Renewal's First Ingredient: Renewed Worship John 4:23 - 24

"The hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth."
 

- Last week we defined church renewal as the continual transformation of God's people into the people he has called them to be, doing the things he has called them to do.

- This week as we continue exploring what church renewal is we'll take a closer look at these two verses from the encounter Jesus had with the woman at the well in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel.

*- First we'll place these verses in the broader context of Jesus' ministry, and then we will take a closer look at them.

- I believe we need to look at these verses in particular because they come to us straight from the ministry of Jesus and they speak directly to Jesus' heart for people and how renewed hearts come from a renewed relationship with God, both knowing him and responding to him in worship.

*- As we look at the Gospels, it is helpful for us to remember why Jesus came. First of all Jesus came to be the light of the world.

- Previously, God called Israel and set them apart to be his people as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation to be a light to the nations.

- The trouble was that Israel had largely failed in this area through ongoing historic disobedience to God's call.

- Jesus came to accomplish what Israel could not. He came to be the light of the world. Jesus came to call a new/renewed people to be empowered by his Holy Spirit to be the light of the world.

- Now that we have some sense of the broader context of Jesus ministry, let's take a closer look at the specific context of John four and verses 23 – 24.

* - Jesus also came to call the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It was no accident that Jesus stopped at Jacob's well that day.

- Jews had no associations with Samaritans because of their religious compromise and because they viewed Samaritans as impure, as well as their previous history.

- Remember that Samaritans were descendents of the northern kingdom of Israel who had broken off from Judah and Benjamin and intermarried with other peoples. Israel and Judah fought and held grudges like feuding families from the time of the exile 500 years before right into the first century A.D.

- As we have heard before it was odd for a Jewish Rabbi to give a Samaritan the time of day and even more odd for him to be in Samaria and asking a Samaritan woman for a drink.

- But ask Jesus did, out of which their whole conversation ensued and the woman came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah and told her whole village so they came and heard Jesus for themselves and they too believed.

- In the broader context of Jesus' ministry, this one story is an example of how Jesus turned upside down 1st century Jewish thinking about remaining pure and separate from those around them.

- Jesus had to go through Samaria precisely because he was and is the Shepherd to the lost sheep of Israel, and what was Samaria but a nation of lost sheep?

- Jesus reached out to Samaria as the Shepherd of Israel and the light of the world, to show Samaria his light and his love.

*- Now that we have it freshly in our minds what Jesus was doing we need to go back.  I have suggested that renewal's first ingredient is renewed worship. But a question arises from that statement: what is renewed worship?

- To answer that question we must look to our Scripture for today.

*- "The hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth."

*- Please allow me echo the Scriptures by saying that renewed worship is worship that is offered to the Father by true worshippers in spirit and in truth.

*- With those words, Jesus introduced a new order where the important question ceases to be where people worship. The important question is now how one worships. (In addition to whom)

- The answer to the question of how we worship is wrapped in terms of worshiping God as Father. Jesus had a favorite term that he used for God which was Father and he taught his followers to do the same.

- Renewed worship comes from new knowledge of who God is and who we are in Christ. It is only through our relationship with Christ that we acknowledge that God is our Father.

- He is our Father because he is our Creator, but more importantly he is our Father because he has adopted us as coheirs with Christ and given us the right to become children of God.

* - To worship God as Father, we must realize that God takes us into his story not the other way around. It is not we who take God into our stories, our lives, but God invites us to come alongside him and join him in the unfolding of his great story as he reveals Jesus Christ who died and rose again to the world.

*- What did Jesus mean when he said that true worshippers worship in spirit? Renewed worship comes from the heart. The heart is the most inner part of a human being. It is that part of us which bears the image of God. The true location of renewed worship is a renewed heart. Everything else is expendable.

- Because God is spirit, then it is from a renewed human spirit that worship must flow. Only a renewed human being can worship the Father in spirit.

- The woman said, "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” John 4:20 (ESV)

- Jesus says, "Yes salvation comes from the Jews, but worship is not about Mt. Gerazim or Mt. Zion. It's not about temples and sanctuaries. It's not about the holy place or the commonplace. It's not about location. It's about worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth."

- Many people continue to make the same mistake as the Samaritan woman at the well made in thinking that you can't worship God properly unless you worship God in the officially sanctioned locations, the specially set apart places of worship.

- The questions of time, location, and style are not important. What matters is that we worship God as Father from the heart.

*- I've already mentioned that God invites us to participate with him and join him in the unfolding of his story. Renewed worship is about God's story and God's story is truth. That's why Jesus said true worshippers worship in truth.

- Jesus himself claims to be the truth and that whoever is on the side of truth listens to him.

- When we think of truth we think about whether or not something is real or genuine, whether or not something is factually true, that is, it's historical fact.

- While we might say that our worship must come from a sincere heart & while it is important for our worship to be sincere, that it comes from a genuine desire to worship God, sincerity does not cover it.

- It is not enough for Christian worship to be sincere, because it is possible to be sincere and also be sincerely wrong.

- Most religious people from any number of the world's religions are sincere, they truly are. But their sincerity is not enough because they're worship is not grounded in God's story, the story whose foundation is historical fact, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave.

*-Renewed worship is in truth because we worship what is true; rather we worship the one who is truth.

* - The prophets foresaw a coming day when God's glory and name would break in on the entire earth.  As Jesus told the woman, "The hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth."

*- Just as the life of the age to come may be enjoyed here and now, so too the worship of the age to come can be offered here and now.

* - Renewed worship cannot be tied to set locations, times, or styles. Renewed worship is offered in spirit and in truth because God is Spirit and Truth.

- Renewed worship is about renewed worshipers joining God in the unfolding of his story.

- So often when we come to Sunday services we make worship about what we get from it. We make it about our comfort and our needs.

- But you know something; worship is not about what we get from it. Worship is not about our comfort. Worship is not about our needs.

- We come to Sunday services looking for that word that'll get us through the week and you know worship really isn't about that either.

- Renewed worship really isn't about us. Renewed worship is about renewed worshipers joining God in the unfolding of his story.

*- Our verse for memory and meditation is John 4:24, "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:24 (ESV)

- If we want to experience renewal, then we must be prepared to worship God in spirit and in truth and that means being willing to join God in his story because worship is all about him.

-Haven't we been coming to worship with the wrong questions? The main question we ask is this: what can I get from God?

- Renewed worship means being willing to learn to think differently and ask different questions.

* - As a church, it means we need to be willing to ask: what can we do to be the light that God has called us to be? What can we do to join God as he works out his story?

- Renewed worshipers don't need to worry about location, where they worship, because their daily lives are offerings to God in worship.

- Their daily lives are offerings to God in worship because they have joined God and are working with him in the unfolding of his story.

- People in our culture have been fed the idea that there is no super story that makes sense of life, that there is no larger story that fits all of life under one umbrella.

- Most people in our culture have only heard that the only story that matters is the mini-story, their little story that is focused on the self.

- Is there any wonder why people are finding no meaning in their lives? People in our culture are longing to be part of something bigger than themselves.

- That is what we have to offer the world as renewed worshippers. We have God's invitation to join him in the unfolding of his story.

- People need to see God's story working out in our lives and they need to hear God's story from us because most people today don't know God's story.

- Renewed worship is about renewed worshipers joining God in the unfolding of in his story.

- I also think there's another lesson in this for us. If we make the unfolding of God's story the focus of our lives and the life of the church, then we will learn to let go of the stuff that doesn't matter since what really matters is the unfolding of God's story. In the big picture, nothing is more important that God’s story.

- Renewed worship is about renewed worshipers joining God in the unfolding of in his story.