What Is True Worship?
“God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” John 4:24
Jesus met a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well one day. His disciples had gone into the nearby city to buy some food. Jesus was weary and sat down beside the well, and the woman from Samaria came to draw water. Samaria was the northern part of Israel that many years prior had been taken captive by the Assyrians. Some of the Jews had intermarried with Assyrians and other Gentiles, and thus were no longer considered fully Jewish. This initiated prejudice among the Jews toward their Samaritan brothers and sisters, and they did not associate with one another. (Prejudice has been around for a long time.)
Jesus asked her for a drink of water, and she was surprised that a Jew would actually speak to her. Jesus began to tell her about the Living Water that would quench her spiritual thirst. He also began to tell her all about herself and her less-than-righteous lifestyle. She had been married five times and was now living with a man to whom she was not married. As an editorial comment, I suppose since five marriages didn’t work out, she decided to skip the ceremony. However, her choices in life show that she was not a happy nor contented soul. Her search for love and acceptance had been futile so far, because, as the song says, “She was looking for love in all the wrong places.”
The woman perceived that Jesus was a prophet because he knew so much about her. She brought up the subject of worship, attempting to change the subject from her sinful lifestyle. The Samaritans worshipped in the mountains, obviously because they were not welcome in Jerusalem, but she had always heard that Jerusalem was the proper place to worship. Jesus pointed out to her that the place is not what’s important, but the object of worship, the Lord, is what is necessary. Her worship had been that of an outward show of reverence for God, who, to the Samaritans was not close and personal. Jesus wanted her to know that true worshippers worship God in spirit and truth–deep down internally from the heart–and not just with a head knowledge. The Samaritan woman understood that God would send a Messiah, but she didn’t realize that she could have a personal relationship with Him.
Jesus revealed His true identity to her and she believed Him to be the Christ. She was so excited, she dropped her water buckets and ran back to town to tell everyone that she had met Christ the Messiah. She had finally discovered the real love and acceptance that she had been searching for all of her life. Because of the woman’s testimony, many of the Samaritans sought Christ out and heard His words of hope and forgiveness, resulting in many of them making the same decision to repent and believe in Christ that the Samaritan woman did. Many lives were changed that day, and worship became a personal and healing experience for those who left their heavy and burdensome “water buckets” of sin and became followers of Christ. They would now know what it meant to worship God in spirit and truth.