John: Worship as Response

So we're back to John chapter 4 after taking a break last week for Thanksgiving.

John 4 · chapter mention

And so we're back to the story and sort of kind of recap for those of us who've been here to kind of remind us, those of us who haven't here, just to kind of remind you of the story.

So John chapter 4, Jesus is making his way and he he decides to go into Samaria.

John 4 · chapter mention

And this is kind of odd because a lot of the Jews, they walked around Samaria.

The Jews hated Samaritans.

And I think a couple weeks ago I went into why.

There's some history to it, but basically, the Jews believed the Samaritans to be basically a racially inferior heretics.

They couldn't stand them.

They despised these people.

And so just the fact that Jesus is going into Samaria is kind of perplexing a little bit and shows he's not your normal Jew.

And not only that, but then he goes to this well in the middle of the day, and then there's a woman there.

And the woman there, she's drawing water for her water for the day, which is a little odd because women didn't draw water in the middle of the day.

Usually women drawed water in the morning, you know, before it was really hot.

And so she's sort of, right away we see well, she might be hiding something.

She might be trying to avoid the other women.

And Jesus is there and he's tuned into her.

He is engaged to her.

And he says, Hey, will you give me a drink of water?

And she's like, How could you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink of water?

She can't understand this.

What is going on?

How would this man even want to speak to me?

And he says, Well, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asked you for a drink, you would have asked him for a drink, and he would have given you living waters.

And I got something that this well that you're getting water from right here, and your wells in your life that you're trying to pull satisfaction from, I have something that is far better and can quench all the thirst that your heart has.

And she says, Well, she doesn't understand this.

And she says, Well, you have nothing to draw with.

She thinks he's still talking about this well right here.

She said, Well, you don't have anything to draw with.

How could you offer me anything?

And he says, Well, yeah, you're right.

But if you drink this water, and he's still talking about more than this well, he's talking about all these wells that she has in her life that she's trying to pull deliverance from her inadequacy from.

And he says, if you keep drinking this water, you're going to keep being thirsty.

But if you drink what I have, if you drink of me, you will never thirst again.

And she says, Well, give me that water, right?

I mean, like case closed, like I'm in.

I mean, that's great.

Give me that.

Okay.

That sounds great.

Give me that water.

And then the weird, and she's always changing conversation, mid-conversation changes the subject.

She says, Give me that water.

And then he says, Oh, yeah, by the way, go call, go call your husband.

And you could probably just sense her.

This is what she was trying to avoid by being at the well the middle of the day and not in the morning.

It was trying to avoid this reality.

And Jesus went right at it and says, Go call your husband.

And she says, Well, I don't have a husband.

She was right.

She wasn't lying.

She was just sort of like twisting the truth a little bit.

And he says, You're right.

You've had five.

And now you're you're with a six man.

He's not your husband.

Right?

I mean, so here's her well.

Relationships.

Just one after the next.

Who will fulfill the void in my heart?

And she's dropping buckets in relationships, dropping buckets in relationships, drinking of that, and it's not quenching her thirst.

Alright, so now we get the second part of this conversation.

And the conversation turns toward worship.

And so that's where we pick the story up in John chapter 4, starting in verse 19.

John 4 · chapter mention

She says, Sir, I see, I can see that you are a prophet.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.

So she has a question about worship.

And see, what the Samaritans did is they took sort of some of the Jewish beliefs and they they accepted certain books of the Old Testament Bible and they did away with other ones, and they sort of just kind of made their own religion and they knew the Old Testament said, you know, you should worship at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, but that part, they weren't doing that, so they got their own mountain, they built their own temple.

This is her question.

You Jews say, we need to worship over here, but we have this mountain and this temple, and this is what we're doing.

And she's saying, what's going on with all this?

This is my question.

Where do we worship?

And then verse 21, Jesus declared, Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

So something new's coming.

But you don't have to go somewhere to worship.

You can worship in your car, worship in your shed, worship in your cubicle, worship in traffic, worship when you're walking, worship when you're giving your kid a bath.

You can worship in the privacy of your bedroom.

You can worship anywhere.

You will be able to worship anywhere.

Verse 22, you Samaritans worship what you do not know.

We worship what we do know for salvation is from the Jews.

So the question here is with these Samaritans, because what they've done is they've basically created their own little religion.

They've taken bits and pieces, they've put it together, and they've formed their own thing.

And the question is not what you like.

The question is what's true.

I mean, there's there's this kind of mentality of like, well, if I can get God my way, if I can kind of turn him into my way, if I can twist him into my way, then I'll love him, then I'll accept him.

If I get Jesus my way, you know, God of the Bible, I mean the whole Bible, he's kind of too authoritative, or he's too just or he's kind of, or maybe I don't understand everything.

And so I'm not sure if I want to accept all of that.

Or maybe you don't understand sickness and God's sovereignty over sickness or God's sovereignty over evil and how he uses that for our good and how he can redeem it.

And maybe there's some frustration there.

Understandably so.

Understandably so.

So last week I talked about how my dog Thomas had been sick and we were uncertain about what was going on with him.

And even Colin, he's like, he was like half dog, half human.

I mean, he could he thought he was a person.

He was a big golden retriever.

He was just connected to us.

I mean, he never wanted to be, you know, if we're outside, he's outside.

We're inside, he's inside.

He he's just he's just your shadow.

He's with you all the time.

And uh so he he was getting worse.

And we're Sunday afternoon.

I mean, we talked I talked something about him last Sunday.

Sunday afternoon, he was getting worse.

And so ultrasound was Monday.

I go in for the take him into the ultrasound.

He's barely making it into the place, walking, his hips are starting to give out.

We put him up on the table, and and right away the doctor says, you know, he has he has stage four lymphoma.

Um, it's not good, it's all over.

He said, You don't have great options.

And so uh the the the the numbers for chemo, not just the cost, but the possibility of of what might happen, it's just not wasn't good options.

And so we knew it was very limited, and there's some some medicine we could give them, hopefully, to buy him a week to a month.

And so we try that starting on Monday.

But Tuesday comes, he's getting worse, he's eating less, he's moving less.

I'm having to pick him up to get him outside, and he's kind of wandering around, he's becoming more vacant.

He uh he's not seeing, he wasn't hearing.

Um sort of like he was fading away to a different place.

And uh Wednesday day was worse, he just quit eating altogether.

I'm like, I'm I'm offering him like peanut butter.

I'm I'm offering him what I mean anything possible, just something, you know, and he's he's he's done.

He he won't he won't even look at it.

And so Wednesday night I'd been sleeping out in the den with him, which I think he loved.

And so we're out there kind of bonding, me and him.

And Wednesday night I hear him stirring, trying to get up, and so I I get up and I help him and we get outside, and he sort of stumbles a few times, and he uses the restroom, and there's just kind of this weird moment.

He he it's like he didn't know what to do, he didn't know where to go.

And I had to go out and kind of kind of lead him back in.

And it is weird, he's a seven and a half-year-old dog.

It's not like he was 15.

I mean, I mean, I mean, literally the cancer is just eating him up.

And at 2:30 in the morning on Wednesday night, I Google if our vet would be open in the morning if this is still going on.

Because I'm just I'm thinking, we're not doing this.

Like, I'm not putting him through this.

I'm not gonna let my girls watch this.

We will remember him as the great, fun, loving, you know, running around dog.

We're not, we're not going through this.

I'm not gonna put him through this.

And so in the morning, he he still wouldn't eat, he wouldn't move.

He he wasn't even interested in standing.

I couldn't even get him to stand up.

And his breathing was worse.

He was he's trying to get air in, and you could just tell it was something was just kind of blocking and suffocating.

And and so Chris and I looked at each other Thanksgiving morning, and we said, you know, it's over.

So I pick him up, the big old golden retriever, and I take him to the car and I drive him to the vet and carry him in.

And I was, you know, you're kind of hoping, well, maybe he'll maybe he'll walk in, you know, kind of proud light.

And he he couldn't even make it in.

I had to carry him all the way in.

And they give him one shot uh to make them sleepy, and the next shot to to put them down.

And it was just sweet, what a sweet dog.

I mean, this you know, you know, golden retrievers, right?

I mean, they're sweet as they can be.

I mean, just a sweet dog until the last breath, sweet as can be.

And and and at the same time, you know, I mean we have some great conversations, just some reading about whether animals are in heaven and all that, and R.C.

Spruel says they are.

If R.C.

Spruel says they're in heaven, they're probably in heaven, let's just be honest.

And so I'm going, all right, well, I'm gonna see him again.

And and also at the same time, sort of this growing hatred toward cancer.

Um, not just there's much worse scenarios than your dog dying of cancer, like children dying of cancer, people dying of cancer.

There's much worse scenarios, and just the frustration of it, the frustration of you, you know, if I can just be honest, you know, God, can you can you chip in a little in the lab and like help the scientist out to get a cure?

You know, I mean, that's just what I'm thinking, just in my like humanity and flesh.

I'm just kind of going, you know, just a little help, you know, just maybe you're helping, maybe God, maybe you're already helping, but let's just go ahead and just kind of like nudge it forward.

And let's just go ahead and get help us get that cure, help us get that breakthrough.

Um, and and just that frustration and the lack of knowledge of how God, how do you use, how do you use cancer in a child?

How do you use cancer in in somebody dying?

I mean, all of that, just a frustration.

I don't know all, I don't know all those answers, I don't understand all of that.

And what do you do with all of that?

I mean, our options are to reconstruct God, to adjust to that.

Well, I don't understand it, so therefore I'm just gonna reconstruct him.

Or maybe I'm just gonna react and not believe at all.

Or somehow you you you you you embrace the sovereignty of God over evil and over disease, that somehow he's using it for our good.

Maybe it humbles us, maybe, maybe it's somehow it's for our good, and that that he's redeeming it, and that everything that is sad will become untrue one day.

And that there's some belief in that, even though I don't understand all of that.

And there's an unknown and there's a frustration that that can be contained within the character of God, which we do know.

That he is good and he is sovereign.

And so all that frustration, all that unknown, all that mystery to some extent can be contained within what we do know, which is he's good, he's sovereign, there's something going on, even though I don't understand all of it.

See, if we strip God of everything that he is that makes him God, which is every a lot more than what we are, if we strip him of all of that, what's left to worship?

So let's talk about worship.

Three questions I think this passage hints toward.

Number one, just kind of, what's worship?

What is worship?

Number two, what is our motivation for worship?

And number three, what is our mode of worship?

What is worship?

Well, this morning my voice is sort of struggling.

I was at this little football game last night in Atlanta, and so we get there early with our red shirts on, um, and so we get to the Georgia, Georgia Tech game a little early, and we get our seats, and and right away you kind of look around, you know, visitor stadium, you look around to kind of get your bearings of like, where are my people?

Like, who are my people?

How close are we to each other?

And I have some we have some people down below, some people over here, and and some people behind.

And uh Georgia Tech, big big guy comes in, and right away he he gets down there and he looks around and and he says, Oh, I'm surrounded by some dog, and he uses some words that that I can't repeat here.

I wouldn't, I would never even say them.

But he uses these words and he's calling us some names.

He's fun, he's fun.

I mean, he's been having a good time earlier in the day.

Very clearly, he's been having an overly good time.

And so he is having a blast first quarter.

I don't know if you watch the guy, it's 10-nothing, oh, and he's just we're we're getting sad.

He's dancing, he's having a blast, he's hands raised, he's he's he's worshiping, is what's going on.

I mean, he's the hands are raised, praising the jackets.

We are depressed, we are mourning, we're just we're kind of camaraderie.

Hang in there, hang in there, hang in there, and then 20 to nothing, we're we're about to, you know, we're about to leave.

First quarter, he is having the time of his life, and he's rubbing it in.

He's high-fiving over our heads to the tech fans behind us here, just kind of taking it, you know.

And so then finally, into the first half, we get a score.

It's 20 to 7.

There's a little bit of hope, and then we come out in the second half, and and we get a score, and it's 20 to 10, and then it's 20 to 17, and he's he's getting quieter.

And the guy behind us, a buddy, a Georgia guy, I didn't know him, me and my brother-in-law, we became friends.

I don't know his name, but we were we were close, and we're getting more and more excited now.

We're we're hopping up and down, and we're getting excited, and and this guy, he's he's up and down the aisles, this Georgia guy, and he's up and down the aisles.

He is pumped.

And so eventually, tie game.

Georgia Tech has the ball, four minutes to get down the field to score.

They don't do it.

We go to overtime.

Georgia Tag fan, he's quiet.

He's quieted down, he's scared.

We're sort of excited because we thought we thought it was over, and so we're just we're this is extra for us.

I mean, we already we had already resigned ourselves, and so overtime, touchdown, touchdown, double overtime.

And we score a touchdown, Georgia Tag gets the ball.

They have, you know, to get it into the end zone, it's fourth down.

They got to get it last play of the game.

It is rowdy.

It was it was rowdy in there.

Tip ball, it's up in the air.

You see the Georgia Tech player at the back of the end zone, you're really scared, and another guy comes, another Georgia guy comes by, tips it, it hits the ground, and we're hugging.

I'm hugging people I don't know.

I'm I'm hugging, if they had red on, I'm we're hugging.

Like we're everybody's hugging each other.

Georgia Tech guy, poor.

He's not hugging anybody.

He's just leaving, you know, he's not running his mouth anymore.

Here's what's got my point.

A lot of fun is my point.

A lot of fun for Georgia Tech early on, a lot of fun for us later on, a lot of fun for everybody.

But there's some worship going on, right?

There's some legitimate worship.

I mean, there's there's some people in there, you know, I mean, we're literally singing at one point, glory, glory to old Georgia, right?

I mean, I mean, we are worshiping to some extent in that stadium because we are giving worth to something to deliver us from our lives we're not real happy with.

So therefore, I'm gonna show up to the sanctuary of 50,000 people, or if you're at the iron bowl, a hundred thousand people, and hope that this will deliver me from the wells I've been drinking from that don't satisfy me.

And in the end, you know what, these sanctuaries of 50,000, these sanctuaries of 100,000 people, it's just another well.

There's a lot of fun.

But it's just another well.

Worship is a response of giving worth to a being, an entity, a group, an organization, a product, a service, anything that we're giving worth to with the core of our identity and to with who we are.

Let's jump into verse 23 and 24.

Jesus keeps talking.

Yet a time is coming, has now come, when true worshipers, here's how we'll worship, we'll worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are a kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

So the lady says, her question is, hey, where are we going to worship?

That's what she wants to know.

And Jesus says, not the question.

Actually, that question is gonna get blown away.

There's not gonna be like some holy site you need to go to to worship.

You'll be able to worship wherever you are.

Jesus says, here's the question.

How how to worship?

That's the question that we need to think about here.

And this idea, this idea of spirit and in truth is complete sincerity.

Spirit, complete sincerity, and complete reality in spirit and in truth.

And our motivation, that's that question number two.

I said, what is worship?

What is our motivation for worship?

Our motivation for worship is not we should or we need to or we ought to, because that's not complete sincerity from the heart outward, a heart that's responding and giving worth.

I mean, look at this story.

The Jesus comes to the woman.

He seeks her out.

He speaks to her, he's speaking worth into her life.

And then he's saying, hey, drink of this well, and worship becomes a response back.

Our motivation for worship is the revealed person of God and Jesus.

That's our motivation for worship.

The deep well that Jesus is.

We see it the clearest on the cross.

The greatness of God, that God is just, he has dealt with sin, he has not overlooked it, and at the same time, he has extended his love to us.

He has taken our sin and he has given us his righteousness.

This is our motivation for worship.

Number three, what is our mode for worship?

Well, this is always a fun conversation because you have your thinkers and you have your feelers.

And what the feelers are thinking, right?

The feelers are thinking, well, we just need to love Jesus with our whole hearts, is what we need to do.

Like we need to, this is what we should be doing.

I mean, you know, I mean, all this studying and like the Greek and the Hebrew and the commentaries, all of that.

I'm not into that.

What I want to do is I want to sing, I want to pray, I want to raise my hand, I want to cry.

I want to cry a lot, and I want to hold hands with people.

I want to feel it.

And a feeler hears that Jesus rescues them and they respond and they cry and they're passionate.

And a thinker says, well, enough with that emotional stuff.

Let's just calm down, let's root in.

We just need some truth, is what a thinker says.

That's what we should be doing.

A thinker would hear, well, Jesus rescues me, and he says, Well, let me let me think about that.

I'm gonna go down to Emery Library and he studies and he looks into the Greek and the word usage, and he reads some good commentaries, and he's digging in.

He's listening to some sermons, he's writing it down.

And he comes back after two weeks of studying, he says, you know, I've looked at the imputation of God's righteousness to me.

And I agree that he does rescue us.

And the feeler says, Yeah, I know.

I'm two weeks ago, that's what I that's what I was responding to.

And the thinker's like, well, now I really know.

Here's the good news You don't have to be a moron to worship God.

And you also don't have to be a cold-hearted intellectual.

Worship should have intellectual depth, thinking, real thinking, not dismissing legitimate issues, but rooting in, studying, thinking, you know, getting at it, and at the same time have emotion and response.

These two go together.

Worship increases as our minds are informed by the word and are endeared by the Spirit.

This is the kind of worship that we want, but at the same time, we're wired a certain way.

I mean, some people are just emotional, and some people are just thinkers.

We don't have to set these two against each other.

And if you end up being a thinking person, you don't have to look at a person who's more emotional and say, oh, well, they're shallow.

They're not shallow, it's just how they're wired.

And if you're an emotional person, you want to hold hands, you want to cry a lot, you know, you don't have to look at the intellectual and say, oh, they're so emotional, they have no passion, they have no zeal.

No, they're just thinkers.

That's how they worship.

I just want to say, you know, as long as you're not a distraction to other people, you're free to worship here or how you want.

I mean, you look into the Bible, I mean, there's all sorts of postures of worship.

People are bowing.

People are laying down.

I mean, I'm not making this up.

That's not weird.

That's just Bible.

People are raising their hands.

People are reverent.

Contemplative.

People are dancing.

I just want to say, you know, you're wired a certain way.

Our hope, my hope for you would be that you would root into truth and that that would have an emotional response in you.

So what is our mode of worship?

I think the answer is yes.

What's our mode?

Yes.

So long as it's not a distraction to people, as long as it's biblical with the postures of worship in the Bible, yes.

Bow, lay down, stand reverently.

Raise your hands.

Dance.

Don't dance.

Right?

I mean, it's how you're wired to respond to the grace of God.

Verse 25 and 26.

The woman said, so Jesus is giving this little mini lecture about worship, worshiping, spirit and truth, complete sincerity, complete reality.

And the woman said, I know that Messiah called the Christ.

He's coming.

And when he comes, he's going to explain everything to us.

So I'm not sure if I got everything you just said, but there's a guy coming, but we've been hearing about him.

He's the Messiah.

He's the Christ.

When he comes, he's going to clear it all up and everything's going to be real clear.

And then Jesus declares to her, I who speak to you am He.

You imagine that moment for her?

He's saying, right, I'm, that's it.

That's what I'm doing right now.

I'm explaining it to you.

Here's the interesting thing about this story, this lady.

She's always worshiped.

This isn't the idea of worshiping, isn't new.

She's always worshiped.

Whether it was in the temple on the Samaritan Mountain or whether it was at the temple of relationships, she has always worshiped.

Because worship means worth, giving worth to something.

And we all give worth to something.

And worship is when we give worth to something with the core of our identity and who we are.

And we say, I give worth to that.

I will let my life give worth to that.

Not just singing my life, my obedience, my confession, my parenting, my career, my retirement, my studying, the way that I deal with people, the way I love people.

I will give worth to God.

So this story, I love this story because it's kind of the story.

And here's the story.

Our first word to God is you aren't worthy.

That's our first word to God.

It was our first word to God, Adam and Eve.

We said, God, you're not worthy.

I want something else.

I want the apple.

This lady says, you aren't worthy.

I want another well.

I want another relationship, another man.

And so that's our first word to God.

That's the human nature that is in us.

We are saying to him, you aren't worthy.

And he is saying to us in Jesus, you are worthy.

I mean, this is what's going on with Jesus in the story, him coming to this well, this lady.

He's coming to her and saying, I understand you're telling me that I'm not worthy, but what I'm saying to you is, I'm saying to you, you are worthy.

And then what that does is as she receives that, she turns and she says, it breaks her, it relieves her, and she turns and says, You are worthy.

And it's just like back and forth, like you know, that God is saying to us, you are worthy in Jesus, and then we are saying back to him, no, you are worthy.

And he's saying to us, you are worthy, and we're saying to him, you are worthy.

And it's just ongoing.

This is worship as response.

Tuesday morning I sat down and I like to walk.

I like to walk when I worship and pray.

If I sit down, I fall asleep.

Let's just be honest.

I'm just one of those people, and so I don't know your posture that works for you.

Walking works for me, but Tuesday morning it was raining because I couldn't walk.

And so I sit down in my study and I just put on some worship music.

And I think I discovered this somewhere in college, and this was a breakthrough, and this is gonna sound so ridiculous to so many of you, but I can distinctly remember maybe about my sophomore year of college where I realized I could worship by myself.

And I don't know if nobody had ever told me that, but like I didn't need a service.

I I could just buy my I could buy myself, I could put on a CD, I could, I could, I could hold back the bulletin and sing those songs.

I could do that, just me and God wherever I was at, right?

This is what this passage is talking about.

We don't have to go somewhere.

I I mean I could do, I can do that.

And I discovered that.

It was just a breakthrough of, oh my gosh, you know, the relationship that I could have with God.

So Tuesday morning I'm in my study and I put on some worship music just to kind of sit in the waterfall of God's grace, which I need to do every day because I'm always reverting back to trying to prove myself and prove my righteousness instead of receiving it.

And so I'm sitting in the waterfall of God's grace, and I'm really sad that my dog is dying, and I'm kind of really upset about that, and I'm just being reminded.

And this is what worship does for me, it just reminds me of so much.

God is great, He revives me.

I mean, that was the first song that I sang.

It was You Revive Me, to sing that and let it wash over me and to be reminded of it.

And then the second song was a song I love, 10,000 Reasons, Matt Redman's song, right?

I mean, this is this is worship, and it's not worship with us and Sunday morning, you've got to be at the holy place.

It's just on your own, you can do this.

And I'm just singing, the sun comes up, it's a new day dawning, it's time to sing your song again.

Whatever may pass, whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes.

You are rich in love.

To say this, to sing this, to be reminded of it, and you're slow to anger.

Your name is great, and your heart is kind.

For all your goodness, I will keep on singing 10,000 reasons for my heart to find.

And then to worship and to have that right to do that whatever you want.

To be able to do it in your car, in traffic.

Other people are you know flicking each other off and they're cussing, they're mad, they're cutting off, and just to be like, I'll just sit in this lane and I'm put on my worship CD, I'm good.

I will sing, I'm gonna have a good time.

You might get there 10 minutes later, it doesn't even matter.

To be able to do it in your living room or your bedroom or go for a walk.

Our hope is that we are a worshiping church in spirit and in truth.

Complete sincerity and complete reality.

Responding to his word to us.

And his word to us that we see in this story is this you may have had five husbands, and you may be on your sixth man.

But you are worthy.

And I love you.

And you may be drinking from all different wells, but there's a well I want to give it to you.

And if you drink of this, you will never thirst again.

Let's pray together.

God, we start by just confessing that we worship a lot of things.

But God, help us to really from the core of our being only worship you.

That we would give worth to you with every year of our life.

God, thank you that your word to us, even when we're saying to you you are you aren't worthy, thank you that your word to us is you are worthy, and that you're able to say that to us in your greatness and your glory, and justly because of Jesus on the cross has taken all of our sin and we are righteous before you.

God, would you increase our faith?

And would you help us to see the wells that we do run to and drink from, that will never satisfy, and would you help our hearts turn back to you?

And would we respond to this word of you are worthy, you are loved, would we respond back to you?

You are worthy, you are loved.

Thank you that while we turned from you and did not love you, that you loved us and came after us.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.