Are You Thirsty? - The Dry Soul
- Paul Downie
- Apr 2
- 12 min read
John 4:19-26 NIVUK
[19] ‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘I can see that you are a prophet. [20] Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.’ [21] ‘Woman,’ Jesus replied, ‘believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. [22] You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. [23] Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. [24] God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.’ [25] The woman said, ‘I know that Messiah’ (called Christ) ‘is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.’ [26] Then Jesus declared, ‘I, the one speaking to you – I am he.’
Have you ever had a conversation where someone started talking about something deeply uncomfortable?
I come from a nation where frankness and straight-talking – almost to the point of being offensive – used to be quite normal, and things were said in jest that would not be accepted if they were said seriously.
But nothing quite prepared me for my in-laws’ culture.
They are Filipinos – a culture governed by respect. They are the most polite, most friendly culture I have ever experienced in my life.
But behind the scenes, once they get to know you and you them, no subject is off limits and filters are non-existent. I've heard topics of conversation discussed at mealtimes that embarrassed me – and I am not easily embarrassed.
I won’t repeat them here. I might embarrass you.
At this stage in Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman, He has touched a very raw nerve, albeit sensitively: he has talked about her tangled love life. And it has thoroughly unnerved the Samaritan woman, despite His sensitivity.
So what does she do?
What any of us would do: she changes the subject. She switches it to one which is less sensitive to her, but one that is a real bone of contention between the Jews and the Samaritans: that of worship.
It is said that there are three topics you should never bring up in conversation in the UK: football, politics and religion. Evidently they didn’t have this prohibition in Sychar.
Maybe because football hadn’t been invented yet.
So in this post, we will discuss the highly contentious subject of religion and worship.
Which, for some of us, might be considerably less sensitive than our last post. At least, that’s what the Samaritan woman might have thought.
There are three areas of contention here which, although thousands of years have passed, are still pretty contentious today.
The first of these is The Place of Worship.
The Place of Worship
John 4:19-20 NIVUK
[19] ‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘I can see that you are a prophet. [20] Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.’
Where we should worship has always been a huge question. I have spent time with people who insist that they have to do it in a grand church or cathedral, and who look down on those who worship in houses or newer churches.
I have met those who feel they worship God best in nature: in woods or forests or on mountain tops. They feel restricted by church buildings, and constricted by the fake worship they perceive to be happening inside them.
Sometimes we tie ourselves in knots over theologically incorrect discussions on where we should worship and whether or not a place is sacred. All sorts of rites and rituals have sprung up to designate certain places as sacred and special. In fact, a veritable cottage industry has sprung up of people who will come to a building or a space and pray a blessing upon it.
In Jesus’ day, however, the debate had a much harder edge. The arguments between the Samaritan temple on Mount Gherizim and the Jewish Temple on Mount Zion were not just about religion, they were also about nationality, history and identity. There was far more ill-feeling between the two nations than just on whether or not one place was more sacred than another.
The issue had very much become political.
The problems really began after the Exile, when the Jews returned to rebuild Jerusalem. Led by Ezra, they rejected help from the predecessors of the Samaritans (Ezra 4). The reason was simple: they knew that the request was not at all sincere. The occupants of Samaria were a syncretistic bunch, worshipping pagan gods as well as the One True God (2 Kings 17:24-41). The Temple was to be a sacred place. It could not be polluted with idolatry.
The result that the early Samaritans successfully spun the rebuilding of the Temple as being a seditious act and stymied it – for years (Ezra 4:6-24).
You can imagine how the Jews felt about that.
And that ill-feeling remained for a very long time.
So when the Temple was eventually rebuilt, without any assistance from the Samaritans, they promptly built their own Temple and worshipped there, in their own way.
You can imagine, then, just how deeply contentious this woman’s question was. If she was aiming to distract Jesus from his x-ray like vision into her messy love life, this was certainly a good way to so it.
But Jesus wasn’t fooled. Because the answer He came up with was just as gently challenging for her as His view of her love life. And in all these years, it hasn’t lost its edge, because we move on to the place of worship to Proper Worship.
Proper Worship
John 4:21-24 NIVUK
[21] ‘Woman,’ Jesus replied, ‘believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. [22] You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. [23] Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. [24] God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.’
The idea of what constitutes ‘proper’ worship has caused so many useless arguments over the years. The most useless I have ever seen was when members of one church wanted to stop using a certain hymnbook because it didn’t have the British National Anthem in it which, ironically, they never sung...
If we try to define ‘proper worship’ by what we see in the Bible, in terms of styles of worship, then we run into a dead end., because the reality is that no church worships as they did in the First Century. Even if we do it in terms of where we worship, we still don’t get it right, because none of us go to the Temple to do it.
Because we can't. It hasn't existed for centuries.
Jesus defined proper worship in a way that was so radically different and new that His fellow Jews would have baulked at it for sure. Because He saw worship as something that is not confined to a building, a style, a method or a ritual.
He saw worship as being in Spirit and in truth.
What did He mean?
Jesus earlier said this to Nicodemus:
John 3:5 NIVUK
[5] Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no-one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
In other words, we must be born again of water (likely referring to baptism) and the Holy Spirit (likely referring to the indwelling that happens when we decide to follow Jesus) if we are to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Natural, genetic birth is not enough.
True spiritual worship only begins when we are born again, not before.
But the worship God requires is not just in spirit, it is also in truth. Often worship is treated like we treat those online terms and conditions that we don’t read, tick to say we agree with and hope no-one will ever hold us to account for. We sing the words, we might even sing them well, but we don’t really mean them. It’s just an act. It’s just a performance. We don’t want God to actually hold us to what we are singing, because if He ever did, then our lives would have to change – quite radically.
That is not worshipping in truth. That is acting.
That is hypocrisy.
Worshipping in truth isn’t singing or dancing or raising your hands because you like the music. That’s what people at rock concerts do.
Neither is it singing because the praise band is ‘singing your truth’. That’s what people at a Taylor Swift concert do.
No, worship in truth is when you sing the words because you mean them, because they are what you believe and know to be true, and because you are committing yourself to doing them. The style of music or the age of the hymn or even who wrote it are nothing. They are meaningless. Utterly irrelevant.
True worship is when you mean it and will do it.
As Paul said in his famous passage on worship in 1 Corinthians 14:
1 Corinthians 14:15 NIVUK
[15] So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my understanding; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding.
True worship is not carrying out the motions and hoping God will bless you regardless.
He might not.
Isaiah 29:13 NIVUK
[13] The Lord says: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
Hebrews 12:28-29 NIVUK
[28] Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, [29] for our ‘God is a consuming fire.’
True worship sings what it means and means what it sings.
True worship is sincere worship.
I have sat in churches riddled with problems and heard their choirs produce a wonderful, melodic sound. But it was all insincere.
On other hand, I've been in churches where the singing was so loud and out of tune that it almost made my ears bleed, but the sincerity was overwhelming.
I know where I’d rather be.
I’d rather put up with the ear bleed.
Because true spiritual worship is worship that is sincere from people who are spiritually attuned to God, and it is a special, special thing.
Regardless of whether the song being sung was written centuries ago or five minutes ago, because that does not matter.
All that matters is whether it is in spirit and truth.
Well, there is one more thing that matters. Apart from the place of worship and proper worship, we also see the Person to Worship.
Person to Worship
John 4:25-26 NIVUK
[25] The woman said, ‘I know that Messiah’ (called Christ) ‘is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.’ [26] Then Jesus declared, ‘I, the one speaking to you – I am he.’
It is possible to be in the ‘right’ place but not be worshipping God. Being in church no more makes you a Christian than being in a fast food restaurant makes you a hamburger.
It is also possible to be doing the right things, and even being sincere in them, but still not be worshipping God. You can be performing all the correct rituals and rights and not giving God the glory. That is all too easy to do.
But here, in these verses, Jesus makes a stunning admission that it just wasn’t safe for him to do in Judea:
He admitted that He was the Messiah.
If He'd done that in Judea, chaos would have resulted. Look what happened in John 10:31-39. The Jewish leaders simply could not accept any possible admission that Jesus was the Messiah, even if He was.
When Peter confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus told His disciples to keep it quiet (Matthew 16:17-20).
But in Samaria?
No problem!
For us nowadays, the title of Messiah has largely been emptied of its original impact. We recognise that it means some form of Saviour. However, in Jesus’ day it would have meant so much more.
The Promised Land that the Jews believed was their sacred property had effectively been annexed by the Romans, a pagan people with little regard for them, their laws or their religion. The Jews were being taxed to pay for this occupation. Their legal system had been subsumed: there were certain laws that the Jews could no longer enact. They were forced to submit themselves to Caesar in order to have a relatively comfortable existence.
They had little power. They were no longer free.
Their situation was pretty dire.
And so their longing for a Messiah was not just for someone to come and improve their life a little. No, their longing for a Messiah was for someone to change the unchangeable: to rescue them from Roman domination and to set up a Jewish golden age.
Nowadays, we would say that it was a utopian dream.
They believed it was coming because they had misinterpreted their own prophets. Before Jesus, several men had come and claimed they were the Messiah.
All met with a violent end, and their rebellious movements had come to nothing (Acts 5:34-37).
But Jesus is now owning this title.
Even though He was no political figure.
Even though He would not defeat the Romans.
Even though He would not lead them into a Jewish golden age.
Because Jesus was born to save us from a greater enemy: our sins (Matthew 1:21; Titus 3:3-8).
And that makes Him more worthy of worship than any other being who ever walked this earth (Philippians 2:6-11).
So it is Jesus and Him alone that we should worship, because He alone is worthy.
Conclusion
John 4:23-24 NIVUK
[23] Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. [24] God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.’
A number of years ago, passengers transiting Houston Airport in Texas used to complain about how long it took their luggage to arrive on the carousel. So, rather than making their luggage handling processes more efficient, airport management simply moved the disembarkation gates further from the luggage carousels.
The complaints stopped.
This was a strange, but effective solution to a problem.
At first glance, that is what we have here.
The problem is that this town is dry: the things they are seeking are not providing them with a sense of fulfilment or satisfaction.
Worship does not seem to be the solution to that problem.
And yet it is.
Not a worship that is obsessed with places and spaces and rules and regulations and rituals and rites. That is a ‘tick box’ mentality.
Our God deserves so much better than that.
Don’t get me wrong: our worship should not be chaotic. There should be order and organisation. It should be coherent and intelligible. 1 Corinthians 14 is clear about that.
But we cannot do things just because we have always done them that way.
True worship, fulfilling worship, is in spirit and truth – meeting a spiritual God with spiritual worship that is genuine and heart-felt and real, not half-hearted or grudging.
The most important thing to note is that our worship should be directed at Jesus, not towards another person or idol or even our pastor. The apostles were very firm on this (Acts 10:25-26, 14:11-18).
We cannot allow anyone else to occupy God’s place in our affections.
I don’t know if you have ever experienced being out for a walk and your phone battery has signalled that it is close to running out. Let me ask you: if you needed to charge it, would you plug it into a tree, or a hedge, or a lamp post?
The idea is absurd, isn’t it?
In these verses, we see the cure for all the dissatisfaction, the lack of fulfilment, the hunger and thirst for reality, that surrounds us even today. The Samaritans found all sorts of possible solutions. They tried history, identity, nationality, religion, love.
None of them worked.
Not one of them.
But Jesus did.
Because, as the Westminster Confession states, ‘man's [and woman’s] chief end is glorify God and enjoy Him forever’.
As Augustine said, ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.’
As Asaph said:
Psalms 73:25 NIVUK
[25] Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
If we long for something beyond ourselves, if we are full of angst over the need to be someone and to do something worthwhile, if we sense the utter emptiness of existence without God, then there is just one solution that will work:
Jesus.
Isn’t it time we turned to Him?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I realise that it is only in worship that I fulfil my true purpose and do what You made me to do. When I worship You, You are in Your rightful place and I am in mine. I will worship You on Spirit and in truth. Amen.
Questions
Why did the woman ask this question about worship? What was she trying to do? Did it work?
What does worship ‘in spirit abs truth’ mean? How do we apply this in our day?
Who should we worship? Why?
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