Scripture: John 4:21-26
Date: December 4, 2011
Speaker: Sean Higgins
God made man to worship. Every man longs for fellowship, desires to praise something great, wants to depend, and seeks satisfaction from some source. That’s worship. Theologian James Jordan wrote, “Human beings are not, as the Greco-Roman tradition teaches, homo sapiens, ‘thinking man.’ Rather, we are homo adorans, ‘worshipping man.‘” As Augustine said in his Confessions,
You stir man to take pleasure in praising You, because You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You. (I. i.)
Resting in God, however, is exactly what men don’t do, not naturally, not when left to themselves. All the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve come out of the womb with dead spirits whose worship is broken. A car can stall in a hundred ways, so worship can fall off a thousand different cliffs. But broken it is, thirsty and restless are all our souls unless God’s Spirit gives us life and makes us wet from the living fountain.
Jesus arranged to offer this living water to a Samaritan adulteress in John 4. He met her at Jacob’s well, engaged her, brought her into the open, and revealed Himself as the Messiah, the way to worship the Father.
She was all sorts of damaged goods. She was a Samaritan, considered a religious disgrace by the Jews, and Jesus told her as much in verse 22. “You (all) worship what you do not know.” That makes her an idolator. She was also an adulterer. She had had five husbands and was living with a sixth man whom she hadn’t bothered to marry yet. She was socially isolated, coming by herself to the well so that she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. She was a broken woman, with a messed up life and misguided worship.
Jesus patiently, graciously, truthfully offers life to her soul. He offers her water from the living fountain and, though she doesn’t get what He was talking about, He keeps steering the conversation to rescue her dry, dead heart.
Last week we saw Him give her an impossible task (v.16), her shameful admission (v.17a), and His uncut cutting (vv.17b-18). She had her opportunity to get away and be done with Jesus, but she stays and let’s Him dig around in her mess. Then in verse 19, she asks what could be a safer, diversionary squabble or, at best, a question about how she could make atonement if she wanted.
She understood from “the fathers” that worship took place in Mount Garizim. She also understood that the Jews required worship in Jerusalem at the temple. So which is it, Jesus?
His answer is a bombshell, a new paradigm. His answer is no less important for us than for the woman. Here is good news. Here is true worship. Here is true and eternal life.
She calls Him a prophet. Little did she know how true that was and Jesus speaks with prophetic clarity about four facets of true worship, it’s geography, history, spirituality, and theology.
Location of worship is secondary.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. (John 4:21)
Up to this point, that is, until the Logos became flesh, God appointed particular places for people to worship in His presence. That didn’t mean that He wasn’t omnipresent, but that He promised special blessing to those who came before Him as He directed them.
The Samaritans believed, based on Deuteronomy 11:29, that God met with men on Mt. Garizim. Of course, that was the right place…for a while. The Samaritans didn’t receive any revelation after the Pentateuch, so they missed the parts about King David desiring to build a temple, then Solomon building it according to the Lord’s the instructions, dedicating it in Jerusalem and God’s promises to . In other words, they missed some key verses.
Jesus doesn’t argue about canon, He doesn’t argue about the merit of Samaritan fathers, and He doesn’t giver her a ticket into one of the temple’s inner courts. He goes farther and says something different, an hour is coming when worship of the Father won’t primarily depend on place.
He doesn’t get into it here but, since we’re Bible people and since He lifts the lid in verse 22 when He says “salvation is of the Jews,” what is important about saying that place isn’t primary? We tend to deflate it, to flatten it. “Oh, then place isn’t important at all.” But why did Jesus say it won’t matter if it’s here or there? Because it will be EVERYWHERE!
God promised that the knowledge of Him would not be limited to a place, it would be in all places. As we’ve already seen today:
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
(Isaiah 11:9, see also Habakkuk 2:14)
“Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously;
let this be made known in all the earth.
(Isaiah 12:5)
“The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as water covers the seas,” wow! “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given” to Jesus so we make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-19). The Lamb is worthy to take and open the scroll “for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). When it comes to worship geography, Jesus isn’t saying forget about place, He’s saying think bigger than one place. There isn’t one worship center on the planet, there are worship centers all over the world.
Though it may sound harsh, He’s giving her good news that includes a history lesson about redemption.
You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. (John 4:22)
The last phrase in verse 22 explains the middle phrase, we worship what we know, *for (because, [subordinate causal clause]) salvation is from the Jews. That doesn’t mean that all Jews worshipped rightly. They didn’t. Every chapter before chapter four and every chapter after chapter four proves otherwise. Even Nicodemus, “the teacher” of Israel didn’t understand.
Jesus makes the point that God’s plan was particular and purposeful and personal and present. God chose Israel as His people and chose them to a light to the nations. From Abram’s call in Genesis, the Hebrews weren’t a cul-de-sac, they weren’t the bottom of the bag of God’s blessing. Israel was a hub of righteousness and peace and good, or they should have been. They had the covenants and the law and patriarchs and promises and the Messiah. God said,
I am the LORD; I have called you in righteousness;
I will take you by the hand and keep you;
I will give you as a covenant for the people,
a light for the nations, (Isaiah 42:6)
Salvation for the Jew first and also to the Gentile, like the Samaritan woman, like us.
We are not the first people God has cared about, let alone saved. We don’t do our story any favors by starting our rendition, acting as if chapter 267 is chapter one. Salvation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Advent is good for us in this respect. We try to put ourselves in the desperate, anticipating wait-fulness of the Jews for their Messiah to come. We also should desperately anticipate the Lord’s second coming. et in some fifth century B.C. sandals this week as you go Christmas shopping/partying. Our holiday would be a lot more meaningful, heavy and happy, with better history, with a recognition of where we are downline in God’s saving purposes. History makes a difference in worship.
It’s not bad to be informed that you don’t know what you worship, especially if the truth includes the fact that everyone is invited to worship, as Jesus says here.
Here is the heart of worship.
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. (John 4:23)
Jesus goes further than verse 21, the hour is now here. It was “here” because He was here. The true temple, the everlasting temple was here (John 2:19-22). He was the new worship center. He wasn’t finished with His work but His birth and the beginning of His ministry moved toward fulfillment. He wasn’t done but He had begun. With Jesus, arguments about true worship concentrate on His person, not on place.
Rather than ignorant worship like the Samaritans, true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Jesus does not provide an exhaustive treatment of worship. This isn’t everything we need to know about the subject. It is the marrow, the heart of the matter, and what the woman at the well needed to know about her broken worship.
The key phrase is in spirit and truth, included again at the end of verse 24. Numerous interpretations abound. A couple observations that should help us get a better grip on this handle.
First, one preposition governs both objects: “in X and X” rather than “in X and in X.” The two objects, “spirit and truth,” are identified together and shouldn’t be divorced from one another.
Second, regarding spirit, remember that we spent most of chapter three considering the need for being born of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and that brings life to our spirit. Without the Holy Spirit breathing into us, birthing us, our spirits are dead. We are born of the flesh and so fleshly. Those who are born of the Spirit are spiritual (John 3:6). True worship is pneumatic.
In verse 24, “God is spirit.” He is not limited by physical, spatial, temporal restrictions. God lives and so worship in spirit is worship that lives, that comes from a person who has been born by God’s Spirit, a person who has spiritual taste buds and thirsts for spiritual things.
No location, no ceremony, no external thing makes worship true apart from God’s Spirit making the man’s spirit alive. Hypocrisy, externals without internals, cannot be more condemned. God never accepts lip-service with far-off hearts, multitudes of bloody sacrifices from those who hate in their hearts.
True worship is in spirit and truth. Among other things, this includes all of God’s revelation, all of His Word, including the incarnate Word, Jesus. Truth of Scripture and truth of the Son belong together, as Jesus told men that the Scriptures bear witness to Him.
Omit the spirit, and though you have the truth, the worship becomes formalism, mere ritual observance. Omit the truth, and though the whole soul is thrown into the worship, it becomes an abomination. (Lenski, 323)
A living spirit focused on the Logos makes true worship. And God loves it! He desires it. This is God’s offer to all men and women. The father is seeking such people to worship Him.
The worshippers whom God seeks worship him out of the fulness of supernatural life they enjoy (‘in spirit’), and on the basis of God’s incarnate Self-Expression, Christ Jesus himself, through whom God’s person and will are finally and ultimately disclosed (‘in truth’), and these two characteristics form one matrix, indivisible. (Carson, 225-226)
The reason why worship works the way it does is because God is who He is.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24)
God is light (1 John 1:5). God is love (1 John 4:8). Both of those are Johannine descriptions. Jesus said, God is spirit. Though there isn’t one verse in the Old Testament that proves this, no Jew would question it. It provided part of the reason why images and statues were prohibited; God can’t be limited like that. He’s bigger than place, uncontainable, in some ways, indescribable.
Again, we must worship Him on His terms. True worship follows from His nature.
He made us to live in this realm as well, that’s why we talk about two types of thirst, one of the body and one of the spirit. We cannot fix the spirit’s thirst with anything other than worship of God who is spirit. He alone is big enough to satisfy. His well alone is deep enough and lives enough.
That’s why broken worship inevitably breaks life.
All that Jesus said made the woman think of the Messiah. It concentrates on the Savior.
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.” (John 4:25)
It’s hard to tell how well she was tracking with Jesus, but she stumbles into the right path. She says, I know, an interesting response to Jesus who just said “You (all) worship what you do not know” (verse 22). It’s also interesting because Nicodemus started out with “we know” in 3:2.
She’s anticipating a time of more explanation. Based on Deuteronomy 18:15-18, the Samaritans expected a “prophet like Moses,” a teacher they referred to as “Taheb” or “the Restorer” (Kostenberger, 157). She realizes Jesus is and she observes that the Messiah will announce all these things when He comes.
His reply is simple and sweet. “As Jesus helped the woman with her confession of sin, so now he helps her with her confession of faith” (Lenski, 327).
Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” (John 4:26)
She said the Messiah will “tell” or speak, He will announce. Jesus fulfilled that, I who speak, tell, announce, am he. He hardly makes so clear a disclosure to anyone else and He does so here, to this immoral, isolated woman.
We’ll see the fallout of their conversation through verse 42 of chapter four.
No location, no liturgy can supply what the Spirit alone can. No emotion, no experience can supply what the truth can. No truth, no worship. No life, no worship. No Jesus, no Messiah, no salvation, no worship, and no eternal life.
Geography, history, spirituality, theology proper make or break our worship, and worship will make or break our lives.
Arguing about the details of worship is meaningless if there is no life.