Worship in Spirit and Truth

Introduction

Have you ever been absolutely convinced that you understood something, only to discover that you had been thinking about it completely wrong?

What makes those moments so difficult is that you are not actually ignorant about the subject. As they say, “a little knowledge is dangerous.”

You simply been operating with some fundamental assumptions that ended up being wrong. That can happen with the concept of worship.

People have been worshiping for as long as humanity has existed. We build places of worship, we develop worship traditions, we sing songs of worship.

We have worship services, worship leaders, worship teams, we have even come up with a genre called worship music. And yet it is entirely possible to be surrounded by all the activity associated with worship while still misunderstanding what worship is.

Many of us can reduce worship to music. So much so, that some in here believe that the worship portion of this service has ended because we have stopped singing.

Perhaps you are more evolved than that and you understand that worship is the entire Sunday morning experience but then perhaps that's the end of it. Meaning that worship is limited to a Sunday morning service experience.

We can associate worship with a particular building, a particular tradition, a particular style, or even a particular emotional experience. Unless I am stirred somehow, I don't feel like I've worshipped.

But none of those things ultimately determine whether we are truly worshiping God. In fact one of the most dangerous things about false worship is that it can look and feel very religious.

Emotions are the spice of life. They are the paprika, the oregano, the Italian seasoning, the pesto that allows you to fully enjoy a good meal. But don’t confuse the flavor with the substance. The presence of strong emotion does not prove that true worship has taken place, and the absence of strong emotion does not prove that it hasn’t.

In fact, Scripture gives you plenty of worship filled with emotion—joy, awe, fear, sorrow, gratitude, longing. The problem isn’t feeling deeply. The problem is allowing how deeply I felt to determine whether what I offered was true worship.

Throughout scripture God repeatedly confronted people who were performing the activities of worship while their hearts remained far from him. But even that requires a qualifier.

What does it mean for your heart to be close to Him? Because many of us believe that the fact that we had an emotional experience means that our heart was close to God.

But emotion by itself is no proof that we have worshipped God rightly. We have already established that everybody worships so perhaps we need to ask and answer the questions:

Who do you worship?

How do you worship?

Does the God you claim to worship receive the worship you are offering?

These questions bring us to our third installment of our series: Encounters with God. Two weeks ago Moses encountered God at the burning bush and discovered that true worship begins when God reveals himself.

Last week Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up and discovered that encountering God's holiness exposes our sin but that God's grace provides the cleansing that makes serving Him possible.

Moses was a shepherd in the wilderness. Isaiah was confronted with the glory of God in a vision of the temple but today we meet a very different person in a very different place.

We meet an unnamed Samaritan woman who wasn't looking for some great spiritual experience and she certainly was not expecting to meet the Messiah. As far as she knows she's going to get some water.

This woman was about to go to an appointment she did not make for sitting beside that well is Jesus Christ, and before the conversation is over Jesus is going to talk to her about water, her relationships, her religion, her worship, and ultimately about himself.

Notice that this woman was not irreligious. She has theological beliefs. She knows something about her religious heritage.

She knows about the controversy between Jews and Samaritans. She even believes that the Messiah is coming. Yet she's standing face to face with the Messiah and doesn't recognize him.

This is where this passage becomes uncomfortable for religious people like us because it is possible to know things about God without truly knowing God.

It is possible to discuss biblical worship, even participate in the activities of Christian worship, without being a true worshiper.

It is possible to defend your religious tradition while completely missing the one to whom all true worship belongs.

Jesus is about to completely redefine this woman's understanding of worship and it behooves us to take a closer look at this familiar story. This woman's encounter with God demonstrates three realities that we will examine today:

Jesus reveals our deepest need, our deepest need, because we don't know what that is.

Jesus exposes what keeps us from true worship, which we also don't know what that is.

Jesus reveals the true worship God seeks, which again we don't know what that is.

This woman came to the well thinking she knew what she needed, what she believed, and how God should be worshipped. Before she leaves, Jesus is going to correct all three.

I. Jesus Reveals Our Deepest Need (vv.1-15)

John begins by giving us the circumstances that eventually bring Jesus and this woman together. Jesus had been ministering in Judea and his disciples have been baptizing.

His ministry had begun attracting the attention of the Pharisees. Because of this Jesus leaves Judea and heads north toward Galilee but then John gives us an interesting detail. He says,

John 4:4 LSB

4 And He had to pass through Samaria.

Geographically traveling through Samaria would have certainly been the most direct route to Galilee but often Jews would take a different route, crossing the Jordan and traveling around Samaria.

Considering John's emphasis through his gospel upon Jesus carrying out the will and mission of the Father, we should not read "he had to" as merely a statement about geography. He certainly did not have to.

Yet he did have to if he was going to keep that divine appointment, an appointment this woman doesn't know anything about. She thinks she is going to get water. Jesus knows he is going to get her:

John 4:5–6 LSB

5 So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; 6 and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

So Jesus stops at Jacob's well, a place that is connected to Israel's history. Jacob had purchased land in this region and Joseph's bones would eventually be buried somewhere nearby.

Notice that the passage says that Jesus was wearied from his journey, meaning he's tired. Yes the eternal Son of God, the one through whom all things were made, is sitting beside a well because his human body is tired from walking.

I cannot bypass this. This is the mystery of the Incarnation. Jesus is truly God and truly man. His deity did not eliminate his humanity. He experienced fatigue just like all of us do.

So he picked this iconic sight to rest and wait for his appointment to arrive:

John 4:7–9 LSB

7 A woman of 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 Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How do You, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, being a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

There had been centuries of hostility between Jews and the woman immediately recognizes the awkwardness in the air.

Since the days of Rehoboam the son of Solomon Israel was divided between the nothern Kingdom and the Southern kingdom.

The southern kingdom came to be known as Judah and it was made up of two of the tribes of Israel, Judah and Benjamin, with its capital in Jerusalem.

The northern kingdom came to be known as Israel, made up of ten of the twelve Israelite tribes, with its capital eventually set in Samaria. The Samaritans were historically connected to the northern kingdom of Israel.

After Assyria conquered the northern kingdom, many Israelites were deported and Assyria resettled people from other conquered nations into the region.

Over time a mixed population and a corrupted religious system developed. The Samaritans eventually accepted only the Pentateuch as Scripture and rejected Jerusalem as the proper center of worship.

So there are several barriers standing between Jesus and this woman. He is a Jew. She is a Samaritan. He is a man. She is a woman

As we will soon discover, her personal life carries its own complication. Yet Jesus initiates the conversation. Something we need to pay attention to: the woman did not come looking for Jesus.

John 4:10 LSB

10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

There are two things that this woman does not know. Jesus tells her, "If you knew the gift of God," and "Who is it who says to you" Not only does she not know, she doesn't know what she doesn't know.

She doesn't have a clue what God is offering and even less who Jesus is. Those two things are connected so at this point Jesus and this woman are speaking about two different things:

John 4:11–12 LSB

11 She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? 12 “Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?”

Jesus is speaking of eternal things but she is speaking about earthly things. Yet her question is magnificently timely. Are you greater than our father Jacob?

She does not have a clue that He is infinitely greater. Jacob needed this well. Jacob drank from this well. Jesus is offering water that Jacob's well could never provide. The exchange is rather humorous.

Jesus says "water". She thinks, "Well". Jesus says "gift". She thinks "bucket". Jesus is talking about eternal life and she is trying to figure out how he's going to get water out of a deep hole without anything to draw with.

This is one of those instances where I could not be Jesus because I would be messing with this woman all day if I had been Him, but He does not allow her to operate in ignorance too long.

John 4:13–14 LSB

13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst—ever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

The point? Everything this world offers eventually leaves you thirsty again. You get the career and eventually you ask, "What's next?"

You can get the house, the relationship, the money, the car, the recognition. You can achieve the thing you were convinced would finally make you content and eventually though you will thirst again.

This is not to say that there's anything inherently evil with these things. The problem begins when we ask created things to satisfy a thirst they were never designed to satisfy.

Jeremiah 2:13 LSB

13 “For My people have done two evils: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, To hew for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns That can hold no water.

We keep returning to wells that cannot satisfy us and some of those wells may contain good things but even good things make terrible gods. Jesus offered something fundamentally different.

“That water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

The deepest need this woman has is not sitting at the bottom of Jacob's well. It is actually sitting next to it. She needs Christ. We must connect this conversation to something Jesus said one chapter earlier.

John 3:16 LSB

16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Here we see Jesus doing just that, offering eternal life. The gift is inseparable from the giver. Jesus doesn't merely know where living water can be found. He is the source of it. That's why this encounter is ultimately about knowing Christ.

John 4:15 LSB

15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come back here to draw.”

She still doesn't understand. She wants what Jesus is offering but she wants it for the wrong reason. There's something remarkably contemporary about that.

People can want Jesus because of what they believe Jesus can do for the life they already want. Jesus fixed my marriage, My finances, Heal my body, Fix my children, Fix my husband.

None of those things are necessarily wrong to ask but what happens when what we really want is the gift without the giver? The woman said, "Give me this water."

Jesus is about to make her understand that the water He is offering addresses a problem much deeper than physical thirst. He is about to confront her with a reality about herself .

Because our deepest problem isn't merely that we thirst. Our problem is where we've been going to satisfy that thirst. And so Jesus says something that almost sounds like he has changed the subject.

But Jesus has not changed the subject at all. He is about to do something very much so related.

II. Jesus Exposes What Keeps us From True Worship

John 4:16 LSB

16 He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come back here.”

Jesus just told this woman about living water that springs up to eternal life. Of course she thinks he's talking about the well and the water in the well but at this point she had to be confused.

What does my husband have to do with this conversation? I can only imagine she must have thought this is so disconnected from what we were talking about.

We are talking about water. What does my husband have to do with water? By the way Jesus has not changed the subject. He is taking the conversation deeper.

She wants the water Jesus is offering but she still doesn't understand the nature of her thirst. Jesus puts his finger on an area of her life that will expose something she cannot see on her own.

John 4:17–18 LSB

17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.”

Please do not gather from this portion of scripture that this woman was the town's prostitute. I don't believe the text gives us that liberty.

We do not know why she had five husbands. Some of them could have died. She could have been divorced or maybe even abandoned.

Let's not make accusations that the text does not make but Jesus does expose one thing explicitly. Whatever happened in those previous relationships, her current relationship is not a marriage.

Jesus knows that. She knows that and now she knows that Jesus knows that but He does not humiliate her or berate her. And he doesn't pretend as if it doesn't matter either.

Jesus tells her the truth because the Jesus who offers living water is also the Jesus who exposes sin. We may want a Jesus who satisfies us without confronting us.

To find that Jesus you will have to search for him outside of the pages of scripture because the Jesus that scripture portrays does not work like this. We don't get grace that leaves us unrepentant.

We don't get comfort without conviction. Or a savior who improves our lives without contronting the things in our lives that are contrary to him.

Jesus loves this woman too much to leave her in her ignorance about herself. Her thirst and her life cannot be separated.

She came to the well thinking she was talking to a Jewish stranger but this stranger knows things about her that he should not know:

John 4:19 LSB

19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I see that You are a prophet.

Closer but still so far. She thought he was a Jew. Then she addressed him as sir. Now she believes she may be speaking to a prophet. Keep climbing, you'll get to what He is.

Her next words could be interpreted a couple of different ways. She could be embarrassed by the whole thing and is trying to change the subject.

Or she's actually taking advantage of the fact that there's a prophet, a legitimate bona fide prophet, talking to her and she has the opportunity of a lifetime to get her theological questions answered:

John 4:20 LSB

20 “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”

A pretty legitimate question: The Samaritans say that Mount Gerizim is where God is supposed to be worshipped and the Jews say that it's Jerusalem. The Samaritans had their religious traditions and the Jews had theirs.

And now we have arrived at the issue that has been underneath this entire sermon. Who gets to determine how God is worshipped? The Samaritan woman did not invent a religious system. She inherited it.

And this is legitimate. There are people who worship the way they do because that's how they grew up. That's how their family worshipped. That's how their church taught them. That's their tradition.

The challenge for us is that tradition does not determine true worship. Sincerity does not determine true worship. Emotion or culture or personal preferences cannot determine true worship.

This woman believes that the issue can be settled by choosing between two places: either this mountain, Gerizim, or the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. But Jesus is about to show her that the issue is much bigger than that.

But before we move forward, notice what has happened in this encounter. Jesus has exposed two things: first, He has exposed her life for He knows her history and her present situation.

Second, He is beginning to expose the inadequacy of her understanding of worship. Because sometimes the obstacle is that we are perfectly comfortable with a version of worship that we have defined for ourselves.

We can sing, pray, attend church. We can raise our hands, know theological language, have deeply emotional experiences and still never ask the most important question:

IS THIS THE WORSHIP GOD SEEKS?

Because true worship begins with God revealing himself, it is God, not us, who determines the nature of the response he requires. The woman wants to settle the debate between two places.

And she wants this answer without ever asking the deeper question: Is any of this acceptable to God? Is this what God is looking for?

III. Jesus Reveals The True Worship God Seeks (vv. 21-26)

John 4:21–22 LSB

21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in 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.

The Samaritans had corrupted the worship God had revealed. The Samaritans worshiped in ignorance. They did not have the full revelation of Him as they only accepted the first 5 books of the OT

Their worship was therefore based upon an incomplete understanding of God’s revelation. The Jews, however, possessed the revelation God had given through the Old Testament.

They knew the God they worshiped, and God’s saving purposes were unfolding through them.

God had indeed chosen Jerusalem, and His redemptive promises, including the coming Messiah were coming from the Jews, but there was a change coming

Jesus was announcing a transition in redemptive history because the One to whom the temple, sacrifices, priesthood and promises were pointing had arrived. Jesus is here

John 4:23–24 LSB

23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

So this answers the question, What kind of worship does God seek? Jesus says, “in spirit and truth.” We must not reduce these to merely emotional or sincere worship and knowing correct doctrine.

Although those things matter, Jesus is saying something deeper. God is spirit. He is not confined to Gerizim, Jerusalem or any other physical location. True worship cannot be ultimately defined by geography.

This is imperative because since God is everywhere and there is nowhere to escape His presence according to Ps 139, and besides, we are to present our

“bodies as a sacrifice–living, holy, and pleasing to God, which is [our] spiritual service of worship.” (Romans 12:1)

Therefore, every aspect of our lives no matter where we are located is potentially an act of worship.

I say potentially because we are always worshipping, just not always Yahweh but the gods of our own making.

And true worship must be grounded in truth, in the revelation God has given of Himself. Jesus says later,

John 14:6 LSB

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.

You don’t get to invent the God you worship, or what He is like. You don’t get to determine how He should be approached. We must worship according to what He has revealed about Himself:

John 1:18 LSB

18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.

This is Christ Jesus, the ultimate and final revelation of the Father. And the Father is seeking those worshipers.

This entire encounter demonstrates this. Who came looking for whom? This woman was not looking for Jesus. Jesus had to pass through Samaria. Jesus was sitting at the well and initiated the conversation.

Jesus is the one who offered living water, exposed her life, and revealed the truth. The Father seeks worshipers. Worshipers respond to Him because He first seeks them.

God takes the initiative by revealing Himself and that revelation produces worship.

John 4:25–26 LSB

25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when He comes, He will declare all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”

And there it is. She had been waiting for someone to explain worship to her and that someone is standing in front of her.

She started this conversation seeing a Jewish man. She called him sir. She thought him to be a prophet. Now Jesus reveals himself as the Messiah. Suddenly the conversation makes sense.

The living water is found in Christ. The truth about her life is exposed by Christ. The truth about worship is revealed by Christ. Access to the Father comes through Christ.

This is why true worship is ultimately not about finding the right mountain. It is about knowing the right person.

True worship is not about location or ritual but about knowing Christ. The question we should leave with today is not "Did I worship today?" But do I know the one I claim to worship?