Many believers are familiar with the biblical account of the woman at the well. We're all familiar with how Messiah struck up a conversation with her. He started out talking about everyday things and gingerly move the conversation over to her eternal needs. He started out asking her for a drink so that he could offer her eternal, living water.
As you will remember from the Bible study techniques review that we discussed in the blog (April 20,2011), whenever you want to find the key passages from any chapter of Scripture which you are reading, remember to look for God first. If you see a passage in your study chapter that describes God's character, God's desires, God's commands, God's principles, or God's promises clearly defined, then those types of verses must take priority as your key verses. In the case of John chapter 4, we see Messiah describing exactly what, God desires and requires from those who would worship Him. I've identified the key verses for you to save time on this occasion:
"Jesus *said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. "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. "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman *said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us." Jesus *said to her, "I who speak to you am He." John 4:21-26 (NASB)
1. In John chapter 4, verses 21-26 are your key verses. Here's why we know this to be true. First, it identifies who Jesus as the Messiah (V. 26).
2. In this passage we understand that worship without knowledge is not as effective, not as acceptable (V. 22).
3. This passage identifies from where our salvation comes (V. 22).
4. This passage identifies what acceptable worship is and what the Father seeks. God seeks people who will worship Him, both in the right spirit and according to the truth (V. 23-4).
Several things struck me hard as never before when I was studying this passage this time around. I thought I would share them with you. I hope that it will help you as you become a more obedient disciple of God and Jesus Christ:
a. “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” In this postmodern politically correct age, many ministers are fearful of confronting sin, but confronting it is the only way to bring God's real and lasting healing and salvation into people's lives. Under the power of the Holy Spirit, Messiah proceeds to tell the woman that she has had five husbands and the when she was living with now was not even her husband. He was not cruel about it. He was not insulting, but He did confront sin. He did not sidestep the issue. If we are going to be effective disciples and disciple makers, then we must confront the issues of sin in our lives(John 8:31-38).
b. Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Jesus operated in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. At the same time, He operated in those gifts very naturally. He did not call attention to Himself or to the gifts, merely for the sake of the gifts themselves. He did not allow the gifts in which He was operating to overshadow the ministry that the Father sent him to do on behalf of the woman.
c. "Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." The Samaritan woman commented that she knew Jesus was a prophet because He was aware of her sins and confronted her with them.
Many theologians speculate that she might have been trying to distract Jesus by bringing up theological questions. She may have honestly wanted to know because she had a desire to be restored back to God. I tend to lean in that direction because God the Father specifically sent Messiah to her, (cf. John 5:19), so she must've been seeking to be restored before God. Otherwise Jesus would not have been sent there by the Father. Moreover, the text does not explicitly tell us what the motives of her heart were, so when in doubt, it is much more charitable that we should assume the best instead of the worst.
Moreover, her question reveals something of the universal question that sooner or later, every worshiper will face. How do I really know that the way I worship God is really and truly acceptable to the Lord? If you truly care about your relationship with God and doing what pleases Him, then you will face that question at one time or another.
Whatever her motives were, Jesus used her question is a teachable moment. He used it as an opportunity to get God's true message across to her and to the generations who would be reading the passage about her.
In her own way, the Samaritan woman revealed that she had an understanding of God which our modern and postmodern theology is rapidly losing. She understood that as gracious as God is, He does not always accept every form and every method, or every act of worship simply because we offer it to Him. She understood that God does have real and concrete standards about what He accepts, and what He does not. She also realized that there was a real division in debate among believers in Almighty God about what was right and what was not right when it came to worshiping the Most High God.
It turns out that her question truly did and in fact still does have some real theological merit. It so happens that the Samaritan woman understand something which modern-day Christendom is rapidly forgetting. God is pretty particular about what He does and what He does not accept in our worship. This aroused my curiosity. Scripturally, is there a way to tell what kind of worship God accepts, versus what kind of worship the Almighty will reject? The answer is yes. Scripture is surprisingly quite detailed about what God requires, and what it means to worship God in spirit and truth. In the past few blog entries we discussed the kind of worship that God rejects. In this blog entry, we will focus primarily on what God does accept in worship.
d. "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know...."
According to Nelson's illustrated manners and customs of the Bible, the mountain upon which the Samaritans worshiped was mount Gerizimi, which from The Samaritan point of view was the place where Abraham offered Isaac and where God first revealed Himself (Genesis 22:2 ff). By Jewish tradition, the place where this occurred was the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
On Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans worshipped, they were known for their emotionalism and their ecstatic speech---but they had ignored key truths from the Old Testament...so they had the spirit without truth... much like many contemporary worship services today.
On the other hand, at Jerusalem, where the Jews worshipped, they had made OT truth an old, dry, lifeless set of rituals...it was truth without spirit....much like many traditional services today.
Pastor John MacArthur comments; "The worship that occurred on Mount Gerizim was enthusiastic heresy. The worship offered at Jerusalem was barren, lifeless orthodoxy. Jerusalem had the truth but not the spirit. Gerizim had the spirit but not the truth. Jesus rebuked both styles of worship when he said, ‘God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ The two enemies of true worship are Gerizim and Jerusalem. Sincerity, enthusiasm, and aggressiveness are important, but they must be based on truth. And truth is foundational, but if it doesn’t result in an eager, excited, enthusiastic heart, it is deficient. Enthusiastic heresy is heat without light. Barren orthodoxy is light without heat."
In order for the worship to be acceptable and pleasing before the Lord, it must be done in the right spirit, and it must be done according to the truth. Otherwise, it simply is not acceptable worship. We will give more details on that later.
For me, the comment, "You worship what you do not know, we worship what we do know," was a pretty profound statement for the King of Kings and Messiah to make. Think about it. He is acknowledging that the Samaritans had a tradition of trying to worship Almighty God, but that at the same time, they were worshiping God in such a way, that their worship demonstrated that they did not accurately know the One whom they were worshiping, nor did they truly understand what God required and desired from them. I sincerely believe with all my heart, that the very same thing could accurately be said about modern day American Christendom.
When you look at what is commonly accepted in church, and you compare it with the Whole Testament of Scripture, it is abundantly clear that very often we accept things and we present things as worship that neither Almighty God, nor His Son the Messiah would recognize as something honoring to Him. For the record, I am not talking about the various instrumental choices. I'm not talking about whether you use hymnals are overhead projectors. I'm not talking about whether you sing hymns or choruses. All of that amounts to window dressing.
However, when we adapt worldly, American business mass marketing and manipulation techniques and call it being "seeker sensitive," it shows that we don't really know God and understand what He requires from His disciples. When we accept motivational speaking, and we resent the unadulterated Word of God being exposited, we demonstrate that we don't really know the God that we worship. When we accept teachings of the false prosperity message as fact, even when Scripture does not accurately support it, that clearly shows a definite lack of understanding. When we accept worldly postmodern philosophy and heresy which denies the gospel and refuses the authority of Scripture as doctrine, and we blend that into evangelical Christianity, and we call it an emerging church, it not only shows a lack of understanding, but it's a dangerous heresy. That's not worship, it's a tragedy.
What seems even worse to me is that while many in modern-day Christendom acknowledge and even lament all of these enormous fallacies as being problematic, so many of our Christian so-called leaders in our day seem to take a lackadaisical almost fatalistic response to the problem.
The response I hear most often, even among those who agree that this is a problem will be, "Well, we are in the last days, and this is what's supposed to happen in the last days." Yes, I agree that we are in the last days. Yes, I know that evil men and imposters will get worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived (2 Timothy 3:13). Yes, I know that we are in a time when people do not accept sound doctrine. We are definitely in the season where people are gathering up teachers for themselves that only tell them exactly what they want to hear (2 Timothy 4:1-4), but we are told to hold fast, Preach the word, to be ready in season and out of season. We are told to convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. We are told to be watchful in all things, to endure afflictions, to do the work of an evangelist, to fulfill our ministry (2 Timothy 4:2-5). We are expressly told to earnestly contend for that faith which was once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3). So where is it written that because we are in the last days and difficult times are prophesied, that we who call ourselves the Lord's servants, should roll over and play dead? Where is it written that we should coexist with wickedness and even call heresy Christian in the name of grace and tolerance? Where is that written?
e. "For salvation is from the Jews..."
In one sense the modern attitude is not surprising. We have a history of forgetting that our salvation truly is from the Jews. For almost 1700 years, the organized church establishment has systematically trained people to either discount or totally reject 59% of Holy Scripture. This is a practice that continues to this day, because that is what you do when you treat the Old Testament as obsolete. In reality though, to discount or reject the instructions of the so-called Old Testament means that you also have to reject almost 5% of the New Testament as well. So altogether, when one rejects or diminishes the instructions of the Old Testament they are actually rejecting almost 2/3 of Scripture altogether. And still we have the nerve to wonder why we do not seem as thoroughly equipped for every good work as the saints once were.
When we actively bring forth the very same names, practices, and feast days and traditions that were used to worship pagan sex gods for centuries, (which are really demons; 1 Corinthians 10:20-21; 1 Timothy 4:1) but still we eagerly enfold and embrace them into Christian faith and practice, and we call it worship unto Almighty God and Jesus Christ, and we do it in direct rebellion to God's commandments, then it's obvious we are demonstrating that we are worshiping what we do not know.
What blows my mind is that the Christian establishment will lament how many pastors and ministers are ensnared in sexual sin (some estimates place the number of pastors addicted to pornography at almost 40%). We will hear from the various pulpits how shameful it is that 66% of Christian marriages end in divorce. Is it any wonder? If we actively invite and embrace sex demons into the church every winter and spring, (in direct violation to God's commandments I might add), then how can we rightly hope to overcome them through the summer and fall?
Beloved, even the Samaritans in Christ's day would not have accepted the practices we tolerate as a common part of worship, and yet Christ said that they were worshiping what they did not know. How much more ignorant would Jesus consider the modern Christian? I shudder to think of it.
We have clearly demonstrated over and over again that we are worshiping what we do not know, just as the Samaritans were doing in Christ's day. Let those who have ears to hear take heed of what the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures say. Let those who are wise and discerning, grow in understanding. Far be it from us a Lord that we should choose to remain ignorant for the sake of our own pleasure, comforts, and traditions.
"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. "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
Since God is looking and seeking for people who worship him in spirit and truth, it stands to reason that we should first understand what that means.
To worship God in spirit: To worship God in spirit obviously means that our spirit (since the word spirit in the verse is not capitalized), it is not referring necessarily to the Holy Spirit, but to human spirit, must be correctly aligned with God. That means that we cannot be worshiping false gods nor should we be worshiping the True God in such a way that dishonors Him. We spent multiple blog entries that idea and giving the Scriptures behind it, so there's no point in reiterating it now. Suffice it to say that in order for worship to be acceptable it has to be completely agreeable to Almighty God, to the Messiah and to the the Holy Spirit. It cannot invite or embrace anything that would be offensive to the Almighty at all.
To worship God in truth: The second criteria that Messiah gave to describe the kinds of worshipers that the Almighty was seeking to worship Him were those who worship God both in spirit, but also in truth. So what does it mean to worship God in truth? I believe that is a vital question. If you look at the word in the original biblical language the New Testament Greek word used is; alētheia [1] meaning; that which is in accord with what really happens, facts that correspond to a reality, whether historical (in the time/space continuum, or to be accurate in the realm that moves beyond time and space So, in order to be true worship it must be accurate to what is happening both in this realm of our present reality and also in the realm of the next.
Now there can be no reasonable doubt in any person's mind that there is no place where God is worshiped more purely than in the Kingdom of Heaven. We know for certain that God is worshiped most purely and accurately in that realm. To worship God in truth means that we would worship God in a way that agrees with what is truly happening both in this realm and in the next. So imagine for example that we were in the presence of the most Holy Almighty God. Imagine for instance that you are all of once fully aware of His perfection, His perfect love, and also His capacity for justifiable wrath over wickedness.
Please, use your sanctified imagination for a moment. What do you think would happen in Glory if a person approached God with the name of a demon sex goddess on his lips and he then heralded her name in a praiseworthy manner right along with the name of God's Son Jesus Christ? What if the 'worshiper' insisted that even though he was using the name of this demon sex goddess, it was really okay, because he was really trying to honor Jesus Christ, the risen Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? Can you sincerely tell me beyond a reasonable doubt based on the Scriptures that such a practice would be acceptable in the courts of Glory?! A snowball would have greater chance of surviving a Mojave desert summer, than for such a behavior to be accepted in God's kingdom, and you know it. We know that in God's Kingdom, even the wedding guests who refuse to wear the robes that the bridegroom provides will be bound hand and foot, and cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 22:11-13). So, what do you imagine he would do to the 'worshiper' in our example? Is there any biblical basis to believe that his behavior would pass, while the improperly dressed men is howling in agony? Think about it.
Even in modern English the definitions and synonyms for the word truth is very telling. It is very close to the word used in the original biblical language. Here are the synonyms for truth even in our modern-day language according to Encarta Encyclopedia: Synonyms: fact, certainty, reality, actuality, veracity, verity; reality, fact, accuracy, genuineness, precision, exactness, legitimacy, veracity, truthfulness; honesty, candor, integrity, dedication, loyalty, devotion, fidelity, uprightness, sincerity.
Please, to Not continue to use the name and traditions for worshiping the Babylonian goddess of fertility (Easter) to honor the resurrection of Messiah. That's Roman Catholic tradition of men. It's not worshiping God in spirit and truth. What's more, it's expressly forbidden (Jeremiah 10:1-2; Deuteronomy 12:28-32; 1 Corinthians 10:15-22; 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1; Mark 7:9-13).
As we seek to remember and commemorate the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, let us care enough to remember to pursue worship the way He says that He wishes to be honored and remembered. Remember, words mean things. It is not honorable worship to God unless He specifically agrees that He is honored by something. God be with you. 
Do you really want to set aside the expressly written Commandments of God in order to uphold the tradition of men? Is that excellence in Christian discipleship?
Michel Lankford |
[1] Swanson, J. (1997). Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Greek (New Testament) (electronic ed.). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
When YHWH Himself shares He is looking for those to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth ...then it is the most important goal we must set our "walk" to obtain...may I be one of those that worships you in the RIGHT SPIRIT and the RIGHTLY DIVIDED WORD "THE TRUTH" GREAT JOB BROTHER MICHEL..!!!
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