Untitled Sermon (6)

Worship is a tremendously compelling and important subject!

In Philippians 3:3 “for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh,”

the Apostle Paul lists it as one of the three great distinctives of true belief.

True believers “glory in Christ Jesus,”

they “put no confidence in the flesh,”

and they “worship by the Spirit of God.”

This is a tremendously important subject! In fact, in the book of John there are three “musts.”

John 3:7: “You must be born again”;

John 3:14: “the Son of Man must be lifted up”;

and John 4:24: “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth”

Practically and theologically, “Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in human life” (Karl Barth).

It is the highest function in which our souls can be involved. The very highest!

In our text John reveals that our Lord views this matter of worship as of the utmost importance, and that is why he immediately answered the woman’s questions, dispensing with the irrelevant and going to the heart of the matter.

Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” (v. 21)

In other words, the question of the place of worship is irrelevant.“

You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.” (v. 22)

If Jesus gave her any further explanation, it undoubtedly included the fact that the Samaritans’ worship was not adequate because they used only the first five books of the Bible, thus limiting themselves to an incomplete knowledge of the revelation of God.

They worshiped in ignorance—“You Samaritans worship what you do not know.”

Moreover, salvation is from the Jews—specifically, from the tribe of Judah.

But the real question, and this was the question Jesus answered, was, what does God require in worship?

We find the answer in verses 23–24....What does God require?

Worship “in spirit and in truth.” We will consider the last first

GOD SEEKS THOSE WHO WILL WORSHIP HIM IN TRUTH (vv. 23–24)

“Truth” means that we are to worship what is true about God.

In other words, worshiping “in truth” occurs when we worship in accordance with what God has revealed about himself.

That is true worship.

The converse is also true—true worship does not take place when we do not worship in accordance with what God has revealed about himself.

So what we think about God is of great importance.

what is God like?

What comes into our minds when we think about God?

This is foundational.

Our answer not only affects our worship but our living.

Every failure in worship, or in doctrine or practice, can be traced back to wrong thoughts about God.

Going way back in history, we see that wrong thoughts about God were the source of Cain’s failure to worship God as he should.

Somehow Cain supposed God to be other than what he is, and he brought a sacrifice to fit his misconception....

Cain distorted the truth about God (his wisdom, his omniscience, and his goodness) and as a result brought the wrong sacrifice.

When the church’s concept of God in any way blurs, not only does worship suffer, but moral standards decline.

When we see who God is and what he requires, and when we subscribe to these things in the very depth of our being, we will take seriously his plan for relationships in life.

Wrong thinking about God is in fact idolatry because an idolatrous heart assumes God is other than he is.

In our sophisticated, civilized times we must not think we are free from idolatry just because we do not bow down to physical images. A wrong conception of God is the root of idolatry. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God …” (Romans 1:21).

Instead they created images. Idolatry begins with a wrong idea of who God is.

The pitiful truth is, the typical twentieth-century concept of God is decadent!

Some see him only as a cosmic force or the “ground of being.” When we conceive of God in this way, we will worship him with an icy reverence.

On the other hand, some conceive of God as a “God Pal.” Everything in religious life is essentially centered on me and what God can do for me. God becomes a kind of cosmic slot machine, but instead of inserting quarters we put in Scripture verses to get what we want from him.

This is by far the most popular concept of God today—the God who gives me whatever I want, the God who is my buddy.

Gone is the awe and reverence of which he is worthy.

God wants his people to worship him in truth, as he really is.

“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” (v. 23)

We must be people of the Word, because the clearest revelation of God that we have is in his Word.

John would later record (John 17:17) Jesus’ words in his high-priestly prayer: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”

God’s Word contains truth about God!

We are to be people filled with the Word of God.

When that happens, the attributes and the metaphors and the words that so beautifully describe God become the music of our hearts.

Not only do we need to be people of the Word, but we need to be people who think.

Worship is not a mindless activity.

It includes mental interaction with the truth about God.

We also need to develop the ability to hold contrasting truths about God in devotional tension.

On the one hand we see him as the mighty, eternal, transcendent Creator who holds the universe together (Hebrews 1:3),

while on the other hand we hold him to be the One who said, “O Jerusalem … how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Matthew 23:37).

We must see all we can of God through His Word if we are to worship him “in truth”!

To worship only one attribute of God and ignore others is not worshiping him in truth.

Worship must include the total revelation of who God is.

When this happens, God is worshiped in truth, idolatrous hearts are purged, moral lives are elevated, and God is pleased.

GOD SEEKS THOSE WHO WILL WORSHIP IN SPIRIT (vv. 23–24)

The Greek is quite clear here.

It does not say “the Spirit” but “in spirit.”

In other words, Jesus is not talking about worshiping in the Holy Spirit.

He is talking about worshiping with or in the human spirit.

What our Lord means is, he is not only looking for those who will worship him in the truth of who he is, but also in the very depth of their inner being—in spirit.

Authentic worship happens only when the very core of our being is employed in worshiping God!

Outward performance may or may not be worship.

As Spurgeon said, “God does not regard our voices, he hears our hearts, and if our hearts do not sing we have not sung at all.”

Sometimes we sing but do not worship.

Sometimes we pray with our lips, but worship does not take place.

Sometimes we give, but we do not worship.

And sometimes we do none of these things but are in deepest worship!

Outward circumstances cannot determine the authenticity of our worship.

We need to realize that some of the most precious worship recorded in Scripture happened in the least likely circumstances.

Remember how it was in Acts 16?

Paul and Silas found themselves in a Philippian jail. “The magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten.” They were “thrown into prison.” The jailer “fastened their feet in the stocks.” It was “midnight.” It is a scene of the most intense misery—their backs hanging in shreds, sitting in the inner dungeon of the Philippian jail, their feet in stocks so they could not even comfortably recline, sleepless with the insomnia of pain.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them” (v. 25).

They held a gospel service in that Philippian jail!

Despite the difficult circumstances, there was such worship in their spirits that it inexorably bubbled into life!

Those who worship God must “worship the Father in spirit and truth,” and that can happen anywhere!

This is one of the most wonderful things about worship.

There is something else we must never forget.

Because as believers we have renewed spirits, our capabilities for worship have been infinitely expanded.

Since the Holy Spirit has touched our human spirits, we have been renewed and have an expanded capacity and an enlarged hunger for worship.

New believers cannot get enough of worship. That is the way we all should be.

One of the major flaws of today’s Christianity is that many times we do not make provision for worship, and as a consequence people sense an incompleteness in the church.

Children who are raised in that kind of environment, where there is no real focus on worship, will sometimes later leave orthodoxy for empty forms that massage the need to worship.

How wonderful it is to worship “in spirit”! May we be the kind of people the Lord seeks!

CONCLUSION

Our text suggests an intensity on God’s part as well.“… they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” (v. 23)

The central reality in worship is not that we are seeking God, but that he is seeking us!

This is a totally Christian idea. The Jew never thought of God this way. That is a wonderful thing about worship—the expectancy within us is just a shadow of God expectancy!

Zephaniah 3:17 says, God “will rejoice over you with singing.”

God seeks worshipers!Are we worshipers who worship him “in spirit and in truth”?

It is possible to attend a church from our youth, to fall into the habit of the liturgy (and every church has its own liturgy), to be a fairly diligent reader of the Word, and to do so for fifty or sixty years, and yet never once worship God the way Jesus described it. Tragic!

The Samaritan woman had no such privileged history, but she worshiped.

The Samaritans had a belief that a prophet like Moses was going to be raised up and that he would explain the Law. They even had a name for him—the “Taheb”—and as a result the woman openly speculated about whether Jesus might be he.

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” (v. 25)In other words, “Are you the Christ?”Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.” (v. 26)

Whether it was then or sometime in the future, that woman began to worship “in spirit and in truth”—she believed what Christ said.

God wants us to be men and women who really understand how wonderful he is. God wants us to stand at his feet and be amazed at who he is and adore him in his awesome majesty.

He wants to be worshiped “in spirit and in truth.” There is nothing more important than what we think of him and how we worship him. Nothing!

May we heed his words and worship him “in spirit and in truth.”