True Worship

to pass through Samaria. There are two reasons for this selection for this specific path.

One's a little bit more obvious than the others. The first and most obvious is that the geography made it the shortest route.

So like I have a map in my nice study Bible here that shows us that Galilee is just north of Judea.

And so Jesus was passing through Samaria and Samaria is right on the route. So obviously this would be the shortest route for him to take.

This was the standard path taken by pretty much everybody except for the most strict of Jews who would actually opt for the path of crossing over, going east, crossing over the

Jordan River, heading north, and then crossing back over just to go around the

Samaritans. So we'll dive into more of why that animosity was there between the

Jews and the Samaritans. So that was the first and most obvious reason.

However, there is a deeper and sovereign necessity for Jesus to go through Samaria.

Jesus had a divine appointment with a woman who needed to know the Messiah, as we see from verses 25 and 26.

The place where Jesus and his disciples rest is a town called Sychar, which is very close to Mount Gerizim, it's just east of there, and where the

Samaritans had their temple. So we'll look at Josephus, the ancient

Jewish historian, to give us a context of why the temple was there and why the

Samaritans are in this relationship with the Jews. And there's a lot of names, so look into the text of scripture and learn why this historical context is so important and what

Jesus is trying to teach us through these verses. So the chapter begins with Jesus leaving

Jerusalem when the Pharisees learn that he is making and baptizing more disciples than John the

Baptist. He passes through Samaria with his disciples and stops at Sychar to rest near Jacob's well.

After his disciples go into town, a woman comes to the well and has to draw water, and it was about the sixth hour, or what we would call noon.

And this is very uncommon for women at that time because most of the women would have either come in the early morning or the evening when the day is cooler.

She came right during the middle of the day, and this kind of hints at what we'll see later of her sin and her lifestyle, that it created this shame where she could not even draw water at the same time as even the

Samaritan women who, of the Jews, were viewed as trash, basically.

So she was viewed as trash of trash. So we'll see

Jesus confront that later, but Jesus tells the woman to give him a drink, and she replies by saying, how is it that you, a

Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? This shows, as we already touched on, this shows the animosity even greater because this shows that even the

Jews, the Jews weren't even able to ask for a simple drink of water. We might dislike a lot of people, but to not even have the common courtesy to either give or receive a drink of water from them really shows the

Jews' view of the Samaritans and also the Samaritan view of the Jews. He then tells her that he can give living water, to which she replies in what

I would imagine a pretty sarcastic tone, where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father

Jacob? Little did she know who she was talking to. Jesus explains that whoever drinks this water will not thirst, and it will become a spring of water in him welling up to eternal life.

And by her response, it's obvious that she either misses the point completely or she remains sarcastic in her response by saying, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come to draw this water.

So it's kind of a sarcastic tone still of, yeah, right, you got this water, please give it to me so I don't have to come up here and draw water from this well.

It also shows that she has a longing for redemption because she loathes the idea of having to come up here to this well at noon to just go around her shame.

She doesn't like to confront the shame that she has, so she comes at a time that is better for her where she doesn't have to deal with it.

Jesus, even though she misses it, even though she is probably a little sarcastic in her tone,

Jesus still begins the process of preparing her to receive living water.

He does this first by calling out her sin. No one can truly come to Christ unless he confronts the sin first, and then we must repent and turn from it.

Jesus will never let us come to him with our sin, with our sin not confronted.

He, just the fact that we understand who he is confronts our sin, that he is completely holy and just and righteous.

The conviction of sin must precede repentance because if you're not convicted of it, how can you repent from it?

There's nothing to repent from if you're not convicted of your sin, and repentance will precede true worship.

So after he calls out her sin of having five husbands and the one that she is with now is not her husband, she admits, she didn't really have to, but she admits that she is accurate in his evaluation of her past and current relationships, and she perceives that he is a prophet.

Little did she know that it's actually God in the flesh. She immediately asks him a question that seems to have been on her mind for a while, and the reason

I say this is because it sounds almost random with the flow of the text. It seems kind of jarring and unnatural because Jesus just calls out her sins, and then she asks, well, where should we worship?

It seems some commentators will say that she is trying to escape the guilt of her sin by changing the subject quickly.

I don't believe that to be true. I think there's a different underlying motive behind the question because this is the type of question that a true worshiper of God would ask.

If we wish to be true worshipers of God, then this must be the most pressing question in our mind.

How does God desire to be worshiped? I remember even in my life as I was coming through to the

Reformed faith, I was looking at all different things, you know, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, all these different religions that seem to have an aspect of reverence for God, and I was asked the question, well, are you saying that you would just be a part of some liturgy?

To which I replied, I don't care what it looks like. I don't care if it's what appears to be dead liturgy.

If that's how God desires to be worshiped, then that's how we must worship. So that's the same heart that this woman has of asking, well, is it in Samaria?

Is it on Mount Gerizim? Or is it in Jerusalem that we must worship? And the question that she asks, she is not disappointed with Jesus' response.

He tells her a truth that will free her soul that has been bound by generations of human tradition and ceremony, all pointing to the fulfillment of Christ.

All of the Jewish processions and the Samaritan processions, because they followed the same five books, all of this pointed to a fulfillment that they could not realize.

But we know now that that all was fulfilled in Christ. He tells her that true worshipers of God will not worship in Mount Gerizim, and they won't even worship in Jerusalem, but rather, they will worship

God not in a specific place, but in spirit and truth.

With Christ's advent, the true worshiper can now worship God without boundary, without location, but in their very being, they will worship the

God that they love. Jesus then goes on to reveal to her that he is, in fact, the awaited

Messiah. And she tells the entire town, and many of them believe just because of her testimony.

So while it's very easy for us to read through this text, as we've probably all heard 1 ,000 times, and say, yes, spirit and truth, we must worship in spirit and truth, and we don't really care to elaborate on that.

What does that mean? We just kind of accept it as Jesus said it. But I think we don't need to really think of ourselves too highly and think of ourselves wiser than we actually are.

So let's slow down. Let's define these terms that we're talking about. The most important term here is worship.

So just to give the dictionary definition of worship is to honor or show reverence for a divine being or supernatural power.

Another dictionary says that worship is homage rendered to God, which it is sinful idolatry to render to any other created being, or any created being, not other.

In John 4 .21, the Greek term used there is proskuneo. Its literal meaning is to prostrate oneself in reverence.

Literally to put your face in the dirt and before God and revere him for who he is.

This kind of worship is only permitted to be directed toward God himself.

And I will turn to Revelation 19 so we can see an illustration of how this affects someone other than God being worshiped.

So if we look at Revelation 19, verse 10, John gives the account of where he fell.

He said, then I fell down at his feet to worship him. And this is the angel that was giving him the vision.

But the angel said to him, you must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you and your brother who holds, and your brothers who hold the testimony of Jesus worship

God. So we see the angel rebukes

John for falling in front of him and falling at his feet to worship him, saying that he is just a fellow servant with him.

He's not worthy to have the worship that God is worthy of. He then commands to worship

God, which is the same Greek term used in John 4 .21. We also see

Peter in Acts 10 .25, where he comes and meets Cornelius and as he walks in the house,

Cornelius does the same thing and falls at his feet and begins to worship. Peter rightly says, don't do that.

I'm just a man just like you. He just had a message that would give

Cornelius the eternal life that he desired, but he was not the fulfillment of that eternal life.

He was not the source of that life. We can even see this concept in the secular world in movies where you would see somebody begging for their life.

Someone who has power over the situation to end someone's life. And that person drops down before them and begins to beg for their life.

It's not a direct parallel, but it gives you that same sense of a humility because there is no pride when you fall down at someone's feet and beg for your life.

So yeah, it shows a similar reality. So once again, this kind of worship is strictly forbidden to be directed to anyone but God.

And we can see in the Old Testament how seriously God takes this transgression of this command. Many times the

Israelites go after other gods and bow down before them instead of God. And God, although He is very long -suffering and gracious and gives them time to repent, sends them prophets to declare to them to repent.

They are still hard in their hearts, and they don't, and they continue in their idolatry. And then once God's long -suffering ends, they're punished for their idolatry.

This is usually in the form of allowing them to be conquered by and exiled to nations, foreign and pagan nations.

So while this term primarily means to physically prostrate oneself, the aspect

I wanna look to in this term is the prostrating of one's own heart, the heart condition in this prostration.

As many truths in the scripture, it's more about the heart than it is about the physical action.

We see in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount that He says that if you hate someone in your heart, you've already committed murder.

If you look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery. So it's not about the physical action, but it's more the heart condition in whatever action is being performed.

So what does this prostrating of one's heart look like? Being humble before God, studying to know

God more, renewing our mind with the Word of God and living a life of obedience and submission to Christ.

So with that definition in mind, let's go back where to be followed whether the heart was transformed or not.

The Samaritan worship had an aspect of zeal for worshiping God. As shown when the woman asked where is

God to be worshiped? But there was still a rejection of God's revelation.

So they had this aspect of desiring to worship God. They said, as I said, she asked where are we to worship?

They had this longing to worship God, but they did so without a full revelation of Him and full knowledge of Him.

On the other hand, the Jewish worship had an aspect of the truth that Jesus talks about. However, they were spiritually resistant.

This is shown by the fact that God Himself walked in front of them. They heard

His teaching, they saw His miracles, and still they rejected Him. And why did they reject

Him? Because He did not match what their traditions told them to look for.

So what can be said is there's deficiencies in both worships. The worship of the

Samaritans and the Jews. However, God, in His immense grace and patience, endured these deficiencies and promised a better way.

Jesus declares that now true worshipers will worship in spirit and truth.

The Samaritan worship was a shadow of the spirit, but the full revelation is when the believer is filled with the

Holy Spirit and then can cry out, Abba, Father. The Jewish worship, on the other hand, was a shadow of the truth aspect.

But the full revelation of that would be seen in Christ, who Himself is very truth.

Jesus beautifully puts these two aspects together, showing that true worship must involve the spirit, your heart, where we have a deep adoration and love for God, where we desire, with our entire being, to know

Him more fully. He also shows that we must have a knowledge of the truth.

Jesus is not okay with just the emotional side of it, the heart of longing to worship

God, because as we see Him say, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. In the same way, if you truly are regenerated and you love

God, you will desire to worship Him as He desires to be worshiped.

We cannot, what this lack of truth ends up, what ends up happening with the lack of truth is that we create a

God in our own image. We can't just create the God that we want.

We must learn what He reveals about Himself and then submit to it. Spirit without truth is not true worship.

Truth without spirit is not true worship. Our reborn spirit must drive us to love

God, and that love will drive our desire to know Him more fully. And the

Holy Spirit, who then searches the deep things of God, will lead us into all truth.

And when we know Him, it will give us a deeper reverence for Him, causing us to love

Him more. You can see the cycle that we're creating here. True worship is a glorious cycle of revelation.

Truth reveals the beauty of God, which ignites our spirit to love Him. That love then drives us back to the truth to know

Him more. If you take the truth away, the fire of the spirit has no fuel.

Truth without spirit leads to dead orthodoxy. And spirit without truth leads to blind emotionalism, as I am very familiar with.

We must be very careful that our worship is not mindless, where we only desire to, what

I have seen is, hear the song that puts us in the best mood to worship God. If you need a song to put you in the mood to worship

God, you don't understand the God that you worship. At the same time, we must also guard ourselves from our worship turning into just human tradition and just doing it to do it.

One beautiful aspect of this not turning into human traditions is seen in Exodus 20, 25 and Deuteronomy 27, five through seven, where God commands for an altar to be built, but these stones that He commands it to be built with could not be hewn.

They could not be modified by human hands. In the same way of these rocks not being able to be touched by human hands, our worship must stay pure and untainted with human tradition.

We often fall into the error, like Uzzah did with the

Ark of the Covenant, as they're bringing it back to Jerusalem, the cart, which is not its mode of travel, commanded by God, it starts to rock and starts to fall off the cart.

And Uzzah's sin is that he stops it. And we often think to ourselves, why would stopping the

Ark of the Covenant from touching the dirty ground, why would that cause him to drop dead?

But it's the misconception that we all often have that the ground is dirtier than our hands.

The ground does exactly what it's supposed to do. If it's muddy, it's because God sent rain and the rain obeyed

Him. And it mixed with the dirt and the dirt obeyed Him and it became mud. But here we are as humans, we don't listen to God.

We constantly rebel against God. So why would we think that His creation that follows His command perfectly is dirtier than our own hands?

So just like these rocks, we have to remain untainted from human tradition. Because anything, any attempt to make our worship more palatable to anyone else other than God will result in the creation of an idol.

And this goes both ways. In the super conservative side of the church that only wants to do the thing and get it over with.

And also in the charismatic side of the church where it's all about feeling. And both sides are trying to make it palatable to the people in attendance.

Whereas if we make it palatable to anybody else, it's an idol. True worship isn't about the right rituals or the right mood.

It's about a heart surrendered to a revealed truth and that truth being

Christ. So we've seen how the Samaritan Jewish worships were shadows of a better way to come.

Yet even our worship today, pure and untainted from human tradition as it may be, is still looking forward to a final fulfillment.

When we look at the heavenly worship in Revelation, we see this spirit and truth that Jesus promised, no longer hindered by our fallen flesh, but perfected in the light of His glory.

So please turn with me to Revelation chapter four. And starting in verse one, we pull back the veil and we peer into the eternal worship of the eternal

God. And we see this in the vision that John details, and we'll read through verse 11 for this.

After this, I looked and behold a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice, which

I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, come up here and I will show you what must take place after this.

At once I was in the spirit and behold a throne stood in heaven. And with one seated on the throne.

And he who sat there had the appearance of Jasper and Carnelian. And around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald.

Around the throne, there were 24 elders and seated on the, or 24 thrones and seated on the thrones were 24 elders.

Clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their head. From the throne came flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder.

And before the throne were burning seven torches of fire which are the seven spirits of God. And before the throne, there was as it were a sea of glass like crystal.

And around the throne, on each side of the throne are four living creatures. Full of eyes in front and behind.

The first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight.

The four living creatures, each of them with six wings are full of eyes around and within.

Day and night, they never cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who is seated before the throne and worship him who lives forever.

They cast their crowns before the throne saying, worthy are you, oh Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created.

This is a glorious vision of the Almighty seated on his throne surrounded by angels and the 24 elders.

I think the most amazing thing about this is the four living creatures who we see have six wings.

This hearkens back to Isaiah's vision of God where he says the seraphim, they're described in this very same way and he elaborates and says that why they have six wings, two to cover their face, two to cover their feet and two to fly.

So it's important to remember why they're covering their face. Why they're covering their face and their feet is to show the recognition of their creatureliness.

These creatures are without sin. They're perfectly holy. God created them perfectly holy.

How can we tell that they're holy? By the proximity of their location to the throne of God.

God cannot tolerate sin in his presence. So that's how we know that these angels have not any sin because of how close they are to God.

We usually get the idea from ourselves that we must bow and cover our face in the presence of God because we're sinful.

And while that's true, it's not the only reason. Like I said before, these angels are morally perfect.

They cover themselves in reverence simply because he is their creator and they are their creation.

They recognize God's utter otherliness from them. He's so far above them in his being and nature that it causes them to immediately recognize this and recognize his superiority to them.

They also do this day and night. They sing this praise day and night and have been doing so as far as we know for all of creation.

The day that they were created to today, they're doing the same thing. And for all of eternity, they will be doing the same thing.