NOT JUST FOR SUNDAYS: EXPERIENCING THE POWER & PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

PART 5. WHEN THE BAND ISN’T THERE

In a nutshell: God gifts musicians and worship leaders to help his church worship him, but we should not be dependent on these gifts in order to worship. Every part of our lives should be offered in worship to Jesus. Everything we do should speak of his praise. In the final part of this series on the Holy Spirit we will see how we are called to worship in Spirit and truth even when the band isn’t there.


The power of music
The death of Michael Jackson this week has dominated our news, despite all the huge issues affecting the world, the death of a musician is what we are most interested in. Music has great power. It fills our lives, and many people are seemingly incapable of living without it – turning off the music is life taking a pacifier from a baby.

Although often abused, or made into an idol, music is God’s gift to us. Music is something uniquely human, and we are meant to worship with music.

The question for us though is this: Can we worship when the band isn’t there? Are we able to produce worship of our own, without someone else providing the notes?

The trouble with words
The words we use are so often helpful yet unhelpful at the same time. For example, it is helpful to talk about “Church” because we know what someone means when they say, “I’m going to church,” or, “My church is here.” But it is also incredibly unhelpful because talking about church in this way reinforces the wrong notion that church is a particular building, a particular place, at a particular time, when what church really is, is God’s people.

We have a similar language problem when we talk about having an “evangelistic opportunity.” Yes, there are moments of intentionality, when we deliberately try to evangelize, but the point is that we are called to be missionaries all the time.

And when we talk about “Worship” what we are usually referring to is the time in our meetings when we are singing – but worship should be all that we do. We do gather to worship – but the whole experience of being gathered should be worshipful: singing together, talking together, storying together, eating together, praying together, learning together. “Sunday worship” is everything we do when we are together on a Sunday! We talk about “the worship” and “the preaching” because we need terminology to describe what we are doing. But our terminology also fails us, because it is not just the “worship” that is worship – Preaching is worship as well!

The woman at the well: John 4:1-26
This is the story of someone who had got this all wrong. She thought worship was about a particular place. She hadn’t had her real need for worship satisfied.

Everything about the story is wrong! Jesus was in the wrong place, the woman’s ethnicity was wrong, and her gender was wrong. Jesus should not have been there talking to a Samaritan woman.

Jesus was not looking for an “evangelistic opportunity” but he was always ready to rescue lost sheep. Empowered by the Spirit he was always ready to touch peoples hearts. Jesus identifies the woman’s real need. Her invisible heart need was more important than her obvious bodily need. Her obvious need was for water – she needed a pump and a pipe to get the water to her house so she wouldn’t have to lug it from the well every day. But she had a greater need than this.

Jesus sees the woman’s need and opens up her heart with a word of knowledge. She doesn’t like this, and throws in a red-herring question to knock Jesus off her trail: “Which mountain should we worship on?” The woman wants to make this conversation safe again, which is what religion does – it erects neat walls and creates control; it creates “ins” and “outs”; it makes it obvious and clear where the battle lines are drawn.

The Samaritans were a mixed race people, the descendents of Jews and other tribes who had been moved into Samaria by the great powers that had conquered Israel. The Samaritans worshipped on Mt. Gerizim, on which they believed many key Old Testament events to have happened, and there was great animosity between them and the Jews. In 128BC the Jews destroyed the temple on Mt. Gerizim and in AD6 the Samaritans desecrated the Jerusalem temple by spreading human bones over it during Passover.

Jews and Samaritans had many similar beliefs, but where you worshipped had become the key thing for them, so the expected response at this point is for Jesus to have a theological argument about why Jerusalem is superior to Gerizim.

But instead Jesus says something unexpected. He does affirm the Messiah will be from the Jews (the Samaritans were looking for one of their own), but he shifts the argument from the place of worship to the how of worship.

“Never mind Gerizim and Jerusalem – what counts is that you worship in spirit and truth.”

It is important to note that “Spirit” and “Truth” are not two separate items. God is spirit; and God is truth. We cannot worship truly unless we worship in the spirit, or worship in the spirit if we are not worshipping in truth.

What Jesus does is to promise never ending water, which is a picture of the Spirit. He says the day will come when people will worship by spirit and truth. And – outrageously! – he says he is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed Anointer, the one who will pour out this Spirit.

Because of what Christ is doing, everything changes. Whereas for the Samaritans and the Jews all the focus was on a particular place, a place where God’s presence was meant to be, when the Spirit was poured out God’s presence goes wherever his people go. Christians are meant to be scattered around the world, not gathered in Jerusalem! The Land and the Temple and the Holy of Holies are no longer the thing – the presence of God in his people is the thing!

Application for us
What we do not need is mere moralism. We need heart transformation. The woman didn’t need moralism – she didn’t need just to be told to sort out her domestic arrangements; she needed a new heart. In what Jesus said to the woman he was tearing down the walls of religion and terminology.

When she said, “I have no husband” she was lying with the truth. It was true that she had no husband, but it was also a lie! And Jesus took her terminology apart to reveal her heart.

She needed an experience of the Spirit that would transform everything. And so do we.

When Jesus gets hold of our hearts and pours out the Spirit on us we are transformed. Transformed people become worshippers, who worship in spirit and truth, 24/7.

So the question is, “Can you worship when the band isn’t there?”

It is essential that we gather in corporate worship. Saying only that, “We are church wherever we are” and never actually gathering with other believers to deliberately worship is nonsense. And we need to honour the musicians and worship leaders because they are God’s gift to us and use their gifts in serving us. But when the body comes together we are to come with our many gifts – it is not all dependent on the band.

We have to keep using our terminology because we need terminology to explain things (“children in for the worship, out for the sermon”) but we need to keep fighting for the heart – for a heart of worship.


Application Questions
• What does it mean to be a worshipper?
• Why is it important that we gather in corporate worship?
• Have you ever previously thought about preaching being worship?
• What is the difference between moralism and the gospel?