White as snow. Why don't you turn with me in
your Bibles back to John chapter 4. story in the Bible, but this
has to be one of them, and I trust it's yours, and I trust that
as we journey with the Lord, as he gathers his people here,
we will feel the call and we'll stand in awe of the wonder of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't it wonderful that in the
eyes of Jewish religion, this particular woman was the lowest
of the low of the low? There was no one as despised
as the Samaritans, and even in this Samaritan village, this
woman would have been contemptuous. Don't you love that thought,
that if Jesus came to get the lowest of the low, then it's
a good place to be, isn't it? It's a good place to be in a
place where he comes to gather his own. Let's read it with me. Verse five, let's begin at verse
five. Then cometh he to a city of Samaria
which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that
Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there, and
Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on
the well, and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman
of Samaria to draw water. Jesus saith unto her, Give me
to drink, for his disciples were gone away into the city to buy
meat. Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that
thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings
with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto
her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith
to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and
he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him,
Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From
whence hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than
our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof
himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and
said unto her, Whosoever drinketh this water shall thirst again.
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall
never thirst, But the water that I shall give him shall be in
him a well of water springing up unto eternal life. The woman
saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not,
neither come hither to draw. Jesus saith unto her, Go, call
thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered and said,
I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast
well said, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands,
and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband, in that saidst
thou truly, and the woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that
thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this
mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where
men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman,
believe me, the hour cometh when you shall neither in this mountain
nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship what ye
know not what. We know what we worship, for
salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh and now is
when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a spirit, and they that
worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. The woman
saith unto him, I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ,
when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto
her, I that speak unto thee, am he. It's a glorious, glorious story,
and it goes on, as you know, and we'll look at the rest of
it in time to come. But I wanted us to spend some
time contemplating what it is to worship God this morning.
I want us to contemplate the depth of the seriousness of what
it is to worship God this morning. I want us to ask ourselves some
serious questions about what it is to worship God. The Lord makes a remarkable promise
here, doesn't he? He makes several of them and
he speaks of worship nine times in these few verses. And the question that must be
before us is, are we worshipping God? Would God call what we are doing
here true worship of him? It's probably a deeper question,
isn't it? Does God have the right to declare what is true worship? Or does God accept any old worship? And probably in this day and
age, the first thing we need to have before our minds is the
fact that worship in the scriptures is much, much more than singing.
I was speaking to someone the other day that left the church
in another country, so it's nothing relating to here, but I'm sure
it does in many ways. But he left, he was a musician,
and he left because they used to have a two-hour worship service.
And you've heard about them, and you've probably witnessed
them, as I have, where they sing the same old song, the same songs,
and they play emotive music, and they try to capture the emotions
of people, and they do so successfully. and they have formulas for doing
so. Worship is much, much more than
that. Does God accept any old worship? The answer of the scriptures
is again and again, absolutely not. He will only accept worship
which is true worship. He will only accept worship which
is worship in spirit and in truth. He will only accept worship that
he creates and he brings. And the remarkable thing in the
context of our story is that the Jews had just had what they
saw as worship in Jerusalem. And now where was the true worship?
Where was the true worship of God? It was in a place that not
one single Jew in all of that nation or all of that world would
have ever thought was a possible place of worship. There was worship
in a Samaritan village. There was worship amongst the
Samaritans. I don't need to labour your time
too much to remind you that throughout the scriptures, God accepts worship
according to what he says, what David said in 1 Chronicles 15,
13, according to the due order. And the context of that, of course,
is the return of the ark, that centerpiece of worship, the place
where God meets with his people. And David thought this ark is
so incredibly special and he gathered as much of Israel as
he could from one end to the other. And he built a new cart,
and he had everything. You can imagine the display that
David put on to gather this ark, to gather the ark and put it
on this cart, a new cart, a fancy cart. You can imagine all of
what went on. And Uzzah, one of the men driving
the cart, the ox stumbled. Uzzah put out his hand and touched
the ark. And God killed him in an instant. And David was horrified. And
David came to realize, that's where he said that they didn't
worship God. They didn't deal with God according
to the due order, which is why Uzzah was killed. The next time
David was found on Circus Beck, wasn't he? He did as God said. He had the priest carry the ark,
not on some fancy not on some fancy cart, not on some fancy
things a man's doing. God would be worshipped according
to the due order. The examples throughout the scripture
are so, so common and often that the question is, aren't we worshipping
God in spirit and truth? It's a question that I would
be asking myself and you would be asking yourself again and
again and again. If you have reason to look, you'll
find the answer is in the Scriptures. And I trust that that's what
the Lord will lead us to today. But there are so many other places,
aren't there, in Scriptures where God dealt with people in the
most extraordinary, severe manner. When Aaron made the golden calf
at the foot of Mount Sinai when Moses was away, they thought
they were worshipping God. They had the first Pentecostal
worship service in the Scriptures. And Moses said to those people,
who's on the Lord's side? Who's on the Lord's side? Who
worships God here? If you are, you strap on your
sword. 3,000, 3,000 died that day. Nadab and Abihu and Leviticus
10 were the sons of Aaron. And they went through this extraordinary,
elaborate ritual of being dressed and being prepared to worship
God in the temple as priests of God. And they thought that
they could come into the presence of God with any old fire. They
didn't even consider it worthy to take the fire from off the
altar. And God killed them in an instant. And he told Aaron, don't you
dare weep for them. And he said, he said to Moses
and Aaron in Leviticus 10, anyone that comes near to me, anyone that comes near to me
will treat me as holy. The treatment is holy. Korah,
Dathan and Abiram went down to hell with their boots on as the
earth opened up in that very midst and 250 of the princes
of Israel and their families went down with them. I want us
to contemplate how serious it is because in this day and age
there is so much religion and there's so much talk about worship.
And yet, again and again and again, if you go and examine
it in light of scriptures, you'll find that it's not worship of
God whatsoever. The other thing that's deeply
serious and deeply personal is that if you don't worship God
here, you're not gonna worship him when you leave here. If you don't worship God here,
in spirit and truth, you will not worship him there. For the
child of God, death is a blessed release and freedom from the
one thing that constrains our worship, which is our flesh.
But in glory we won't be loved any more than we are now. We
won't be any more acceptable than we are now. We won't be
any more holy than we are now. All that will happen is that
our worship, our company doesn't change. The true company of the
child of God here is the Lord Jesus Christ and his people and
his family. It's the fellowship of worship,
isn't it? Our company doesn't change. All
that happens and the object of our worship doesn't change. If you don't worship Him here,
you don't worship Him there. I want us to look at these nine
aspects of worship. But before we do, let's sing
again. And I would like us to ask and take those questions
to the Lord. They are incredibly serious,
aren't they? The Lord Jesus Christ said, the
blind lead the blind. Those who are blind to the glory
of God, those who are blind to the cross of the Lord Jesus,
those who are blind to the scriptures, the blind lead the blind. that the led blind are safe because
of their position or their ignorance. The blind lead the blind, says
the Lord Jesus Christ, and both fall into the ditch. I want us
to worship God. I want us to worship God in the
beauties of holiness. I want us to treat the worship
of God as seriously as the Lord would allow us, because from
all of the scriptures and from these verses that are before
us, God takes his worship extraordinarily I mean, does he take it seriously,
but he creates it. He creates it in places where
no one would ever think it were possible. It's serious. It's serious for
me. I love what Luther said, it's
in the front of your bulletins, isn't it? To know God is to worship
him. Let's sing again, we're gonna
sing number one. Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,
the King of creation. Shepherds, see how many dreams
they took their fleeces to Yeah. I've got eight aspects of worship
that I want us to look at briefly as we contemplate what it is
to worship God according to the Lord Jesus Christ. So let's just
read these few verses in John chapter four. Let's begin at
verse 20. She had earlier in that verse
19, she perceived that the Lord was a prophet because he'd spoken
to her and told her all things whatsoever she had done. And
it's just interesting, isn't it, that she went down the rabbit
hole, as lots of people do, the fig leaves of her religion, but
the Lord Jesus Christ used her evasiveness to actually teach
us something very, very beautiful. These words are special. She
says in verse 20, our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and
you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to
worship. Jesus saith unto her, woman, believe me, the hour cometh
when you shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem
worship the Father. You worship, you worship, you
know not the Father. We know what we worship, and
I'll speak about it later, but that word what there is actually
nearly always translated whom. We know what we worship, for
salvation is of the Jews, but the hour cometh and now is when
true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to
worship him. God is the Spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And the next couple of verses,
the Lord Jesus goes on to give the clearest declaration to this
Samaritan woman and to us. incarnate. So we've just read
the words of God describing the worship of God. And I've entitled
this message, True Worshippers Shall Worship. All true worshippers
shall Let's begin at verse 24. God is the Spirit and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. So the worship of God is not
an optional thing. God says must. When God says
must, it must happen. There's no doubt in the world
that this is happening. There is the worship of God in
this world. There is the worship of God wherever
the truth is proclaimed. And there are three musts in
this context. Four, if you count the one that
he must go through Judea, must go through Samaria. In John chapter
three, verse seven, the Lord said, you must be born again. you must be born again. In verse
14 of chapter 3, he said, the Son of Man must be lifted up. And here he says, God must be
worshipped in spirit and in truth. and the order is very clear and
it's very significant, isn't it? All those, all those, and
only those who are born again by the Spirit of God and were
redeemed by the Son, all those and only those who are redeemed
and justified by the blood of Christ and called by His Spirit
can and will and must worship God the Father in spirit and
in truth. It gives me great confidence,
brothers and sisters, isn't it? If God is our teacher as he's
promised to be, and we beg him to teach, then we will know what
worship is. We will know what true worship
is. So the beginning of worship,
as we see in this woman, is a response of heart, and it's a response
of the will to the command of God. There is a necessity of a believing
response to the call of God directly and personally to you with power
from on high. You must be born again. The only
people who worship God are those who are born again. Worship is
spiritual worship. And we've looked at this woman's
path to worship. The Lord Jesus Christ comes to
her when she wasn't searching for him at all. And he initiates
a conversation and he creates an interest and then he exposes
her as a sinner. He told me everything ever I
did. Then he takes away the fig leaves
of the covering that you might have, whatever that might be,
your own morality, your own religion, your own traditions, he'll take
away. that cover that you have created, the fig leaves that
we spend our lives stitching together in this world, and the
Lord has to take them away from us and to cover, to expose us
for what we are. And then she asks for living
water, he speaks to her about the water that he alone can give,
and then he reveals himself as a Christ. And then, gloriously,
he takes up residence. He takes up residence in His
people. Having washed them clean in His blood, He takes up residence
in His people, and they are now accepted, accepted before the
Father in the Beloved. And He abides, He abides. So true worship begins with God. appropriate to his character. That's why we read in Psalm 29
about the beauties of holiness. That's how you worship him, in
the beauties of who he is. And how do you get to see His
holiness as beautiful? Almost no one in Jerusalem saw
Him as beautiful. No one in Nazareth saw Him as
beautiful. People say to us, don't they,
that we need to live such lives that people will see Christ in
us. They didn't see Christ in Christ when He told them He was
Christ. We declare Him, we just live
humbly before people, live faithfully and truthfully before people,
and trust the fact that God says the power of God is the gospel
of the declaration of the Lord Jesus Christ. God's people need a new heart,
and new eyes, and a new creation to see the beauties of the Lord
Jesus Christ. I do love, when I study the scriptures,
I love looking at what the words mean, what the words mean in
Hebrew and in Greek, and I like looking at the context of them.
And the other thing that I like looking at is where they are
first mentioned in the scriptures, and the first mention of worship
in the scriptures. And the word worship means to
bow oneself down, to prostrate oneself, to do homage, to submit
oneself, and it has connotations of service. But the first mention
is in Genesis 22, and I want to look at the father of faith
a little bit later on, on his journey to worship God. But worship
is seeing the Lord Jesus Christ in the beauty of his character,
to seeing in him the fullness of deity dwelling in a body. It's a spiritual activity, and
it's a personal activity. Now, I can't worship for you.
It's always personal. Even in public, it's still personal. It's spiritual from the heart.
It's in truth. He says, I am the truth. And it's exclusive, he says at
Mount Sinai, for thou shalt worship no other God for the Lord whose
name is Jealous. He's jealous about his worship.
Every time we think of jealousy, all we can do is see sin, but
there is no sin in God and there's nothing wrong with him being
jealous. It's a wonderful thing that he's jealous. He is a jealous
God. And he tells people not to worship
the things of creation. You're not to worship the things
of creation. You're not to bow down to the moon and the stars.
You're not to be caught up in all the nonsense that this world
has where it's worshiping the creation so much that what it
will end up doing is what man has ever done when he worships
the creation. They'll trash the creation, guaranteed. And the Lord will preserve seed
time and harvest until he comes back. you're not to lift up your eyes
into the stars and those things and worship them as the nations
do. Worship is linked to faith. I love the command that he gave
to the woman. Believe me. Believe me, he said
to this woman. Believe me. the command of faith. Faith,
like worship, has a true object. Faith, worship, like faith, is
like this living water, isn't it, that comes from Him, that
flows from that rock, that wells up, that wells up from inside,
not from outside. It's not stagnant water, it's
water that comes from the rock, the Lord Jesus Christ. And this
water has a fruit, and we don't have time to look at it today,
but worship has acts, doesn't it? And what does she say? How
does she exhibit worship for God? She says, come and see,
come and see, come and see a man who told me whatsoever things
I did, is not this the Christ? Come and see the Christ, is what
she's saying. And they came, and they came,
and they believed as she did. They believed the words that
he spoke. They received her testimony and
they received and then received their own as he spoke to them. It's that voice that we read
about in Psalm 29. And what did he speak about?
He speaks about himself and he speaks about the kingdom of God.
He speaks about how God saves sinners. He speaks about the
glory and the holiness of God. Worship in the original of English
means worth-ship. Worship. Worship. So let's just look briefly at
these aspects of worship. In verse 21, verse 20, she says,
our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you say that in
Jerusalem is a place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith
unto her, woman, believe me, the hour cometh when you shall
neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the
Father. The first thing we need to know
about worship is it's not about a place any longer. It's about
a person who is worshipped. In the Lord Jesus Christ, we
worship God the Father. It's not a ritual. but a fellowship with the Saviour,
which is what happened in that Samaritan village. It's not about
traditions, it's about a living reality of communion with God. And you've got to remember that
she's at that place where Jacob came back and on his way out
on that journey, to Laban's house, Jacob met with the Lord Jesus
Christ, didn't he? And then what did he say? He
says, this is the house of God. He was out in the middle of a
desert on his own. He said, this is the house of
God. The Lord is in this place and
I knew it not. The Lord is in this place. A
true worship is not linked any longer to a particular building
in a particular place. If we are worshipping God, we
are worshipping God while we're underneath a tree or in a shed.
We are worshipping God because of who the Lord Jesus Christ
is and we worship God in Him. Secondly, I want us to see from
that verse, you shall worship the Father. True worship is worship
of the Father. All true worship is Trinitarian. All true prayer is Trinitarian. All true baptism is Trinitarian. Worship is being brought into
the presence of the Father. It's worshiping the Father, but
it's being brought into the presence of the Father by the Son. We
have access, we have access to God by Him and in Him. And this
occurs by the regenerating and in the regenerating power of
the Holy Spirit. And the Son is honoured when
the Father is honoured. And the Holy Spirit is honoured
when the Son is honoured. We rejoice to declare all three
persons of the Trinity. We rejoice to declare their activities
before this world began. We rejoice to declare the union
that they have. That if you've seen me, says
the Lord Jesus Christ, you've seen the Father. And the Lord
Jesus Christ is the one that brings us into the presence of
the Father. You'll worship the Father, he says. True worship
is Trinitarian worship. So much of what's called worship
these days is people talking so much about the Holy Spirit
that they seem to have forgotten the promise of God about the
Holy Spirit that He won't be talking about Himself, and yet
they do nothing else, so many of them. Verse 22 in our text, you worship You know not what. There is true worship. It's worship
of the Father. And there is false worship. There is false worship. You worship
what you know not. This is an extraordinarily accurate
description of so much religion today. you try and talk to people about
the true and living God and it's almost as if you're introducing
someone that they have never heard of before. When you talk
about his holiness, you talk about his covenant engagement
before the foundation of the world, you talk about the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world, you talk about the
particular effective redemption that the Lord Jesus Christ won
for all of his sheep on Calvary Street, the absolute success
of God in all that he does, and the absolute sovereignty of God
in all that he does. And people are horrified that
God is God. God's people delight in God being
God. See, true worship is about a
home. All false worship is about all
the what's, all the activities of man's imagination, the image
that man creates in his own mind of God. You think of what's going
on around the world in what people consider worship of God these
days. There's a billion Roman Catholics
worshipping little statues. I saw those Jewish, those Orthodox
priests in Ukraine, and it's a tragedy to think that these
men are going off to the battlefield and their last understanding
of anything religious is an icon sat up on top of a vehicle. They're
praying to things, aren't they? They're praying to things that
are not true. It's the images that man creates. Man lost sight of the image of
God in the fall of our father Adam. in regeneration can restore an
understanding of who God is, and no amount of evidence is
going to make any difference. People say today that they need
evidence, and there's a whole religious industry based on the
notion of apologetics. If somehow we can just get people
to have enough information, out the other end will pop salvation. But think about this event. Think
about this event and think about this worship that the Lord Jesus
Christ is talking about. The Lord Jesus Christ had just
fulfilled the promises of Malachi chapter two and going to that
temple. And he says in going to that
temple, he says, this is my father's house. He says, I am God. And
then in Jerusalem, he performed those miracles that even Nicodemus
would say, no one can do this unless God's with him. He claimed openly before those
Jews, by his teaching and by his actions, that he was the
Messiah. He was declared to be so by John
the Baptist. He performed miracles no one
else could perform. He taught as no man ever taught,
and yet he was rejected and pursued by the Jews who sought to defy
him. John and his disciples from Christ,
and yet here he is, here he is, beside a well, having what seems
to be a cryptic conversation with an open adulterer and an
idolater, the lowest of the low, in the eyes of all the Jews. and several others are in that
village. So what's the difference? The
difference, the difference always is a difference that he makes. As John the Baptist said, a man
can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven. The
only solution to false worship is for him to reveal himself
to people. He comes both to his own and
he reveals himself and he reveals sin and he reveals his provision. And she was made to see what
she was in the presence of the one who knew everything. from the world are open to him.
And then she left her water pot. She came there with a water pot
to gather water and she left it by the well. The one thing
that she had an interest in when she went there is now absolutely
irrelevant and she worships God. She proclaimed him. False worship. And ignorance is no excuse, my
friends. Ignorance is no excuse. God has revealed himself in creation
and in conscience and supremely in his son. You worship what
you know not. make sure again and again and
again that we're absolutely clear about who we say God is as revealed
in the Lord Jesus Christ according to these scriptures. I read statements
of faith all the time and it's amazing how often people will
put their statements of faith in such a way so that you could
read it in both ways, couldn't you? You could read it that God
is absolutely sovereign and you could read it so that man had
some sovereignty You can read it so that Jesus died for absolutely
everyone and loves absolutely everyone, and Jesus only loves
his people in particular. Why do they do that? They do
it deliberately. And the reason they do it, and
they maintain their doing of it, is simple. They haven't met
him. and only those who have met him
ever do so. Throughout Israel's history,
and particularly with the Samaritans, they mixed the worship of God
thinking they were worshipping God. It says in 2 Kings 17, so
these nations feared the Lord and served their grave and images. Just like Aaron said, when he
made that golden calf down at the foot of Mount Sinai, he said,
this is the God that brought you out of Egypt. They serve their graven image,
both they and their children, their children's children, as
did their fathers, so they do unto this day. There is, to go
back to where we started, there is true worship, as true worship
is worship of God the Father. There is, as the Lord Jesus Christ
said, there is empty worship. There is empty worship. They
worship me in vain. Their worship is empty. They worship me with their lips
and their hearts are far from me. There is sincere worship,
but ignorant worship. The Ethiopian eunuch came all
the way from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship God. And he left Jerusalem
as ignorant as when he arrived. But he had something with him.
He had a copy of Isaiah. He had the book of God with him.
And Philip was sent to open his eyes. There is, in the scriptures,
there's just deceitful worship. Herod said, you show me where
the baby is down there and I'm gonna come down and worship him.
He had no intention of worshiping the baby. He only wanted to kill
him. There is the worship of the work of men's hands, that
which their fingers have made. There is so much in this world
that proclaims to be worship of God, and it's not true worship. Listen to what the Lord goes
on to say. He says, you don't know what you worship. We know
and I want us to see that that word, what, there, means that
one or whom, and 270 times in the New Testament it's translated
that. We know whom we worship. We know what we worship. We know
whom we worship for or because salvation is of the Jews. Salvation has its origins in
the Jews. So true worship, fourthly, true
worship and salvation and truth are united in Christ Jesus the
Lord. Only those, according to the
Lord Jesus Christ, only those born again can see the kingdom
of God and enter the kingdom of God. And this is eternal life,
says the Lord Jesus Christ as he prayed. This is eternal life. That you know him. This is life
eternal, John 17.3, that they might know thee the only true
God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. You must be born again. You have to be born again to
see. You have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God.
You have to be born again to worship the kingdom of God. The
Lord Jesus Christ said in John 8.32, you shall know the truth
and the truth shall make you free. make you free to worship,
make you free of the chains of deceit, make you free of bondage
to the law and its curse. You see, one of the things that
is so evident in the Scriptures is that in every New Testament
account of God saving a sinner, They just didn't adjust their
Jewish worship and modify it to new demands. That was the
problem that attacked the church. Every single one of the people
who were saved in the New Testament had to get rid of all of what
they thought was worship previously. See, worship, true worship, and
salvation, and the truth are all united. They were sincere. Paul was remarkably sincere,
murdering people and thinking it was the worship of God. People
can be sincere and sincerely wrong. Let God be true and every man a liar. So this is how Paul described
his Jewish worship as it was. He says in Titus 3.3, For we
ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived,
serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful
and hating one another. But when the kindness and love
of God our Saviour toward men appeared, not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us by
the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,
which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
He says in his testimony to Timothy, I thank Jesus Christ, 1 Timothy
1.12, I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who hath enabled me, for
he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry. And this
is what he declares Jewish worship in his day. Sincere, zealous,
with remarkable knowledge of the scriptures, remarkable history, He thanks the Lord Jesus Christ
for rescuing him out of that. And this is what he describes
it was, who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious. But I obtained mercy because
I did it ignorantly in unbelief. He declares it all to be unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was
exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. There is true worship and there
is false worship. There is true worship that is
salvation and there is false worship. Yes, I see my notes, I'm sorry. There are people called true
worshipers, if you look back in our text. It says in verse
23, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit
and truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. There are
true worshipers. I love the definition of what
that word true means in the original language. It says that which
has not only the name, resemblance, but the real nature corresponding
to the name. Isn't that a great description
of what true is? has not only the name, resemblance,
but the real nature corresponding to the name, in every respect
corresponding to the idea signified by the name. It means to be real. It means to be genuine. It means
to be true. And the Lord Jesus Christ describes
himself, doesn't he? He says, the true light has come
into the world, John 1.9. He calls himself the true bread.
He's the true vine. He's the true God. It's the true
record that he gives. It's the true saying. True worship
is linked to salvation because it's the response of revelation. Salvation is of revelation. Of all humanity was God pleased
to reveal himself, and to reveal himself in grace and mercy. They shouldn't have been surprised
by the Lord loving a Samaritan woman. Rahab the harlot, Ruth
the Moabitess, they were directly in the lineage of David. And yet, in their self-righteousness,
they looked down their noses at others. But the Jews had this special
place in God's salvation, didn't they? It was they who had the
very oracles of God. It was they who were given the
covenants and the testimony. It was they who had these remarkable
pictures of electing grace and eternal love. They had so much
true worship, true worship. comes from He who is the Jew
of the Jews, the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is an hour, isn't there?
There is an hour now when the true worshippers will be revealed
because the true object of true worship is revealed in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And let's just finish briefly
by looking at some of these things. The true worshippers in verse
24, It says, the true worshippers
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Don't you love
the promises of God? They shall worship. There's going
to be absolutely no doubt that in this world there'll be worshippers
of God. There is absolutely no possibility
of failure that there won't be worshippers of God. And the reason
is given in that verse, isn't it? Verse 23, because the Father
seeketh such to worship him. That word seek means to seek
in order to find. Do you think God has any problem
finding them? It's ridiculous, the notion is
ridiculous, isn't it? The father seeks them, if the
father seeks them, he'll find them. And the father seeks them
and finds them, they'll worship, they will worship. They'll be
found, just like this Samaritan lady was found, they'll be found
in the glory of the grace of God as he comes to his own. The father seeks. And finally, they
that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. True worship is in spirit and
in truth. And both those words, spirit
and truth, are nouns. True worship is worship of Father,
You cannot worship if it's not directed toward the parlor. True
worship is in the spirit. We are the circumcision, says
Paul in Philippians 3.3, and we worship God in the spirit
and have no confidence. We rejoice in Christ, we have
no confidence in the flesh. We must worship him in spirit
and in truth. God will always cause his people
to worship him in spirit and in truth. It means our worship
will be spiritual, in our spirits, by His Spirit at work in our
hearts, by His Spirit illuminating His Word and revealing the Lord
Jesus Christ in His Word. And we must worship Him truthfully,
in sincerity, in honesty, in uprightness. We must worship
Him in accordance with revealed truth, We just say this is who
God is according to his word. This is how God saves sinners.
This is how God deals with sinners. This is how the Lord Jesus Christ
saves his people from their sins. The truth, of course, is the
word of God, the word written and the word incarnate. He says,
I am the truth. It means, like this lady, he's
told me all things whatsoever I did. What are the all things
whatsoever you've done? Sin. That's a good word for it,
isn't it? Whatsoever you've done is sin. Sin is what we are and we do. That's why true worshippers
confess their sins. The other thing, he's told me
whatsoever things ever I did, all of the children of to bring before God is the perfect
finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. His righteousness, His
works, His law obedience, that's all we ever bring to the Father.
We just bring what the Father delights in. This is my beloved
Son in whom I'm well pleased. We bring, we bring to God the
Father His Son in worship. And we trust in worship. and righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ as our Saviour. We call upon the name of the
Lord. We don't go up to the Lord on
steps. We come to the Lord in the truth
of who He is and the true character of our God. And we worship God,
as Paul says, believing all things that are written in the law and
the prophets. And just finally, in closing,
There is a special word of true and spiritual worship. And he told her, didn't he? He
gave her this word. The word is father. You worship the father. What a remarkable, remarkable
statement. The Jews hardly ever call God
their father. And yet the children of God you're born again. See, true
worship involves a kinship with God, involves a sonship with
God. Until the Lord Jesus Christ caused
his people to pray that prayer, our Father, which art in heaven. We are extraordinarily privileged
people. The Gentiles of this world are
supposed to make the Jews jealous. The New Poster calls the Jews
to be jealous about our relationship with God, that He's our Father,
that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Christ, is our Elder Brother
and our Husband and our Friend and our Saviour. We get to call
God Father. We're adopted. as sons into his
family, for as many as are led of the Spirit of God, they are
the sons of God. Behold, behold what manner of
love the Father has bestowed on us. That Samaritan woman was
able to call God Father and there wasn't a Jew in the land that
could do so. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed
on us. Not something we've earned, he's
bestowed it on us. That we should be called the
sons of God. Therefore the world doesn't know
what we are, has no idea that this is worship of God. The world
knows us not because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we
the sons of God. And it doth not yet appear what
we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall
be like him. for we shall see him as he is. There's a glorious day of worship
coming, brothers and sisters. May the Lord bless his word to
our hearts. May he make us worshippers in
spirit and in truth. Amen.