· Jesus left Judea and entered Samaria (Jn 4:3-4). The Jews believed worship took place in Jerusalem, and the Samaritans contended that it was at Gerizim.
· Jesus met with a man and then met with a woman.
· Jesus encountered Nicodemus at night and conversed with the woman at the well during the day.
· Jesus met with a person of good reputation and then met with a person of poor reputation.
· Both initially failed to see the spiritual truth behind the physical realm.
· In John chapter three we get the most well known verse of the entire Bible on God’s love in verse 16,
- The womb - Nicodemus was hung up on how to be physically born again when Jesus said you must be born again (Jn 3:3-4).
- The well - After Jesus informed her that whoever drinks from the water that He gives will never thirst, the woman wanted it to keep from returning to the well (Jn 4:13-14) .
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life;
in John chapter four we read of the famous passage on worship in verse 24,Let’s pick up reading at John 4:3
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must (of necessity, added along with emphasis) worship in spirit and truth.
He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. (4) But He needed to go through Samaria. (5) So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. (6) Now Jacob's well was there.
Before taking a closer look at what Jesus said concerning true, genuine, or authentic worship, it will enrich our understanding of worship that brings glory to God by first examining the cultural and historical context surrounding the woman at Jacob’s well.
The city of Sychar (Jn 4:5) is mentioned by name only here in the Bible. It earned its spot on a Bible map because Jacob’s well was located there but more importantly, because Jesus sat by that well according to John.
Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well (Jn 4:6, 12).
It is hard to imagine the Almighty God incarnate (clothed in flesh) being wearied having to sit down and rest a spell. Jesus identified with our humanity; He was physically thirsty (Jn 4:7) and hungry (Jn 4:8). To understand the hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans, we have to go back almost a millennia!
Upon the death of Solomon around 931 B.C., Israel split in half and became a divided monarchy. Why the division? Solomon turned away from God’s law according to 1 Kings 11:9-11,
So the LORD became angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned from the LORD God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, (10) and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not keep what the LORD had commanded. (11) Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, "Because you have done this, and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant.
Rehoboam reigned over the southern kingdom of Judah (1 Kgs 11:43); Jeroboam ruled the northern kingdom of Israel (cf. 1 Kgs 11:31-39). Rehoboam, Solomon’s unwise son and successor to the throne, created an avoidable rift that divided a nation (1 Kgs 12:1-16). Then he did another incredibly stupid thing by sending the taskmaster over forced labor up to the northern kingdom (1 Kgs 12:18-19, ESV),
Then King Rehoboam sent Adoram, who was taskmaster over the forced labor, and all Israel stoned him to death with stones. And King Rehoboam hurried to mount his chariot to flee to Jerusalem. (19) So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day. I guess Forest was right, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
For fear of the two kingdoms reuniting (1 Kgs 12:26), Jeroboam established sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan (1 Kgs 12:29) and placed a golden calf god in each temple (1 Kgs 12:28) to prevent his people from worshipping at the temple in Jerusalem of the Southern Kingdom. You know God wasn’t too pleased about that (cf. the time Aaron made a golden calf during the Exodus, Ex 32:2-4, 10).
Later on, a very wicked king by the name of Omri (1 Kgs 16:25-26) chose Samaria (1Kgs 16:24) for his royal residence and capital of the Northern Kingdom. He was, by the way, the father and role model for Ahab (1 Kgs 16:28-33) who was married to the most wicked woman in the Bible, Jezebel (1 Kgs 16:31; 21:25). The name Samaria eventually became synonymous with the Northern Kingdom.
Despite the repeated warnings by God’s prophets for Samaria to turn from their idolatrous practices and wickedness, Shalmaneser V, of the Assyrians, defeated the capital of the northern kingdom in 722 B.C. and carried them away into Assyria. (2 Kgs 17:5-6). 2 Kgs 18:12 tells why Israel fell to the Assyrians (This could very well serve as a warning to the Christians in the United States right now); Samaria disobeyed God’s Law – because they did not obey the voice of the LORD their God, but transgressed His covenant and all that Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded; and they would neither hear nor do them. (cf. 2 Kgs 17:7-23, emphasis added). I am not a doomsayer, but aren’t we guilty of the same thing, for these things were written for us (Rom 15:4; 1 Cor 10:5-11)!
Along with the Assyrian deportation strategy, Assyria injected into Israelite culture heathens from other conquered lands (2 Kgs 17:23ff) to intermarry with the remaining Samaritans, resulting in a nation of mongrels or half-breeds (cf. Ezra 9 and 10; Nehemiah 13) who had a penchant for heathen idolatry.
When the southern kingdom of Judah (the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin) were finally hauled off to Babylon in 586 B.C., they were allowed to retain their racial and religious identity unlike Samaria. Seventy years later the Jews in Babylon were allowed to return to the ruins of Jerusalem.
Not only was there a history of animosity between the Jews of the southern kingdom and the Samaritans of the northern kingdom, but the intermarrying with the heathen to a devout Jew was unthinkable.
To ratchet the tension between the two a little tighter, when the returning Jews of the exile rejected the help of the Samaritans to rebuild the temple destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon back in 586 B.C. (Ezra 4:2ff), the Samaritans did everything in their power to prevent the rebuilding of the temple.
Now the Samaritans torqued the religious tension to another level when they constructed a temple of their own on Mount Gerizim around 388 B.C. which was later destroyed by a ruler of Judea, a one John Hyrcanus, the Hasmonean, circa 128 B.C. (second century B.C. according to Josephus, a first century A.D. Jewish historian). Naturally, this furthered the gap between the Jews and the Samaritans.
It didn’t help the Samaritan’s cause, even though they professed a belief in the God of Israel and awaited for the coming of the Messiah (cf. Jn 4:25), by accepting their version of the first five books of the law (The Torah, also referred to as the Samaritan Pentateuch) and rejecting the other thirty-four books of the Old Testament! Their knowledge of God was deficient, lacking, incomplete, fragmented (cf. 2 Tim 3:15-17; 2 Pet 1:20-21). Keep this in mind when Jesus informed the woman at the well in John 4:24, God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (emphasis added). Divine revelation and worship are inseparably linked together.
When God's Word is tampered with, replaced, ignored or rejected, worship becomes vain, empty, purposeless, and of no value (cf. Deut 4:2; 12:32; Prov 30:6; Mt 15:6-9; Gal 1:8-9; Rev 22:18-19). Okay, don’t skip over these references, read the pop-ups! This is some serious stuff. When we turn away from the Truth (add, subtract, ignore, or reject), our worship becomes a mere religious act, vain, contemptible, and worthy of rebuke.
Like the Jews whenever the Samaritans wanted to accommodate or justify their religious point of view and actions, they simply modified the Law! The rabbinical interpretations of the Torah and Jewish traditions superseded the authority of God’s Word! Jesus accused the Jews of making the Word of God of no effect through their traditions (Mk 7:13, 9). Again, this is very serious charge leveled against the Jews by the Author of the Old Testament! “Reread” those verses of what will happen to those who adds to or takes away from the Scriptures for any reason.
From this we see the richness of the mandate for authentic worship to take place – in truth! Oh, how Jesus must have longed for such worship throughout the ages. There were those who worshipped in truth but many who did not, many who turned away from it. Perhaps we can detect the passion in His voice when he uttered John 4:23-24 by the statement found in verse 23, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. This is why Jesus was at Jacob’s well in Sychar, a city in Samaria! The woman at the well and the people in her village will discover the identity of the Man at Jacob's well (Jn 4:26; 14:6) that told her everything she did.
During the time of Christ the Jews still had disdain for the Samaritans. Jesus experienced the stinging remarks of the Jews that revealed their hatred of Jesus as well as the Samaritans in Jn 8:48, Then the Jews answered and said to Him, “Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?”
In Luke 9:51-56 we see the resentment of the Samaritans toward Jewish pilgrims. So this ancient feud between the Jews and the Samaritans was still alive and thriving during the time of Christ.
Remember that it all began around 931 B.C. after the death of Solomon who had turned away from obeying God (1 Kgs 11:11-13), providing a pattern for his son to follow and ultimately causing Israel to fracture into two separate kingdoms, north and south.
We know that John chapter four is about Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well; not only was she a Samaritan (a term found only once in the OT [2 Kgs 17:29]; 9 times in the NT), but she was a woman (duh)!
But did you know that women were often treated like second rate citizens in NT times. Even the woman at Jacob's well was puzzled and taken back by the fact that Jesus spoke to her, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans (Jn 4:9). Even though the writer John explained in the latter half of the verse, the woman at the well said it all in a nutshell, a Samaritan woman. Normally, Jewish men would not speak to women in public, even if this included his mother, sister, wife, or daughter! Jesus not only spoke to a Samaritan but also to a woman in broad daylight at a public place! The truth is for all - for God so loved the world....
The Old Testament, however, ascribed great dignity to womanhood (cf. Prov 31:10-31, particularly verse 10, Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies). You can see how the Scriptures were being twisted by Jewish paganism by the time of Christ. This is just one example of where a virtuous woman went from priceless at home to worthless in public; Jesus broke through the barriers of national prejudice and gender bias speaking to this woman of questionable reputation. This explained why Jesus needed to go through Samaria (Jn 4:4), to seek and to save, yes, even Samaritans (cf. Acts 1:8)!
Postscript:
Solomon turned away from the truth; his magnificent kingdom was torn in two not long after his death in 931 B.C. The Samaritans refused to hear and do God’s law and after a three year siege in Samaria, the northern kingdom fell (722 B.C.), and the Assyrians hauled them off to Assyria. In 586 B.C. the Babylonian made a final assault on Jerusalem; the southern kingdom was carted off to Babylon for the same thing – turning away from the truth of God’s law.
And now in 2010 we see evangelical Christians turning away from the truth of God’s Word in the United States. Historically, refusing to hear and to obey God’s law incurs judgment. This means that if we are guilty of the same thing then either judgment is pending or we are at the genesis of judgment. When we turn away from the Truth (add, subtract, ignore, or reject), our worship becomes a mere religious act, vain, contemptible, and worthy of rebuke.
When there is a turning away from the truth, there is in essence no fear of God in the eyes of man. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10). So our brand of worship may prove to be very unwise and useless, unless we are worshipping in spirit and truth.
Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the LORD and depart from evil (Prov 3:7).
The fear of the LORD leads to life, And he who has it will abide in satisfaction; He will not be visited with evil (Prov 19:23).
You want to know the irony here, Solomon wrote these proverbs…. Yep, the very man caught in the landslide of sin. If we don’t repent and walk in His ways daily, we will be visited with evil. Solomon finally figured this out but a little too late; we must (of necessity) never stop applying God’s Word to life,
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, For this is man's all. For God will bring every work into judgment, Including every secret thing, Whether good or evil (Eccl 12:13-14), including our worship…. It may be, like Solomon, a little too late. Nobody knows. Pray to God that there is still time for a turnaround! It really looks as if we are in the throes of judgment. If my people... (2 Chr 7:14).
For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: "I dwell in the high and holy place, With him who has a contrite and humble spirit, To revive the spirit of the humble, And to revive the heart of the contrite ones (Isa 57:15).
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (Jn 4:24).
The next time we meet, God willing, we will be in Genesis 4 and John 4 as we continue our discussion on authentic worship, part 3.
