SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_02: Good morning, always a delight to fill in for Jason, who is, I believe, in Kansas doing some classwork there in fulfillment of his course requirements for the PhD program.
SPEAKER_02: This morning we're going to open our Bibles in John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_02: John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_02: And we're going to cover, hopefully, 34 verses.
SPEAKER_02: You think it's doable?
SPEAKER_02: I've got no plans for this afternoon.
SPEAKER_02: I've still got a lawn that needs to be mowed, so if I can preach, I've got an excuse.
SPEAKER_02: So how about this?
SPEAKER_02: Instead of reading the whole passage, we're gonna just work through it, but I'm gonna get us uh started so that we can get an idea of what this is about.
SPEAKER_02: Chapter 4 of John's Gospel, verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were, he left Judea and went away again into Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria.
SPEAKER_02: So he came to a city of Samaria called Sikar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
SPEAKER_02: And Jacob's well was there.
SPEAKER_02: So Jesus, being wearied from his journey, was sitting thus by the well.
SPEAKER_02: It was about the sixth hour.
SPEAKER_02: Verse seven.
SPEAKER_02: There came a woman of Samaria to draw water.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus said to her, give me a drink.
SPEAKER_02: For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
SPEAKER_02: Now let's skip over all those verses and we'll read verse thirty-three.
SPEAKER_02: This is how it ends.
SPEAKER_02: So the disciples were saying to one another, no one has brought him anything to eat, did he?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
SPEAKER_02: Probably one of the more fascinating stories in the age of exploration is that of Captain James Franklin Ross.
SPEAKER_02: He was the leader of a most daring expedition, namely of paving a route, a shorter route from England to China.
SPEAKER_02: And that would follow a treacherous journey through the icy waters of the polar seas.
SPEAKER_02: Now for a journey of this magnitude, food, fresh water, and other rations should have enjoyed a higher priority, but for the organizers of this expedition put it off to the eleventh hour before they awarded contracts to the suppliers.
SPEAKER_02: Under the tyranny of the urgent contractors each placed the bids on the table, ranging from the highest to the lowest bid.
SPEAKER_02: Who do you think they picked?
SPEAKER_02: The highest bidders or the lowest bidders?
SPEAKER_02: If you were organizing an expedition that's now paving a way to the Orient, through the Arctic Seas, over the North Pole, food and drink is obviously of utmost importance importance.
SPEAKER_02: What would you do?
SPEAKER_02: Would you go for the highest bid or the lowest bid?
SPEAKER_02: Who says highest?
SPEAKER_02: Okay, only.
SPEAKER_02: Who goes for the lowest bidder?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, all of you.
SPEAKER_02: You are cheap.
SPEAKER_02: Who goes for the middle?
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: And the rest is this is a trick question.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to put up my hand.
SPEAKER_02: Well, the Franklin party settled for the lowest bid on the table.
SPEAKER_02: The party set off on two ships, the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus, with a crew of 129 men and a monkey.
SPEAKER_02: And they did so sailing into the unknown for an unknown period of time, supplied with the cheapest and nastiest canned foods available in the whole of England.
SPEAKER_02: And then the party vanished off the face of the earth in a cloud of mystery around 1845.
SPEAKER_02: They just went missing.
SPEAKER_02: Nobody found them.
SPEAKER_02: Even search bodies came afterwards, and about 120 years later, some researchers on King William Island and Northern Canada found the grisly remains that bore evidence of cannibalism and violence.
SPEAKER_02: It was Flat Franklin's party.
SPEAKER_02: You see, while food and water were to be of the highest priority, they went for the cheapest, the lowest bid on the table.
SPEAKER_02: And what revealed a sobering clue was a can of venison.
SPEAKER_02: You see what they found was the soldering was done so poorly.
SPEAKER_02: And the soldering was done with lead, and that leached into the food, and the party eventually succumbed to lead poisoning, or the consequences of lead poisoning.
SPEAKER_02: Isn't it strange why people for something as important as food would settle for the cheapest bit on the table, the lowest bit on the table.
SPEAKER_02: And this is our story in John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_02: You see, our life's highest priority, we might think, is food and drink.
SPEAKER_02: Because the story opens here with Jesus asking for a drink of water and his disciples going into the city of the Samaritans in search of food.
SPEAKER_02: However, Jesus would show that the highest priority in life is not food and drink, nor one's personal happiness, but rather to worship the living God in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: You see how the story, as I said, begins here with food and drink.
SPEAKER_02: And in verse 7 it says there that when Jesus came to the well, a Samaritan woman came up to the well and he said to her, give me a drink.
SPEAKER_02: At that point, his disciples have already departed into the city to buy food.
SPEAKER_02: In the end, in verse 31, his disciples come back very concerned about Jesus, and they they bring him some food and they say, Rabbi, eat.
SPEAKER_02: What is the author saying for us here is setting the stage that food and drink seems to be of utmost importance here.
SPEAKER_02: But the way that John structured the passage for us, the meaty pot is in the middle.
SPEAKER_02: The main idea, the that which is to be of the highest priority is right there in the middle.
SPEAKER_02: Verses 20 to 24.
SPEAKER_02: And verses 20 to 24 is about worship.
SPEAKER_02: And so many pastors have preached this passage saying that this is about evangelism, and I beg to differ.
SPEAKER_02: This is about worship.
SPEAKER_02: However, worship usually leads to evangelism.
SPEAKER_02: The story is typically known as the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, because her life now becomes an object lesson about priorities.
SPEAKER_02: At least, flip-flopped priorities.
SPEAKER_02: Worship ought to be our highest priority.
SPEAKER_02: And more specifically, worshiping God the Father in spirit and truth ought to be the highest priority.
SPEAKER_02: Hence the title of my message this morning: Worship our highest priority.
SPEAKER_02: You see, we as human beings are made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: So we worship.
SPEAKER_02: We are made to worship.
SPEAKER_02: None of the animals in the Garden of Eden could worship.
SPEAKER_02: But we have our priorities wrong as human beings.
SPEAKER_02: We tend to worship our personal well-being and of course our personal happiness.
SPEAKER_02: We think if we could at least satisfy our personal well-being and our personal well happiness that we will be satisfied for life.
SPEAKER_02: But lo and behold, dear brothers and sisters, you and I were made to commune and fellowship with the divine.
SPEAKER_02: Yet we want to have fellowship and communion with things like food and drink and even our personal happiness seems to be of the highest priority.
SPEAKER_02: You see, we as human beings, and the story will show, that we accept the lowest bids offered on the table of life.
SPEAKER_02: We worship faltering imitations of the living God, thinking that will satisfy us.
SPEAKER_02: We bow down to these idols that we create, believing that our spiritual thirst and hunger will be satisfied and fulfilled.
SPEAKER_02: Yet we are not.
SPEAKER_02: Instead, we need to keep our eyes on what Jesus is saying here, which is the highest bids on the table of life, namely, that is to worship God in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: We must worship God the Father, we must do so in knowledge, and we must do so in an understanding of who he is, and it must be done in spirit and in truth.
SPEAKER_02: And hence, I have this very simple outline this morning that we will follow.
SPEAKER_02: A is, or one is accepting the lowest bid, how that looks like, and then two accepting the highest bid on the table of life.
SPEAKER_02: And each one has its different characteristics, and I will walk through them.
SPEAKER_02: The Samaritan woman will become somewhat of an object list and of someone who accepts the lowest bits on the table of life, thinking that that will satisfy.
SPEAKER_02: It is very clear from the story here that we will get into that her priorities revolve around a her physical well-being, b, her personal happiness, and then C her religion, which is a religion of ignorance, not of knowledge.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 7.
SPEAKER_02: The woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, give me a drink.
SPEAKER_02: It's hot, it's dry.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus has been on a long journey.
SPEAKER_02: And quickly the conversation is about water, which is a very important thing, but then look at verse 10.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus replied to her and said, If you knew the gift of God and who it is who is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
SPEAKER_02: You are not greater than our Father Jacob, are you?
SPEAKER_02: she replies, for he gave us this well and drank of it himself, and his sons and his cattle.
SPEAKER_02: Somewhat this is magic water.
SPEAKER_02: But then in verse 13, Jesus says to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again.
SPEAKER_02: They will not be satisfied.
SPEAKER_02: But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst.
SPEAKER_02: But the water that I give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.
SPEAKER_02: And then the woman says, Sir, give me this water so I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw.
SPEAKER_02: It's very interesting that the word give occurs here at least a half a dozen times in my translation.
SPEAKER_02: We're being cued into the idea that something is being offered here.
SPEAKER_02: Here's a bed on the table.
SPEAKER_02: Here's something of great value being offered, namely water, but this is not ordinary water that Jesus is talking about, but extraordinary water.
SPEAKER_02: The water that I give is the water that will make you not thirst for other things.
SPEAKER_02: The water that I will give will have a perpetual satisfaction.
SPEAKER_02: But here the Samaritan women, like most humans on this planet, will settle for the lowest bit on what they believe is on the table of life, namely physical well-being and personal happiness.
SPEAKER_02: Look at how she responds.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is putting out something there very, very important.
SPEAKER_02: And yet all she can think about is her what?
SPEAKER_02: Convenience, ease, and comfort.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, great idea.
SPEAKER_02: I want that water.
SPEAKER_02: Because if I don't become thirsty, I don't need to come out all the way here.
SPEAKER_02: That's very convenient.
SPEAKER_02: And guess what?
SPEAKER_02: If you can save me time, you can save me money, and then I can get on with my life and pursue the things that make me really happy.
SPEAKER_02: You see, she is having a conversation here with the creator himself, but she completely misses the point.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because her sights are set so low.
SPEAKER_02: She's only thinking of things that will help her physically, not spiritually.
SPEAKER_02: She thinks of what's that which would satisfy her now, so that she could invest her time in something more important, which is the pursuit of happiness.
SPEAKER_02: How often human beings dance to the tune of the lowest octave on the bar of life, which is according to the tune, All I Want to Be is Happy.
SPEAKER_02: If we look at John 4, 16, it gives us a glimpse of what she thinks will make her happy.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 16, Jesus says, Go call your husband and come here.
SPEAKER_02: And she answered him, I have no husband.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus said to her, You have correctly said, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you have now is not your husband.
SPEAKER_02: This you have truly said.
SPEAKER_02: What is this woman's main pursuit in life?
SPEAKER_02: Personal happiness.
SPEAKER_02: She truly believes that if I could find the right husband, that will satisfy me, and if I'm satisfied, I will be happy.
SPEAKER_02: Well, let's see how that is working out for her.
SPEAKER_02: You have had five husbands.
SPEAKER_02: And guess what?
SPEAKER_02: Five has failed.
SPEAKER_02: Five of them have failed to bring you what you really think you need.
SPEAKER_02: It is very interesting that Ecclesiastes 3.11 says that God has set eternity in the human heart.
SPEAKER_02: You see, God has put something into human beings that make them hunger and search for something more.
SPEAKER_02: God has made us in such a way that we are just not satisfied with just food and drink.
SPEAKER_02: We want something more.
SPEAKER_02: We want things that will we think will make us happy, something that will have some eternal value to us.
SPEAKER_02: And we thirst after those things.
SPEAKER_02: But really, what God has put in our hearts is this innate thirst to commune with the divine.
SPEAKER_02: You see, all human beings have this hungering for a more meaningful existence in life.
SPEAKER_02: But in the way they pursue things in this life, they are left thirsty and hungry and wanting more.
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that what Solomon concluded?
SPEAKER_02: Thinking that if I could just get what I see, I will be happy and satisfied.
SPEAKER_02: But he learned that the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with yearing.
SPEAKER_02: It seems that this woman pursued things that she believed would satisfy her and give her what she really needs, and that is to be happy.
SPEAKER_02: But seemingly boyfriend number one failed to satisfy her.
SPEAKER_02: Boyfriend number two and three also left her thirsting and hungering for more.
SPEAKER_02: Then boyfriend number four and five left her hungering and thirsting for more.
SPEAKER_02: And what do you think is the verdict on number six?
SPEAKER_02: He still doesn't cut it.
SPEAKER_02: Or else you would have married him.
SPEAKER_02: He is not your husband.
SPEAKER_02: Can you see that human beings have this innate drive in them for something more significant, something more meaningful in life?
SPEAKER_02: There is something in them hungering, some thirst in them.
SPEAKER_02: And they try to satisfy it with things that God has not designed it to be satisfying to them.
SPEAKER_02: You see, we as human beings, we want to satisfy ourselves with whatever is offered on the table of life, and we time and time again pick the lowest offer on the table.
SPEAKER_02: This is what Ecclesiastes 6 9 said.
SPEAKER_02: We just read it.
SPEAKER_02: What the eyes see is better than what the soul desires.
SPEAKER_02: But this too is futility and the striving after wind.
SPEAKER_02: You see, what the soul really desires can only be satisfied with fellowship and communion with the living God, but we strive after things that the eye sees.
SPEAKER_02: And striving after these things, the writer says, is a striving after wind.
SPEAKER_02: You see, you and I are all created in a way that we will hunger for communion and fellowship with something more than us.
SPEAKER_02: We are created to worship, but we worship substitutes for the living God.
SPEAKER_02: We are so quick to accept cheap imitations.
SPEAKER_02: And the promises of quick thrills keep catching up to us.
SPEAKER_02: The truth being, what your eyes sees is not what the soul needs.
SPEAKER_02: What the soul desires and thirsts after is intimacy with the living God.
SPEAKER_02: But like the Samaritan woman, she went for substitutes to that.
SPEAKER_02: She turned to men.
SPEAKER_02: You see, the human soul craves and hungers and thirsts for something more, but we give the soul cotton candy substitutes.
SPEAKER_02: We tell ourselves, oh, I see that over there, that will satisfy the hunger that I have within me for something more.
SPEAKER_02: But you see these cotton candy substitutes leave a temporary sweet taste in the mouth, but soon turn sour in the stomach.
SPEAKER_02: You've had five husbands.
SPEAKER_02: And the verdict is out a number six.
SPEAKER_02: You will not be happier because you base your personal happiness on the things that your eyes see, rather than turning your eyes away into the unseen, namely that which is divine.
SPEAKER_02: And this is where we want to get.
SPEAKER_02: She's like, Yeah, you you are about the bigger things in life.
SPEAKER_02: You know, you're probably a pastor or something like that.
SPEAKER_02: And she then gets all religious.
SPEAKER_02: I love it.
SPEAKER_02: You know, when I go to the store or something, somebody's like, Yeah, you've got an accent, and I'm like, Yeah, I can't tell.
SPEAKER_02: But uh since you notice, let's talk about this.
SPEAKER_02: Uh and they go, Yeah, what brought you to America and whatnot?
SPEAKER_02: And I said, I'm a pastor.
SPEAKER_02: God brought me to America, and God brought me to Grand Forks, and usually they laugh and they like, yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Because they like, well, would God bring somebody from a warm place to a cold place here?
SPEAKER_02: I thought it's the opposite.
SPEAKER_02: Uh and then people get all religious.
SPEAKER_02: They're all like, yeah, yeah, my grandfather was a great bishop.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh, that's great.
SPEAKER_02: This is what she does.
SPEAKER_02: Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
SPEAKER_02: I wonder what she is saying here.
SPEAKER_02: But is she saying, does it even matter?
SPEAKER_02: As long as you worship?
SPEAKER_01: Whatever makes you happy, whatever floats your boat, that is good enough.
SPEAKER_02: As long as you could be happy, because nobody knows for sure what is right and what's wrong.
SPEAKER_02: And this is once again settling for that lowest bit on the table, a religion based on ignorance.
SPEAKER_02: People don't know what they believe, but they worship what they believe.
SPEAKER_02: The Samaritan people, like many people of our own day, worship something in ignorance.
SPEAKER_02: The ignorant about what they believe and the ignorant about what they worship, but as long as they can be happy and feel good after all, that is the highest priority in life is to feel happy and feel good.
SPEAKER_02: But what they worship is a faltering imitation of the living God.
SPEAKER_02: You see, the human soul will crave and hunger until it finds God.
SPEAKER_02: But we are on that journey so willing to accept cheap imitations.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus takes the conversation up another and he says in verse 21, Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
SPEAKER_02: You worship what you do not know, i.e., in ignorance.
SPEAKER_02: We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
SPEAKER_02: You see, also many churchgoers, just like the Samaritan woman here, is indifferent to truth.
SPEAKER_02: They are like the Athenians who worshiped an idol to the unknown God.
SPEAKER_02: It's like, yeah, you can worship this God, but you don't you won't know anything about him.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't tell you anything, but just worship him because it makes you feel better about yourself.
SPEAKER_02: But Paul says in Acts 17, 30 about such worship and ignorance, uh, that is it's futile.
SPEAKER_02: You worship out of ignorance, he says to the Athenians.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus will soon be telling the Samaritan woman, you are worshiping in ignorance.
SPEAKER_02: You don't know what you worship.
SPEAKER_02: What you're worshiping there is is will never satisfy you.
SPEAKER_02: It's cotton candy stuff.
SPEAKER_02: It's sweet for now, but it turns Sarah in the stomach at some point.
SPEAKER_02: And so Jesus takes the story for us now to a whole new level.
SPEAKER_02: He puts the highest bit on the table.
SPEAKER_02: He's tried, but now he's driving it home.
SPEAKER_02: Listen to verse 23.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I got this slide for us.
SPEAKER_02: Just look at that passage.
SPEAKER_02: Verses 23, verse 20 to 24.
SPEAKER_02: You can count the amount of times that the word worship is in there.
SPEAKER_02: So I guess Jesus is trying to tell us something about what?
SPEAKER_02: Evangelism?
SPEAKER_02: Worship.
SPEAKER_02: Here's a few things that Jesus says about worship.
SPEAKER_02: He says, but an hour is coming, verse 23, and is now, when the true worshipers will worship the father.
SPEAKER_02: True worshipers versus fake worshipers, the true worshipers will worship the father, specifically a person who is known as God the Father, and they will worship him in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: For such people, the Father, once again, a specific person that can be known, seeks to be his worshipers.
SPEAKER_02: The worshipers who worship him in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: There's something being driven home here, something about a person.
SPEAKER_02: Pursuing the highest bid in life is to worship a person.
SPEAKER_02: True worshipers worship a person, and that person is not the one we often see in the mirror there in the foyer.
SPEAKER_02: Why do we have a mirror in the foyer?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it is to remind us, say, you have a propensity to worship the person in the mirror.
SPEAKER_02: Ouch.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, now God wants us to take the focus off self and worship a person, namely God the Father.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus points out that traditions, mountains, specific places are really valueless when it comes to true worship.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus points out that worship is not about worshiping on Mount Gerizim or on the Temple Mount, because there's no substitute for communion and fellowship with the living God.
SPEAKER_02: Once again, a mountain or a temple could be a cheap substitute, a faltering imitation of the living God.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus points out that worship must be based on knowledge and a specific knowledge about the Jewish Messiah and the God of salvation.
SPEAKER_02: Because he says that salvation is of the Jews.
SPEAKER_02: He's trying to clue her into the God who saves.
SPEAKER_02: And that such worship is in the sphere of salvation.
SPEAKER_02: And therefore, second point here about the highest bit on the table that such worship, if worship is the highest priority in life, such worship must be in knowledge and understanding of that person.
SPEAKER_02: Have you often tried to have a relationship with somebody who is hard to get to know?
SPEAKER_02: Some people are just a closed book.
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, man, I'm trying to have a relationship with that person, but he's a closed book.
SPEAKER_02: Try it.
SPEAKER_02: Try to have a relationship with somebody, and you just closed up.
SPEAKER_02: You don't give them anything.
SPEAKER_02: God is an open book.
SPEAKER_02: God has revealed himself.
SPEAKER_02: He wants us to know him.
SPEAKER_02: And not be like the Samaritans who say, well, at least I'm worshiping, but their worship is based on ignorance.
SPEAKER_02: It's void of knowledge.
SPEAKER_02: You will often find people who worship and they are very devout and they worship and you say, tell me more about your God.
SPEAKER_02: And they can tell you nothing.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing.
SPEAKER_02: How many Christians, even today, supposed Christians, can tell you nothing about the God that they worship?
SPEAKER_02: You see, God, the Father, is a person that must be worshipped, not out of ignorance, but in relational knowledge.
SPEAKER_02: It's probably the best way that I can translate verse 21 for us.
SPEAKER_02: God needs to be known.
SPEAKER_02: He reveals himself.
SPEAKER_02: We can know him.
SPEAKER_02: And based on how we know him, what we know about him, there's a relationship that draws us into fellowship and communion with him.
SPEAKER_02: And once again, how is it that we set aside knowledge of God for what we term relationship?
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm not really interested in, you know, all this theology.
SPEAKER_02: I'm more interested in having a relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
SPEAKER_02: So how does that work?
SPEAKER_02: How does that work?
SPEAKER_02: We can't even have a relationship with somebody who's a closed book.
SPEAKER_02: And if you want to have a relationship with Jesus, how are you going to have a relationship with him if you don't know who he is and what he is like?
SPEAKER_02: And that is a relationship out of ignorance.
SPEAKER_02: And we have the risk always of worshiping a faltering imitation, born out of our own imaginations.
SPEAKER_02: We are quick to create our own worship.
SPEAKER_02: The Samaritans created their own religion and they worship a figment of the imagination.
SPEAKER_02: But Jesus says there in verse 22, we worship what we know.
SPEAKER_02: For salvation is from the Jews.
SPEAKER_02: Where does that knowledge and understanding come from?
SPEAKER_02: Where do we get a knowledge and understanding of where it who God is?
SPEAKER_02: Is it just from experiencing life?
SPEAKER_02: You know, wait, dude, God is so cool.
SPEAKER_02: You know, I was standing there waiting for a parking spot.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad about that.
SPEAKER_02: But but you know, your God is actually more than offering you a parking spot.
SPEAKER_02: He's offering you a spot in heaven.
SPEAKER_02: And do you know how to get there?
SPEAKER_02: You see, knowledge and understanding of Scripture is essential because God the Father reveals himself within the sphere of salvation, which incidentally would come through the Jewish Messiah, who is the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, whom the Jews crucified on a cross.
SPEAKER_02: But not only will he provide forgiveness of sins, he would ultimately provide access to the Father.
SPEAKER_02: Have we ever thought about that?
SPEAKER_02: That your salvation provides access to the Father?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus says, you cannot come to the Father unless you know and come to me.
SPEAKER_02: Now let's finally talk here for a minute about what it means to worship in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: True worshipers will worship this person called God the Father.
SPEAKER_02: They will do this in knowledge and understanding of his great salvation in his son, the Jewish Messiah, but we must worship him in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: Now I know there are many of you who say, well, Pastor, just preach all the views and we will pick.
SPEAKER_02: Now I can preach all the views and we will be here until dinner.
SPEAKER_02: Supper.
SPEAKER_02: I just love how verses 23 and 24 is laid out.
SPEAKER_02: True worshipers, true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: True worshipers are people who will.
SPEAKER_02: It's not they can they will or we're not, they will.
SPEAKER_02: They will because they can.
SPEAKER_02: But then he also says those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: This will, which is a guarantee, and this must that it's absolute conditional, is uh very reminiscent of John 3, but we will get back there.
SPEAKER_02: Now, let's first look at this in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: There are multiple interpretations of this, but I'll give you the right interpretation and save you time.
SPEAKER_02: This is called a hendiadist.
SPEAKER_02: Hendiatist.
SPEAKER_02: Now I'm no grammar scholar or anything, but but basically they tell us this is using two words for one concept.
SPEAKER_02: It's almost like saying, I'm thinking of an example to give you now, it's like saying he's a gigantically, no, he's a big and huge man.
SPEAKER_02: Is he big and huge?
SPEAKER_02: Or are we just trying to say that this guy is like big?
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: It's a two-fold mode.
SPEAKER_02: Notice, let's get into the technicalities here of Greek grammar.
SPEAKER_02: It says they're in spirit and in truth.
SPEAKER_02: No, it's not saying in spirit and in truth, as if these are two separate concepts.
SPEAKER_02: It's one concept, spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: He's giving you two words because the concept is so big that he needs two words for that.
SPEAKER_02: It's a singular concept expressed in two words, spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: Here is what John Owen, Puritan, said worship is accessed to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: There's something to be said here of the work of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Remember, if you turn back, you only need to turn back one page to see the context.
SPEAKER_02: And the context here is still very close and connected to John 3, 7, where Jesus says to Nicodemus, do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again.
SPEAKER_02: The rebirth is conditional for access to God, the Father.
SPEAKER_02: Being born again is conditional for someone to have access to the Father, to worship him in spirit and in truth, one must be born again.
SPEAKER_02: Now think of this.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: Remember what God Jesus said there is, you've got to get to know this God.
SPEAKER_02: If you want to worship this God, you've got to know him.
SPEAKER_02: You've got to know about him, you've got to understand who he is.
SPEAKER_02: But this is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 14.
SPEAKER_02: He says, But the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are to be spiritually appraised.
SPEAKER_02: So what is Jesus saying here?
SPEAKER_02: He says, if you think you're going to worship God the Father and you are unregenerate and dead in your trespasses and sins, whoopee, you are fooling yourselves.
SPEAKER_02: You must be born again.
SPEAKER_02: Or else you cannot understand and comprehend who God is.
SPEAKER_02: You will comprehend something, but it's not true.
SPEAKER_02: You will worship indeed in ignorance as the Samaritans.
SPEAKER_02: And so, number one, what I'm postulating here is that worship of God the Father is a product of someone being born again.
SPEAKER_02: It comes out of the rebirth.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, that person must and will profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but a person who is still in the flesh are oblivious to these spiritual things.
SPEAKER_02: But the rebirth makes us alive in the spirit.
SPEAKER_02: And I think John 3, 6 is very clear on that.
SPEAKER_02: He says that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.
SPEAKER_02: What Jesus is saying there is while all human beings have this desire to worship, they cannot worship what really matters.
SPEAKER_02: John 663, two pay a few pages on, Jesus says this, John 663, he says there, it is the Spirit who gives life.
SPEAKER_02: What type of life?
SPEAKER_02: Spiritual life that the flesh profits nothing.
SPEAKER_02: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
SPEAKER_02: You see, before we can worship the loving God, that which is dead must be made alive.
SPEAKER_02: But you see, we pursue the things that profits the flesh, but not profits the spirit.
SPEAKER_02: You see, the flesh seeks to gratify and satisfy what benefits?
SPEAKER_02: The flesh.
SPEAKER_02: But we are told here that in order to have fellowship and communion with the living God, we must worship him in spirit and truth, because God is spirit, verse 24.
SPEAKER_02: If God is spirit, our spirit must first be made alive so that we can worship him in spirit and flesh, or else we will be operating in the flesh and we will seek what profits and satisfy the flesh.
SPEAKER_02: And this is where things get really bizarre at times.
SPEAKER_02: People often gauge the worship experience in church and they say it was okay.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, worship was so so.
SPEAKER_02: Worship was average.
SPEAKER_02: But are we not interpreting that through fleshly principles?
SPEAKER_02: You either worship or you don't.
SPEAKER_02: God the Father is either worship or he's not.
SPEAKER_02: Either dead people worship a faltering imitation of the living God, or born-again people worship the living God in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 51 confirms this idea of being a worshiper out of the new birth.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 51, 10.
SPEAKER_02: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me.
SPEAKER_02: The psalmist acknowledge that there is a tendency.
SPEAKER_02: No, that spirit is not right.
SPEAKER_02: And it must be made right so that we can commune and have fellowship with the living God.
SPEAKER_02: Let me tell you what this Puritan Stephen Sharnock says.
SPEAKER_02: And I have my eye on the clock.
SPEAKER_02: I'm under great pressure here to get you out here in a reasonable amount of time.
SPEAKER_02: But God made, as he says here, God made man's nature fit for worship.
SPEAKER_02: But man made himself unfit by guilt and filth.
SPEAKER_02: This unfilthiness must first be removed by the regeneration before this privilege man had by creation can be restored.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot worship God.
SPEAKER_02: Forget it.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot, unless you're born again.
SPEAKER_02: Not that this restored righteousness is the cause of our worship with God, but it is a necessary requisite for it, or I would even say a prerequisite for it.
SPEAKER_02: The cause of our worship of God is our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: So Sharnock is also saying there that God must first renew that which is crooked and broken before man can worship the living God.
SPEAKER_02: That filth and guilt must first be washed away, and how is that washed away?
SPEAKER_02: By the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and as Titus 3 says, by the work of the Holy Spirit, not by the will of man.
SPEAKER_02: Before we can draw near God in fellowship and communion.
SPEAKER_02: Matthew 5, 8 says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
SPEAKER_02: When Jesus says that he must worship in spirit and in truth, in spirit and truth, there has to be this inner truthfulness that we belong to God and we worship God alone.
SPEAKER_02: If God has not given us a new heart, that heart will be duplicitous, that heart will worship God and mammon.
SPEAKER_02: God and self.
SPEAKER_02: God and personal happiness.
SPEAKER_02: We need God to give us a new heart so that we can be like the psalmist in Psalm 15 who says, Who can worship God?
SPEAKER_02: Well, the person who walks in integrity, works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart.
SPEAKER_02: That, dear brothers and sisters, is a question that we need to ask ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: Are you here to worship God, the Father, exclusively?
SPEAKER_02: Or is there other things that you're looking for?
SPEAKER_02: Don't settle for the lowest bid on the table.
SPEAKER_02: Look for the highest bid, and that is to have communion and fellowship with the living God.
SPEAKER_02: Let me close with this.
SPEAKER_02: Worship is not an end to itself.
SPEAKER_02: Fellowship and communion with God, that is the end.
SPEAKER_02: To desire worship itself as an end is carnal and can even be idolatrous, Stephen Sharnock says.
SPEAKER_02: But to desire worship as a means of drawing near to God in fellowship and communion with him, that is spiritual, and that is the fruit of a spirit-filled life.
SPEAKER_02: God created you and me for nearness.
SPEAKER_02: And you and I will go on a journey through life, and we will be like a deer in the wilderness, and we will desire all other things except the living God.
SPEAKER_02: We will desire all things substitute.
SPEAKER_02: And we drink from a well often that cannot satisfy.
SPEAKER_02: We eat food that will leave us hungry.
SPEAKER_02: But the worship of the loving God will not leave you unsatisfied.
SPEAKER_02: Because this is what Matthew 5 6 says.
SPEAKER_02: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness because they will be satisfied.
SPEAKER_02: And this is how our story ends here in verse 33.
SPEAKER_02: So the disciples were saying to one another, No one brought him anything to eat, did he?
SPEAKER_02: Because Jesus said, I'm not hungry.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus says, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and accomplish his work.
SPEAKER_02: Worship for Jesus was to accomplish the Father's work, and worship of the Father for Him was to do His will.
SPEAKER_02: If you and I thirst after righteousness, we will be satisfied.
SPEAKER_02: And who of us can say, like the psalmist said, As the deer pants for water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God.
SPEAKER_02: What are you hungering after?
SPEAKER_02: What are you thirsting?
SPEAKER_02: What are you using in life to satisfy that thirst that God can only satisfy?
SPEAKER_02: Well, that is a question you will have to ask yourselves.
SPEAKER_02: Let us ask God to bless our time.
SPEAKER_02: Here as we end our service, Lord, we thank you for your goodness and for this tremendous passage that speaks about the priority of worship.
SPEAKER_02: Make us single-minded, single-hearted worshipers who worship the living God.
SPEAKER_02: I pray that we will turn away from the false gods that we have erected in our lives, that we will turn away from these false imitations that seek, that we think will satisfy us.
SPEAKER_02: I pray, God, that you will draw many to you and that many will come to faith.
SPEAKER_02: You're at faith, so that they may have access to the loving God.
SPEAKER_02: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.