Spread Us a Banquet

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By John Piper About
Part of the series Message Excerpt

The Heart of Leading Worship

Audio Transcript

Worship is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus, which means the task of this preacher here and these lead worshipers over here, their task is to spread a banquet in lyrics and in preaching with whatever helps we need musically to connect with the living God. It seems to me, a lot of that was happening here, and I’m eager to just breathe on that and be happy about it.

Which is why, by the way, so many different forms in 10,000 cultures around the world are okay with God. I mean, if you try to take your way — all those instruments, that big choir, and transplant that to Chad, where the missionaries got six converts, there’s nobody even dreaming that way. So, you just need to be aware that’s okay too: six people singing with no instruments or whatever drums they use there, that’s just fine because that’s not the heart of worship. The heart of worship is: Are these six people satisfied in the God they just met in the gospel? It’s the heart. “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Matthew 15:8) is Jesus’s indictment of worship from the Pharisees. You don’t want to go there.