Authentic Worship...part 2...John 4:4-34

 


This image is from GotQuestions.org and here is an article and video from them that expound on the topic of authentic worship.  https://www.gotquestions.org/worship-spirit-truth.html

We have finished our month of looking at the Jesus' discipleship practice of authentic worship.  This narrative of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well bring worship front and center.  The conversation goes the route we tend to think of worship as something that happens at a "where."  The church becomes the building and worship becomes our singing.  We know it is more than that but our vocabulary many times limits worship to a place and a specific activity.  1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (LSB) challenges this practice.

Do you not know that you are a sanctuary of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the sanctuary of God, God will destroy him, for the sanctuary of God is holy, and that is what you are.

As I shared on Sunday, when the people of God leave the building, worship leaves the building too.  The worship of God goes wherever His children go.  This also ties all that we do, say, and think to the worship of God.  This is a humbling thought that should guide all of our activities of life.

In this passage, the phrase "in spirit and truth" is used twice.  The worship of God is the fabric of the converted who will worship and must worship with his/her spirit connected personally to God who is spirit and also with the truth outside of themselves that His word is the truth.  Jesus is that word who is the way, the truth and the life as recorded in the gospel of John.  The worship of God is both subjective and objective.

Jesus is declarative that this Samaritan would worship God in spirit and truth.  This Samaritan would be a true worshipper.  We see her leave her jar; go back and proclaim; and give an invitation to others to see Jesus.  The elements of a true convert are seen here.  A true convert repents, leaves their water jar.  A true convert has a new message to share with others, goes back and proclaims.  A true convert share the hope now within them which is Jesus, an invitation is giving to also know this one named Jesus.

The disciples come back into the scene after the conversion with the Samaritan woman.  Jesus now focuses on them and helps them so see beyond the physical to the spiritual.  There are so many other people who are being called by God to worship Him.  Do we see them?  Or is our focus on ourselves and our comforts and preferences even when it comes to the topic of worship?  Have we reduced worship down to something to be consumed, to be manufactured and to be on the level of just being sincere?  

Our true worship of God will move us into the realm of serving rather than consuming; being Spirit-led rather than man manufactured; and being God-centered rather than a performance showing our sincerity.  

One prayer was that the term and definition of worship would be enlarged in the life of the church-goer.  Dillon said that we all worship someone.  This is true and I would pray for the Christian that our 365 and 24/7 would be singled on God and God alone.  As Jesus said recorded in Matthew 4:10 (LSB),

Then Jesus said to him, “Go, Satan! 

For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’”

Adam



A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 38th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

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