Have you ever wondered why the Israelites kept going back to worship idols? From the beginning of the Old Testament to the end, these idols appear repeatedly. Genesis 35 records Jacob’s instruction to his family:
“Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you and purify yourselves”.
Zechariah, the penultimate book of the Old Testament contains the words:
“The idols speak deceit, diviners see visions that lie; they tell dreams that are false, they give comfort in vain. Therefore the people wander like sheep oppressed for lack of a shepherd.”
So, in spite of constant instructions from God not to do this, in spite of all the hardships that worshipping these idols brought upon them. The Israelites still kept going back to idol worship.
I know that I am taking this verse out of context, but I believe that Jesus gave one answer to this why in his words to the woman at the well “we worship what we do know”. The Israelites worshipped idols because they could know these gods (and that is gods with a small g). They could put them on a shelf in their house and see them day-by-day. With the Almighty God, they could not do this; He was a God who could not be seen unless you were somebody very special like Moses or Elijah. He was a God who could not be heard unless you were somebody like them. He was a God who could not even be approached, the only person who could enter God’s presence was the High Priest, and he could only do that on one day in each year. It was so much easier to know and therefore worship an idol than it was to know and worship Yahweh, the Almighty God.
And if the Israelites found it easier to know an idol and worship it, how much harder it must have been for the Samaritans to worship God. The Samaritans knowledge of the God they tried to worship was based only on the first five books of the Old Testament. Can you imagine how difficult it must have been to worship God when you have no Psalms to use in worship? When you have little knowledge of the God of salvation for none of the words that the prophets spoke about salvation were known to the Samaritans.
“We worship what we know”, yet even though the Jews had a much fuller knowledge of Yahweh than the Samaritans did they still found it easier to worship idols that they could see, than to worship the God that they could only hear about.
Is it any different for us today? When you look at the difference between what the Samaritans knew about God and what the Jews knew, and then compare that to the difference between what the Jews knew and what we can know about God today, we are so blessed. The author of the book of Hebrews wrote at the start of the book:
“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways”.
That describes the position that the Jews of Jesus’ time were in. God had made himself known to them by revelation through Abraham, Moses, Joshua, the Judges, King David and King Solomon and then on through all of the prophets. But the author of Hebrews does not stop there, he does not write that God revealed Himself through these people and then stopped. He writes:
“but in these last days he has spoken to us by Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.”
Just in case you think I read the verse wrong there, some modern versions of the Bible use the words ‘he has spoken to us by his Son’ in this verse. Many scholars now believe they have this slightly wrong for the Greek states clearly ‘spoken by Son.’ God did not send Jesus here because he could explain all about God. He sent Him because He is God, and there could be no better revelation of God than God himself.
We are so blessed because we have so much more knowledge of who God is and of what He is like than the Jews did. There should be no excuse at all for people today being involved in idol worship. Yet, sadly, even in the Church, we still fall into this old error. We don’t have the same idols as the Jews did to tempt us, you won’t find many Christians in this country who bow their heads before a Buddha on the mantelpiece each day, our idols are much more sophisticated than this.
Many of them, you will know about, money, leisure, family, sex, all of these can be idols in people’s lives. For some people, even the Church can be an idol. When a change is suggested in the way things happen in the Church, they are immediately outraged by it; their god remains the same yesterday, today and forever. Even the smallest things can be idols in our lives, for an idol is simply anything that is more important than God in your life or anything that you know more than God in your life. For example, Sunday lunch can be an idol for some people. They go to all the trouble of getting to Church on a morning, they take part in the worship and the prayers, sit and listen carefully to the sermon, but if the service goes on for longer than it should, there is trouble. Their time with God has to finish at a certain time or their lunch will be spoilt. If the service finishes late, the Minister of the Church gets more complaints than they would have done if somebody had stood here and said that red was black. When the length of the service becomes more important than the God who is found in that service, you can tell that at least some of the people involved have a problem with idols.
The reason why this still happens today, just as it happened to the Old Testament Jews is the same. We find it easier to know other things than it is to know God. And what is the answer to today’s problems with idols? It is to get to know God better than we know anything or anyone else in our life. How well do you know your job at work, well, you have get to know God more than that. How well do you know your husband or your wife, well you have to know God in a deeper way than that. If we do not do this, then we are always going to have problems with idols simply because we worship what we know.
This word ‘know’ is a fascinating word to do a Bible Study on if you get the chance. There is so much meaning to this one four-letter word. The way that it is used in this verse does not mean a complete knowledge of what is known. Jesus was not saying the Jews knew God fully. If they knew God fully, they would not have killed Him on the cross, neither would the world have needed them to. The word ‘know’ as it is used here means that there was a partial knowledge that can grow to completeness. It does not matter how well we know God while we are here on earth, we will never know him completely, that will only happen when we bow before Him in heaven. We should be glad that this is so, for if we could worship a God that we knew absolutely everything about, he or she would hardly be a God worth knowing.
But if our knowledge of God does not grow while we are here on earth, then we do not really know Him at all. That is what the word means in the way Jesus uses it here. That is why Paul could write in his introduction to the Church in Colossi:
“And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God,”
What a challenge God gives us, do I know Him better today than I did a week ago, do I know Him better than I know anything else in my life? If we are to worship God as He deserves, we have to be able to say yes to these questions. As well as a challenge though, these words are a comfort to all who are or wish to be Christians. We do not have to know God fully before we worship Him; we only have to be willing to do this.
How can we grow to know God more? I looked at one way that we can do this when I preached on the first part of this story two weeks ago. I explained then that there are three movements in this account of the woman at the well. The first movement occurs when we accept Jesus as Lord. This movement is seen in verse 14 of John 4 “the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” When we accept Jesus as our Saviour and Lord, he takes residence within us. The second movement is seen in the verses we heard today and it is a movement towards God in worship. The third movement occurs at the end of the story when the disciples rejoin Jesus. This woman who has just discovered that Jesus is Lord, goes running of to tell everybody in the village about Him. This movement is outwards in witness to others. These three movements inwards, upwards and outwards should be a summary of what has happened and is happening in all of our lives.
Sadly, this does not always happen. I would love to be rostered to preach here one Sunday when the worship we have beforehand gets so intense, when we actually experience God moving so much and so strongly in our worship that there is no time left for me to stand up and preach. I would love to be able to come here one day and find that I cannot get into the Church because everybody here has run and told their friends about this amazing God. I know this can happen, and I know God wants it to happen even more than I do. Why doesn’t it happen now? It does not because we ignore or forget about the first movement in this series.
Can you imagine what Beethoven’s ninth symphony would be like without the first movement? It is that movement that defines the whole symphony just as the first movement defines every other symphony, take it out and the rest means so much less. What would have happened if Fanny Crosby had never written the first verse of her wonderful hymn ‘To God be the glory? The second and third verses contain wonderful words, but I don’t think the hymn would be in Mission Praise today without that first verse in it.
Yet this is what we try to do in our Christian lives. We try to worship God without really getting to know the God who lives within us. We find it hard to witness because we do not know the one we witness to. There are several places in our New Testament where we are told that God has made his home inside of us. For example, Paul wrote to the Church in Colossi saying ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’ But how often do we spend time getting to know this Christ in us. So much of our private prayer time seems to speak to a God who is outside of us. You only need to think how often you speak your prayers out loud to see how true this is. And the words we speak so often deal with situations outside of us. We pray for the Church, for friends and family, for ourselves and the way we get on with others. But how often do we sit or kneel in silence simply wanting to be in the company of the Christ within us.
If our worship is to be more like the worship God desires, we need to spend more time looking inwards and getting to know this Christ. Listening to what He has to say to us, seeing what He wants to show us, and simply being in His presence.
As we do this though, we also need to concentrate on another way of knowing God. One danger with meditation, which is simply another word to describe how we spend time with the Christ within us, is that we hear what we think Christ is saying, rather than hearing what he is actually saying. To guard against this danger, we need to spend time getting to know God better through His word as well. Everything that Christ says to us when we listen to him in our hearts will agree up with He has already said or done in scripture.
The knowledge of God that we gain through the scriptures is not something that comes simply by reading the words. One of the meanings for the Greek word ‘know’ suggests a knowledge that includes understanding and living. A knowing that can only come from applying what we know in our heads to our daily lives. One of the best ways we can do this is through the Bible Study Groups, for it is here that we can learn from each other how to live God’s word in our lives. It is actually nice to belong to a Church where so many people attend these groups. I have belonged to and preached in Churches where only a very small proportion of those in the Church went to such a group. But even here at Longfleet, there are people there is still room for improvement. If there are no groups meeting at a time that suits you then see Janet or another deacon and hopefully, there soon will be. Knowing God is important enough to our deacons that this difficulty can easily be overcome.
One of the greatest wonders of this electronic age is that even if you have difficulty joining one of these groups, there is always the use of e-mail. One of the most challenging Bible study groups I belonged to was one where I never met the other members. It took place through the computer and e-mails.
We worship what we know. I have been reading a book recently called ‘The Heart of Healing’ by George Bennett. He was called by God to begin a ministry of healing in his Church before the Church began to discover about the charismatic gifts in the last thirty years. To give you an idea of when he was called, the second edition of the book cost £2.50, and there is a note on the back saying ‘please add 40p per copy for packing and postage’. George explains how when God called him, he was asked three questions. “Do you really believe that when Christ was on earth he really healed people?” “Do you really believe that after they killed Him – He really rose again?” And finally, “Do you really believe that He is the same, yesterday, today and forever?” All of these questions have one thing in common; you have to know God in order to answer them. George Bennett writes that if he had been asked the same questions a few years earlier, he would not have been able to answer, for he did not know God well enough to do so. Fortunately, for many people who later experienced the healing power of Christ through George Bennett’s ministry, he knew God well enough to answer yes to each question at the time God asked them.
Do we know God well enough to answer yes to each of these questions? If we do, there is no reason at all why we should not be experiencing him changing lives, renewing, and healing people in our midst as we worship Him today.
And maybe, if we get to know God as well as this, we will discover what many people who worship other gods have discovered. That there can be an excitement in worshipping the God we know. I stood outside a Bingo hall one night just watching people as they went in. When I looked at them, I could see the sense of expectation on their faces. They knew that at least one of the people who entered that hall would be walking out richer. And they were all excited because they hoped that it would be them.
I don’t often see that same expectation when I see people walking into a Church. Could it be that we do not know the one who is here to meet us. Could it be that we do not yet know the one who has made his home within us. If people can be excited as they walk into a bingo hall, how much more excited and hopeful should we be as we come to worship God.
May God give us the desire to know Him as fully as we possibly can, and to worship Him as He truly deserves.
