A good congregation gathered at St Swithun’s in Martyr Worthy yesterday on a mild morning for Valley Worship, where our concentration this year at our monthly services on worshipping God in different ways continued. Tim Clapp capably led our worship in song, Beccy Clark did the reading and Nick Owen led our prayers with his customary verve. The service was led by John Barber and Nicky Barber gave the talk, on worshipping God in spirit and in truth, drawing on John 4, verses 19-26:
19 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ 21 Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ 25 The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26 Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’
The text of the talk can be found below and a link to a recording of it is here:
John 4 v.19-26
This is the 3rd of our VW series of services looking at some of the different ways Christians worship God.
Any memories of times when you were caught out doing something wrong? How did it feel? Shame, hot cheeks? Mine was a broken window when I was about 8 years old. I had kicked it in a fit of rage then was too frightened of my mother’s reaction to admit it. She called the police to investigate a break-in and the policeman had a quick look and said it must be an inside job because the broken glass was on the outside not the inside. He looked at me and my siblings and I felt a crimson flush rising up my cheeks. Caught in sin.
The Samaritan woman here was in a similar situation. She had come to the well at noon when it would have been too hot for others to be there. There she found a strange man, who alarmed her by showing that he knew the details of her shameful past. What did she have to hide from? Were her cheeks burning as she quickly changed the subject onto the great debate between Samaritans and Jews – v. 20 “Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Where should we worship? Is there a “right” place to do so?
Christians worship God in all sorts of places and each of us will have our own favourite – Cathedral, church, school hall, field. In the Itchen Valley some also prefer to worship in one physical church rather than another. We may also disagree about styles and traditions: Hymns or modern worship songs, pews or chairs, organ or guitar, smart clothes or casual?
Do you think that perhaps God has a preference too?
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”
Jesus dismisses the fact that a particular place is important. As we read on, we see that he is more concerned with the who and the how than the where:
23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
Who (do we worship):
True worship is God-centred rather than man-centred – we are to worship the God who relates to us as our heavenly Father, who (v.23) is seeking people to worship him. Worship is not something human beings dream up; it is a response to the God who seeks us out and who wants to draw us into a right relationship with him as his children.
In v.22 Jesus pointed out that the Jews worship what they know. The Samaritans only had the first five books of the bible and so only had a partial revelation of God, compared to the Jews who had all that God had revealed about himself in the Old Testament part of our Bible.
We now have the benefit of seeing the even bigger picture – we know that God entered history as a man; Jesus. Later in John’s gospel when Philip asked Jesus to show him the Father, Jesus replied “Don’t you know me, Philip? … Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
How many of us really know each other? Not just names and a few details but who the person really is. Have I revealed enough of myself to each of you for you to know what I am really like or have I just given you enough to know me superficially? Could you write a eulogy for me?
Really knowing a person comes from spending time with them, talking to them, watching how they live, interacting with them.
Training Millie, our spaniel. I ask her to sit and watch me. She sits but swivels her head to look in the other direction. She gives the impression of being willing but her heart is not in it. How much of the time does God have my full attention? What might be distracting us from getting to know him better?)
We know who – How do we worship?
How does Jesus say the Father wants his children to worship him?
The right way to worship (v.23-24) is in the spirit and in truth.
Jesus uses the word “must” in v. 24 – the Greek word Dei used here for must gives the idea of a divine command. This is not just desirable or optional, it is the type of worship God requires and seeks from us.
- We must worship God – In the spirit:
In v. 24 Jesus tells us that God is spirit. He is somehow outside the limitations of our physical world of time and space while also being in it. He is not an idol made by man, he is not a philosophy or a theory.
He is a living being but we can’t see him and our human minds struggle to really understand who he is and what he is like – we use big words to describe him: Omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal but we still can’t really tie him down to something that our brains can comprehend.
His realm or kingdom is not an earthly one, it is the realm of the spirit and that is where we have to meet him and worship him.
We don’t have to go to somewhere like Buckingham Palace to find his realm. Instead, he stepped into our physical world in the person of Jesus and he now invites and enables us to step into his realm of the spirit.
How do we imagine the Holy Spirit of the living God? Because he is so different from us, we have to use metaphors to help us to grasp what he is like. Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus talked about the Spirit being like a wind or fire or a spring of water.
We have a wood burning stove. When it is damped right down it can look as if it has gone out but when we open the air inlet, within minutes the flames flare up again and the fire springs back into life. God’s spirit is like fresh wind entering our cold hearts and bringing them back to life.
Or remember last weekend when most of the valley was suffering from burst water mains. We knew where the burst pipes were because water was bubbling or gushing up nearby, softening the ground and causing rivers of water to run downhill. Jesus had told the woman earlier that if she asked him, he would give her living water and he has said his spirit will do the same for us. He will be like a spring of living water bubbling up in our hearts, softening them and giving them life.
Water or wind or both – have we met the Spirit in this way? Do we want to? But Jesus also said:
- We must worship God – in truth:
How do we worship in truth? Truth is about reality, about how things actually are not just how we think they are. Where do we find truth?
Jesus said in John 14 v.6 “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No-one comes to the Father except through me”.
Jesus embodied truth as part of his divine nature and sends what he called the Spirit of Truth to live in us. (John 14 v.16).
With his help, we can build our lives and worship on truth and be honest with God about our true condition. Sham, counterfeit worship which says one thing to God while doing or thinking another is not “true” worship.
But we might ask, how do I, even with the help of the Holy Spirit approach a pure and Holy God? We all have things in our lives we are ashamed of and know that before God we are what the bible calls sinful.
The sad reality is that none of us is good enough to enter his presence.
Have you ever tried dropping a ball of soot from the fire into a bowl of clean water – it quicky spreads out over the whole surface of the water and makes it dirty. However hard you try, you can’t scoop it out – you have to throw all the sooty water out and start again with fresh water.
We each need our sooty residue removing too and this is where we need to receive the miracle of what Jesus has done for each of us through his death and resurrection.
Jesus took my place in divine exchange so that when a pure and holy God looks at me, he sees me as pure and holy too, all my grubbiness washed away by the precious blood of his son.
True worship involves acknowledging our real heart condition honestly to God, how we feel about him deep inside, doubts and all, asking forgiveness where necessary and then daring to approach his throne confident that the blood of Jesus has opened the way for us to do so.
True worship involves the whole of our lives. This Samaritan woman later ran off to her town and called others to come and meet Jesus too. No longer a social outcast hiding her shame away, her life had been transformed by this encounter with her Messiah.
On the London tube platforms, we hear a tinny voice repeating “Mind the Gap”, warning us of the dire consequences if we inadvertently step into that gap. Jesus instead bridges the gap for us. God is no longer “over there”, out of reach, he is right here, not just near us but inside us if we allow him to come in.
We often think of worship being mainly about praise and thanksgiving but it also involves surrender and sacrifice, holding nothing back from God, being willing to give him control of everything. It can be very costly and at the next VW service we will be looking more at this cost.
What is the real question and challenge this passage leaves us with today?
I wonder if it comes down to this: Is God really worth it?
One of the original meanings of the word worship is “Worth-ship”. Is God worth giving up other things for? If we think he is worth it, then we might have to devote time and effort to doing so. Seeking him in his word, setting aside time to talk to him and listen to him, not just on Sundays but every day. (God doesn’t just turn up at church then take the rest of the week off!)
But the supreme incentive to worship must be that it matters to God. He seeks it. He gave his son and gives his spirit to make it possible for us to worship him. True worship is about him and not about us and whether we are in the mood for it.
Our adult children don’t come home as often now as they used to but when they do get in touch suddenly and ask if we are free, we drop everything to see them – we love spending time with them.
The God who says he is our Father is always available, he always has time for us when we approach him in spirit and in truth but he leaves us to choose whether we do so or not. Day by day, minute by minute decisions – is he worth worshipping now?