The Kind of Worship God Desires, Part 2 (John MacArthur)

Now again I want to have you open your Bible, if you will, to a text that is a starting point for our discussion of worship. We're talking about acceptable true spiritual worship, what worship really is. I remember when I first came to Grace Church and did something that was a little bit rare in those days, that is I preached for an hour, Sunday morning and Sunday night, sometimes even longer than that. There are some sermons on record that went an hour and thirty minutes and maybe a couple an hour and 45 minutes. And I remember a person saying to me, and the question came up a number of times, but I remember a particular conversation where someone said to me, "With such long sermons with so much time taking up and preaching, how much can your church really worship?" Well the answer to that is to pose a question to the questioner, "With so little time given to preaching, how is it possible for your church to worship?" Because worship is not a matter of time, it's a matter of content. Adding another verse to the song, or another five verses or repeating the verses again and again, or adding more songs does not necessarily increase worship. More music does not necessarily enrich worship. Worship is enriched by what the worshiper knows. Worship is a mental experience. It is not an emotional experience, emotion follows. But we worship when we praise the Lord, that's one way, corporately. And our praise is informed with revelation. Truth informs and therefore increases worship...