Fellowship Bible Church A WORSHIP TUNE-UP Tim Beard

Fellowship Bible Church A WORSHIP TUNE-UP 11-13-2011 Tim Beard Good morning LORD. You are holy, holy, holy. Who do we say You are? You are the great I am. You are the mighty God. LORD, You are the name above all names and LORD we thank You this morning that we can come into this place and join with a song of creation, that song of Your glory, proclaiming Your holiness, LORD. So, this morning we do pray that as we celebrate what You are doing here in our ministry of Fellowship Espanol, what You are doing in our midst of reaching the world, that You today would give us a glimpse and an understanding of what it means to worship You, to worship You in spirit and truth, God, because You have called us to do that and You are looking for worshippers like that. LORD, we give you this morning and we ask Holy Spirit that You would speak to us. I pray that You would change us today, God. We are here to meet with You and we give you this day. In Jesus' name. Amen. Go ahead and take a seat. Well, good morning everyone. What I usually say is if you are visiting with us I am Crawford Loritts [laughter], but I won t say that this morning. Crawford is actually out of town this week. He is up in Washington, D.C. doing some ministry there. I told the guys on the worship team that Crawford gave me the keys to the car this week. He just said, Don't wreck the car, son, whatever you do. I am happy to be here this morning as your worship pastor and talk about a very important subject, the subject of worship. We will get into that in just a second. If you are visiting with us, we are so glad that you chose to be with us here today. As Richard mentioned, if you could just fill out your name on the visitor card that you received when you came in we would love to know that you are here. I am struggling a little bit with my voice. Last week I did this race in Savannah. There are 25,000 people running and you are going along with all of these people with probably the same amount of people who are cheering you on, and you are high fiving [sic] people and doing all of this stuff. When I went back to my hotel room I was reading this article about what not to do when you do these long races. I found out the number one thing is don't be high-fiving [sic] people when you are running along because your body is wearing down. You are probably going to get a cold, so I am suffering with a little bit of that. Hopefully I will be able to work through it. TEXT: GENESIS 22; DEUTERONOMY 6:4-9, JOHN 4 This morning we are going to take a look at worship. We are going to jump through the Bible and look at three main passages on worship that I think are very important as well as some key passages that we can take a look at. First of all let me ask you this. When I say we are going to look at worship, what comes to mind automatically? We usually think about singing. We think about maybe a time when we have experienced God s presence as we offered our voices in songs. We might think about styles. We might think about, Well, I come from a church where they define themselves as being a traditional worship service or a contemporary or a modern worship service. Some of us may have even come out of backgrounds where we have even seen division in the church based on styles of music. So, whatever our context I am sure that for pretty much all of us here when I mention worship you know there is going to be some music because that is the first thing that comes to mind. But this morning as your pastor of worship I want us to take a look and build a biblical definition of worship and to look and see if perhaps maybe our definition or our understanding of worship has been more of a traditional understanding rather than a real biblical definition of worship. 1

I am calling this message, A Worship Tune-Up at Fellowship Bible Church. So, let s tune up worship here a little bit. Turn your Bibles to Genesis chapter 22. As you are turning there, if you are studying a specific topic or issue in Scripture one of the principles of Bible study is that you go to that point in the Bible where it is first mentioned. This is called the law of first mention. It is kind of a standard thing. Whatever topic, you want to go to where you first see that word. That is what we are going to do here in Genesis chapter 22. We are going to do a lot of reading of Scripture this morning. We are going to go to the first place we see the word worship used in the Bible. Just to set the context, Abraham was 100 years old and his wife Sara was 90 when they gave birth to their son Isaac. So, Isaac was very precious in their sight. Isaac was a child of promise. It was the one that they had been waiting for and waiting for God to answer. So, let s read Genesis 22 together. I will be reading in the English Standard Version. After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham! And he said, Here I am. He said, Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, Stay here with the donkey; [and here it is] I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, My father! And he said, Here I am, my son. He said, Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they went both of them together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham! And he said, Here I am. He said, Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, 2

and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. [skipping down to verse 15] And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, [ultimately fulfilled through Christ] because you have obeyed my voice. (Genesis 22 ESV) So here in Genesis 22 we see for the first time the word that we translate as worship being used, but where was the worship in this passage? I mean if we kind of define worship the way we are used to, then when Abraham said, Hey, you guys stay here, and me [sic] and the boy are going to go over there, he would have said something like You guys sit down here for a little bit. Me [sic] and Isaac are going to go to the top of that mountain and we are going to sing a couple of songs and then we will come back to you. First I am going to sing a hymn and he is going to sing something by David Crowder or whatever. That is the way we would typically think about this when we talk about worship. But, that is not the way it is used here. Worship happened in this text when Abraham demonstrated by his actions that he put God above all things. He made Him preeminent. He put Him above even his most precious thing, the child of the promise, his son Isaac. So you see here from the law of first mention there is no music involved in this whole thing, that this is more about an attitude of the heart, that worship was the act of making God preeminent, above all things, separate, holding nothing back. That is the first mention of worship here, that God tested Abraham to see if Abraham loved God, even more than his own precious son. So, from the law of first mention we see that worship is about putting God first, about putting God above all things. Now we are going to skip forward a few hundred years and we are going to go to Deuteronomy chapter 6. Go ahead and turn to Deuteronomy chapter 6. Right before this text Moses delivered the ten commandments and then in the next chapter in Deuteronomy 6 Moses continues and he gives basically an overview or summary of what he has just talked about. This is a very familiar passage. I am going to pick it up in Deuteronomy 6 and I am going to read verses 4 through 9. Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 3

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 ESV) So you see, just as we saw with Abraham, worship was defined and demonstrated when Abraham put God above all things. Moses continues with that same theme here. He says this is the greatest commandment, that you love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus later on quotes this and said, This is the greatest commandment, that you love your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Moses said, Hey, do whatever you can to stir this up within you. Talk about it when you rise, when you are walking around, when you are driving put it on sticky notes in your car. Make God preeminent in your life. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO WORSHIP? As a worship pastor I have really thought a lot about how you define worship. I thought about this a lot for many years and I think that this passage right here really is the best biblical definition for worship. What does it mean to worship God? It means to love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Authentic worship then is the acting out of, it is the expression of, it is the actions that come out of this heart of loving the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Now we are going to continue jumping through the Bible. We are going to jump forward about 1500 years. Turn to John chapter 4. This is another familiar passage. This is the passage where Jesus has the conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. You remember Jesus and his disciples are traveling together and they stop at this location in Samaria. The disciples go into town to find some food. Jesus gets into a conversation with a woman there. We are going to pick it up in John chapter 4 starting with verse 16. Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband, and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You are right in saying, I have no husband ; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things. 4

Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. When the Samaritan woman asked Jesus about worship, she was asking about more of what does it look like, what are the externals of it? She said now my fathers have been worshipping on this mountain but you Jews worship in Jerusalem. It is a little bit about the same way we talk about worship when we have conversations. What is your church like? or We worship with hymns, or We use holy water, or We sprinkle or we use incense, or whatever. We tend to define worship more in the terms of the external things. It is a similar kind of thing right here. Now Jesus could have rightly and truly explained to her why the Jewish form of worship was the only kind of worship that God was accepting because He had set forth this whole rules and regulations for the Levitical priesthood and worshipping in the temple and all these type of things, but He kind of skipped over that whole thing. He brought worship down to its essence. He didn t want to talk about the externals of it. He said that the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. He said that those who worship must worship in spirit and truth. So, what does it mean to worship in spirit? It is not about the externals. It is about the heart. It is not about this mountain or in Jerusalem or this style of music or whatever. It is the expression of loving God from our hearts. Even if you can go through the right motions as they did in Jerusalem, because they were actually executing the letter of the law, the worship is not acceptable to God. Jesus quotes Isaiah and Matthew 15 where He says, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. So, the worship that the Father is seeking, the worship in spirit, is a worship that flows from our heart, flows from hearts of gratitude and putting God at that preeminent place in our lives. This is aligned with our biblical definition of worship from the great commandment that we are to love the LORD our God with all our hearts, our soul, our mind, and our strength. So, worshipping God in spirit is more about the attitude of the heart. It is not so much about the external systems and processes we go through. 1. WORSHIP IS CHRIST CENTERED. What does it mean to worship in truth? I think this is a really big multi-faceted word right here. There are lots of different ways that we explain this. I have listed 25 ways to explain it. No, really I am going to talk about four different ways here. Do you remember the first song that we sang this morning where there was a line that said, You are the way, the truth? Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Worshipping in truth first and foremost is acknowledging that Jesus Christ is LORD of lords and KING of kings, that Jesus Christ is LORD. Jesus said that whoever has the Son has the Father also. Whoever does not have the Son doesn t have the Father. In our day and age we are very accepting of people who disagree with us, and we need to be kind and gentle; but if we take a true definition of the kind of worship that the Father seeks as in the Bible, then the only type of worship that is truly acceptable to God is worship that acknowledges that Jesus Christ is Savior. What that means for our friends who might have a different way, who may go through the rituals and the motions of bowing down a certain way everyday and saying prayers or trying to live a good life and trying to come back maybe as something better, all those things unfortunately the LORD is going to say, I am sorry. You did not worship in truth. Christ needs to be preeminent in our worship. Worshipping in truth means first and foremost that our worship is God centered. You know I had a pastor friend in Denton, Texas, Tommy Nelson, who had a quote that still sticks with me. He had a lot of quotes that still stick with me and a lot of them I can t quote here, but one thing he said is that it does not really matter how sincere you are. God does not really measure sincerity when you approach Him. He said this: It is not that you truly believe. It is that you believe truly. 5

It is not that you truly believe. I sincerely believe something, but is what you believe based on truth? So just as an aside, this is why we have a heart for evangelism, a heart for sharing our faith because we know there is no other name under heaven by which man can be saved. So, out of love and out of just reaching out to those who are lost we want to share the gospel with them. So, first of all worshipping in truth is Christ centered. 2. WORSHIP IS BIBLICALLY ROOTED. Worshipping is biblically rooted. It is aligned with Scriptures. We are not basing our lives and basing our actions on this feels good or I have a peace about this. Worshipping in truth means we put our lives under the authority of the Word of God. That is why preaching and teaching of the Word of God is such a big deal here at Fellowship Bible Church. We don't just pick our favorite passages that we like, but we put ourselves under the entire counsel of God. That is one of the distinguishing marks of Fellowship Bible Church, that we want to preach and teach the entire Word of God. Worshipping in truth is Christ centered. It is biblically rooted. It is aligned with Scripture. 3. WORSHIP IS ALIGNING OURSELVES WITH GOD S HEART Worshipping in truth means we align ourselves with God s heart. What I mean by that we make Him important and we do the things that God says are important. It says in James that authentic religion is caring for widows and orphans. We reach out and we care for the oppressed. That is why we do things in the communities here in Concepts 21 with Fellowship Espanol, that we want to demonstrate God s love to them by the way we reach out to them. We are aligning ourselves with God s heart. 4. WORSHIP IS DEMONSTRATED BY THE WAY WE LIVE It is Christ centered. It is biblically rooted and aligned with God s heart and worshipping in truth means it is demonstrated by the way we live. We can come in here and sing as many songs as we want about how we surrender our life to God and you know I give everything to you. There is none like You, but it says in Romans 12 that okay that needs to be validated by a lifestyle of worship. It says in Romans 12 to present your bodies, your entire life, as a living sacrifice to God which is your spiritual worship. So, worshipping in truth means that it is not confined to just this corner of my life, that Oh I worship when I come to Sunday morning worship services, but it is the way that I live my life. It is again becoming all consuming, that we love the LORD our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Worship is a lifestyle. BIBLICAL DEFINITION OF WORSHIP Worship is all that we do, so our biblical definition of worship this morning is that worship is the expression of, the living out of, the putting feet to loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It flows from hearts of gratitude and it is based in the truth of the Scripture. That is our biblical definition of worship this morning. CORPORATE WORSHIP Okay, if that is it, what about Sunday mornings? I mean this is called our worship service, right? So, how do you take these same principles and you apply them to Sunday morning? If it is really more about a lifestyle and a heart, do we really need to do this? Do we need to have all of this singing? Do you think Crawford comes to me on Tuesdays and he says, Hey, Tim, listen? I don't have a whole lot to talk about this week, but if you could fill in some time with some nice catchy songs I would appreciate that. That does not happen. 6

Trust me [laughter]. Sunday morning is a big deal. Sunday morning and gathering for corporate worship is a big deal for a few reasons. 1. A Picture of Worship in Heaven First of all this is a little picture and a taste of what it is like in heaven. You know when you look in Isaiah and you look in the book of Revelation, whenever you see the book open and you see a picture of what worship looks like in heaven, what is usually happening? There are usually multitudes and multitudes of people who are surrounding God, who are lifting up voices, who are proclaiming His worth. So, what we do is we gather here on Sunday mornings as a foretaste. It is worship practice for glory. It is that we are able to enter into worship, and I believe that our worship rises up into heaven and just kind of becomes mixed in with that glorious worship that is going around the throne of God. God is pleased by that when we offer that to Him when we worship Him in truth. 2. A Time to Celebrate and Encourage One Another Sunday morning is a big deal because it is a time for us to gather together and encourage one another, to celebrate the work of God, to see what God is doing in the lives of other people, and it spurs us on to good works also. When we talk about what is happening in Fellowship Espanol, with prison ministry, with the Brazil trip, we give God the glory and it encourages one another to man, I want to be a part of that. 3. A Time to Make God Preeminent Sunday morning is a time for us to look intently into the Word of God, the very God-breathed words, that we take the time to look into. Sunday morning is a time for us to corporately make God preeminent, rather than okay I have been making Him preeminent over here, preeminent over here. Think what a blessing it is to our God when we come to together and we gather here on Sunday morning and together we lift up our hearts and we live out, we express the great commandment that LORD, we love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We love You from our inner being, and we worship You in spirit and truth. We worship You LORD Jesus because You are KING of kings. You are LORD of lords. There is none like you. Imagine how great that must be to our Father. WORSHIPPING IN SPIRIT So what does it mean to worship in spirit on Sunday morning? How do we apply that? Well, obviously if it is from the internals, it means to engage our heart, our internals, our mind as we go through the proclamation of the Word and in our singing. It means to think about the words that we sing and not letting our minds wander. I have to tell you as a worship leader and as a musician up here that can be really hard for us to do sometimes because I can come here and lead worship in multiple worship services and go home and never have really connected with God in worship, because I am thinking about the mechanics of it. I am thinking about D major 7, A. I am thinking about the transitions going on here, thinking about the mix. I am doing all of that. You know we all come in here with distractions and you may not be thinking about the chords or whatever, but let s be honest. You come in here with, Oh, who is leading worship? I like that person, or oh, I don't like that person. Oh, that song. No, not that song again. I can t believe they are wearing that up there. Oh, gosh. The music is too loud, isn t it? No, the music is too soft, isn t it? So, our minds and our hearts are not really engaged. Worshipping in spirit on Sunday mornings means that we come in and we really want to believe God when He says where two or more are gathered together there I am in your midst. Believe that. believe that God is present with us and believe that God is seeking our worship so we offer Him 7

hearts of gratitude and it is all about Him, to focus on Him, and not about the externals or things that are going on around us. Worshipping in spirit on Sunday morning means that we really listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit as the Word is being taught. As Crawford is teaching, you know what is God telling me? What is God speaking to me? As we are singing songs a lot of times you may get this impression of something. What are You trying to tell me, LORD? For some of us it may even mean venturing out into engaging more a little bit physically in our worship so that we can engage our minds. Now we are going to go way out here this week. When we come here to worship the things that we do, we stand. We engage our bodies. We pray a lot of times. We bow our heads before God. We finish songs. We clap and hopefully you are not clapping for the worship team but you are clapping because of the glory of God. We don't want to receive any of that. We want God to receive all the glory. Some of us on the first and second row actually raise our hands. I am going to share something with you that I have shared with the worship team a few times. I have a confession to make to everyone here. Okay, for many years I was a closet hand raiser. It is true. I came from a church environment where we sang three hymns heartily with gusto as to the LORD, but if anybody ever ventured to lift up a hand or do anything that might look like that they are kind of engaging their whole body in worship, okay hold on. That is a little too spooky for us. Way back when I was living in Denton, Texas I went to a bible-teaching seminar in Dallas and there were thousands of people in there. I am up there in the balcony and we are singing songs and we happened to be singing, How Great Thou Art. Some of you guys have heard this story before. So, we are going along and I am pouring out my heart singing, and there is this dude next to me, you know one of those wacky guys who has his hands raised up, and I am looking at him, Okay, just stay over there. That is fine. I am singing. Well, the next thing I know the guy had grabbed my hand and then sings my soul my Savior God to Thee. How great thou art. Tears are just flowing from my eyes. I am going, Oh my gosh. What was that? I couldn t tell anybody about it because they would kick me out of the church that I was in at that time. So, I kept it a secret that I came out of the closet here. You know the externals of worship are not the big thing, but what happened is when I engaged my body it also kind of loosened something up in my heart. Think about it. When you talk to somebody you love and you are looking intimately into their eyes, there is all this kind of stuff. You are going, Hey, how was your day today? Good. That is nice. When we worship God in spirit and truth, one of the ways we engage our heart is we engage our bodies. I am not saying that everybody has to raise their hands and everything here, but I want everyone to have the freedom at Fellowship to do whatever it takes to engage your entire being in worship. So, worshipping in spirit on Sunday mornings that we engage our hearts and minds, really thinking about the words that we are singing, listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit. For some of us it might even be venturing out and getting physical with what we do. WORSHIPPING IN TRUTH Worshipping in truth on Sunday morning, what does this mean? It means a few things. First of all, as I mentioned, it is biblically based. It is Christ centered and that we preach and teach the whole counsel of God and not just the parts that we like, that we align our lives to the truth of God s Word, that we come wanting to hear the truth of the God and wanting to give our life and change our life based on what He is telling us to do. We sing songs that are biblically based. Have you ever noticed that about our songs? We are going to close this morning with a song called Revelation Song. Guess what book of the Bible the words are from? That is right -- Revelation. We are very careful about not just picking and selecting music just because, Oh, I like the melody of that. It has a nice little beat I can dance to type of thing, but we pick songs, we select songs, 8

because is this truth? Does it align with Scripture? Is it proclaiming Scripture or is it in agreement with Scripture? Worshipping on Sunday morning means do we really mean it what we are singing? That is really a warning to all of us that let s be careful about we say as we are singing. There is that song, the hymn, I Surrender All. All to Jesus I surrender. I surrender all. Do you really? Do I really mean that or am I just kind of going through the motions? We worship in spirit and truth. So, it is a big deal. It is a very important thing when we come in here on Sunday mornings and corporately lift up our hearts to God in worship. We need to speak truth. We need to sing truth. We need to put ourselves under the authority of truth. Now there is a huge thing in this text. Have you ever thought about the fact that one of the things that Jesus says here is that those who worship in spirit and truth are the kind of worshippers that the Father seeks. The Father is seeking your worship. When you drive up into this parking lot on Sunday morning or you are walking in the door does it really dawn on us that God is looking forward to our worship, that God is actively waiting and anticipating, that He is looking for worship in spirit and truth, to change our priority on Sunday morning, to change what time we get here on Sunday morning, that God is waiting for us and wants to receive our worship. It is an incredible thing that God is seeking. He is looking for our worship. It says in I Chronicles 16:9 that the eyes of the LORD search to and fro throughout the earth so He can strongly support those whose heart is completely His. Love the LORD your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and strength. Worship Him in spirit and truth. Another thing that is incredible about this text is God s response to Abraham s worship. Remember what he said, Because you have done this and not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you. Because you have made Me preeminent, because you have put Me first, because you have exalted Me above even the things most precious, here is what I am going to do, I am going to bless you. What does that mean for us? Does that mean through all the nations of the earth we are all going to be blessed? Probably not; that was a specific blessing. But when we engage with God in worship and worship Him in spirit and truth, He meets us in that worship and He might speak to us in certain ways. When you are sitting here and you are listening to a message and you hear that small voice speak something to you, that is the LORD meeting you in worship and blessing you by giving you a word. When you are maybe worshipping God and you are caught up in the song singing about His glory and you just kind of get this feeling, this joy, this inexpressible joy that wells up, that is God meeting you in worship. You know we don't always have mountain top experiences when we come together to corporately worship God, but God will always meet us in worship in spirit and truth and He is waiting for us and He will speak to us in someway. So, as we come together on Sunday morning let s change the way we talk about the worship services. Rather than walking out and saying, Wow, worship was great. Well, what do you mean by that? Well, I like the band. I like the base player this week. I like those songs. Let s change that and let s say worship was great because I worshipped God really well today. You know, how did I do? How did we do in worship? Not how did the people up on the platform do. Let s love the LORD our God with all of our heart, all of our soul, mind, and strength. You know over the years here at Fellowship I have had the privilege of programming and participating in literally thousands of worship services. There were some great high points. I think of the Good Friday service last year, and for any of us who were here we had the cross in the center of the room. Families lined up to go take communion on their knees in front of the cross. It was a beautiful moment. All those thousands of worship services that I have been a part of my heart has been and my heart will continue to be that we as a people of God will offer Him our hearts in worship and we will love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and 9

strength. We will worship Him in spirit and worship Him from our very inner being, worship Him in truth. It is a spiritual discipline. Let s love the LORD our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. This is our worship tune-up for today. Now in just a moment we are going to continue our worship service and are going to conclude it by remembering God by re-enacting the LORD s supper together, and at this point I am going to ask all of those who are serving communion to go ahead and get yourself and then wait at the back of the auditorium. I am going to ask the worship team to come up. As the worship team is coming up, pay no attention to those people who are walking on the stage. I am not done yet. Pay no attention. Look right here. There is one more thing I want to say about worshipping in truth, and it really applies to the way we do communion. You will notice that before Jesus got into that conversation about worship with the Samaritan woman He called something out. He said, Go bring your husband. She said, I don't have a husband. He said you are right. You don't have a husband because you have been married many times and this is not your husband. Before we can offer God authentic spirit and truth worship, we need to come to Him in truth often and confess that we have sin. That is what we do when we celebrate the LORD s supper, when we reenact what He did that night before He was betrayed. We are told in Scripture to examine our hearts, not that any of us are going to come here sinful or sinless, but we examine our hearts and we ask the LORD, Search me and find anything that is offensive within me. So, that is what we are going to do now in just a moment. The vocal team is going to sing over you. Now what I ask them to do is make this angelic voice over the congregation, but pay no attention to the angelic voice. I want you to examine your hearts as the elements are being passed examine your heart and see if there is anything offensive to our God. Then after the elements have been passed out we are going to have a couple of our elders, Joe Rice and Bob Gerndt will be up here and they are going to lead us through the taking of the elements together and we are going to conclude by singing the Revelation Song. I want to encourage you to really focus on what we are doing and by joining in that worship that is going on in heaven together. Just a word about communion here at Fellowship. Communion is open to any who have put their trust in Christ. I would say that if you are here this morning and you have not done that, we invite you, we plead with you to accept this free gift of salvation that has been presented to you, that God loves you so much that He took the punishment due to each one of us on Himself on the cross when He was crucified. That offering was validated and accepted by the resurrection, so maybe just in the quietness of this moment you can ask Jesus to come into your heart, to accept that free gift of salvation. Let s move toward communion now and I am going to ask the servers to go ahead and let s examine our hearts. 10