Worship in Spirit and in Truth

Notes
Transcript
1 Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son! 2 May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice! 3 Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness! 4 May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor!
1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 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. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 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.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
Introduction
Worship to the the immortal, thrice holy, sovereign, almighty and gracious God is the greatest act that any person can ever be involved in.
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“Worship comprehends all that respect which man owes and gives to his Maker.… It is the tribute which we pay to the King of Kings, whereby we acknowledge his sovereignty over us, and our dependence on him.… All that inward reverence and respect, and all that outward obedience and service to God, which godliness enjoins, is included in this one word worship.” D. A. Carson
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8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ”
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23 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. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Jesus gives us a very clear, unambiguous, authoritative, unchanging definition of the fundamental elements of what true worship is.
It needs to be remembered that the true worship of the living God can only come as a result of the gracious work of God’s Spirit in the salvation of the soul. Before a man can ever worship God biblically, he must first know this God as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This great and almighty God sent his Son to live the life that we could not live and to die the death that we should have died. Robert Dickie - What the Bible Teaches about Worship
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1. Background
1. Background
The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Samaritans)
Old Testament Version. Jewish accounts, characterized by 2 Kings 17 and Josephus (Ant 9.277–91) claim that the Samaritans are descendants of colonists brought into the region of Samaria by the Assyrians from other lands they had conquered, including Cuthah, and thus the Jewish designation of Samaritans as Cutheans (Ant 9.290). The Jews have argued that the veneer of Israelite religion displayed by the Samaritans is the result of instruction by an Israelite priest repatriated from Assyria after the colonists had been attacked by lions sent by God (2 Kgs 17:25–26).
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a. Samaria
a. Samaria
1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria.
it is more probable that the meaning here is: he had to go through Samaria in agreement with the orders of his heavenly Father: to do the will of the One who had sent him and to accomplish his work (4:34).
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b. Jacob’s Well
b. Jacob’s Well
5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
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c. The Samaritan Woman
c. The Samaritan Woman
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7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
The Jews and Samaritans were opposed to each other. The Samaritans only accepted the first five books of the Bible.
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2. Challenge
2. Challenge
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a. Conviction
a. Conviction
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16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
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b. Seeking
b. Seeking
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19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
26 “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, 28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known. 29 And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.
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3. Genuine Worship
3. Genuine Worship
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a. Location is Irrelevant
a. Location is Irrelevant
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
The Samaritans had set up a place of worship on Mt Gerizim.
Jesus answers that not where one worships matters but the attitude of heart and mind and the obedience to God’s truth regarding the object and method of worship is what matters. It is not the where but the how and the what that is all-important
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b. Knowledge
b. Knowledge
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22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
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14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
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c. In Spirit and Truth
c. In Spirit and Truth
Jesus proclaims very clearly what true and genuine worship is. These are not just suggestions but the essential elements of worship. If they are not fully observed then the worship is invalidated.
Worship is a spiritual act. Sinful persons saved by grace come together in the presence of God to glorify and honour him.
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24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Worship must always be in line with God’s truth.
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John (4:1–26)
...worshiping in spirit and truth can only mean rendering such homage to God that the entire heart enters into the act, and doing this in full harmony with the truth of God as revealed in his Word. Such worship, therefore, will not only be spiritual instead of physical, inward instead of outward, but it will also be directed to the true God as set forth in Scripture and as displayed in the work of redemption. William Hendriksen
I will be considering this in more detail over ensuing weeks. Please read Revelation chaps 4 and 5 to learn how the church worships in heaven.
Conclusion
May our worship be that which truly honours God and gives him the glory.