EXPERIENCING SATISFACTION IN WORSHIP
John 4:1-26
After church with his father one Sunday morning, before getting into bed that evening a little boy kneeled at his bedside and prayed, "Dear God, we had a good time at church today, but I wish you had been there."
That boy experienced dissatisfaction with his worship that morning. I suppose there is no part of the church’s program with which more people express more dissatisfaction and disagreement over how it ought to be done than with worship.
Robert Webber, author of Worship Is a Verb, said he came in the early seventies when he first became interested in worship to identify four deep-seated concerns about worship: (1) He began to see it as dominated by the pastor or minister; (2) He began to feel that the congregation was little more than an audience; (3) He began to sense that "free" worship was not free, but fixed and often dead; (4) He began to feel that the mystery was gone.
Worship can be a terribly dissatisfying experience, but that feeling develops, more often than not, from a dissatisfying life. Having and maintaining satisfaction in life has a dramatic effect on our worship. We see this quite clearly in John 4 through Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well. Jesus demonstrates quite clearly how worship is related to satisfaction with life.
The experience of the woman at the well, as revealed in her conversation with Jesus, raises a question that is tremendously important to our lives and our worship.
I. HOW DO YOU EXPERIENCE SATISFACTION IN LIFE?
The account of the Samaritan woman’s encounter with Jesus is a familiar one: Jesus went through Samaria on this trip from Judea to Galilee. This was unusual, even though the route was more direct. Normally Jews would go many miles out of their way to avoid the Samaritans. John specifically says, though, that Jesus "had to go through Samaria." There was a mission for him there.
Jesus had stopped at Jacob’s well when the woman appeared at about noon, and Jesus asked her for a drink. Now Jews and Samaritans did not mix, especially men and women. The Samaritans of the Southern Kingdom had intermarried with the Assyrians who had taken them captive. The Jews despised this race, even though they had tried to maintain their Jewish heritage, even begging the Jews for a priest who would teach them the true worship of God. Their request was rejected. They thus established their own place of worship, building a temple on Mount Gerizim. By the time of this encounter, that temple had been destroyed for a century and a half. They continued to worship there, though, and even today, while there are less than 500 Samaritans left, they gather regularly on the mountain to worship.
Jesus offers her the opportunity to have satisfaction in life - living water. She raises the question, "How?” how can he give satisfaction?
Have you ever been really thirsty? Thirst is what kills people in the desert.
In his book Sahara Unveiled, William Langewiesche tells the story of an Algerian named Lag Lag and a companion whose truck broke down while crossing the desert:
They nearly died of thirst during the three weeks they waited before being rescued. As their bodies dehydrated, they became willing to drink anything in hopes of quenching their terrible thirst. The sun forced them into the shade under the truck, where they dug a shallow trench. Day after day they lay there. They had food, but did not eat, fearing it would magnify their thirst. Dehydration, not starvation, kills wanderers in the desert, and thirst is the most terrible of all human sufferings.
Physiologists…use Greek-based words to describe stages of human thirst. For example, the Sahara is dipsogenic, meaning "thirst provoking."
In Lag Lag’s case, they might say he progressed from eudipsia, "ordinary thirst," through bouts of hyperdipsia, meaning "temporary intense thirst," to polydipsia, "sustained excessive thirst." Polydipsia means the kind of thirst that drives one to drink anything. There are specialized terms for such behavior, including uriposia, the drinking of urine, and hemoposia, the drinking of blood.
For word enthusiasts, this is heady stuff. Nevertheless, the lexicon has not kept up with technology. I have tried, and cannot coin a suitable word for the drinking of rusty radiator water. Radiator water is what Lag Lag and his assistant started into when good drinking water was gone. In order to survive, they were willing to drink, in effect, poison.
Many people do something similar in the spiritual realm. They depend on things like money, sex, and power to quench spiritual thirst. Unfortunately, such "thirst quenchers" are in reality spiritual poison, a dangerous substitute for the "living water" Jesus promised.
This woman wanted the water, and Jesus reinforces the satisfaction it will bring (verses 13,14). Jesus had to penetrate her life first, though, so he speaks to her about her lifestyle. With the sin in her life isolated, she seriously considers that he is a prophet and seeks out how she can worship God in the proper way (verses 19,20). She wanted satisfaction, and realized it comes from worship.
The account is an up-to-date one. People are still looking for satisfaction for their mixed-up lives. Roger Fredrikson tells of a man who came to his office:
He came in with fear and spoke haltingly of his misgivings, the long debate he had with himself before he dared come to a pastor’s study. In 26 years, he had been in church but one time, and that for his daughter’s wedding. He had been in "lots of trouble" over the years and had "done time" in a state penitentiary. He remembered with shame the humiliation he had suffered the last time he had been in church for a regular service. The preacher, he said, had lectured him publicly because of his most recent divorce. He had never gone back. Yet he yearned to belong some place. Fredrikson was amazed he had come to the office. His pain was not unlike this woman’s, and he had not been able to find relief through worship.
Darryl Strawberry, about his drug problems, said, "Life has not been worth living for me. That’s the honest truth."
We all know many people with such pain, inside and out of the church. Like this woman, they misunderstand worship and how it can bring satisfaction to their torn lives. The confusion is often understandable: The woman of our text lived amid two totally different systems of worship, neither of which seemed to offer the kind of satisfying spiritual life Jesus was talking about. Jewish worship was highly ritualized, and Samaritan worship was much less ornate and sophisticated. With all the variety of churches around, people are today confused by worship.
Gordon Borror and Ronald Allen tell about a close friend who was suffering with a painful foot: Walking was becoming increasingly difficulty; access via stairs was excruciating – the foot seemed about to put an end to normal living. He sought a doctor’s help, x-rays were taken, special shoes were worn, bandages were applied, but nothing brought substantial relief. Although causes were sought they could not be found; they treated symptoms while looking for the cause. One day a mutual friend mentioned that he had heard of a similar case and suggested the cause to be a bad tooth. Although no toothache had occurred, a dentist was consulted and oral x-rays were taken. A small abscess was found which had not yet caused any local pain. A proper procedure by the dentist brought almost immediate relief to the foot, and it has not hurt since!
Many people, even in the church, suffer from dissatisfaction. There are many areas of hurt. We try counseling, camps, workshops, but perhaps we need to learn the true nature of worship that Jesus calls us to.
II. EXPERIENCE THE SATISFACTION OF WORSHIP.
Worship is the highest calling of the Christian; it is the issue of the Christian life. That is clear in Deuteronomy 6:4-8, a passage which is specifically emphasized by Jesus as being the greatest commandment.
This passage makes this clear: At least ten times in this text a form of the most frequently used Greek word for worship is used. The word literally means "to kiss forward," and indicates honoring God. Jesus told the woman that the location of worship was no longer the main concern. The issue is not where you worship, but whom you worship and how you worship.
The Samaritans worshiped what they did not know. Know means to know facts or truth. The Samaritans had the spirit without truth in their worship. The Jews worshiped what they did know, but, while they had truth in their worship, they had no spirit.
Jesus highlights two aspects to experience the satisfaction of worship:
First there is the subjective nature of worship: worship in spirit. The word spirit refers to the human spirit, the inner person. Worship in the spirit is worship from the inside out. Worship here has to do not with being in the right place, at the right time, with the right words, the right demeanor, the right clothes, the right formalities, the right music, and the right mood, but with the right attitude and the right heart.
The spirit involves the emotions. Our emotions should be involved. It is natural that we should worship in the right spirit, because God is Spirit. The Jews had lost this aspect to worship. It had simply become a form for them. We have often lost the spirit in our worship. We have removed emotion from it, but worship needs to be expressive of how we feel. That is not all it is, however.
Yet worship is not just our experience. It is not an attempt to determine what authentic worship is. It is worshiping in the Spirit of God: Marshall Shelley describes it this way:
Early in our marriage I gave my wife a terrific anniversary gift: a rain gauge. At least I thought it was a great gift. Susan, after all, is a farmer’s daughter and keeps close watch on the weather. I envisioned her delight and nostalgia while tracking our back yard precipitation. I congratulated myself on my creativity.
Guess what? Susan was not impressed: "A rain gauge—for our anniversary?!" The rain gauge is now a family joke, a classic example of a gift enjoyed by the giver but not the receiver.
One word I hear a lot these days is authentic, as in "we seek authentic worship." Usually this means we’re trying to create an experience that helps worshipers feel something. Nothing wrong with that, but if our focus is only on our experience, we may be giving God a rain gauge.
Are we offering in worship a gift we enjoy and figuring God will like it?
A real gift, real worship, means knowing what’s important to The Receiver.
Second there is the objective nature of worship: worship in truth. Worship in truth is worship from the outside in. Here we must know what we worship, who we worship. Worshiping with enthusiasm is not enough.
No group of worshipers is more spirited than the fanatic Shiite Muslims who once a year slit their scalps with razors and then beat themselves in the head with the flat side of their swords to stimulate bleeding. Men, boys, and even infants have their shaved heads lacerated with swift chopping strokes of a straight razor and then march around in the square before the mosque, bleeding profusely while thousands watch and chant. They do it to celebrate the death of a Muslim leader more than a dozen centuries ago, and they see their hideous display as worship. It is an extreme example of what attempting to worship apart from the truth can become.
Here the Word of God is central to worship: Acts 2:42; Colossians 3:16,17; 1 Timothy 4:13. Here is why preaching is so important.
Arthur Pink wrote about how some people do not worship:
They bring their bodies to the house of prayer but not their souls. They worship with their mouths but not in spirit and in truth.
They are sticklers for early morning communion with God but they take no thought about keeping their hearts with all diligence.
They boast of their orthodoxy but disregard the precepts of Christ.
Multitudes of professing Christians abstain from external acts of violence, yet hesitate not to rob their neighbors of a good name by spreading evil reports against them.
They contribute regularly to the church but shrink not from misrepresenting their goods and cheating their customers persuading themselves that business is business.
They have more regard for the laws of man than those of God for his fear is not before their eyes.
Someone summed up approaching worship in spirit and in truth this way: “In order for us to worship, our mind, will, and emotions have to be moved.”
William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, defined worship well: “To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.”
That is the essence of worship. It is both individual and corporate, personal and congregational. Personal worship feeds corporate worship, and corporate worship feeds personal worship.
Satisfaction in life results, and, as Gordon Borror and Ronald Allen say, worship becomes not something that begins when you come to church, but something that began when you came to Christ.
CONCLUSION
A number of years ago, when astronauts Grissom and Young had successfully completed their Gemini flight, they received a phone call from President Johnson. After commending them, the President invited them to the White House on Friday. Then, in his characteristically Texan way, he added, “If you can make it.” Do you suppose they made it? Of course they did.
God has similarly invited us to worship him and experience satisfaction in life. Will you make it?
