The Weekly Diner

Dear Weekly Readers! 

We pray you are having a blessed week!  Please enjoy this article written by Pastor Ron Holmgren.

 

Spirit and Truth

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship
him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24)

THROUGHOUT THE AGES MAN HAS performed acts of worship. He has built temples and altars to his god or gods. He has offered sacrifices and tried to worship correctly. It is no different today. All around the world there are acts of worship being performed at all hours of the day.

Jesus is in conversation with a Samaritan woman in the text we have before us. She was not like Him or "His people" in her acts of worship. She challenged Him with the history of her people and His and where they worshiped. So the two places were to be examined as to which was the correct one for worship. Jesus tells her plainly,

Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. (John 4:22)

There was no question as to who was correct when it came to the challenge set before Him. The Jew! The ones who had the promises and the temple and the altar, etc.

 

But now Jesus turns her thoughts away from the past and points to a future that was to come and was in fact dawning now in Him. Things were to change dramatically, and in the coming time worship would take on a completely different form. The temple would be destroyed and Jew would worship alongside Gentile as one. They would worship the Father in the same way even though the outward acts might look different.

T HE TRUE WORSHIP Jesus was talking about was, in fact, the same as it had always been. Although the Jews had all the things outwardly correct, it was not enough. They would only truly worship if they did so "in spirit and truth."

The two nouns are joined and cannot stand alone. Spirit and truth! There is such a thing as genuine worship and it centers in the one who worships in spirit. As Paul writes in Romans 1:9: For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son… And also he tells us in the 8^th chapter, verse 14: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. So we do worship in spirit!

But that is not to be the only thing we look for in our worship, for to do so is to be deceived. And so Jesus says worship in spirit and truth! We should not try to explain this away as some special kind of revelation beyond the limits of our minds. Jesus is speaking to an ordinary woman. And she would receive His words in the plainest way. It is simple truth as the Word (the Bible) presents it. The great chapter in Corinthians about love confirms this when it says that charity rejoices in the truth! (1 Corinthians 13:6)

If we are not in spirit our worship becomes formalism and ritual. And likewise, without the truth of the doctrine of our Lord, our worship becomes an abomination of our own fanciful imaginations. God protect us from this and lead us in the way of righteousness for His name's sake. ~