rather God sees the heart. And so He looks at the heart to see what’s going on in the heart. So therefore we don’t substitute the physical for the spiritual. We submit the physical to the spiritual. We tell our bodies to worship God. We tell our tongues to shout to God. We tell our arms, lift thy arms up to God. And that’s what David meant when he says in various Psalms, “Awake, my glory, awake.” He’s saying to himself, wake up and worship God. The body submits to the spirit, and the body then becomes a manifestation of what’s in the heart. Just because God sees the heart doesn’t mean therefore we don’t engage the body. It means rather that the heart is to bring the body into submission and obedience to God, not only in worship, but really in every area of our life.
So God is a spirit, He must be worshiped in spirit. Secondly, God is immaterial. He doesn’t have a body. We are not to make bodies for Him. This is why we have the second commandment: you shall not make any graven image. We are not to picture God, because any picture of God is a limitation of God, because He, being infinite, has no limits. He cannot be pictured. Any object, no matter how large, is too small. Because infinity is not largeness. It is otherness. The necessary result of portraying God to our senses by pictures and images is to degrade God. It’s to lower our conception of Him. Robert Hall said, “No sooner do men attempt to make the Deity an object of their senses, than they begin to think of Him altogether such a one as themselves.”
Walk by Faith, Not by Sight
Thirdly, God is invisible. He cannot be seen, and so what that means is that we must learn to walk by faith and not by sight. Walk by faith and not by sight. Faith means that we have a firm persuasion of the truth and a reliance or trust on the object of our faith. The object of our faith is invisible. You cannot see God. You are trusting someone you cannot see. Now you might say, you might see the Bible, and I can see the Bible, indeed. But God wrote the Bible, and you can’t see Him. And so you cannot walk by sight. You must walk by faith, because the object of your faith is invisible. Faith means that we perceive and we receive and we rely upon an invisible object. And this is why the Bible contrasts faith and sight, because the object of our faith cannot be seen. However, the Bible says that by faith the things which are not seen end up being seen, or evidenced. The world says out of sight, out of mind. We say out of sight, but in our [audio unclear]. Amen. The world says, I’ll believe it when I see it, but we say, I’ll see it when I believe it. And Jesus said to Thomas, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
Modernity, what is being called postmodernity now, is, I believe, swallowing up the church. I believe that the church is becoming more and more a faint reflection of the world, and part of it is due to the pervasiveness of our technology. We are an image-driven culture now, not a word-driven culture. We’re surrounded by images. By the time you leave here and get home you will see numerous images. You’ll see billboards. If you stop to get a soda you’ll see magazine covers. When you spend the day watching a ballgame or something you’ll see hundreds of images, images, images, images, images, images, images. And so our lives are shaped by what we see. But the most important thing, the most important Person, we cannot see. So what that means is that we must constantly—you listening? Say yes. We must constantly nourish our communion with the invisible.
I’ll read you a quote by William Shedd. If you’d like to read old dead guys, this guy’s awesome. Listen to what he says. “There is no being with whom man stands in such close and important relations as with the invisible God. And yet, there is no being with whom he finds it so difficult to have communication. The earth he can see and touch. His fellow man he can look in the eye and speak to. But no man has seen God at any time. Century after century passes by, and the Highest utters no voice that is audible to the outward ear. Thousands and millions of human supplications are sent up to Him who dwells in the heavens, but the heavens are not rent. No deity comes down, no visible sign is made. The skies are silent. The impenetrable veil between man’s body and God’s spirit is not withdrawn even for an instant.” And so this continues generation after generation. And he says, “It is not surprising, consequently, that the natural man, finding no response to his passionate and baffled attempts to penetrate the invisible and eternal by the method of the five senses, falls into unbelief and concludes in his heart that a deity who never shows himself has no real being.” That is to say that if you’re counting on the senses to give you assurances of God’s existence, you will be led into skepticism, not into faith. “Thus the natural tendency of all men who hold no prayerful and spiritual communication with their Maker is to atheism. But the child of God, the believing, the spiritual, the prayerful man, is delivered from this atheism, for he knows of an intercourse with his Maker which, though unattended by signs and wonders, is as real and convincing as anything outward or visible can be.” Amen? We not only know God, we know that we know God. And you could no more convince me that God doesn’t exist than you could convince me that I don’t exist. But I suppose there’s a way that, given enough time and enough neglect and enough sin, that I could fall into complete atheism. And many Christians do over time. It’s called backsliding.
And just as because God is a spirit and He must be worshiped in spirit, which means that at the center of our worship is our heart, so therefore the center of our declension in our backsliding is our heart. You know, people say, how could that famous pastor who had a mega church and all this stuff, how can he run off with the secretary and do these things? Well I can tell you easily how he did it. He backslid in his heart years before, little by little by little. You don’t wake up one day and go commit adultery. That’s a result of a silent and secret declension of private communion over a period of months and perhaps even years. It’s only a symptom of the problem. It’s the fact that there has been a broken communion between the believer and his God. It means that there has been no true fellowship in the secret place. Therefore, there’s no power in the public place.
Trust the Living God
Lastly, because our God is a living God, we can confidently trust in Him. Amen. Our God is not a wooden idol. He’s not an abstract philosophical notion. Our God is a living person. Because He is a living person, we therefore can trust Him. Because we do not pray to a dead object, and we do not pray to a silent heaven, we pray to a God who hears, a God who knows, a God who sees. And I love this. Can we look at one more passage? Go to Matthew, chapter 6.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
(Matthew 6:19–23)
If your light is dark, how dark is that? It’s bad when you’re in the darkness, but you know what, if you’re in a dark room and you know it’s dark, you can stumble around and find the light switch. The problem is when you’re in a dark room, you say, boy, isn’t it lovely in here? And you don’t even know you’re in the dark. That’s dangerous.
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
(Matthew 6:24)
And it’s not just money. It’s like all the goodies the world gives you, whether it’s wealth, whether it’s prestige, whether it’s, you know, all that stuff.
Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
(Matthew 6:25–26)
Of course you are. Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? Some of your versions say it can add one year to his life. In other words, anxiety does nothing except ruin your health. It does nothing.
So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
(Matthew 6:28–32)
If God is your God, that is, if you’re a Christian, then you are a child of God, which is to say that He is your Father, and your Father already knows what your needs are. Whatever your need is right now, God knew about your need now before you did. God knew about your need a long time ago, when you were swimming along in life thinking everything was great and you weren’t going to have any problems, and then a problem is coming. He’s not taken by surprise. He’s a person. He knows, He sees, He’s not just some force, some energy. So God is aware of all of your needs, therefore He can be trusted. That’s what Jesus is saying. God knows your needs. God is your Father, therefore He’s so living and active that He’s clothing the fields. He is feeding the birds. We’re going to go out today and it’s beautiful outside. And if you’re having troubles and you’re trying to get through a struggle, you’re thinking in your heart, where’s God? Where’s God? Where’s God? And Jesus would say to you, look. Look. Look at the grass. Look at the birds. Look! Why can’t we see Him? Unbelief. It’s unbelief. God is alive. He’s a person that knows all of your needs. And if you were His child, He’s a Father that loves you dearly. Jesus is saying, aren’t you more valued than the grass, than the birds? He knows. Don’t worry. He knows. So we can trust Him, the living God.
Last thing. When Jesus said that we are to worship the Father in spirit and truth, I think in some ways that simple description is nothing more than what happens in a real relationship. I’ve used the example before: you can give me a piece of paper to list all the attributes of my wife before I knew her. It could tell me everything about her before I knew her, and when I read it I would say, I don’t know this person. But the moment I met her, what had changed? None of that information had changed. None of it had changed. She would have been born on the same day, she would have gone to the same school, she would have worked the same job. Everything on the page would have been the same, but I went from not knowing to knowing. But nothing on that page changed. This is that page. So we can know, and should know, everything that it says about God. But that’s different than meeting Him. And if you’re a Christian, you’ve met Him. Amen. But you need to meet Him often. And like any relationship, the more time together, the better your relationship is going to be. The more you talk, communicate, fellowship, it’s going to grow and get better. If you neglect that personal time together, you drift apart. Happens in marriage, happens in friendships, happens with God. Time, time, time, you must spend with God. Some of you might be churchgoers, and you haven’t met Him. It’s time to meet Him. I mean it, really is. It’s time to meet Him.
Closing Prayer
Let’s stand and pray. Father, You are such a good God. You are so patient and kind with us as we fumble along trying to know You. I just want to thank You, God, for Your Word. It’s so good. It’s precious to us. It is light. I ask, Lord, that You continue to unfold Your Word to us, not only here at church, but in our private place at home. I ask that each one of Your children here, Lord, would spend time in Your Word and in prayer, and that even though they cannot see You, they would see You, because they can know You in a personal way. I pray for our worship even now, even at this moment, God, that we would apply this sermon, Lord, and that we would worship in spirit and in truth, that we would tell our bodies to submit, that we would command our mind to focus and our will to be engaged, because worship is about You. It’s about You. It’s about glorifying You and honoring You. So, Lord, receive this worship. Be pleased, Lord, with our worship. And use it to glorify Yourself. That’s why we’re here. We pray in the name of Your Son. Amen.