Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
We recently used this passage as our call to worship and what a beautiful passage it is. This is where Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman and they have a great discussion concerning the temporal and the eternal. During this encounter Jesus explains, reveals and demonstrates. He shares that as Scotty Smith describes; “The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. The living water of grace is sweet only to those who know the bitter taste of their sin.”
So when we truly recognize our desperate condition, our need of saving we can then and only then realize that Jesus alone is our only hope. And once we do get it, once we do accept this; it is then that we taste the true, eternal and living water. As we taste, as we are rescued, as we are saved, as we are born again, it seems to me that the reaction should be an eruption of worship.
Again there is instruction here. Jesus tells us that worship matters, but it is not a matter of where we worship, or worship is not a matter of our position in the world, but it is the what (God) and the how (in spirit and truth) that are important. As with this woman from Samaria it is so tough for us to recognize that it is Jesus that should be central in our worship, not the music, not the preacher, not what we like, but Jesus and his amazing grace.
At the end of this passage, Jesus adds the exclamation point to our worship. Jesus rightly reminds us, instills in us the object and nature of our worship. Jesus says to us all; “I who speak to you am he.”
Grace and Peace!
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