The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: Those who are forgiven little, worship little. But those who are forgiven much, worship much.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Healing Word with Pastor Jack Morris. Worship is far more than attending church, singing hymns, or offering a prayer. True worship is a personal encounter with the living God that changes us from the inside out.

Today, Pastor Morris begins a powerful new series, Entering His Presence, by exploring what it really means to worship in spirit and in truth. As he looks at the worship of Abraham and the sacrifice God provided, you will discover that genuine worship begins when our hearts are fixed on Jesus. Stay with us for today's message, An Experience in Worship.

Pastor Jack Morris: You have an outline in your bulletin, and I always encourage you to follow the outline. If you will open your Bible to Psalm 99, I am going to call your attention to this particular psalm this morning. Prayer is a wonderful thing. Singing is a wonderful thing. But worship... I want to talk about worship today.

Worship is something higher than even prayer. It is prayer with a higher dimension to it. It is song with a higher dimension to it. I stumble a little bit today because I am trying to grasp the true meaning and experience of worship and explain it and amplify it and talk to you about it today. It was like the little boy that his mother asked him, "Did you say your prayers before you got into bed?" And he said, "No, I did not want anything."

One family had some company in for dinner one evening, and the mother thought she would ask the little seven-year-old daughter to say grace. She asked her to say grace, and the little girl said, "Oh, Mommy, I do not know what to say. I do not know what to say." Everyone, all the guests and the family around the dining room table, were ready to eat. The mother said, "Well, you just say what mother says when mother prays." The little girl said, "All right." They bowed their heads, and she said, "Dear God, why did I invite these people for dinner tonight?"

How would you get out of that one? So prayer means many things, different things to many people. And do you know, I think sometimes Christians are about like that. We go almost all week and we cannot think of anything to ask Him for. Prayer is almost limited to asking God for things. But prayer is something so far more than just asking.

We are going to look at the scripture here. I want to have a worshiping experience this morning. I want you to have a worshiping experience. But I am asking myself the question, will I worship in this service this morning? Will I have a worshiping experience? Now, I do not know. I hope so. But I am not sure that I am going to have that. I am at the place of worship. I am in the house of worship.

I am on property that has been dedicated and set aside for worship. I am in a sanctuary house. This dome says this is a house of worship. It has been built for just that very purpose. So, I am at the right place. Now, I look around me and I see the symbols of worship. We have Bibles. I have my Bible, you have yours. There are pew Bibles. There are hymnals. There are candles. There are crosses.

We have all of these symbols. A piano, an organ. There are hymns and prayers and scripture reading. All of this is conducive to worship. But again, will I worship? That is the question. Are you going to have a worshiping experience in the house of God today? Maybe you have already had it. Maybe you have already touched God with your heart. Maybe you haven't.

I am going to begin by trying to define the word worship. If you will open your Bible to Psalm 99:5. And if you will open your bulletin to the sermon outline, the first word you might write down under point A is the word "defining". We are going to define the word worship. So you go ahead and write it down. As soon as you have it written down, I want you to open your Bible to Psalm 99:5, hold it up, and read this verse together in unison.

Are you ready to read? Hold it up. Verse five together. "Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool. He is holy." Now, there are two words, two key words: exalt and the word worship. The word worship means to bow down, to bring myself low, to stoop. That is what the word worship means. To bring myself down in submissive reverence to the Lord.

Until that happens in my consciousness, listen, my mind has to click. When my mind clicks and I think, "I am here to come down." Now, the second word is exalt. You can underline those two words. The second word, exalt, means I am here to lift Him up, to elevate Him, to extol Him. So two things must happen for me to worship. I must come down in submission.

I must say, "Lord, I have sinned. I have broken Your law. I have thought thoughts that are not godly thoughts. I have not done all that I should have done according to Your word." I must humble myself. I must come down. I must make that open confession. At the same time, I must now start to exalt Him, lift Him up, speak of His greatness, give thanks for the great salvation that He has brought to me and the forgiveness and the redemption.

Those two things must be happening, and it must be happening in my consciousness. Listen, you have not worshiped when you prayed and sang some hymns. You have not worshiped. You have to be consciously aware. You have to be engaged in Psalm 99:5. Look at it and read it again with me. "Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool."

Now, under point B in your outline, I want you to write down the "first mention" of worship. Write down the word "mention". I am going to turn with you to Genesis 22:5. Genesis 22:5. Okay, hold your Bibles up and read it. "He said to his servants, stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

That is the first time the word worship is in the Bible. The very first time. I do not know where Abraham got that word, but that is the very first time the word worship is given in the Bible. Now, this is what happened. God spoke to Abraham and told him to go to a place. Now, I want you to say a place. Say it. Now say it this way: the place.

God has a place. It is the place. Friends, you have to think about worship. You cannot just sort of sashay in and sashay out to the parking lot when it is all over and say, "I have been to worship." No, you have gone through ritual and ceremony. But there is a certain place. But more importantly, the place is in your heart, in your mind, in your thoughts, in your thinking.

There is a place in you. But Abraham went to the place. He saw the place. The place there was Mount Moriah. It is the place, and Abraham goes to the place. He says to the men with the donkey, "Now you stay here with the donkey. I am going to take my son and we are going to the place. And then we will come back. While we are there, we are going to worship."

There is a holy place, a holy sanctuary that you retreat to. It is a private place. Abraham and his son were going to the place. Now, this is what the son says. You see, you have to be observant. You have to put your mind into what is going to happen. The son said, "Father, we have all of the instruments of worship with us." I am paraphrasing, but this is basically what he was saying.

"We have the wood, we cut the wood, we have the wood. We also have the means to make the fire. One thing is missing, father. We need a sacrifice." The father told him, Abraham said, "Now son, God Himself is going to provide the sacrifice." Now, listen to what I am saying. So we have the place. 1701 Enterprise Road, Largo Community Church, Mitchellville, Maryland. What is the zip code? 20721. Yeah.

So here we are. We have the place. We have all of the trappings of worship: candles and crosses. Here the son says we have the wood, we have the fire. We have the place. We have the trappings. We have everything. But we are not ready to worship yet, father. We need a sacrifice. You see, friends, you worship God on God's terms. Not my terms. On God's terms.

They got to the place of worship. A lot of people get to the place of worship. Man, you come in here trying to find a parking place. We are going to have plenty of parking space very shortly. Yeah. You are trying to find it. You run into this. "I am in the place." I see the hymnals, I see the Bible, I see the crosses. We have the wood, we have the fire, we are ready to go. We have an altar.

We are ready to worship. But how many Sundays you have come to church and you have not had that worshiping experience? There has been one thing, something missing. Now, you can have it every Sunday if you want it, if you are ready for it, if your heart is in it, if your thoughts are in it, if your mind is in it. You can have it. So here they are at the place of worship, Abraham and his son Isaac.

Isaac is about to be offered. Now, I am not going to expound this story because there is just so much in the story. Isaac is about to be worshiped. But there is a ram caught in the thicket. And Abraham takes the ram, a substitute, not Isaac. Listen, God did not put you on the altar. God did not put you on the cross. God did not put me on the cross.

I was ready to go to the cross, but God took me down and put Jesus there. Can you say praise the Lord? I want you to remember that you are not there today suffering for your own sins. Jesus went to the cross. God had a substitute. Abraham said, "Son, God Himself will provide the lamb." Then on the banks of Jordan, the Baptist saw Him and said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

Friend, oh, may God help you to hear what I am going to say right now. You cannot worship today unless you have an altar and Jesus is seen. You see Him on that altar. You cannot do it. You cannot. This is what the young boy Isaac said to his father Abraham. "Father, we have everything for worship but a sacrifice. Where is the sacrifice?" Now, friend, if you come today and you are thinking about Jesus, you will not think very long about Him until you begin to feel a warmth, a love, a sensation, a nearness, a blessing.

Oh yeah, you will start to worship. It will start flowing. But you cannot without Jesus. Every time I come in this place, I have got to think the same thought. I have got to bring Jesus to the altar. I have got to see Him on the cross for me. Then I can worship Him. When He is on the cross for me, then I can truly worship Him, bow down before Him, confess my sins to Him, humble myself in submission before Him, exalt Him.

I am trying to exalt Him and I do not see Him. I am trying to bow before Him, and my mind is on what I am going to do this afternoon at the ballgame after church or something else. But you cannot exalt someone you do not see, someone you are not thinking about. You cannot bow before someone who is not there. Friend, do you see Jesus this morning? That is the question.

Are you thinking about Him this morning? Are you thinking about what He has done for you? Now you are starting to worship. Now you have moved into the higher gear. Now you are not just here saying, "Lord, give me some. I cannot think of anything to ask for, so I will not pray today." No, it is more than prayer. It is prayer, but it is a higher level. It is singing, but it is a higher level of singing.

Now, under point C, I want you to write down "true worship". Write the word "true". In John chapter four, this is what happened. Jesus saw the woman at the well. The woman at the well wanted to debate. The only thing some people want to do when they go to church is learn something. Now, that is good. We do want to learn something, but we want to worship.

She wanted to talk about a particular geographical place. She said, "Here is where the Samaritans worship and here is where the Jews worship." Jesus is saying, "But true worship now is not a particular place. You can be in the place and never experience the reality of worship." The reality of worship now is not just 1701 Enterprise Road, but the worship now is that holy sanctuary in your mind that you retreat into, that you think about.

In spirit. Write down under number one, "in spirit". Here. What is He talking about? The invisible touches the invisible. The invisible in you touches the invisible God that you have never seen, but you know Him. He knows you. He is near you. You are near Him. In spirit. This is it. In spirit is an attitude of the heart. Here is where the true sanctuary now is.

Yes, I want to do all of these conducive things. I want it to help us and to turn us on to worship. I want to do that. I want to sing hymns and have congregational singing. I want to have choir singing. But all of this is to help us, to lift us, to push us along, to motivate us to worship. But it is not ceremony. It is not ritual.

Now, ritual and ceremony serve that purpose only to sort of encourage us and push us along. Someone says, "Should I worship like an Episcopalian or like a Catholic, or should I worship like a fundamentalist and the Pentecostal?" That is not the important thing. That serves a purpose. That is to encourage you to move you along a little bit. But the ritual and the ceremony are like a vehicle. Ah, there, now I am getting some words, they are coming.

It is like a vehicle, like a car or an airplane to get you from here to there. Now, that is all this service is. That worship bulletin, that is to help us to get us from here to there. To get us from here to where? To get us from where we are in this mundane world with deadlines and schedules and stress that is just tearing you apart. To get you from that place to a higher level where you can see God and worship God, experience God, and have your spirit touched.

See, your body has been touched. That is why it is all wore out and you are tired and you can hardly keep your eyes open during the sermon sometimes. Your body has been touched by stress, deadlines, schedule, work, complaints, never being able to please your boss, or never being able to get your employees motivated. Your body has been touched. Now God wants to touch your spirit and energize that man, that woman that lives within you.

That is why He says you have to worship God in spirit. That is right and proper because the nature of God is spirit. God is spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. This is what the scripture is saying. It is an attitude. You have got to get your mind in gear. You have got to get yourself ready.

That is why we stop often. We do everything I can possibly do that I can think of to get you ready and get you going. We stop, we will say we are going to have a silent moment of prayer. And the narthex is filled with people. Listen, all you latecomers, go ahead and stay, be late. That is okay. But when we say we are going to have a silent moment of prayer, when you are late, you bow your head out there. Will you do that?

I do not hear any amens from the latecomers. But you go ahead and bow your head out there. Listen, you have got to get yourself into this thing. If you do not... see, God told Abraham to do something, to go some place, to take something with him. God is telling you to do some things now, and He is wanting to touch you with His heart. He wants you to touch Him with your heart.

This is a ceremony. Now, you do not have to turn to this, but you might want to write this scripture verse down. Psalm 2:12. It says this: "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry. Kiss the Son." Now, what is He talking about here? This is a means of submission in the oriental culture. Kissing. Even today, when you are watching television and you see that on CNN, and you see the people from the Middle East, even the dignitaries and the officers of government, often when they greet each other, they will greet each other with a kiss.

Have you ever seen the men do that? They will kiss. That is an oriental greeting that goes all the way back even before the Book of Psalms, the date of the Book of Psalms. This is what it means. It means submission. That is what it means. It means I am coming down, I am submitting to you. So you see these two dignitaries, even on CNN today, when they kiss each other, they represent their government.

They are heads of state. They are in a ritualistic way, they are submitting. One government submitting to another government through these two agents, these two men, through the kiss. Now, this is what the Word of God is saying to us. Kiss the Son. When you come to church, kiss Jesus. Meaning, come down before Him. Those two words, worship and exalt.

Come down before Him. Humble yourself before Him. Tell Him that you have sinned. Tell Him how grateful for you are that He saved you. Now, you do that even before the service starts, and in every hymn that is sung, and in every prayer that is prayed, and in every sermon that is being preached. You keep on remembering how His grace came to you, redeemed you, saved you, made you a child of heaven.

Redeemed you. You are no longer a child of hell. You have got to think of that. You have got to have that in your mind. You have to hold that in your consciousness. When you sing those hymns, you have got to be looking for words in that hymnal that helps you to come down. When the choir is singing, I have got to be in tune and listening for them to say the words that will bring me down and will exalt Him in my heart.

When they say the words, boom, something clicks with my spirit. Something bonds within me, and my heart is saying, "Hallelujah, hallelujah, God has redeemed me and I am saved." Every word, every prayer, every hymn, every sermon, every praise chorus... listen, only you can get ready to worship, and only you can worship. Worship is a very personal and private thing.

God called Abraham. Abraham told the others, "You stay here. God has called me to worship. God has called me to a holy place. God has given me the instruments of worship, and He will provide the sacrifice of worship." God has done it all. Now you just have to get yourself in gear and make it happen, and God will let you make it happen. And it will happen.

Now, I want you to know something. Judas kissed Jesus, did he not? Anybody can go through the acts of worship. I cannot tell, really. Up here, when I am seated here, I cannot tell whether you are worshiping or not. I just cannot tell. You are going through all the motions. You cannot tell whether I am worshiping or not, can you? I am going through all the motions of worship.

But here is Judas. He comes and he kisses Jesus. He finds Him at the most holy place, the Garden of Gethsemane. He finds Him there where He took on our sins and sweat drops of blood for our redemption. He walks up to Him and he puts a kiss on Him. The act of submission. The act of coming down. The act of exalting. That hypocrite! That phony! That was not worship.

Listen, the hymns you sing, the prayers you pray, if Jesus is not on the altar of your heart, you are not kissing the Son of God. You are not submitting to the Son of God. You are going through the motions. But the reality of it, there is nothing happening in your heart. You are not being drawn closer to God. You are not being made a better Christian. It is sad.

It is sad. No wonder people do not go to church. No wonder. Why? Why should they? There is no redeemer on the altar. They do not see Him in the songs. Their voice never touches His heart. I do not blame some people for not going to church. Now, that is terrible to say that, isn't it? But if you do not worship, if you do not worship, if you do not see Jesus, if you do not meet Jesus, if you just kiss Him through the song, through the word, but you do not come down and He is not exalted, then it is useless.

It is meaningless. It is a bore, it is a drag. Go golfing! Go to an early movie! But do not go into Gethsemane and say I am worshiping when I am not worshiping, when there is nothing happening. Friends, I wonder right now with your bulletin down, don't look at it. Do you know the first hymn we sang this morning? Do you know the praise choruses? Can you sing even a little phrase of it?

You see what I am talking about today? You see what I am talking about? God wants to touch your heart today. You see, there was a woman. She came up behind Jesus when He was in the house of the Pharisee, and she began to weep, and her tears flowed from her eyes and dropped on His feet and ran down over His feet. Then she took her hair and she began to wipe His feet, and then she picked up His feet and began to kiss His feet.

That Pharisee looked with indignation, and he thought to himself, "If that man is truly the Messiah, if He is a prophet like He says He is, He will know that that woman is a sinner." See, she knew she was a sinner. Jesus knew she was a sinner. But that woman knew how to worship. I mean, she could get her heart into it.

Jesus said, "You know," to this Pharisee, "I came to your house. You put on all the externals, but you never gave me any water to wash my feet. Yet that woman washes my feet from the moment I came here with her tears and dries them with her hair. You never gave me the customary kiss of greeting that we do in the Middle East. You never did that, but that woman has not stopped kissing my feet."

Then Jesus, listen to this, friends, listen to this. Then Jesus said the most important thing of all. "Those who are forgiven little, worship little. But those who are forgiven much, worship much." You see, we are all forgiven much, but all of us do not know how much we have been forgiven. But this woman knew she was a sinner, and she knew how much she had been forgiven.

Her kisses were so altogether different than that which Judas, the hypocrite, the betrayer, tried to put on Jesus. "Oh, I love you, Lord." Yes, that is what Peter said to Jesus when Jesus asked him the questions. "Peter, do you love me?" Now, everyone here has a given name today. I am wondering if you can hear Him ask you today, "Do you love me?"

He asked Peter, "Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you really love me?" Oh, Jesus, there are people who are fond of Jesus. They really are. Very respectful. They are very fond of Jesus. But that is not love, that is not worship. There are people who have affections for Jesus. They really do. They are affectionate toward Him.

There are people who are very polite and reverent toward the holy and the spiritual and the house of God. But Jesus says, "Look, Peter, I do not want you to be polite. I do not want you to be affectionate. I do not want you to even have fond feelings toward me. Peter, do you love me?" He is calling you and me by our given name today. "Do you love me? Then worship me. Bow down before me. Submit to me. Submit to my word."

Now look back, friends, I am going to just go through it very quickly. Worship means to bow down in submission. And you have to ask yourself, "Is there anywhere in the word that I am not submitting to the word? Some place where something that God has called me to do or God has spoken to my heart, and I am not submitting. I am not obeying."

God has asked me to teach a class, sing in the choir, witness to somebody on the job. I have been feeling it for weeks. Friend, why are you waiting for? Why have you been feeling it for weeks? Why haven't you done what Abraham did? The scripture said God spoke to Abraham that night, and early in the morning, he got up. He did not even have time to think about it, debate it, check his schedule to see if he had the time to do it.

He was going to sacrifice his son because God said so. That is worship. Quick obedience. That is what worship is. True worship. It is worship in spirit and in truth. Deep calling unto deep. The invisible touching the invisible. Hearing the voice of Jesus and responding, "Yes, I love you, Lord." That is what worship is. Have you had a worshiping experience?

Now, this can happen not only here, but wherever you are. For your heart is the altar. And when I come into the presence of God, and when you come into the presence of God, I must come in with Jesus. Every time I say grace at the meal, or say my prayers before I get in bed, or have my daily devotions, I must come into the presence of God with Jesus.

I am saying to the Father, "Father, if you look at me, you will look at a sinner. If you look at me, you will look at a failure. If you look at me, you will not like what you see. But I am coming in Jesus' name. Look at Jesus. Jesus is on the altar. Jesus is on the altar." Like one place I went, the fellow was not going to let me in. Stopped me at the door.

The other man spoke up, stepped up and said to the keeper of the door about Jack Morris, he said, "That is okay. He is with me." The doors opened up. That is what Jesus does. When you go to heaven in prayer, who do you think you are? Or who do I think I am? Only Jesus can open the door. He is the way, the truth, the life.

He is the door into the sheepfold. The veil of the temple was rent in twain. The door is open, but you have got to walk through escorted by Jesus. You have got to know that in your heart. If you know it, if it is in your thoughts, if it is in your affection, then you have gone to the throne of grace and you have found a welcome. But you always have to stand there with Jesus. You cannot stand there alone.

Guest (Male): What a wonderful reminder that worship is not merely something we do. It is an invitation to draw near to God through Jesus Christ. As Pastor Morris shared today, worship begins when we humble ourselves before the Lord, exalt Him above everything else, and keep our eyes on the sacrifice He made for us.

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If the Lord leads you, we invite you to partner with us through your prayers and financial gifts. Be sure to join us next time as Pastor Morris continues this series with The Wonders of Worship, revealing the remarkable things God does in the hearts of those who truly seek His presence.