God Says You’re Worth It

• i was a women’s conference recently and an older beautiful older saint came up to me and she was talking about the youth event that had been there uh the friday night before we had the women’s conference and she said you know i pray for those kids i pray for them because you know they have that loud drum kit and i got so tickled because i thought this precious saint equates good worship with hymns and she doesn’t think that worship that includes a drum kit or maybe kids jumping up and down is actually pleasing to the heart of god
• and i thought boy she’s missed the whole myth the whole truth because worship biblical worship has very little to do with the style of music or with the posture of our bodies that has everything to do with the posture of our heart i want to talk for just a few minutes about worship what it is what it looks like and what a joy it is for us to actually experience true worship i want to turn to john chapter four and you probably know this story we talk about this story a lot it’s about a woman who jesus encountered at a well
• and most people say she was a sleazy woman because she had been married five times and then was living with a guy who wasn’t her husband so she’s kind of like the elizabeth taylor of her culture you know just married a lot divorced a lot but i’ve read recently that this woman may not have been uh the kind of sleazy girl with her number all over the boys locker room the way we typically paint her as a matter of fact the fact that she kept being married proves that there was something about her that jewish men in this first
• century found attractive so i’ve read a lot of scholars recently that have said it’s very likely this woman was infertile so that’s why men continued to marry her to do her the honor of marrying her because she was beautiful and possibly very honorable but then when they found out she could not bear children then they would give her a certificate of divorce so again we don’t know for sure but don’t be so quick to paint her as being a trashy chick she may not have been but boy her story is tragic jesus encounters her at the well this is
• john chapter 4 and and most of you know that he encounters her at the heat of the day she goes to the well at noon and all the other women would come early in the morning or late in the evening when it was cool she comes in the middle of the day in the heat of the day because she wants to avoid the gossip of the other women in town who have surely marginalized her um you know we are so quick often times as christians to disguise gossip as prayer request be careful of the prayer requests you are slinging around if they defame