“But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The account of Jesus meeting with the unnamed woman at Jacob’s well near Sychar in Samaria is so deep and so profound, that I would not be surprised if a preacher could stay in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel and preach for a year, never repeating a main topic of focus from one sermon to the next.
It is so rich that there is much to learn there about Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus as the Prophet of God, Jesus the destroyer of barriers between men and men and men and God, Jesus the healer of hearts, Jesus the great Teacher of all, Jesus the Savior of men, Jesus the object of true spiritual worship, and much more even than this. There might even be one called, “Jesus, the Man Who Kept His Disciples Dizzy”
In His discourse with this blest woman of Samaria, Jesus has moved in a very short time from total stranger of whom the woman can only be suspicious, to interesting conversationalist, to prophet of God, and to promised Messiah who, in her words, ‘when (He) comes will declare all things to us’.
But Jesus was much more than an information giver wasn’t He? The woman couldn’t be faulted for having a limited expectation of the Messiah; the entire nation of Israel did, and they had more information to go on than the Samaritans who even then only accepted the first five books of the Bible as legitimate. They rejected Israel’s prophets and poems and historical books out of hand. So in truth, this woman showed some pretty perceptive thinking and reasoning.
I think we can deduce just by this conversation that although an uneducated woman, and by all accounts a woman of relaxed morals – to put it kindly – she was one who spent some time listening to things being said around her and thinking them through on her own.
Her questions were pointed and legitimate, her conclusions were accurate, and when she came to the place of believing the words of Jesus she wasted no time running to fetch others so they might come and see for themselves.
In the sermon previous to this one we focused on the many barriers Jesus tore down between people and between people and God, but in order to do so we skipped over a vital portion of Jesus’ discourse to this woman, and I think I would be doing a great injustice to the passage and to the Word of God if I failed to come back to it today.
So let’s read this account again just to have it fresh in our minds, and again we’ll just read to verse 26 because our primary focus will be in verses 16 through 24.
“Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), 3 He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. 4 And He had to pass through Samaria. 5 So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; 6 and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7 There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9 Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” 11 She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? 12 “You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?” 13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” 16 He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” 17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” 19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
A QUESTION FOR A PROPHET
Jumping right in at verse 19 then, the woman has just been told by Jesus how many husbands she has had and the fact that she is now living outside the bonds of marriage with yet another.
I don’t want to dilly dally here because this is far from the point of this discourse, but since we’re focusing on this woman and her role in this account, I just want to bring to your attention the absolute and utter shame she lived in.
In our modern American society, unfortunately, the sinful lifestyle of people is largely tolerated, widely accepted and in many cases applauded. You know this and I know it, so let’s not go into the details. If you are over 30 years old you know how rapidly the moral climate in our society has dropped to the lowest level it has ever known.
If you are a Bible-studying believer, you may also at this point be thinking of the indictment of Romans 1, which at the end of a long list of labels of sin and debauchery finishes in verse 32 with, “…and, although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”
Then if you think about the last time those well-spoken, clean cut news commentators on your favorite news program talked about people with an anti-homosexual position as intolerant, and gave their verbal support to the option of homosexual lifestyle, then you should be able to connect the two in your mind and say, ‘yes, this is at least in part, what Paul was talking about’.
But in the middle-eastern society of first century Israel or Samaria, there was no such tolerance for immorality lived openly and without repentance, and the commentators are probably right on, when they speculate that this woman was almost certainly an outcast in her community and lived a very lonely existence.
Now I said all that to say this. She might have been a very bitter person. At best, she might have been a very sensitive person and loath to have her lifestyle brought out openly by a stranger, and a Jew at that. But isn’t it interesting, that at this point in this chance meeting with Jesus she has become so enthralled with Him – perhaps seeing something in His eyes – hearing something in His tone – that puts her at ease in His open and non-condemning presence, that her reaction to His revelation – instead of getting embarrassed or offended – is to say, “I perceive that you are a prophet”!
In the past I have read an assessment by someone that she was being sarcastic and defensive in this response and that her subsequent question was meant to corner Jesus and back Him down with an unanswerable query.
Personally I don’t get that impression. We have already noted that she seems to be a thinking person and a straightforward and sincere one. And after all, she could not have helped but be amazed that someone she had never laid eyes on could know those details about her. So with that in mind, consider the first thing that comes to her lips in response to her realization that she is in the presence of a prophet.
“Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship”.
Let’s break this down some. First of all, who does she mean when she says ‘Our fathers’? Well, she is talking about the Samaritan ancestors going back to the return of the Jews to Israel and Judah from the dispersion.
If you remember, we talked about the rebuilding of the wall under the leadership of Nehemiah and how when Samaritans came to help they were turned away because they were seen as half-breed traitors, and how the enmity between Jew and Samaritan only escalated after that. So a man named Manassah (no relation to the king of the same name) built a temple on Mount Gerizim and established it as the place of worship for the Samaritan people.
It is my understanding that the Samaritan culture at one point almost died out, but today there is a community of a little over one hundred of them living in that region, and they still worship on Mount Gerizim, and they still only accept the first five books of the Bible.
Do you remember the story of the little church in Mayfield County, Kansas in 1890 that split over a peg in the wall? I’ve told it in the past and you may have heard it since. Unfortunately the church who calls herself after the name of Christ has many stories like this in her history.
There were two deacons in that little Kansas church who were always bickering with one another about one thing or another. One day one of those deacons took it upon himself to install a peg in the back wall of the sanctuary for the pastor to hang his hat on as he came in the door.
When the other deacon found out about it he was so incensed that the peg was placed without consulting him that he flew into a rage. During the course of the little feud between these deacons, the congregation began to take sides until the church split, and in this small, rural area, there were now two Baptist churches that were thereafter referred to as Peg Baptist and Anti-Peg Baptist.
This is sort of what went on between the Jews and the Samaritans. No, you can’t worship in our Temple because you stayed in the land and intermarried with Assyrians. Well then, we’ll build our own temple over on this mountain, and we’ll worship God there and have our own truncated little Bible and our own little rules for morning worship. Maybe we’ll have contemporary music and say ‘amen’ out loud.
Ok, I made that last part up…
So this was apparently an item of debate and discussion among these people for all these generations. Where is the proper place to worship? Is God really only in the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem? Or is God here on this mountain with us? Surely, He can’t be in both places at once…can He?
No, I don’t think this woman was trying to stump Jesus. I think she wanted to know from a prophet how and where a person could worship God. I think Jesus, just by His very presence and His contact with her and His words to her, had changed something in her heart. I think He was drawing her to the Father one gentle step at a time.
I think He had awakened something…stirred something inside of her, and she was coming down the birth canal – so to speak – on her way to being born again.
AN ANSWER TO A QUESTION SINCERELY ASKED
Is there such a thing as a stupid question?
Whenever my children came home from school – and this usually happened in their early years of schooling, because that’s when teachers tend to say these things – and they would say, ‘Teacher says there’s no such thing as a stupid question’, I always turned that into a discussion designed to get them thinking. Because I have heard stupid questions. I’ve probably asked some of those myself over the years.
If you are watching the news on television and following some tragic event or some mystery that has just come to light, and the police chief gets up behind the microphones and says, “I have a statement to make concerning this incident, but this is an on-going investigation, therefore I will not be taking any questions at this time”, and then he makes his statement, if you keep listening after he is finished with his statement, you will hear lots of stupid questions.
If you have ever been through college or you have taken special courses connected with your vocation; perhaps an advanced training class of some kind, then certainly on at least one occasion you will have been in the following circumstances: The class is boring, either by virtue of the subject matter or the instructor’s inability to make it interesting or both.
The class is supposed to end at 11:45 AM and you are thinking about lunch and your stomach is reminding you that it is about that time. Then the instructor says, “It’s about time to break for lunch…” but before he or she can end that sentence a hand shoots up. You see it, everyone else sees it, a collective groan passes like a wave through the classroom, and the next thing you hear is, yep, a stupid question.
Jesus fielded a lot of stupid questions. He was gracious and answered them but He never gave them more time or attention than they deserved, and the response was usually designed to shut the mouth of the one asking and when it was, it always worked.
Do you remember the Pharisees trying to catch Jesus advocating civil disobedience by asking Him if they should pay taxes to their oppressors? It’s in Mark 12. Jesus had them hold up a coin and asked whose picture was on it. Well, it was Caesar’s image on the coin. So He said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.
End of discussion.
That’s just one example. He didn’t waste time arguing with fools and He didn’t grace hypocritical questions with deep and thoughtful responses.
But look what happens here, with this scandalous woman by Jacob’s well.
And let me repeat here that this is why I believe her question was presented from a sincerely inquiring heart.
She really wanted to know and I believe she really wanted to know how and when and where to properly worship God.
And Jesus gives her the deep and thoughtful answer she deserves.
“Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
AN HOUR IS COMING
Twice in this initial response from Jesus He uses the phrase, ‘an hour is coming’. That alone makes the phrase worthy of notice.
The word itself and taken by itself doesn’t mean anything mysterious. The same word is used throughout the New Testament for ‘hour’, no matter what context the word is being used in.
We do the same thing with the English language, you know. We talk about going somewhere ‘an hour from now’. We say, ‘it was at about the dinner hour’, meaning it was just late afternoon or early evening but we’re being less specific than that. When Jesus’ disciples ask Him when the last things will take place and He answers that no man knows the day or the hour, we don’t get confused by that; we understand what He meant.
Well much more significant than Jesus’ use of the word ‘hour’, is the message He is getting across to her.
When He says, ‘the hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father’, He is grabbing her attention more deeply even than before.
What has Jesus said in that phrase? There is a time coming when these physical places either will not be available for worshipers to gather, or worshipers will change in some sense and to some degree that negates both of these places as places to go for worship.
That’s a pretty strong statement to make, isn’t it? Especially naming Jerusalem, which in one form or another has been the worship center of the Middle East for many, many years.
In Genesis 14, when Melchizedek came out to bless Abram he is called ‘king of Salem’, and most scholars believe that to be the ancient name of Jerusalem. So even then, before there was a Jewish nation, as a priest of some order that worshiped the one True God, Melchizedek was also king of Salem so even then it was a center of worship.
Jesus has indicated to this woman that some earth-shattering changes are about to take place, one way or another. So her ears are even finer-tuned now, as He goes on to say,
“But an hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth”.
Wait! It’s coming and now is? If it now is, how can it still be coming?
Jesus is telling her that all true worshipers have always worshiped in spirit and in truth. Hasn’t that always been the case? Yes, it has! God instituted tabernacle worship in the wilderness to provide for the ordinances of sacrifices He ordained as a tutor to point His people to the one True Sacrifice who would come.
But God has always had true, spiritual worshipers; we just named one in Melchizedek. God has always had His remnant of worshipers in this world, my friends. Before buildings, before the establishing of religious ritual, before organized religion existed, the Father had those who worshiped Him in spirit and in truth.
So the hour ‘now is’… that hour has always been.
But there was an hour coming, and although she may not have caught the immediate implications of what Jesus was telling her, in 70 AD Jerusalem was sacked, the temple torn down so there was not one stone left on another, and the people taken away into dispersion.
As far as Mt Gerizim was concerned, there was no need to make further mention of that; there never was anything there anyway. There was a time when God blessed the Temple with His presence so that He might be among His people. But the temple on Mt Gerizim was never more than a physical structure, just like the cathedrals of Europe, just like the shrines to modern techonology that have sprung up all over our own country, just like many of the churches in which God has not been glorified and Christ has not been honored, in some cases for generations.
Just like Peg and Anti-Peg Baptist, or any other assembling of people who do not worship the Father, either in spirit or in truth.
KNOWING WHO TO WORSHIP
Now back up to verse 22 because I just jumped over that.
“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
Jesus wasn’t at all shy about calling it like it is, was He? Paul followed His Lord’s example in Acts 17 when he was invited to address the esteemed society of philosophers that met on Mars Hill in Athens.
He opened right up with “…what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you” He was talking about all the pagan idols they had lining the main road into the city and the fact that he saw one labeled, ‘The Unknown God’. The Athenians just wanted to cover all the bases. IF there was some god out there they didn’t know about, they didn’t want to offend Him by not inviting Him to the party. So Paul pointed out their ignorance as his introduction.
Not the sort of thing that usually gets you invited back to preach again, but at least by the end he had piqued the interest of a few of them enough that they wanted to hear more.
So Jesus says, ‘You Samaritans don’t even know what you’re worshiping’. You see, they didn’t have the things the Jews had. They didn’t have the Oracles of God, as Paul pointed out in Romans 3:2, like the Jews did. That is, they didn’t have the writings of the prophets and the revelation that God had made of Himself to His people through the Scriptures. So they didn’t even know how to worship properly or indeed, who it was they worshiped.
God’s message and plan of salvation was revealed to the Jews. The Samaritans only accepted the first five books of the Bible.
Listen, people of the Bible. If you are to be true followers of Christ, if you are to be worshipers of the Father in spirit and in truth, you have to have the divinely inspired and complete record of God’s revelation of Himself to men, and that is called the Bible. It starts at Genesis 1:1 and it ends at Revelation 22:21.
The Old Testament ends at the end of Malachi’s prophecy, and the New Testament begins at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel. There is nothing in between that is God-breathed, and there is nothing before or after that is profitable for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.
Nor can you take of what is there and neglect it or extract it. I have been told that in Rabbinical schools students are forbidden to read Daniel’s prophecy because it’s too confusing or something like that. I think it’s because there’s too much in there that sounds like Jesus.
There are churches and organizations of churches that, if they haven’t stopped using their Bibles altogether, focus on some parts to the exclusion of other parts so that their doctrine is contracted and their theology is truncated.
God gave us the Bible and He gave it first to the Jews. You can climb the highest mountain and find the finest gold-lined sanctuary in which to kneel and light your candles; but if you don’t have the Word of God you do not know what you worship.
At the time Jesus spoke with this woman by Jacob’s well He could say there was a time, and hour, coming. And that hour came. Jesus went to the cross of Calvary to do His Father’s bidding and to glorify the Father’s name, and when He cried, ‘It is finished’, He was not only referring to His earthly life…He was not only talking about the fulfillment of His divinely appointed task in bringing many sons to glory…He had finished the contract that says, “Because I live, you too shall live”, a contract signed with His own blood.
When Jesus gave up His spirit from that cruel cross and breathed His last, so died every one of God’s elect through the ages of time. When Jesus burst forth from the tomb in glorified body, so rose every one of God’s chosen ones up to and including the last soul that will be ushered into God’s grace by the One who purchased him at so dear a price.
Jesus said, the hour is coming, and the saints of the ages worship in that hour in spirit and in truth.
We can see fulfillment of it in the very chapter we’re studying. We see it as the woman leaves her precious water vessels and runs to Sychar to tell the men there she has found Messiah. That’s worship.
She figured something out that the people of her village were soon to figure out as they came to find Him, and asked Him to stay, and sat at His feet to learn from Him over the coming days.
The One to worship was there. He wasn’t on the mountain and He wasn’t in Jerusalem. He wasn’t in some far away place and He wasn’t aloof or distant from them at all.
“This God…is not remote. Just the opposite is true. The God who made the world is always, inescapably, our environment. Omniscient, omnipresent, unsleeping, undistracted, He is before and behind us, ever taking knowledge of us, whether or not we acknowledge Him” J.I. Packer, “God Has Spoken”, Inter Varsity Press, 1979 pg. 49
But all those who acknowledge Him, worship Him in spirit and in truth.
FOR SUCH PEOPLE THE FATHER SEEKS
Isn’t that last phrase of verse 23 amazing?
The emphasis is on worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth, of course. Jesus even goes on to repeat that premise in verse 24.
But did you catch that word, ‘seeks’?
My fellow Christ-followers, the Father seeks worshipers!
Paul quotes the Psalmist in Romans 3:11 when he said ‘no one seeks for God’. So it is twice confirmed to us there.
Jesus says in John 6:44 that no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him.
So the Bible tells us on two fronts that 1. no one seeks for God and 2. no one can come to God unless the Father draws him.
Yet, here is this beautiful statement. The Father seeks for people to worship Him in spirit and in truth.
Again, Paul, speaking to the Athenian philosophers, said that God made from one man every nation of mankind to dwell on the face of the earth, and established their times and the boundaries of their habitations so they might seek Him. They did not seek Him. But He wanted that. The Father wants worshipers and He actively seeks for them.
Now that doesn’t mean God beats the bushes in desperation and shakes the trees hoping some worshipers will fall out.
It simply means His attentions are focused on them as He draws them to Himself.
Remember… He is not on a mountain somewhere. And when people become so fixated on structures that they worship the structures the structures don’t last long. Think about all the old churches and cathedrals and temples of worship to demon gods that are now either in ruins or kept up only as tourist destinations.
But God says this through the prophet (Isa 66:1-2):
Thus says the LORD, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? For My hand made all these things, thus all these things came into being,” declares the LORD. “But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.
Who? To those who will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
“That, despite sin, God still wants human friends appears from Christ’s statement that God seeks true worshippers” writes J.I. Packer. “For worship, the acknowledging of worth, is an activity of friendship at its highest (hence ‘with my body I thee worship’ in the marriage service). God wants men to know the joy of the love-relationship from which worship springs, and of the worship itself in which that relationship finds its happiest expression.” J.I. Packer, GOD HAS SPOKEN, InterVarsity Press 1979
And worship found its happiest expression in this woman, didn’t it? She now openly confesses belief in the Messiah, “I know that Messiah is coming and when that One comes, He will declare all things to us”.
So Jesus does something for her that He wouldn’t even do for the probing, prying Pharisees. He openly tells her. “I who speak to you am He”.
I’m it! I am the One! Look no further! And remember that I just told you a minute or two ago that for the asking I would give you water that would become in you a well, springing up to eternal life!
Now just skip verse 27. That’s just the disciples plodding back up the road clueless and laden with sandwiches that feed the flesh. Go right to verse 28 and 29.
“So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?”
I’ve heard people get all wrapped up in spiritualizing the reason she left her water pot. ‘Well, Jesus had asked for a drink, so out of courtesy she left it so He could drink’. ‘Oh, Jesus did another miracle and she never needed to drink water again’. For pity’s sake…!
She was excited! She probably didn’t want a full water pot slowing her down. Anyway, I am certain she planned to come back.
But think about the symbolism; and I think this is the only reason John troubled to even mention the abandoned water pot.
Well of water springing up to eternal life? Listen to verses 39-42
“From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. 41 Many more believed because of His word; 42 and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.”
These are the marks of a true believer. This is active worship from the spirit that is rooted in and demonstrated in truth.
She heard, she believed, she ran to tell, as a result of her testimony others believed and also worshiped in spirit and in truth, for they no longer needed the word of others; they had seen and believed for themselves.
That is the church that Jesus built. These are the people the Father seeks to worship Him and to be His friends.
