1/28/07 Worlds In Collision Pt. 4

JOH 4:21, 23-24 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

We didn’t have time to dig too deeply into this passage last week,

because we focused mostly on what was happening

in the life of the woman to whom Jesus spoke those words.

So before we continue on with our study of this 4^th chapter of John’s Gospel

I want to share just a few more observations

about what our Lord is saying here.

If you haven’t been with us for the past few weeks

it will help if I take a few minutes

to offer a few words of background.

Nearly the entire 4^th chapter of the Gospel of John

is given to the account of an incident that took place

as Jesus traveled from the south of Israel

back to His home base around the Sea of Galilee in the North.

This particular trip took Him and His disciples

through a region of Samaria,

a region populated by the Samaritans -

the ancestors of Jews who, generations before,

had intermarried with the pagan inhabitants of the Land.

They were a group of people

who were deeply despised by the Jews,

viewed as corrupted traitors to their Jewish heritage.

The Jews avoided contact with the Samaritans whenever they could,

and certainly never reached out to them for friendship or reconciliation.

As this account in John chapter 4 begins

John tells us that when Jesus and His men reached this well

Jesus sat beside it to rest

and the disciples headed into town to find food.

And as Jesus sat there,

a woman came out to the well to draw water

and the conversation that took place between the two of them

literally altered the course of her life forever.

We have seen how Jesus began the conversation

first by asking her for a drink,

and then by offering her what He called “living water”,

a water that, once drunk, would result in the person never thirsting again,

JOH 4:14 “...a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

And as we’ve seen,

Jesus was starting with something this woman understood well,

in this case water,

and then using that water as an illustration of Himself.

He was telling her that,

just as her body thirsted for water,

so her spirit thirsted for her God,

and that through Him she could enter into a union with her Creator

in which her spirit would never thirst again.

As we’ve moved through this passage

we then saw the way in which Jesus did what this woman feared the most

and yet at the same time needed the most.

He brought out into the light

the greatest failures of her life,

and yet He did it in a way

that did not condemn,

did not shame,

did not crush her,

but rather in a way that allowed her to discover

that her God loved her,

and called to her,

and accepted her in the face of those failures.

Welcome to the redemption of our God.

It’s a fine process when we see it in others,

as with this woman at the well.

But it gets a little

or more often a lot terrifying

when we see it in our own lives.

It’s because of the failure thing, of course.

It breaks the most fundamental rules of human interaction.

We really do want those we come in contact with

to think well of us,

or at the very least to be impressed with us in some way.

Which means, of course,

that we must heavily edit

what we allow them to see of us.

And we automatically bring the same standard operating procedure

into our interaction with our Creator.

Surly we will be able to relax more with Him

if we keep focused on the good stuff in our life,

the stuff we’ve done well,

the successes we can bring to Him.

And yet...

and yet in truth it works exactly the opposite.

Because it turns out

that the only way we can ever find real peace with our God,

deep, enduring, inalterable peace,

is when we see His response to us

in the face of the worst stuff in our lives.

ROM 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

That’s the only way we’ll ever get it,

when we can hear His love for us

when there is no external reason why He should.

And last week we watched

as Jesus pushed this woman’s failures right out into the light,

and then forced her to realize

that it was in the face of those failures

that He made her His offer of living water.

Now, in the course of this exchange between the two of them

there was a point at which we saw this woman run for cover behind a blanket of religion.

She offered Jesus a roaring debate

concerning where the correct place to worship might be.

And Jesus did a fascinating thing.

Typically we would have expected Him

to avoid the question altogether

and to bring her directly back to the life issues that affected her most.

And He did bring her back to those issues,

but not before He first made a few comments

about that whole worship thing.

And He did that, I think,

because there was some crucial knowledge He wanted her,

and through her, all of us to have

about a profound change that would soon take place in our relationship with God

as a result of what He would accomplish for us through the crucifixion and resurrection.

We saw last week that the question this woman asked the Lord

was one driven by a desire to hide from some very painful issues

behind the fog of religion.

But the question itself

was one that goes to the very heart

of man’s desire to find God.

What she said was,

JOH 4:20 "Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."

Now, the significance of the question she was asking

is lost on us to a great degree

because of the cultural differences between this woman and us today,

but the heart of the issue has not changed.

What she’s really asking

is where can a person go to meet God?

Where can we go to find Him?

Where on this earth can we go

in order to enter into His presence?

Building upon the detailed instructions outlined by God Himself in the Old Testament,

the Jews understood God’s dwelling place on this earth

to be within the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem.

It was only in that Temple

that an acceptable blood sacrifice could be offered.

It was there that the first century Jews believed

they could find the presence of God

in a unique and powerful way.

The Samaritans, on the other hand,

apparently had a history of religious traditions

that told them there were certain holy or sacred places in their region,

places at which they could access God in a unique way,

places where they could come into the presence of God.

But if the conversation between Jesus and this woman

would have taken place today,

in our culture,

do you know what this woman would have asked Jesus?

Let’s bring it real close to home.

Let’s have this conversation take place right here in our home town.

If it would have,

this woman would have said,

“Sir, we have more than a 150 churches right here in our area,

and they’re all saying that they have the truth,

and that they can show me the correct path to God.

So what do you think?

Which really is the right church?”

Now, it’s true that the woman’s question was motivated

by a desire to avoid facing some hard personal issues in her life,

and we looked at that last week.

But it is also true

that Jesus recognized that the question itself

was one that very much needed to be answered.

And so, rather than bypassing it altogether

and dealing directly with the personal issues in this woman’s life,

He first gave her exactly the answer she’d asked for.

He begins first by preparing her

for the most radical change

ever to enter into man’s relationship with God.

He says,

JOH 4:21 “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father.”

And what He’s saying

is that changes are coming

that will force the human race

to radically alter the very foundations of man’s relationship with God.

Up to this point

people thought in terms of holy places on the earth,

places to which they would go

in order to enter into the presence of God,

or to gain access to Him.

But Jesus tells this woman

that something is in the process of taking place

that will alter that forever.

And just so we don’t miss the power of what He’s saying,

let me point out that things really have not changed in people’s thinking even today.

Even in our culture,

with our so called “Christian” heritage,

people still talk about church buildings as being “God’s house”,

and they still think in terms of going to church in order to meet God.

Though folks rarely put it into these words,

they still have this feeling that there is this special presence of God

that can be found only in a church building.

And when we go to church

we are gathering in His presence in a unique way.

Such thinking is deeply imbedded in our natural religious nature,

and to tell you the truth,

I think we like such concepts most of all

not because they help us to know how to find God,

but rather because they give us the illusion that we can avoid Him.

As long as we hang onto the idea that God is “in church”,

we can also hang onto the idea that as long as we avoid church we can avoid Him.

Maybe He won’t even notice us

because His attention is all tied up

with all those people who are doing the church thing.

And if we’re making some life choices

that we think He may not like real well

the idea that we can avoid Him is rather a comforting thought.

Do you remember that scene from Home Alone

when the two bad guys were chasing the little boy

and the boy ran into a church yard to escape?

When the crooks saw where he’d gone

one of them said to the other,

“I’m not going in there! Are you going in there? I’m not going in there!”,

or something close to that.

And there’s something within all of us

that understands what they were saying.

That’s where GOD is! There’s no way I’m going in there.

But in Jesus’ response to this woman

He makes it clear that all such thinking

is just games we’re playing with ourselves and with our God.

With His next statement

He does confirm that throughout history

there has been a special work God has been accomplishing with the Jewish people,

a work through which God brought the offer of salvation to the human race.

JOH 4:22 "You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

But then He goes on to give her the answer to her question,

and the answer to everyone who has ever asked themselves

which really is the “right” church.

JOH 4:23-24 "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

And what in the world does that mean?

OK, this will only make sense

if we keep Jesus’ response

in the direct context in which it was given.

Do you remember the question the woman asked?

She asked where we could go in order to find God?

Where is the true dwelling place of God on this earth?

Is it in Jerusalem?

Is it in this mountain?

And He responds by telling her

that from now on

the true dwelling place of God on this earth

will be within the our spirits.

He’s not just telling us

that true worship must involve our spirits,

He’s telling us that through Christ

God is creating an entirely new relationship between us and Himself,

a relationship in which His Spirit

literally takes up residence,

dwells within our spirits.

Where is God?

Where do we go to find Him?

Through Christ we no longer have to try to go to God

because God has chosen to come to us,

and to enter our spirits,

and to make our spirits, our hearts His home.

Paul says simply,

GAL 4:6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts...

Anticipating what God was going to do through Christ,

quoting God, the Old Testament prophet put it this way.

HEB 8:10-11 "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel After those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their minds, And I will write them upon their hearts. And I will be their God, And they shall be My people. And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, And everyone his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' For all shall know Me, From the least to the greatest of them.”

All throughout the Epistles

we find the writers trying to express to us

what happens between us and God when we come to Him through Christ.

To the Colossians Paul talked simply about, COL 1:27 ...Christ in you, the hope of glory.

And when he wrote his letter to the Romans,

in the 7^th chapter of that letter

he tells us that it’s like a marriage ceremony has taken place between our spirit and the Spirit of Christ.

ROM 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit for God.

And what possible difference does any of this make?

I mean, so what?

So through Christ God now joins His Spirit with our spirit

and all true worship,

and all discovery of truth

now comes from that inner spirit union with Him,

from the inside out.

What I share with you now

will only make sense

if I preface it with a few words of explanation.

If you were to ask most people

what they considered to be Satan’s greatest achievements on this earth

I think most people would look at the obvious evils around us -

hatred,

bigotry,

physical or sexual abuse of children,

those types of evil.

And certainly they are hideous,

and tragic to the extreme.

But there is an even greater accomplishment of Satan here on this earth,

one that is potentially far more destructive

to a person’s discovery of the truth about God

than all the overt acts of evil ever committed.

It is the skill with which he has blinded us to the truth Jesus gives us in this passage

and perpetuated within the thinking of the human race

the belief that our access to God can and in fact must come through religion.

When Jesus said, "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.”,

He was revolutionizing the very heart of all that we naturally assume about us and God.

He was telling us that rather than religious form standing in judgment over us,

we now stand in judgement over all forms of religion.

When He said, “such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers”,

He was telling us that what God wants,

what He has been seeking from the very beginning

is not our willingness to conform to some preestablished religious form,

but rather our willingness to join ourselves to Him,

personally, individually, at the spirit level,

and then trust Him to communicate Himself to us one day, one step at a time.

This is what He was talking about

when earlier in this conversation with the Samaritan woman

He promised her ...a well of water springing up in us to eternal life.

He was attempting to create a mental picture

of a relationship with God

in which His presence within us

literally pours out, flows out into every aspect of our lives.

If you were here last week

you may remember that I began our time together

by telling you that I have two specific goals

that I bring with me to every teaching opportunity I have.

The first is that what I do in my teaching will not be something you’ll have to recover from.

That will only make sense to you

if you’ve been involved with church experiences

from which you had to recover.

Typically that happens in religious environments

in which the goal is to insure the success of the church organization

and the members are viewed primarily as tools to be used for that end.

And the second goal I mentioned

is that I will be able to bring out into the open and put into words

something that God has already been saying to your spirit.

When that happens

it will have tremendous power in your life

because it allows you to trust

that communication that has been taking place between you and God at the spirit level.

And what sort of things is His Spirit saying to your spirit?

Well, of course there is no way I could know the specifics of that communication,

but I do know the broad outline.

I certainly know what’s at the top of the list.

Paul says simply,

ROM 5:5 ... the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

With everything He says,

and every communication He seeks to bring about between us and Himself

there is the underlying message, “I love you! I love you! I love you!”

And everything else His Spirit is seeking to say to us

grows out of that one huge underlying truth.

And it is both the most difficult truth

and the most life-changing truth we can learn.

But my point with all of this is twofold.

First, I want you to understand

that what God has been seeking with each of us from the very beginning

is the simple yet utterly life-altering union between His Spirit and our spirit.

He’s not trying to get us to figure out which is the “right” church.

He’s not trying to get us to pledge allegiance to the “right” group.

What He wants,

what He’s always wanted is just us,

each of us united with Him at the spirit level.

And all He asks from us in order for that to happen

is our willingness to place our lives into His hands,

just as we are,

believing that He really will take us just as we are.

And then, second,

I want very much for you to begin trusting Him and His voice within your Spirit.

Learning what He’s saying is sometimes hard stuff

because it’s all knew,

and often so different from what we expect Him to say.

But entering into that learning/trusting process

is at the very heart of all He is seeking for us as His children.

JOH 4:23 "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.