Frank Abagnale was the world’s greatest con artist. The movie Catch Me If You Can is based on the true-life story this man, who bilked the government out of more than $5 million by the time he was 21. Raised in the home of a father who cheated the government and a mother who cheated on her husband, he observed the ease with which a person can lie his way through life.
At age 16, when his parents divorce, he runs away and for two years leads a life of amazing deception. Creating false documents and forging checks, he passes himself off as an airline pilot, a medical doctor, and a practicing attorney. During this time he even passed a state bar exam.
While posing as a doctor, Frank meets a young nurse, Brenda, and falls in love. When he meets her father, who is a prestigious lawyer, and her mother, he scores points with them by feigning to be a graduate of the same law school the father attended. Knowing they are dedicated Lutherans, he also claims to be Lutheran. Because Frank looks ten years older than he really is, Brenda’s father hires him as an associate in his law firm.
The FBI crashes their elaborate engagement party at the parents’ mansion, but Frank sees them coming and races upstairs to pack his bags. Before the agents enter the home, Frank’s fiancé Brenda follows him into the bedroom. He wants her to escape with him. He opens his suitcases to pack for a quick getaway, and Brenda sees thousands of dollars in cash stuffed in each valise. Frank must level with her. He confesses, “Brenda, I don’t want to lie to you anymore. I’m not a doctor. I’ve never been to medical school. I’m not a lawyer or a Harvard graduate. I’m not even a Lutheran. I ran away from home a year and a half ago when I was 16!” With a straight face, Brenda says, “Frank? Frank? You’re not a Lutheran?”
A woman surprised - you REALLY aren’t the man I married… Are you the worshiper you think you are?
John 4 is regarded primarily as a foundation for understanding worship. When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, He describes to her the nature of worship that God will accept… vv. 23-24 – But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
As I meditate upon this passage the Holy Spirit shows me some things I hadn’t seen quite so clearly before. They are things, which God does in our worship. As we look at this together, open your heart. In fact, these two verses describe God the Father seeking true worshipers.
The Father’s Pursuit
Seeking is a Divine initiative. We hail the ones, who are the touchstones of God’s revival moves, those earnest seekers after God’s heart and presence. God seeks…
I remember when I returned to the Lord in college. Adrift in spiritual compromise and hypocrisy and entirely lost… Knowing a call that the Lord had placed upon my life for ministry and running from God… I became utterly desperate. I repented.
It was in my dorm room at about 6:00 PM. I sold out. I gave up. I surrendered. And the power of God filled me in that room, which such divine grace. I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and, for the first time, I began to pray in another language… And I take NO Credit!
For all my pursuit after God in that desperate condition – He had been earnestly pursuing me. Let’s back up to the beginning of the story in v. 3… He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. But He needed to go through Samaria.
No Jew ever really needed to go through Samaria. The Samaritans were leftovers. They were descendants from the northern Jewish kingdom and had intermarried with foreigners after the chiefs and nobles were taken into exile in 722 B.C. They had once built a separate worship place on their own Mount Gerizim. They rejected all of the Old Testament except their own version of the first five books of Moses. Their animosity toward Jews was centuries old.
Jesus embraced the opportunity. He is bone-weary from the journey. He is hot and thirsty. And He is also on a mission. In Luke 19, Jesus invited Himself to Zacchaeus’ house; Zacchaues, the despised tax-collector. Jesus describes it this way…
Luke 19:10 “for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Jesus decides: “Perfect… A Samaritan adultress. I will show my disciples how my Father seeks worship in the midst of real life from the least likely. She is a Samaritan. She is a woman. She is a harlot.” God comes to make true worshipers out of broken Samaritan harlotes
That’s the heart of the Sovereign God. That’s the God the woman at the well was about to meet. He was the God seeking after her.
He was the One that Zacchaeus climbed into a tree to see, but later found out that Jesus was coming to his house. Harlots, tax collectors, sinners – that’s where we find a busy Savior. He’s there seeking out true worshipers.
Worship begins because He seeks us. And He is seeking in this place for true worshipers, in our homes for true worshipers, in our community for true worshipers, at Caswell prison for true worshipers… The harlots, the addicts, the abused, the wounded – He seeks after them. He seeks after us. He draws near and when He finds potential worshipers…
The Son’s Promise
Jesus comes offering waters of life. Quickly, the issue of His thirst turns to the issue of our thirst… John 4.10, 13-15…
The prophet Jeremiah put it like this: My people have exchanged their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord; for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:11-13)
The heavens are appalled and shocked when people give up soon on their quest for pleasure and settle for broken cisterns.
We Are Far Too Easily Pleased. The enemy of worship is not that our desire for pleasure is too strong but too weak! We have settled for a home, a family, a few friends, a job, a television, a microwave oven, an occasional night out, a yearly vacation, and perhaps a new personal computer. We have accustomed ourselves to such meager, short-lived pleasures that our worship has shriveled.
The soul that worships in spirit and truth is a Wellspring of life… Jesus uses the same imagery in John 7:37-39… So the water Jesus gives is the Holy Spirit.
The presence of God’s Spirit takes away the soul-thirst and turns us into a fountain where others can find life. A worshiping church will be a healing place…
The Heart’s Preparation
True worship is an affair of the Heart… God seeks people to worship him “in spirit and truth” True worship always combines heart and head, emotion and thought, affection and reflection, doxology and theology.
Almost everyone would agree that biblical worship involves some kind of outward act. The very word in Hebrew means to bow down. Worship is bowing, lifting hands, praying, singing, reciting, preaching, cleansing, commissioning...
But the startling fact is that all these things can be done in vain. They can be pointless and useless and empty. Isaiah 29:13…
Worship takes place in spirit. It is generated internally. It begins deep. This woman wanted living waters and Jesus began to prepare her heart…
v. 16 – Go call your husband… Why does Jesus strip open this woman’s inner life like this? Because worship begins deep – Jesus began in the depths of her life – her heart, her spirit. Concealed sin keeps us from seeing the light of Christ.
Sometimes we need to be shocked. If you want to hear what the Holy Spirit wants to say, He might need to shock you. Jesus is especially good at this. When he wants to teach us something about worship, he uses a whore!
Jesus is dangerous to the concealed things of our lives, the treasured things, even the shameful things. He is not afraid of the things, which shame us. He is not afraid to probe deeper than our comforts. “I don’t have a husband,” she answers. “That’s right,” Jesus says, “But you’ve had five, and the man you sleep with now is not your husband.”
Jesus simply sits there on the edge of the well with his hands folded, yet brimming with the white hot fire of truth and ready to teach us about worship.
Worship has to do with real life. Worship has to do with adultery and thirst and racial conflict and broken women and failed relationships. The heart must be prepared to worship by being laid open by truth. To receive waters of life through worship in spirit the heart must be exposed – it must be acknowledged – it must be cleansed…
The Priority of Truth
Worship must be vital and real in the heart, and worship must rest on a true perception of God. There must be spirit and there must be truth. So Jesus says, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” The two words, “spirit and truth,” correspond to the how and whom of worship.
The whom is Jesus as He really is… v. 26… The question is: Have you really had your eyes opened to see Him?
True worship cannot come from people whose spiritual roots are not deeply immersed in the soil of the Word of God. He must be worshiped in truth. We need to worship Him truthfully…
Worshiping in spirit is the opposite of worshiping in merely external ways. It is the opposite of empty formalism and traditionalism. Worshiping in truth is the opposite of worship based on an inadequate view of God. Worship must have both a heart and a head full of the wonder of God declared by the Word. Worship must engage emotions and thought. It is to be done in spirit and truth…
Conclusion
Pastor and author Stuart Briscoe writes: I was in Edinburgh about a year ago speaking at Charlotte Chapel, and a delightful young lady gave her testimony. She had come back from Kabul, Afghanistan, where she was a missionary nurse. She said how she was really enjoying the work she was doing there, and then she’d met a young man and fallen in love. He’d asked her to marry him, but she had said, "I made a commitment to my church back home to serve on the mission field. If I were to marry you, that might change everything. So before I can give you an answer, I need to talk with the leaders of the church." And so that was why she was home. She’d flown home all the way from Afghanistan to talk to the leaders of the church.
As I was looking at the congregation, I noticed a fellow sitting in the front row who had the weirdest look on his face. So when she was through and sat down next to me, I said, "Who is that fellow? Do you know him?" She said, "That’s the young man." I said, "I thought he was in Kabul." She said, "He was. He heard I was flying back to Scotland to talk to the leaders of the church, so he said he wanted to talk to them as well. So he jumped on the next plane."
You can always tell lovers: they don’t give up. They "come after," as a lover comes after the beloved. The test of following Jesus, adoring Jesus, worshiping Jesus is answered by how much we love Him. That’s one application of the illustration.
The real application is that God’s intense love for you brought Him to Earth and Calvary on a search for you - to capture your heart and your will and your emotions and your soul with ALL that He is that you might worship Him for Who He is.
