Being A True Worshipper Series

Being a True Worshipper

John 4:20-26

FCF: We are all created with a propensity to worship.

Proposition: Because acceptable worship is through Christ, we must worship Him in spirit and truth.

Scripture Introduction:

We were created to worship God, yet we often spend more time each week in worship to false gods, such as money, television or sports than we do in worship to the true God, Jesus Christ. We see in John 4:20-26, Christ conversing with a pagan Samaritan woman in which He identifies what His requirements are for acceptable worship. Please turn to John 4:20-26.

Introduction:

It seems strange for us to think of idolatry as being something in the modern world but consider this:

• There are actually people who worship crawling creatures: in a museum in Egypt there is a monument to the scarab beetle.

• The Philistines actually worshiped flies. Hindus today won’t swat a fly lest it be an ancestor of theirs paying for his wrongs.

• Today you find that there are 330 million gods of the Hindus, 8 gods for every person.

• In China a Buddhist statue actual fell on a man and the family sued the Buddhas in the temple. The statue was found guilty and it and 14 other statues were actually beheaded.

• In America someone has said that the god of the last half of the 20th century is MATERIALISM. I can’t think of another generation that has spent more of their resources and time to accumulate more stuff than we do today. It is the reason many people go to school or choose the kind of work they do; to get bigger and better and nicer.

• False worship is plenteous and IDOLATRY is rampant in our world.

Since our innate nature is to worship; we spend all of our lives in worship. Every moment of everyday we are worshipping. The question is what or whom are we worshipping? The problem arises when we fall prey to offering worship either to ourselves or to some other god or we offer unacceptable worship to the one true God. We must take heed to John 4:20-26

and make sure we are worshipping God with a worship that is acceptable to Him. Because acceptable worship is through Christ, we must worship Him in spirit and truth.

I. Put your faith in Christ. v. 20-22

A. Sinners worship in darkness. v. 20-21

1. People are concerned about the act of worship.

2. God is concerned about the object of worship.

Explanation:

v. 20 -- We are all born in spiritual darkness. Thus, we do not know how to offer acceptable worship to God and we are humanly unable to offer acceptable worship to God. But, we are born with an innate need to worship. As a result we worship false gods. In this passage Christ answers the Samaritan woman’s question and pours light into her mind on the spirituality of all true worship, as of its glorious Object, and so brings her insensibly to the point at which He could disclose to her wondering mind who she was speaking to.

She ingeniously shifts the subject from a personal to a public question. It is not, "Alas,

what a wicked life am I leading!" but "Lo, what a wonderful prophet I got into conversation with!” Worship is no longer going to be through the old covenant. A new covenant of salvation through Christ is about to take place.

Ought to worship – better, must worship. She puts it as a divine obligation. Worship is in the “present infinitive” which refers to continuous or repeated action. We don’t just worship God on Sundays or when we read the Bible. We worship seven days a week 24 hours a day.

v. 21 – Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me -- “believe” means “to have faith”. It is in the “aorist imperative” and thus means a command for doing something in the future that is a simple action. Jesus is saying “trust in me” as your Savior! Believe me! Have faith in me; not your ritualistic worship.

B. Christians worship in the Light. v. 22

1. Worship involves knowing the truth.

2. Worship requires salvation through Christ.

Explanation:

v. 22 -- There is a sharp contrast here between the “ye” and “we”. It seems to imply a

significant difference between the two positions of worship (true and false) offered in this verse.

Ye know not what – literally, what ye know not., rightly, that which ye know not Compare Act 17:23. Christ suggested that the Samaritans were ignorant, not only of the true object of worship, but knew not what they themselves worshipped: or, at least, were not agreed in it. Know what we worship -- literally, and as Rev., we worship that which we know. The neuter that which is used of the true as of the unreal object of worship.