True Place of Worship
SYNOPSIS - To a Samaritan woman, Jesus revealed that the presence of God is no longer limited to specific locations or manmade structures – John 4:20-24.
- (John 4:20-24) – “Our fathers in this mountain worshipped; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where to worship it behoveth. Jesus saith unto her—Believe me, woman! There cometh an hour when neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father. Ye worship that which ye know not; We worship that which we know; because salvation is of the Jews. But there cometh an hour, and now is,—when the real worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for even the Father is seeking such as these as his worshippers. God is spirit; and they that worship him in spirit and truth must needs worship.” - (The Emphasized Bible).
Even
at this early point, Jesus experienced opposition from the Temple authorities;
therefore, he determined to leaven Judea for more receptive ground in
Galilee. The most direct route was through the Samaritan territory, which
many Jews avoided by taking a more circuitous route. Not so Jesus - (John
4:1-3).
On
the way, he encountered a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and asked for
water. This surprised her since devout Jews avoided contact with
Samaritans. Furthermore, it was socially awkward for a Jewish male to
communicate with an unrelated female in public.
Jesus
responded - “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is speaking
to you, you would ask, and he would give you living water.” She
assumed he meant water and asked how he could draw any from the well since he
had no vessel, and then asked - “Are you greater than Jacob who gave us the
well?” Jesus responded:
- “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. Whoever drinks of the water I will give will never thirst; it will become in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
The
woman then asked for this “living water.” In turn, Jesus told her
to “summon your husband.” She claimed to have no husband but he
responded - “You have had five husbands and he whom you now have is not your
husband; you have spoken truly.”
The
woman perceived that Jesus was a prophet, therefore, she asked him about the old
dispute between the Jews and the Samaritans - “Our fathers worshiped in this
mountain and you say that in Jerusalem is the place necessary to worship!”
Moses
directed Israel to worship Yahweh at the place He would designate but did not
specify its location. Because the Jews accepted the rest of the Old Testament,
they assumed the correct site was Jerusalem. The Samaritans argued for Mount Gerizim in Samaria, pointing for scriptural authorization to the book
of Genesis:
- (Genesis 12:6-7) - “Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem, unto the oak of Moreh...And Yahweh appeared to Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there built he an altar unto Yahweh” - (Compare - Deuteronomy 11:29-30, 12:5).
Jesus responded with a
most unexpected declaration:
- “There is coming an hour when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father…there is coming an hour and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for even such as these is the Father seeking as his worshippers. God is spirit; they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Jesus
did not attempt to resolve the dispute. Instead, he described a new
order of worship that was being established in him, one in which questions
about holy sites were pointless. His words indicated the obsolescence of the old
Temple or any other religious structure.
What
mattered was not where God’s people worshipped but how -
(“An hour is coming and now is”). Regardless of
ethnicity, the people of God must now worship him as Father by
means of spirit and truth. Likewise, the division between
Jew and Samaritan (and Gentile) had reached its termination point.
As
elsewhere, “hour” in John refers to the death of Jesus, the “hour”
of his glorification. He was ushering in a new reality in which external rituals
would be replaced by spiritual worship:
- (John 7:37-39) – “Now, on the last—the great—day of the feast, Jesus was standing, and he cried aloud, saying—If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink: He that believeth on me—just as said the Scripture,—River from within him shall flow of living water. Now, this spake he concerning the Spirit which they who believed on him were about to receive; for, not yet, was there Spirit, because Jesus not yet was glorified!”
With
the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, traditional restrictions and regulations based
on holy space and holy time were no longer relevant. God’s presence could not
be limited to buildings, geographic locations, or specific “seasons” of the
year. Jesus was now the true “holy place” where God was to be
worshipped, the place of Yahweh’s presence.
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