Worship in Spirit

Jesus revealed the proper form and location for worshipping the Father to a woman in Samaria. With the advent of the Messiah, concepts and traditions about holy space and holy time have become irrelevant. The presence of the Messiah rendered the historical debate over the location of the Temple moot. From now on, the worship of God must be performed in truth and spirit.

Even at this early stage in his ministry, Jesus experienced opposition from the Temple authorities, which could be why he left Judea for Galilee. The most direct route to Galilee was through Samaria, a region Jews who were scrupulous about ritual purity avoided by taking a more circuitous route - (John 4:1-3).

[Photo by Aliane Schwartzhaupt on Unsplash]

• (John 4:20-22) – “Our fathers in this mountain worshiped, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where we must worship. Jesus says to her: Believe me, woman! There is coming an hour when neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father. You worship that which you know not. We worship that which we know because salvation is of the Jews.”

He encountered the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and asked her for water. This surprised her since devout Jews avoided contact with Samaritans, and it was socially awkward for a Jewish male to communicate with an unrelated and unaccompanied female. But he answered her - “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is speaking to you, you would ask, and he would give you living water.”

The woman assumed he meant water and asked how he could draw from the well without a vessel. She asked him, “Are you greater than Jacob who gave us the well?” Jesus responded again - “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. Whosoever drinks of the water I will give will never thirst; in him, it will become a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.”

The woman instinctively asked for this “living water,” but Jesus told her to “summon your husband.” She claimed to have no husband, but he retorted - “You have had five husbands and he whom you now have is not your husband; you have spoken truly.”

The woman perceived that he was a prophet and asked about the old dispute between the Jews and Samaritans - “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place necessary to worship!”

The Samaritans also worshipped the God of Israel. Unlike the Jews, they recognized only the five books of Moses as inspired Scripture, and they disagreed with them about the proper location for the Temple of Yahweh.

THE PLACE OF WORSHIP

Moses directed Israel to worship at the place Yahweh would designate, but he did not specify where that was. Because the Jews accepted the rest of the Old Testament, they assumed the correct site was Jerusalem based on numerous passages from the later books of the Hebrew Bible.

The Samaritans argued in favor of Mount Gerizim in Samaria, and they pointed for scriptural authorization to the Book of Genesis where God promised to give Shechem, the city of Samaria, to Abraham and his “seed” – (Genesis 12:6-7, 1 Kings 12:25).

However, Jesus responded with a most unexpected declaration:

• “There is coming an hour when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father… when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for even such as these is the Father seeking as his worshipers. God is spirit; they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth” - (John 4:23-24).

He did not attempt to resolve the old festering dispute. Instead, he described the new order of worship in which questions about holy sites and times were (and remain) pointless. His words indicated the obsolescence of the old Temple and religious concerns concerning holy space.

Rather than the dried-up worship rituals in man-made structures and regulations, Jesus offered his followers an endless supply of “living waters.” What mattered was not where God’s people worshipped Him, BUT HOW they did so - (“An hour is coming and now is”).

The people of God must worship him as Father through Spirit and Truth. Likewise, the division between the Jews and Samaritans had reached its termination point.

The declaration that the time “now is” meant the old order was passing away in the life and ministry of Jesus. As elsewhere in John’s gospel, the term “hour” refers to his death, the “hour” of his “glorification.” He was ushering in a new era where external rituals would be replaced by spiritual worship - (John 7:37-39).

[Photo by Sonder Quest on Unsplash]

With his Death and Resurrection, traditional regulations based on space and time became irrelevant. The presence of Yahweh cannot be limited to buildings, geographic locations, or specific “seasons” of the year. Jesus is the true Temple where God is worshipped and His presence dwells.

The “Son of Man,” the “Word made flesh,” is the true tabernacle in which the glory of God is manifested, and he is the means of access between Heaven and Earth, and the true Temple raised up by God “after three days” - (John 1:14, 1:47-51, 2:17-22).

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RELATED POSTS:

• The Greater Tabernacle - (Jesus is the True and Greater Tabernacle in whom the presence and glory of God reside and manifest for all men to behold – John 1:14)

• Where God Dwells - (The New Testament applies Temple language from the Hebrew Bible to the Church, the Body of Christ, the greater and true Sanctuary of God)

• One Spirit, One People - (By his death, Jesus formed one covenant community - One New Man - based on faith in him, not ethnicity or nationality – Ephesians 2:11-22)