Isn’t it amazing how God layers truth upon truth within the Biblical text? Today, I invite you to see one truth from John 4. This is not to to suggest that this is the only truth, or necessarily the highest truth. But I believe you will see it certainly is a truth. As we read through this text from John 4, there are many ways to see it. One way is through the lens of worship.
“Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. 7 Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water…”
Worship begins by entering into the presence of the Divine.
- Sometimes, We enter into the presence of the Divine unaware.
- You entered into a special moment of Divine encounter this morning… whether you knew it or not.
“Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.”
Often, it is God himself who initiates the Divine encounter of worship.
- God asks us to join him, to drink deeply from the River of Life.
- God is the one who initiates the Divine union of worship. He is the one seeking it, He is the one who prompts us, He is the one who enables us to worship.
9 The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?”
The call, the invitation to worship can be such a surprise.
Worship can come at times, at places, in moments, in manners which we would never anticipate.
10 Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who I am, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”
God offers a gift in worship that we are slow to understand, and slower to search out.
- Worship contradicts our consumer “Get something” mindset – refusing to reduced to a utilitarian trade of good.
- Worship conveys to us and through us something uniquely powerful about the ministry of the Holy Spirit – an understanding we have been very poor at recognizing.
- Worship is perhaps one of the most powerful ways that God speaks to our hearts, to our minds and to our souls. Long before the Word can take root, long before a teaching can blossom, long before the sermon can penetrate us, Worship breaks open the callousness and self-centeredness of our hearts and souls.
- Perhaps this is why we are so slow to change, so gradual to experience the life-change which the Holy Spirit promises.
11 “But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this is a very deep well. Where would you get this living water? 12 And besides, are you greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his cattle enjoyed?”
How little we understand about God’s presence, God’s power in worship.
- We’ve tried to generate this ‘getting in worship’ through our own power, our own capability. (I focus my mind, I say a prayer, I study the word… its all about the religious performance I’ve put in.)
- Yet clearly there is an expectation of the Divine doing something that is not of human origin. Clearly God is going to go somewhere we could never go. God is going to do something we could never do.
13 Jesus replied, “People soon become thirsty again after drinking this water. 14 But the water I give them takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life.”
What God offers becomes a part of our very nature, changing every element of how we experience and live our lives.
- Worship infiltrates our lives, and rewrites the essence of our lives.
- Worship permeates my day-to-day conversation, my countenance at work, my witness in my neighborhood.
- Worship is the presence of God with me at all times, in all moments, in all efforts.
- Worship taps into the Eternal, timeless, whole presence of God.
- Perhaps part of the reason why we are so thirsty during the week… Perhaps why we are still missing something in our everyday life is a testimony about a lack of worship, a failure to encounter the Divine in a meaningful, powerful, life-giving way.
15 “Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me some of that water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to haul water.”
There is a natural hunger in our soul for worship of our Creator.
- We long for something that will provide for the needs that we hide in the closets of our hearts.
- There is a chasm in my soul that can only be crossed and filled by worship of the Divine.
16 “Go and get your husband,” Jesus told her. 17 “I don’t have a husband,” the woman replied. Jesus said, “You’re right! You don’t have a husband—18 for you have had five husbands, and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now.”
God invites us to worship in honesty about who we are, where we’ve been.
- We need to know that God already knows who we are, where we’ve been.
- God calls us to recognition to of our need for him and his healing power.
- God calls us to a discovery that none of this is news to Him. He’s been with us all along, well aware of what others have to us, what we’ve done to ourselves.
- God calls us to an appreciation that our worship of Him is best done in absolute honesty: Honesty about who we are, Honesty about where we’ve been.
- Until worship is done from authentic, naked honesty – it isn’t worship – its just religious proclamation with nothing personal or powerful about it.
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “you must be a prophet. 20 So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped?”
We are easily attached to, and often confused by, the style or form or structure of worship
- ScareCrow Worship
- Tin Man Worship
- We care more about the form or structure than we do about the one to whom worship is given!
21 Jesus replied, “Believe me, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father here or in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans know so little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews. 23 But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
Worship that God desires has its beginning and its end in His nature – Spirit and Truth.
25 The woman said, “I know the Messiah will come—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26 Then Jesus told her, “I am the Messiah!”
God is always willing and yearning to reveal himself to us in Worship.
John 4: 1-26 (NLT)
Let’s find the audience of our worship! Let’s find the one who is yearning and has literally died and risen in effort to draw us back to Himself to be worshiped.
