Our Worship must be Genuine

 Read John 4:1-26

We started this journey with words about putting the words of Jesus into practice. I told you that you could go wrong with the words of Jesus. How?

By knowing what he said to do and not doing it.  That’s a life lived on shifting sand.

Jesus challenged us to ask, seek, and knock as we go after the things that we need to bring glory to God’s name.

We examined 3 parables about lost and found and we found that God has a heart to seek us, receive us, and welcome us as one of his own as soon as we turn around and come back to him. We should have a heart for rescue.

Now we come to a well at Sychar in Samaria. Jesus is tired and wants a drink. The disciples had gone into town looking for food and a woman approached the well.

Jesus said that he would like a drink and the woman responded by asking just what Jewish man would ask a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. The Jews don’t like Samaria. They didn’t like Samaritans, and women were at the lower end of the social structure.

Just who is this Jew to ask me for a drink?

We are comfortable with our social barriers.

We don’t care for you Jews because you hate us. We both believe that there is a God and a Messiah will come but we don’t agree on much else and don’t really want to have a conversation with you anyway. Besides, you don’t even have anything with which to draw water.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

The woman came prepared for a religious and historical and cultural conversation but not prepared to be honest with the Lord himself.

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?  Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

We know this history. Jacob dug this well. Back in the day—we have all been through Genesis—The Jews and Samaritans were much closer.  It was only after the Assyrians and Babylonians invaded the Promised Land, did they grow to hate each other.  Now, both sides seem content with the status quo.  The two peoples might not be at war with each other, but they were content with the way things were—mutual dislike.

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

This interested the woman.  Did this man really have water that would make it so she didn’t have to visit this well at noon. Everyone else came in the morning or the evening when it was cool.

As we discover in this reading, the woman probably came at noon to avoid the scorn of the other women. She had already gone through 5 husbands and was shacked up with another man at the moment.

Jesus called her out on this. Jesus said, let’s make this a real conversation. Let’s talk about things that matter.

The woman did not want to examine her own life. She had surely grown accustomed to getting her water at noon and the scorn of her own people whenever she had to cross paths with them.  She decided to give her best effort to changing the subject.

Hey. You know everything about me. You must be a prophet. So enough about me. Let’s talk prophet talk.

So, the woman said.

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

The woman wants to change the subject. Jesus came to deliver this message.

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

Do you remember verse 4 in this chapter? Jesus had to go through Samaria.  Why? Was the bridge out at the Jordan? Was it tax free day in Sychar?  Why did he have to go through Samaria?

Jesus had a message for this woman, and if you keep reading, we find it was a message for the entire town.

The woman made one more attempt to avoid the conversation. Maybe if she threw in the topic of the Messiah, this prophet would lose his train of thought and just go with it. Maybe the subject of the Messiah would get her out of having a real conversation about her life.

Jesus addressed this issue of the Messiah and the woman’s question from earlier: Are you greater than our Father Jacob?

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

This wasn’t the distraction that the woman sought, but it did get her attention.  She left her water jug and ran into town. Someone who spoke with authority just said he was the Messiah.

If we kept on reading, we would see that many people believed in Jesus because of this woman’s testimony. Some people believed after a direct encounter with Jesus and some who believed in Jesus because of this woman, later said they believed because of Jesus and not this wretched woman.

Jesus told this woman that humankind had made a mess or God’s instructions. He didn’t go into detail but did tell her that they had missed the boat on a lot of things.

Jesus didn’t say go back and fix them. He revealed himself to this woman as the Messiah. We will go forward from this point. Do you really want to worship God?

True believers will worship him in the Spirit and in truth.

It’s not about who has the best interpretation of God’s rules. It’s about who is really seeking God and ready to put the words of Jesus into practice.

Seek God and his kingdom and his righteousness first and God will grant you those things that the pagans have made into their God.

What is it to worship God in the Spirit and in truth?

It is to first recognize that the Spirit that lives inside of you is of the sovereign God.  If God is sovereign, and he is, then the Spirit that lives within you is sovereign as well. He reigns.

To worship God in the Spirit and in truth is to know the one true God through his Son Christ Jesus and to put his words into practice. Do you remember that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life?

Worship is the application of the truth, not just an academic exercise. Truth demands application—that we put the words of our Master into practice.

If we can’t do this, we should ask, is Jesus really my Master or do I just give him lip service and do things my own way?

We are often like the woman at the well. We will talk about religious things, but avoid the real conversations of our life that involve our relationship with God. Are we putting his words into practice?

We can post scripture online like crazy, hit like, and then share and think our work is done, but have we put the words of our Master into practice?

Are we being genuine to the calling that we have received to live a life of love that brings glory to God?

The Messiah has come. He has called us to believe in him and receive life.

He has called us to live in truth by trusting him enough to put his words into practice.

We worship with our every breath. Everything that we do is worship.

So is our worship given in the Spirit and in truth?

What about when we come into the assembly to worship? Are we glad to be here? Are we waiting for everyone to get through with the songs so you can sit down?

Are you dreading the sermon? How do I pretend to pay attention when I really don’t want to hear this message?

Is the offering a burden to you?

Are you holding side conversations to help pass the time?

Are we worshiping in the Spirit and in truth?

For all of the things that we are likely to fall short on as we work to put the words of our Master into practice—I’m thinking that love your enemy stuff is going to be a might prickly for many—we want to get this one right.

Worship in the Spirit and in truth.  We must make sure that our worship is genuine.  We must be the real deal in worship.

We are going to get distracted or lazy or forgetful with something that Jesus told us to do.  We should confess and get back in our race of faith.

But we should always be genuine in our worship.

We are not just passing time until we can go to the ball game or hunting this weekend. Our every moment is to be given as worship to God by the very things that we do.

When we gather for worship, we should really want to be here to put a smile on God’s face.

We need to get really good at worshiping in the Spirit and in truth.

True worshipers will worship in the Spirit and in truth.

Amen.

 

Journey Through John

 

Journey Through John

Below are links to scripture and messages from our Journey Through John. 

John 1

John 1 – Part 1

John 1 – Part 2

John 1 – Part 3

John 1 – Part 4

Behold the Lamb of God

Calling Disciples

 

 

John 2

John 2 – Part 1

John 2 – Part 2

 

John 3

John 3 – Part 1

John 3 – Part 2

John 3 – Part 3

 

John 4

John 4 – Part 1

John 4 – Part 2

John 4 – Part 3

John 4 – Part 4

 

John 5

John 5 – Part 1

John 5 – Part 2

John 5 – Part 3

 

John 6

John 6 – Part 1

John 6 – Part 2

John 6 – Part 3

John 6 – Part 4

 

John 7

John 7 – Part 1

John 7 – Part 2

John 7 – Part 3

John 7 – Part 4

 

John 8

John 8 – Part 1

John 8 – Part 2

John 8 – Part 3

John 8 – Part 4

John 8 – Part 5

 

John 9

I was blind but now I see

Introduction to videos

John 9 – Part 1

John 9 - Part 2

John 9 – Part 3

John 9 – Part 4

John 9 – Part 5

John 9 – Part 6

John 9 – Part 7

Food for Thought:  Looking a Blind Man in the Eye.

 

 

John 10

John 10 – Part 1

John 10 – Part 2

John 10 – Part 3

John 10 – Part 4

 

John 11

John 11 – Part 1

John 11 – Part 2

John 11 – Part 3

John 11 – Part 4

 

John 12

John 12 – Part 1

Palm Sunday Message (Part 2)

John 12 – Part 3

John 12 – Part 4

 

John 13

John 13 – Part 1

John 13 – Part 2

John 13 – Part 3

 

 

John 14

John 14 – Part 1

John 14 – Part 2

 

John 15

John 15 – Part 1

John 15 – Part 2

 

John 16

John 16 – Part 1

John 16 – Part 2

 

John 17

John 17 – Part 1

John 17 – Part 2

John 17 Part 3

 

John 18

John 18 – Part 1

John 18 – Part 2

John 18 – Part 3

 

John 19

John 19 – Part 1

John 19 – One Liners

 

John 20 and other accounts of resurrection

John 20 – Part 1

John 20 – Victory in Jesus

Who is going to roll the stone away?

Why are your crying? 2020

Woman why are your crying? 2016

Blessed are those…

Resurrection from a different perspective

Do not be afraid

 

John 21

John 21 – Part 1

John 21 – Part 2

 

 

Wrap up and Review

The Seven I Am metaphors of John’s gospel

Jetting Through John – Review or Prologue

 

Trust in the Lord

Read John 4

We continue our journey through John’s gospel. Earlier this week, we looked at an encounter between Jesus and a woman who met him at a well in Sychar, Samaria.

In the course of this interesting discussion between the One who brought living water and a very cagey woman who tried to change the focus of the discussion from herself to religious topics, thinking that would allow her to discontinue examination of her life, we get a message for her time and ours.

True worship has less to do with geography and more to do with being genuine.  God wants those who worship in spirit and truth.

As we consider our present geography, celebrate the fact that you can worship just as much where you are right now as when you were sitting in one of these pews.

Also of note, this is the first place that we see Jesus professing himself as the Christ. 

 Jesus went from living water to food that his disciples didn’t know about.  His food was to do his Father’s will and finish the mission that he had been given.

My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”

Think about the second part of that statement.  We often pray Thy will be done, but how often do we ask for strength to see this through?

Paul would put it this way.  Let me let go of what is behind me and press on towards the goal.  That was after he discounted his previous religious standing—and he had great religious credentials—and desired to just do the work of his Lord.

Not only today do we say, Thy will be done, but tomorrow and the next day and the next.  How long must we do this?  Until we hear the words, Well done good and faithful servant.  We too must finish the work that we have been given by our Lord.

The fourth chapter continues with the woman who encountered Jesus testifying as to that encounter.  Some believed upon her testimony. Many went to see Jesus and then believed.  She left behind her water jar and aversion to meeting with the “righteous” people and boldly shared her encounter with the Lord.

The people of Sychar invited Jesus to stay with them and he did for two days.  Many more believed and some revealed their very human nature even after recognizing the Savior of the world.

They told the woman that they might have believed her at first but now they believe because they met Jesus themselves.

When I tell this story to my grandchildren, I want to say that the Savior of the world came to Sychar, I met him, and I believed.  I’m going to leave out the part about how the testimony of some floozy first led me to believe.

What I ask you to remember is how an encounter with Jesus changed this woman who came to the well in Sychar, probably coming at noon to avoid the shame of being with the other women, and she boldly proclaimed the One whom she met at the well.  This could be the Christ!

Now it’s on to Galilee.  Jesus headed back to where he turned water into wine.  Few witnessed this but surely the news had spread.  Some had been to Jerusalem and knew of what he did during the Passover Feast.  You might say that there was a buzz about him coming back.

Jesus advised his disciples that the saying that a prophet has no honor in his own country was a valid one, but for now, he was welcomed.

A man had come from Capernaum, a city where perhaps Jesus even had a house, and asked Jesus to heal his son. 

Jesus was a little terse at first.  He admonished the people that they sought miracles more that belief.  It was if they just wanted the broken stuff in their lives repaired without mending the brokenness of their lives.

Jesus did not deny the man’s request to heal his son, but he found the trip to Capernaum unnecessary. He simply said:  Your son will live.

The man took Jesus at his word and headed home.  There is a lesson in faith in his actions, but what came next defined the miracle.

While he headed home, he met some of his servants.  They 

told him that his son would live.  He asked them when he got better and it was the exact time that Jesus had told him his son would live.  The man who accepted Jesus at his word believed in Jesus as did his household.

There are similar accounts in other gospels, but this one comes from John.

This is the second miracle that we see in John’s gospel.  It was not performed before many but many would hear of it.  Only a few servants would know that Jesus had turned water into wine but many would hear of it.

Many in Samaria came to believe, but it’s Samaria.  What self-respecting Jew would listen to accounts from Samaria?

Jesus would soon head back to Jerusalem and perform more miracles.  He was gathering a following.  In just a couple chapters, Jesus would begin the first of his I Am statements in this gospel.  Jesus would heal a paralytic and feed a multitude, but he would also lose followers because his teachings were difficult.

Peter said that Paul was sometimes hard to understand.  Compared to what Jesus was about to teach, understanding Paul was a walk in the park.

For now, meditate upon these things from the fourth chapter of John’s gospel.

When it comes to worship, geography matters less than genuineness.  Let your worship be in spirit and in truth wherever you are.

Let doing the will of our Father in heaven be our real sustenance.  Enjoy your lunch, but be sustained by the word of God.

Don’t be cagey, dancing around the parts of your life that you would like to hide from the Lord.  You can’t do it.  Nothing is hidden from God.  Let God’s truth call you into the light where you can kick every dark thing to the curb.  Don’t be like the woman at the well.

Be like the woman at the well when it comes to sharing good news.  Don’t let your past get in your way.  Don’t let shame hold you back.  The world may still try to keep you down, but you have good news for that lost world and should share it with the same boldness that the woman who met Jesus at the well had.

Have faith like the man from Capernaum.  Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  Believe and do not doubt!

Amen!

Many believed that the Savior of the World had come

Read John 4

Think back to the end of the encounter of Jesus and the woman at the well.  She left her water jar at the well and went into town proclaiming what had just happened.

This could be the Christ.  He knew everything about me.  Come and see for yourself.

They did.  As the disciples were hearing about being sustained by doing the will of the Father, some from the town were on the way to see Jesus.

Many of those who came already believed that this man they were on their way to see was the Christ.  After meeting Jesus, they invited him to stay with them for a while.

He did.  Imagine that!

Jesus stayed with the people of the town of Sychar for two days and many more believed.  After he left, the people told this woman—this woman who was not living a godly lifestyle, that while they may have believed initially because of her testimony, now they believed because they met Jesus.

There’s some human nature right there.  When I tell my story later, I don’t want to have to say that I believed Jesus was the Christ because of this floozy. I got my belief first hand.  That’s human nature.

But the result was that many believed that Jesus was the Savior of the world.  Now that’s God’s nature revealed in a place where no self-respecting Jew would want to be seen.  Jesus spent two nights there and many believed.

It’s an interesting twist that reveals our nature.  We are just as susceptible to the same thing today.  We want to go one up on a fellow believer. 

Hey!  I’ve got the real scoop on that.

This is the one and only way.  Yeah, I know that Jesus is the way, but you need Jesus plus…

Even James and John wanted reserved seating with the Master in the life to come.

That’s our human nature, but this time we see God’s nature revealed in the woman that Jesus met at the well. 

She left her jar and her daily mission and her seclusion at the well and went and proclaimed that the Christ was here.

At that point, her past didn’t matter.  Her standing or lack of it in the community didn’t matter.

What mattered?

The Christ had come and that’s not something you keep to yourself. 

We don’t see doubt debilitating this woman for sharing what she knew to share.

We don’t see shame getting in the way of her message.

Jesus revealed the truth to her and that set her in motion.  She shared the good news.

Before I challenged you to examine yourselves and see if in your relationship with God you were like the woman—evading the darkness in your life with trifling conversation.

Now, I challenge you to consider if you share the gospel with the same boldness as the woman we have come to know in this chapter.

Do we let our past slow us down?

Do we let the opinions of others dissuade us?

Do we use our life experiences as testimony to the Christ?

Jesus got to Galilee before the end of this chapter, but for now, consider the encounter of Jesus and this woman and how she went from avoiding the other women of the town to the one who brought them the good news.

You won’t hear this from many preachers or Bible commentators, but with regard to sharing good news, we should cast off everything that held us back before and boldly proclaim Christ.

We should be more like the woman who met Jesus at the well.

Amen.

Cut to the Quick by the Truth

Read John 4

As we enter the fourth chapter, John has moved north and a little east on the Jordan to Salim.  To his east was Samaria, a land and a people detested by the Jews.

Jesus had remained in Judea, but now the religious leaders had an interest in him so Jesus thought it time to go to Galilee.  In other words, his time had not yet come.  Tension and confrontation with the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Teachers of the Law would come with increased frequency and intensity, but not yet.

Jesus was headed to Galilee.  In almost every translation, we are told that Jesus had to go through Samaria.  Had is the word we use today.  Behooved made it into some translations.  Necessary, proper, inevitable, and even a duty are other translations of the Greek word  δεῖ (die). 

Most modern translations just say that he had to go that way, but he didn’t.  Any self-respecting Jew would have traveled the extra miles along the Jordan to the east, turned north, and then hung a left before reaching the Decapolis.

Jesus took what was a more direct route.  Not knowing his exact starting point, we can’t say it was the most direct route, but he was headed to Galilee through Samaria and stopped at high noon in the town of Sychar.  His disciples went into town looking for something to eat.

Perhaps Jesus had a divine appointment to be at this well at that time.  Perhaps he was constrained by his mission on this earth to spread good news beyond Judea before he confronted the religious teachers.

Jesus parked himself by the well while the troops went looking for lunch.  Evidently, he was alone.  Water was normally drawn in the morning and evening.  Before we continue with this account, take a moment to be thankful for water.  We have water.  We take it for granted.  Water is plumbed into our homes.  When we want a drink, we just get one.

I have been to parts of the world where water is carried for miles.  Water is heavy, about eight and a third pounds per gallon.  So, five gallons of water is over 40 pounds.  That’s not much to carry for a hundred yards or a quarter mile, but today there still are places where people walk for 5 or 10 miles to get their water. 

Two thousand years ago, the Romans had done a lot to bring water to the people, but that was for a select few.  Most people of that time, walked to get their water.  Water for the home was women’s work and it was done early and late.

Picture Jesus resting against the elevated perimeter of the well and a woman approaches to draw water.  He said, I would love it if you would get me a drink.

Somehow the woman knew Jesus to be a Jew and she thought it odd that a Jew would ask a Samaritan to draw water for him.  Most Jews walked around their land but this one was here and he wanted a drink.

The story could have taken a different turn if the woman had just said, Here you go, buddy, drink up and speak nicely of Samaritans.

But this woman was a little cagey.  She would not even commit to a drink of water.  Jesus told her if she knew who she was talking with, she would have been asking him for water.

She was still skeptical, noting that Jesus didn’t even bring anything with which to draw water.  Really, where is this water coming from?  Are you greater than Jacob who gave us this well?

Jesus noted that you could draw water every day and still be thirsty again the next day, but the water he had would quench her thirst forever.  It would well up inside her.  It would be living water.

Some might speculate as to why this woman was at this well at noontime.  The next part gives us some insight into why she might come when there were no others, even though it was the heat of the day.

The woman asked Jesus for this living water.  Jesus told her to go get her husband.  That seems like an odd instruction. What?  Does the husband have to sign for this special water?

The woman said that she had no husband.

Jesus noted that she had spoken correctly.  She had 5 previous husbands and the man she was now shacked up with was not her husband.

Busted!  She was busted but cagey for she shifted the conversation from herself to religious sort of things figuring this man to be some sort of prophet.

So, she brought up what was surely a recurring topic of conversation.  The Jews say that you must worship in Jerusalem.  We have been worshiping on this mountain for who knows how long.  Maybe I can dance around examining my personal life a little longer.

Jesus said that the Jews had it right.  Tough break, but don’t throw in the towel because the Father is looking more for genuine worship than for its geography.  The time had come for people to worship in the Spirit and in the truth.

The time had come for worship to be genuine not perfunctory.

The woman was still leery so she kept the conversation directed towards backyard topics, things that everyone talked about so that they didn’t have to reveal much about themselves.  It’s the sort of talk that you found in coffee shops back when you could go inside and sit at a table.

She said, “Heard that the Messiah is coming.”  That should shift the conversation somewhere else.  “When he comes, he will explain everything.”

The woman was surely thinking: That should deflect any further focus on me.

Jesus really threw her for a loop when he did just that.  He shifted the focus to himself.  He said, “I am the Messiah.”  This was a unique, perhaps the first first-person revelation by Jesus, not to mention the power revealed when the Almighty speaks the words, “I Am.”

Somedays even when you think your excuses are in order, God cuts to the truth and there is no retreat or escape.  The woman left her water jar and went back into town.  More on that later.

This is a very unique encounter between the Lord and a woman of less than good standing.  He did not admonish her.  He did not condemn her.  He did not excuse her lifestyle. 

Jesus simply spoke the truth.  He was the Messiah.  He brought life.  In the previous chapter, John noted that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Today, we know that the words of the Lord are true.  That he brings life.  That in him there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

Yet, when faced with confronting how we live, how often are we more like the woman at the well than someone desiring to confess to our Father in heaven?

Nothing is hidden from God, so why play games with ourselves?  God already knows.  We can only fool ourselves.

Our religious talk surely ranks among our greatest enemies.  It steers us away from true relationship.  It gives us comfort when we should be discomforted.  It causes us to challenge the promises of the Lord.

Nothing is hidden from God.  Let’s live that way.  The only one we fool with a cagey approach to our Lord is ourselves.  Whatever our past or our current situations or the condition of our hearts, God already knows.  So, why pretend to keep him in the dark.  It’s an impossible task.

He wants us to live in the light where every dark thing is exposed, and as such, can be discarded and replaced by truth.

As for the woman in this account, don’t discount what she does when the truth is revealed to her.  More on her later.

Amen.