Worship in Spirit and Truth

But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. (John 4:23-24)

In John chapter four, we read the story of Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well. In this brief passage, the Lord gives the Samaritan woman a primer on relationship with God. When we think of our relationship with God, we often think of doing. We pray, meditate, or study the Bible. Yet, doing is not the best place to begin when defining what it means to walk with God. The Pharisees in Jesus’s day did many deeds that appeared to be spiritual. They prayed far more than most of us, and they added fasting two days a week. Study was ingrained in their lives. They memorized what we call the Old Testament word for word. They kept God’s Law before their eyes constantly. Yet, Jesus called them whitewashed tombs, all dressed up in good deeds on the outside but void of the Spirit on the inside.

Ironically, doing can be the antithesis of knowing the Lord. In fact, as we shall see, a person who knows God is at absolute rest. Jesus offered the woman at the well the Spirit. In other words, He offered her God. All she had to do was ask. He mentioned no doing. In this we get a clue about relationship with God. At its heart, it is receiving and living in God’s gift of Himself. Ultimately, spirituality is a Person you know.

God is Spirit

Jesus described God’s nature with three words: “God is Spirit.” The most profound truths take few words to express, but their wisdom is infinite. When we relate to God, we focus on what He does. He blesses us, uses us, and delivers us from our troubles. Yet, spirituality is not just perceiving God’s hand. It is seeing His face. It is partaking of who He is. Jesus did not offer the woman any finite thing. He offered her the infinite.

Jesus used form to help the woman understand the Spirit, which is formless. Water has form. We can see it with our eyes. It quenches bodily thirst. Yet, the living water has no form. It cannot be seen with the eyes, and it quenches the soul’s thirst. The gospel of John uses other imagery to convey this same message. John chapter six takes place over two days. The first day is about form. The second day is about the formless.

On day one, the Lord multiplied five loaves of bread and two fish to feed 5,000 people. It was a great miracle, but the Lord’s blessing was finite. He met their physical need, and they loved Him for it. Everyone loves the Jesus who meets our finite needs. Teachers who preach the first day Jesus draw great crowds. They tell us God gives us what we need and what we want. Who wouldn’t love such a Savior?

As great as the first day miracle was, the second day miracle was greater. He gave them bread the first day, but offered them the bread of life the second day. The first day's blessing was finite. The second day's blessing was infinite. He offered them God! Yet, most refused. They would rather have a full belly than a full heart. They were content with God’s hand, but had no desire to see God’s face.

Interestingly, in the first and second days of John six, we notice a contrast between the Old Covenant blessings and the New Covenant blessing. In the Old Covenant, they related to God through form and their promises had form.

In the Old Testament, you could find the kingdom of God on a map. It had real boundaries and a literal king who sat upon a literal throne. In its midst, there was a temple built of stone. The house of God was a place you visited, and the heart of worship was sacrifices, offerings, and the shedding of blood.

The fulfillment of these things had no form. No one today would look for the boundaries of the kingdom of God on a map, nor associate it with a single nation or people. The house of God in the New Testament is not built by humans but by God Himself. His people are His temple. His glory is no longer behind a veil, but within us.

When God came down to Mt. Sinai and gave the Law, He promised blessings for obedience. (Deuteronomy 28). The central promise was a land in which to dwell and a life of abundance. Among those promises, God said,

Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. (Deuteronomy 28:5)

Full baskets meant there would always be more than enough food. This might not sound like much to us in our day, but for former slaves who knew only lacking, this was like winning the lottery. No doubt the people remembered this promise the day Jesus multiplied the loaves and fish. There were twelve baskets full left over. God provided more than enough. It is no wonder they wanted to make Jesus their king. It looked like He was restoring the Old Covenant blessing. Surely, He would soon conquer the Romans and scatter them in seven directions, just as the Law promised (Deuteronomy 28:7).

They did not understand that a new Joshua had come but not to lead them into a land filled with blessings that had form but to lead them in to the formless. There are still material blessings in the New Covenant, but they are secondary. The emphasis changes to the spiritual. Paul said,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ…. (Ephesians 1:3)

In the gospels, Jesus introduced the idea of heavenly treasure. I do not believe this meant He will give us a mansion in heaven when we die. He meant treasure of a heavenly nature, the formless and the infinite. Their blessing was bread. Ours is the bread of life. Their promise was a land in which to dwell. Ours is a Person in whom we dwell, Christ Jesus the Lord. Our High Priest has not led us into material prosperity, but into the presence of God. Our home is not in the first day of John 6 but in the second.

Ironically, Paul calls the Old Covenant blessing, which had form the shadow and that which had no form the substance! This helps us understand how differently God thinks than we do. Reality is found in the infinite, and the infinite defines the finite.

The word “infinite” helps us understand the Spirit. God is Spirit and Spirit is infinite. It has no beginning or end. The book of revelation says of the infinite Christ:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8)

Infinite things are so. You cannot make them be or not be. God is existent and all things exist through Him and for Him. To be spiritual is not to accomplish something, but to take part in that which is. Thus, spirituality is far more about seeing than doing and resting rather than accomplishing.

Jesus told the woman at the well to ask for the living waters. When we pray, most of our requests concern form. We want the Lord to turn the bad things in our lives to good. These aren’t bad prayers, but they only ask to experience God’s hand. They are not the intimate face-to-face God yearns for.

Unlike petitions for gain, the Spirit will lay down a good life for eternal life. The Spirit follows Jesus into the second day, where the infinite is food and life. It lets go of the first day when God gives us what we want for the second day when He gives us Himself. When God in Christ Jesus is our prize, we begin to comprehend and partake of those three words: God is Spirit.

Worship in Spirit

Worship is at the heart of spirituality. For many years, I found worship difficult, because I did not understand it. I defined it through form rather than relationship. To me, worship was all about music, and I am not very musical. To most people, the best part of a church service is the music. Some of us enjoy the first half of a meeting but can’t wait for the sermon to be over. I was always the opposite. The preaching was the highlight.

When I understood what worship is rather than what it should look like, everything changed. The ancient Hebrew concept of worship opened my eyes. If asked people about worship in Jesus’s day, their first thoughts would not be about music but about sacrifice. Sacrifice was the heart of worship in the ancient world.

The Hebrew people had all sorts of sacrifices. We are familiar with their sacrifices that dealt with sin. The Jewish people had various offerings to cover sin, including the great sacrifices on the Day of Atonement. It is easy to see how Christ fulfilled these. He was the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. Since Jesus gave Himself once for all, this type of sacrifice in no longer necessary or desired.

Yet offerings for sin were only part of Jewish worship. Another major sacrifice was the Gift Offering, also called the Burnt or Evening Offering. As the name implies, this was not about sin, but about giving oneself to the Lord. Gift offerings came in many forms, but they were always burned. Thus, you couldn’t get back what was given. These offerings represented the worshipper’s gift of themselves to the Lord. God still wants the Gift Offering. We see the Lord’s desire in Romans chapter 12:

Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. (Romans 12:1 New American Standard Bible)

We are the love offering pleasing to the heart of God. Therefore, worship is the act of giving ourselves to God.

We have many weddings at Thorncrown Chapel. Sometimes I remind our couples what a wedding is. Two stand on an altar together. The altar is a place of sacrifice. They are there to give the greatest gift one human being can give to another. The two give themselves to each other and the two become one. This is a divine picture of our relationship with the Lord. God comes to church to give Himself to us, and when we have the same heart, the two become one. Worship is not just about music. It is the experience of union with Christ. Togetherness is the essence of worship. In fact, togetherness with God is a good way to explain what spirituality is. The form it takes does not matter. Worship is always happening because God is always giving Himself to us. We merely join in.

Our togetherness with God defines us. To be carnal is to define oneself through separateness as if we have an identity apart from who Christ is. When we fail God, our greatest temptation is to lose sight of our union with Christ. Self-definition is the antithesis of spirituality.

Our worship services should be a place where we are reminded of who we are. The message we hear should not be one of shame. “You aren’t good enough! Do better!” Shame has no place in worship. In worship, our consciousness of union with God is restored. It is as if God lifts our head and says, “Look at me!” In an instant, God changes our mind about who we are, redefining us according to His gift. Our goal becomes not to do better, but to live in the identity God has given us.

Our togetherness with God completes us. Jesus tried to teach this to the people in John chapter six, but they would not believe Him. They wanted a Messiah who would give them a good life. They wanted finite things to fill them rather than the infinite. Moreover, they wanted Jesus to teach them how to use their faith to make life good rather than bad. “Teach us to do the works of God! (John 6:28)” They wanted more of the bread Jesus gave them the first day, but the greatest faith is for the bread of life.

Paul said we walk by faith and not by sight. I believe this passage has been abused. It is not the power to make our lives the way we want. It is not a tool to satisfy the desires of the ego. “What’s in it for me?” has little to do with faith. Faith is seeing life is full even when it is empty. It is knowing joy when there is no happiness to be found. It is knowing our fullness is a Person who gives Himself to us.

Jesus said from our innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. The joy and completeness we all seek does not come from the right external circumstances. In our innermost being, the infinite and the finite are one, and it is that togetherness which completes us and fills us to overflowing. So, we are full, and we are always full. Blessed are those who see they are full, even when life is empty. David knew this blessing.

O God, You are my God;

Early will I seek You;

My soul thirsts for You;

My flesh longs for You In a dry and thirsty land

Where there is no water.

So I have looked for You in the sanctuary,

To see Your power and Your glory.

Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,

My lips shall praise You.

Thus I will bless You while I live;

I will lift up my hands in Your name.

My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness,

And my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips. (Psalm 63:1–5)

This passage is beautiful and powerful, but we multiply its glory when we realize where David wrote it. It was in a time he had nothing. The mad king Saul wanted to kill David, so the young man was forced to flee. He ended up living in a cave. God told David he would be king. A palace would be his home, but he was in a cave, the opposite of the promise.

Yet, here, where it looked like the Lord had forsaken him, he boasted of God’s love. “Your lovingkindness is better than life.” He was saying God’s love was better than a good life. The formless filled David’s heart. The form his circumstances took did not matter. God’s company was his home, and he knew the Lord’s glory even in a cave.

Worship in Truth

Spirit and truth go together. Being spiritual is an experience of the truth. Truth is a major topic in the gospel of John. In John 14:6, Jesus identified Himself as the truth.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. (John 14:6)

The Greek word for truth in this passage is alētheia. The translators of most Bible versions translated alētheia as truth. I am not sure that was the best choice for Christians in the western world. To us, knowing the truth is having the correct facts. Yet, I don’t believe truth is a big enough word the way we interpret it. Alētheia is the word the ancient Greeks used for reality. In John 14:6, Jesus was not just identifying Himself as the one with the correct facts but as the one who is reality itself.

Worship, therefore, is the experience of the one who is the truth. Through Him, all things exist and are defined (Colossians 1:15-18). What might this worship look like? Our illustration about being full while empty can help us answer this question. My life may appear empty. I might have nothing I want and everything I don’t want. Human reasoning dictates my life is bad. I might complain I don’t have a life. That is what form tells me, but form does not define the moments. The infinite defines the finite. If God has given Himself to me, how can I be anything but full? In worship, who Christ is comes to define the moments, even the worst of them. Togetherness with Christ becomes the meaning of life, not good and bad circumstances. Thus, worship is the perfect response when life is bad. It is not a denial of reality, but recognizing a higher one, the reality of who God is. He is all in all.

God is the God of togetherness. If we can understand this, we can grasp relationship with the Lord. Togetherness defines us and completes us. Long ago, at a well in Samaria, Jesus taught this to a Samaritan woman. Like us, she thought she knew what defined her and filled her, but her thoughts kept her in the dark about God. The Light stood before her that day, gave her worth, and turned her sorrow to joy. This is what the gift of God does.

Once the woman realized the truth, she was off to tell others what she saw.

The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (John 4:28-29)

She left her waterpot. Why did John include this in the story? Perhaps because it was hugely symbolic. She left form behind for the formless. She encountered Spirit, the one who is the living water. Who Jesus is became all that mattered. She had become something new.

Doing is not enough to define relationship with God. It is far more about knowing. The Lord desires to unveil Himself, and what is revealed is given. This unveiling is a prominent part of redemption. God is no longer hidden behind a veil, but we behold Him with the eyes of our heart. And seeing changes everything, including who we are.

Relationship with God is an awakening, a growing awareness of the infinite. This awakening is so transforming Paul called it life from the dead (Ephesians 5:14). It changes the nature of life itself. It is no wonder the Lord calls us a new creation. Like the Pharisees of old, the old creation was defined through doing. The new is defined through seeing and knowing.