family, Ernest, Hattie, and Alma. Wanda Vance. These have been
added to the prayer list. Remember them. They'll be put
on the board from this week. I'll be leaving tomorrow morning
preaching in Spring Lane, North Carolina. I'll be back Saturday
afternoon sometime around about 4 or 5 o'clock. Regular services
on Sunday. And then next week, Debbie's
brother, who's had pancreatic cancer and went through all the
chemotherapy and everything else. It seems that his cancer's come
back, so we're gonna take about three days off next week, Wednesday,
Thursday, and Friday. So I'll just tell y'all tonight,
I'll remind everybody soon, we'll all have Wednesday service next
week. Next week, and we'll see Randy and Also, I'm going to
see my brother, Myron, and her brother, Grant, also, over there
at Winston-Salem. I'm trying to see all of them
over there. But we'll go mostly to see Randy, as he thinks his
cancer's come back. And usually, when a pancreatic
cancer comes back, it's real big. My brother lasted six months
after he was come back. It was that quick. OK, let's
begin our worship service tonight with hymn number 205. I want
to read from the law. have redeemed Jesus provides a what for all we children of god as you can In number four hundred and seventy-five Redeemed now I love to proclaim
Him, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Redeem through His
truth, love, and mercy His child and forever I am! Redeem! Redeem! Redeem by the blood of the Lamb! Redeem! Redeem! His child and forever
I am! Redeemer so happy in Jesus, no
language the rapture could tell! I know that the light of His
presence with me doth continually dwell! Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed
by the blood of the Lamb! Redeemed, redeemed, His child
and forever I am! I think of my blessed Redeemer
I think of Him all the day long I speak, for I cannot be silent
His love is the theme of my song Redeem, redeem, redeem by the
blood of the Lamb Redeem, redeem, His child forever I am I know I shall see in His beauty,
the King in whose law I rely With love in my heart and my
foot as a stake, when there is something I find Redeem! Redeem! Redeem I the blood of
the Lamb! Redeem! Redeem! His talent forever I am! You have your Bibles turned,
be pleased, to John chapter 4, verses 20 through 26. The woman at the well says to the
Lord, our Father is worshiped in this mountain, and ye say,
in Jerusalem is where men often worship. And Jesus said to her,
woman, believe me, The hour cometh when he shall neither in this
mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship
him on our part. We know what we worship for salvation
is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now
is, when the true worshiper shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to
worship him. God is spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit. and in truth. The woman saith unto him, I know
that Messiah is cometh, which is called Christ. When he is
come, he'll tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that
speak unto thee, am he, our father. We're thankful for your word,
which is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. the
entrance of which gives understanding and wisdom to the simple. We
pray that we might hide that word in our heart that we might
not see it. We know, Father, that what we
can understand about you and about ourselves and about the
salvation brought by Jesus Christ can only be found in these pages.
And there is a full accounting in the matter of salvation, what
you've done for us. And we thank you that we don't
have to wonder. And we can be glad that you have
told us all that you have done. Give us every promise, all of
which are in Jesus Christ. Help us, Lord, this hour to worship
you, as our Savior has said, in spirit and in truth. We pray for those who are a couple
who are sick and lost loved ones. Those who are going through trials
and tribulations, we pray that you bring them back to a place
where they are. And especially Arlene, she's suffering with
this cold. And this call, we pray that you help her. We pray
also for ourselves tonight, Father, that you would give us a glimpse
of the Savior. That these words that are spoken here might find
purchase in our own hearts and cause us Be thankful that you
have caused us by your grace to know him, who is altogether
lovely and the chiefest among 10,000, the lily of the valley,
the bright and morning star, the rose of Sharon, the rock
that is higher than iron. Help us to worship tonight. We
pray in Christ's name, amen. Now as we saw last time, this
Samaritan woman when confronted with the fact that the Jewish
man knew all about her, knew everything she did. That she
had had five husbands and the one she was living with now wasn't
her husband. She immediately went to a theological
question. She said, you Jews say you worship
in Jerusalem, we say we worship in the mountain. Now that question
that came to the Samaritans and the Jews worshipped, in their
mind, the same God, but did it merely in different places. The
Jews called God their father, as he was the one who elected
and preserved that nation. Samaritans called God the father
of all, including themselves under his preservation and under
his care. Things haven't changed much.
Believers call God the Father of the elect according to the
grace of God. And the ecumenical evangelism
calls God the Father of all. So things haven't really changed.
There's nothing new under the sun. Our Lord addresses the woman's
query in plain terms. He says, woman, in verse 21,
believe me, The hour cometh when ye shall
neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the
Father." He told her that she, as a Samaritan, did not know
what she worshipped. You don't know what you worship,
that's what he said there. You worship, you know not what.
We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews. Now this is a
subtle entrance into the teaching concerning the Messiah. When
he said salvation is for the Jews, he was alluding to the
fact that it is through the Jews that the Messiah would come.
He would be a son of David. He would be the Savior. That
was the Messiah called the Christ or the Anointed in Psalm 2. But the place of worship, mountain
or temple, in due time will have no significance at all. That's
what he's saying. In time to come we won't worship
in this mountain, nor will we worship in the temple. We know
that in AD 70 all that was destroyed anyway. But the places of worship
in Newtown had no significance. Now this is an early introduction
to the dissolving of the old covenant. in the establishing
of the new covenant. Remember what Christ said in
Hebrews chapter 10 in verse 9. Lo, he that written of me in
the law of the world, to do thy will, O God, he taketh away the
first, and establishes the second. So here our Lord begins to say
something that nobody's ever heard of before. There's always
the Jews on the Sabbath, they go to the temple, they worship
the Lord, They did the rituals, they did the ceremony, they still
did the different feasts every year, they had the day of atonement
every year, they had the year of jubilee in the 50th year,
they had all these things. But they were also mixed with
the Samaritans at the time. Samaritans were joining in with
that, joining in with that. He says there's coming a time
when none of that will matter. Can you imagine saying that to
people who, this Samaritan woman, she went to the mountain to worship.
And she went to the mountain to worship God, as He was revealed
in the Old Testament, because that's all they had, was Genesis
to Malachi. And the Jews went to the temple
to worship God, just as He's revealed in the Old Testament.
They both did that, they both did that. And to say to them,
there's coming a day, and it now is, you see, this time has
come, that doesn't matter anymore. That doesn't matter anymore.
In that day, he said, true worshipers, not those who worship according
to location, will worship the Father in a wholly different
way. In spirit and in truth. In spirit and in truth. This
is astounding language. The worship of God at this point,
with both cases, the Jews and the Samaritans, had to do with
established rituals and ceremonies. and ordinances, and feast days,
and Sabbaths. All these were observed. All
these were observed. It was a very ritualistic and
very exacting way of doing things. The day of atonement, everything
was done exactly as it was supposed to be done. When they saw offering
their sacrifices, they were in a specific way that God had said
that it would be done. All these things, when he set
up the tabernacle, those elements of the tabernacles we studied
in Exodus were very specific in how they were done. All this
was very specific. This was a ritualistic, ceremonial
religion that was given to the Jews and adopted by the Samaritans. This was a mixture by now. You
remember God said that He hated a mixture in the Old Testament.
We know from the prophets that such worship involved a mixture
of foundational Jewish principles and practices. and pagus idolatrous
ritual. We studied that in Isaiah. We
studied it in Jeremiah. We're studying it now in Jeremiah.
These rituals were now a mixture. Oh, they went to temple. They
didn't stop going to temple. But in the temple, now they had
erected statues of Dagon. They had erected statues of Beor
and Beor. And they had statues of Ishtar. These were gods that they had
in the temple of the Lord. Now, they were saying, we worship
God. This is where you worship God.
The Samaritans, they went to a mountain to do it. The Jews
went to a temple to do it, but it was a mixture of the same
religion, the same religion. To assert that those places and
those practices are not involved in true worship, think about
it now, is to destroy the hope of those on both sides of this
spectrum. jewish america jewish italic
spirit and truth are people ritual worship everything that came
out of rome and the reformation they have some sort of ritualistic
things that they do they still baptize infants they still hang
the green in presbyterian churches during the christmas holidays
they celebrate easter and they use the fundamentals of I went to a Roman Catholic high
mass on Christmas Eve one time when I was in London. Of course, I had quite a few
hails when I went, but I went anyway. And I was there, and
I was just utterly amazed at the ritual that went on. I must
have bowed down, or I bowed down three or four times, and then
my knees started hurting. I quit bowing, but they hit that bowing bench
over and over again. And this guy come in with a funny
hat on and all of his beautiful robes, and he came with a censer. It had smoke in it. You'd go
up and down the aisles of the house of the Savior and shake
that censer and smoke would rise up. All that was taken from Jewish
ritual. It was never a Christian practice.
Because you see, all that stuff is set aside. Our Lord said,
ain't going to be in the temple no more. We don't worship like
that. You Samaritans are not going
to the mountain to worship like that. You're going to worship
God, and God is to be worshipped. He's going to be worshipped in
spirit and in truth. A very foreign concept to these
people, both Jew and Gentile. Spirit and truth involves saving
faith, saving faith. And that is entirely a new thing. The old covenant didn't involve
faith, it involved obedience. If you obeyed, you got blessed.
If you disobeyed, you got cursed. It was that simple. It was that
simple, a very simple thing. The spirit of truth involves
saving faith. Ritual worship puts confidence in visible things,
in what you can see. That's why they call these ornate
edifices and mausoleums of death, they call them the house, God's
house, God's in the house. Don't like that, don't talk like
that, you're in church. They have a ritualistic idea
and they can see things. Just like I said before, when
this woman asked this question, I can't tell you how many times
my friends of mine and myself, and I told you the story of the
brother who said, I'm not going to tell you what I do because
it's going to ruin your day. But people have a tendency. So I
don't usually tell them I'm a preacher because they want to tell me
some religious thing. The old, I can't think of his
name, he was an assistant pastor on 13th Street for many years. He went on an airplane. And a
lady asked him what he did. He said, well, I'm a preacher.
And she said, well, let me tell you what I think about heaven. She said, I believe heaven's
this place with a whole lot of doors. Everybody who's just good
people, they got a door to go in. He said, man, if there's
that many doors, some of them ain't fall out. had to talk. You tell somebody
you're a preacher, even if you tell them you're a believer,
they're going to give you so opinion that they have of God that they
can't help themselves. But it has to do with seeing
something. The people of the Old Testament
were given the rituals and given certain elements of the temple.
One of them was the Ark of the Covenant. Now, that was not visible
to everybody. It was visible only to the priest
who wrapped it up to carry it. And the high priest once a year,
the normal congregant, didn't see the... But they knew about
it. They knew about it because Moses
had given the rules and regulations on how these things were to be
built. And they knew about it. And they had confidence in that
thing. You remember that movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark? Once
they found that thing, it let out all kinds of power. People's
faces melted off because people believed that things had power.
Things have power over in 1 Samuel, 1 Samuel chapter 4. The Philistines are coming. They're
about to attack. Here's what Israelites say. In verse 1 it says, And the word
of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out against the
Philistines to battle, and pitched against Ebenezer, and the Philistines
pitched at Aphek. The Philistines put themselves
in array against Israel, and when they joined battle, Israel
was smitten before the Philistines. They lost the battle. And they
slew the army in the field, about 4,000 men. And when the people
were come to the camp, the elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath
the Lord smitten us today? before the Philistines, let us
fetch the ark. Let us fetch the ark of the covenant
of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us, that when it cometh among
us, it may save us out of the hands of our enemies. What was
their confidence? Was it in the God who gave that, the rules on how to make that
ark? Was it God who set the ceremony up for that ark? Their confidence
was in that thing. He said, well, that'll save us.
Get that. And the Philistines believed
it would save them, too, because when the Philistines heard that they
were going to get to Earth, they fled. Their religion was scary, and
they fled. Spirit and truth have to do entirely
with something else. It has to do with what is written
and describes what cannot be seen or understood with the five
natural senses. Spirit and truth has to do with
faith. It's about looking on what cannot be seen. That's how
Paul described it in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Verse 18, he says, While we look
not at the things which are seen, How do you look at something
you can't see? Well, that's what we do. That's what faith does. It
look at what cannot be seen. But at things which are not seen,
that's what we look at. For the things which are seen
are temporal. And the things which are not
seen, these things are eternal. So we look at things nobody else
can see. That's what faith does. That's
the glory of it. And this is what our Lord is
still in this moment. This is coming. And now it is. that all
that stuff you think is important, all that stuff you put confidence
in, is going to be taken away. People put confidence in those
elements. Belshazzar, when he gave his great feast, he wanted
to really buff it up and make it holy and high. He said, bring
those elements out of the temple, the spoons and bowls and stuff
like that. We'll use that to serve our people.
That'd be using holy stuff. Holy stuff. Well, God had said,
that's holy. That's mine. It's not for you to ship out
of the priesthood. Only we use the temple. Israel
Belshazzar's having his party, a finger appears, and that's
on the wall. Many, many people you've forsaken. You've been
weighed into balance and found wanting. And tonight, the kingdom
has been taken from you. But he had confidence in those
things. Christ said, things don't matter. It ain't in that mountain. It
ain't in that temple. It's in spirit and it's in truth. Spirit and truth, as referred
to by our Lord, have a very specific subject. The Holy Spirit is the
Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's look at a few verses. John
chapter 14, verses 16 through 18. Our Lord says, and
I will pray the Father that he should give you another comforter,
that he may abide with you forever. And he's talking about Pericle,
the Holy Spirit. Even the Spirit of Truth, whom
the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not. You mean the
believer sees the Spirit? Yeah, he sees it through the
Word. That's it, he sees the unseen. Neither knoweth him,
but ye know him, For He dwelleth in you, and shall be in you.
I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you." So the Spirit,
the Holy Spirit, is the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember,
He's Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And Him dwelleth in the
fullness of the Godhead bodily. And the Holy Spirit's job is
to exalt and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. In John chapter
15, verse 16, or excuse me, verse 26, he says,
when the comforters come, whom I will send to you from the Father,
even the spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he
shall testify of me. Now, people talk about the Holy
Ghost means all the time, don't they? What do they talk about?
Emotions, and upheaval, and laughter, and carrying on, and running
about pews, and falling down, that's the Holy Ghost. The Holy
Ghost does one thing, it testifies of the Lord, Jesus Christ over
in the next chapter, chapter 16, verses 13 through 15. It says this, how be it when
he, the spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth,
for he shall not speak of himself. If he spoke of himself, it wouldn't
be the truth. See what that says? See what
that says? For he shall not speak of himself,
or whatsoever you shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will
show you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall
receive of mine and show it unto you. All things that the Father
hath are mine. Therefore, said I, he will take
of mine and show it unto you. Show it unto you. Christ is what? The truth. Did he say that about
himself? He said that. John said it first
in John 1 17. The law came by Moses, but grace
and truth came by the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in John chapter
14, in verse 6, our Lord said, I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No man comes to the Father but
by me. Our Lord told this lady that
the Father is not worshiped except through the Son. That's how it's
done. And then only if the Father makes
it happen. No man comes to me except the
Father which has sent me to draw him, and I will raise him up
again in the last day. The Lord said that the Father
seeks such to worship him, I can tell you. Seeks such to worship
him. You never see God seeking anything
in Scripture except His people. Remember what the Lord said when
they were talking about the time of Zacchaeus? He says, I came
to seek and save that which is lost. He sought that lost sheep
until he found it and brought it back to the fold. He left
the ninety and nine, and even though repentance died. And because
he brought that one sheep home, the joy and the presence of the
angels, that one sinner had repented. One sinner repented. He seeks
his sheep until he finds them. in truth. Seeking is accomplished,
this is accomplished for the believer through the preaching
of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. How? With the Holy Ghost. I remember one time this preacher
friend of mine, I don't know if he's still preaching or not,
he left. He went and reformed and went and lived in this church
for a pretty good while. But he was preaching from 1 Peter
chapter One, and he talked about preaching the Holy Ghost coming
down from heaven. And he actually liked what he
taught, you know, was that this was a different experience than
preaching the gospel. It was like really something
special when you preach with the Holy Ghost coming down from
heaven. Well, listen, if you tell the truth, anytime, to anybody,
the Holy Spirit is with you because he operates, he is and the Holy Ghost is with you.
Peter said this about preachers, about the prophets, in 1 Peter
1, verse 10, he says this, of which salvation the prophets
have inquired and searched diligently. He prophesied of the grace that
should come to you. Searching what, or what manner,
or time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, did signify.
When he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and
the glory that should follow, unto whom it was revealed that
not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things
which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the
gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven,
which things the angels desire to look into. The Holy Ghost
is the spirit of truth. The thing for us to do is try
our best to buy the truth and sell it not. As the man of Proverbs
said, this woman reveals that the mixture of worship involves
some knowledge of scripture. She understood that. She said,
when Messiah comes, when Messiah comes, Messiah, she said, she
adds the words, or at least they were added by the translator,
the Christ, the anointing. who when he comes, he'll be the
revealer of truth. That's what she says in verse
25 back in our text. She says, the woman said, I know
that Messiah's cometh, which is called Christ. When he has
come, he'll tell us all things. He'll tell us everything. This
was what was spoken of the Messiah throughout the scripture. Let's look at a few passages.
Genesis 49, this is Jacob talking about Judah. He says in verse 10, the scepter
that is the means of acceptance before God, shall not depart
from Judah, whose Jesus Christ was the only one who was born
in Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh
come. And then to him shall the gathering
of the people be. Why will they gather? Because
he's the one that's teaching. He's the one that speaks. He's
the one that tells everything. Look at Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 2 and verse 3,
and many people shall go and say, Come ye, let's go to the
mountain of the Lord, that's Zion, to the house of God of
Jacob, and he will teach us his ways. He will walk in his path,
for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord
from Jerusalem. That's talking about the coming
of the Messiah. In chapter 11 of Isaiah, verse two speaking out of the
rod out of the stem of Jesse the branch shall go out of his
root speaking of Christ in verse one the spirit of the Lord shall
rest upon him the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit
of counsel and light the spirit of knowledge and the fear of
the Lord that's where it's all at that's where we learn of these
things in verse nine of the same chapter it says And they shall
not pour it nor destroy it in all my holy mountain, for the
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the water covers
the sea." Full of the knowledge of the Lord. And then when Jeremiah
set forth the new covenant in Jeremiah chapter 31, he says
in verse 34, it says, and they shall teach no more,
every man his neighbor, saying every man to his brother, saying,
Know the Lord. I'm not going to teach that anymore. Why? Because they'll all know
me. Because they'll all know me.
From the least of them to the greatest of them, said the Lord,
for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins
no more. When did that take place? When Jesus Christ died on the
cross. He said, you're never not going
to have to say, Know the Lord. If you're the Lord, you'll know
him. And remember what our Lord said to this woman early on in
the thing. Look at verse 26, back in our
text. Jesus said, when she said, Messiah
shall come, he said, he said under her eye that speak unto
thee, that he is in italics. It was not in the original text.
He said, I that speak unto thee am, I am, I am. Before he said to her, if thou
knewest, Jeremiah said, they'll all know, from the least to the
greatest, because I forgive their sin and remember their sins no
more. He said, Thou knowest the gift
of God, and who is it that saith unto thee, Give me to drink?
Thou wouldst have asked him, and he would have given thee
water. And our Lord said, I am. This is he described as the one
who dwelt in the burning bush. She now knows the gift of God
and who it is that speaks to her. Salvation has come to this
woman's house. Father, bless us to understand
and pray in Christ's name. Holy shit.