In Scott Brown's sermon 'Am I a True Worshiper,' based on John 4:16-26, Jesus' dialogue with the Samaritan woman at the well is explored to understand true worship. The sermon highlights the woman's unfulfilled life, marked by a series of relationships, as a metaphor for spiritual thirst. Jesus offers her a way out of this cycle through true worship, which is defined as worshiping in spirit and truth, focusing on God rather than rituals or locations. Brown emphasizes that true satisfaction and fulfillment come from genuine worship of God, not from earthly desires or achievements. He explains that worship involves valuing God highly and must be both heartfelt and rooted in truth. The sermon concludes by urging believers to seek satisfaction in God, as true worshipers are those who delight in God and His kingdom.

John chapter 4 from 16 to 26. Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You have well said, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband. In that you spoke truly.

The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worship on this mountain, and you say that Jerusalem is a place where one ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.

But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is the Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to Him, I know the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things.

Jesus said to her, I who speak to you, am he. Thank you Lord for being merciful and giving us your truth. Thank you Lord that you open our eyes to many of you. Give us faith through the preaching of your word, Lord. I pray that you have mercy today and you open the eyes for those who are blind.

I pray that you give them faith, give them to believe in Jesus today. In Jesus' name, amen. I'm so delighted to bring this passage of scripture to us this morning. It really is one of those passages of scripture that really draws us to living water to help us to recognize the goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ like the song says to lead your children to the shoreline you know come all you pining hungry poor the Savior's bounty taste you know behold the never failing store for every willing guest. And this narrative, of course, is of Jesus and his disciples.

They're making a straight course to Galilee and they have to go straight through Samaria and Jesus sits down by a well and a Samaritan woman comes to speak. He speaks to her. This is the longest dialogue with an individual in the New Testament in the gospel record. And this conversation leads to a revival of an entire region. And so our text that we're in now finds us midstream in this conversation with this woman from Samaria.

And this is the second of three messages on this conversation. And the first message that we delivered about it really focused on the matter of living water. Jesus proclaims Himself to be living water, to fill her empty life. And she's spent her life seeking water that doesn't satisfy a very needy woman never finding her needs met and we've seen that before six relationships five marriages and now a new boyfriend and nothing is working at all And she's craving for something that has always eluded her. It's a dangerous thing in a woman, dangerous thing in a man as well, to be so thirsty and to look in all the wrong places and her thirst has never been satisfied.

And so now Jesus continues this conversation with her. Now there are three things that I pray we see from this section in John. There are so many things that we can focus in on, but there are at least three things I pray that somehow we can grasp. And the first is that we have a woman here whose longings have just led her through a labyrinth of relationships. She goes from one longing to another and without the center of the kingdom of God, And without the center of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, you will always wander from one desire for satisfaction to another.

And you're always adrift in this world for the next opportunity, the next fad, the next craving, the next experience, the next toy, the next purchase. In the case of the woman at the well, it was the next relationship, and now she's talking to another man at that well. And then the second thing is that we have a woman for whom Jesus offers an escape from the cycle of unfulfillment and dissatisfaction. It's really an escape from her dead end because that's where she always ends up. And he explains it to her.

And you know, if anybody has been caught in a trap like this, it is the trap of the unbeliever. There's a way out. But that way out is a lot simpler than you might expect. It's not primarily entering into this complex world of changing everything. It's not getting your act together.

It's not about getting back into church. It's not about necessarily reading your Bible and, you know, ending these bad relationships. It isn't primarily like that. I might include things like that. But the solution has to do with something far simpler and far deeper and far more wonderful.

And it has to do with this word that we encounter. It's the word worship. It has to do with worship. And it really has to do with what you treasure in your heart. What you believe is the most beautiful thing to you, the most attractive thing to you, because when Jesus Christ in His kingdom is the most attractive thing to you, you escape the dead ends that you are trapped in.

And so we talk about what worship is. And now, you know, thirdly, for all who name the name of Jesus, who have turned to Him and Him alone for salvation, who have recognized their sin. I also pray that we recognize that growing in our worship is the thing that gives us the satisfaction that we're still looking for in our lives because you never escape the desire for satisfaction even after you become a Christian. Isn't that true? Absolutely it is true.

And whether you're Christians or non-Christians, every good thing flows from the same source, and it always flows from the worship of God. And for us, it has to do with the genuineness of our worship, the passion for our worship, the adoration that we have for God. Every human being, Christian or non-Christian, is wired for God. And what is true about all of us today is that some of our greatest concerns, some of our greatest pains, some of our greatest senses of unfulfillment, they really come from this one thing, and that is that we're not the kind of worshippers we need to be. We need to grow in worship.

We need to grow in fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, even after we're Christians. So this thing has broad application. So those are three things that I hope we can see out of this. Again, you can see Jesus in the way that He cares for people. You know, He speaks to Nicodemus in one way, and He speaks to him about being born from above, being born again, and he speaks in a completely different way really about the exact same thing but he uses different language different imagery different different ways to help that person be delivered from their bankruptcy you know the woman has been drinking all this brackish water and she's got this brackish life because of the brackish water that she's been drinking.

And so Jesus reveals all these things. So now we turn to this major issue that Jesus deals with, her worship. You know, her whole messed up life had one single source. It was messed up worship. And that's always the truth for all of us, whether we're Christians or not.

I'm here to testify that's true of me and it's often true of me every day where I recognize how distracted I've gotten by the cares of this world and the troubles that are around me and I find myself falling off into the slew of despond and despair and there's really only one way out, it's the worship of God. And hopefully you have people around you that are pointing you to the worship of God. By the way, that's why we're gathered here today, so that we're pointing one another to the greatest source of joy and satisfaction that there is. And we're singing these things to each other, we're opening up our Bibles to look at what the Bible says about it, we're praying. All these things are designed to drive us to this well of living water, to taste it, and to bring your children to the shoreline.

So this woman has been blinded by her unquenchable thirst for intimacy and Jesus shows her how all that can be escaped by worshiping in spirit and in truth. In spirit how we worship and in truth whom we worship. So that's what we're dealing with here. What is true worship? Who are true worshipers?

And how is it that they actually worship? Because Jesus is defining true worship and this is the heart of the matter. Now let's dive into the text. You see it, you have an outline in front of you and I've divided it into four basic sections. And first of all you see Jesus revealing the heart of her dissatisfaction in verses 16 through 19, and then in verse 20, the second section, the woman diverts the conversation to religion.

Haven't you seen that before or done that before. And then thirdly, Jesus reveals the heart of what God is looking for. And then fourthly, Jesus reveals Himself to be the Messiah. So with that, let's begin with this first section where Jesus is revealing the heart of her dissatisfaction. He's exposing the heart of her thirst, and to get there, he says, go call your husband and come here.

He's probing underneath the surface of her life. And she's living with her boyfriend. She didn't tell him that. But now she needs to face who she really is. She must deal with her sin.

And Jesus in a very careful and compassionate and sensitive way leads her to her sin. And it's one of the men in Bible study said that it was almost I think it was Mike who said something like Jesus was saying to her you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep And he's opening her eyes to her sin. Now, here's the principle. In order to drink of living water, you must first face the ugliness of your sin, and without it you can't be saved. Now here's the reality.

No one ever saw the depth of the ugliness of their sin. We only see the surface of it, and especially when we're new Christians, we really only see the thin surface of it. And then as time goes on, you see deeper and deeper, and You just see how worse you are than you thought you were. But the Lord Jesus comes and deals with her the way He does with really all of us. He deals with that big glaring thing, but sin's deeper than that.

And so he deals with that glaring thing. You've got to determine your position on your sin if you're going to have living water. And Jesus is probing into the heart of her dissatisfaction and she's driven and tossed by this wound in her soul to look for satisfaction in her relationships. And Jesus puts his finger in that wound. And we want a God that keeps us comfortable and tells us how successful we can be.

That isn't exactly what Jesus does here. And in order to heal the infection, you have to deal with the wound. And that's true of all of us who have been saved. And there has to be confession before there can be cleansing. Everybody wants to be successful.

Everybody wants to receive big things from God. But the only way is to recognize sin and to be reconciled to Him. And then we realize that the woman is sugarcoating the truth. She says, I have no husband. Well that was true, sort of true, you know, in the same way that Adam and Eve put on fig leaves to cover up their shame.

The woman is doing that. She is draping the fig leaves all over the place here in her conversation with Jesus. And this also helps us to see another truth about us, and that is that usually the chief impediment of our cleansing, either in salvation or even in our reconciliation with one another and with God, is our fear of exposure. As if exposure was the worst thing in the world. In the kingdom of God, exposure is the best thing in the world.

Because when sin is exposed, it can be atoned for. And Jesus has already said that we want to conceal our sin. He said in John 3.20, everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds be exposed. So she's feeling that pressure of exposure. Her deeds are being exposed by this question and so she tells a half truth, a half lie, or whatever you want to call it.

And she's had five marriages, five divorces, and She's looking for love in all the wrong places. She's a needy woman. She's trying to get her needs met through men, through relationships. Young men, let me have your attention right now. Beware, Be wary of needy women.

Be wary. If you're the one that they're looking to to get your needs met and you get intimately connected with them in marriage, there's trouble. That needs to be resolved first. Sometimes you lose a relationship to wean you from your idolatry of some kind of a relationship with a man or a woman. It's a good thing.

But she's a very needy woman and she has this impulsive search for satisfaction in relationships. She's been drinking of these cisterns that don't hold any water and then Jesus reveals more complete truth about her in verse 17. Jesus said to her, you've well said, you have no husband. In other words, that was a convenient way to say that. You said that well.

You hid that so amazingly. He says, for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband. In that you spoke truly. Now right at this moment You'll notice something that happens in the narrative. It's very interesting She immediately becomes less talkative Like in verse 9 she speaks 26 words in verse 12.

She speaks 46 words In verse 15 she speaks 19 words. And here in this verse here she speaks four words. I don't... And then she says I perceive that you're a prophet So now she has a whole different predicament. She's with a different kind of person different kind of man.

She's been with a lot of men. She knows how to handle men in a way, but now she knows that this man knows everything about her. She calls him a prophet, And now she knows that somebody is seeing deep in her heart and she can't hide. Nothing is hidden from his sight. He knows her.

He's omniscient. And he refuses He refuses to heal her wound lightly and so he continues the surgery. And he wounds her before he heals her. He's been talking about healing living waters. So he's brought up his superiority, but he continues.

And then in verse 20, her religiosity springs into action. In verse 20, she says, our fathers worshiped on this mountain and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. And it's almost like she's saying, okay, now that you've exposed my adultery, hey, are you a cessationist? You know? Hey, could we talk about, you know, this whole conflict?

Like, where are you supposed to worship? Do you think we should worship in Samaria? We're worshiping in Samaria. How about that? Could we talk about that?

Do you think the Sabbath has passed away? Do you think we should use drums in worship? What about these pastors that are getting, you know, it's diversion. He has just put his finger in the wound and she wants to jump away and talk about some theoretical religious controversy. You know, and so she definitely changes the subject.

And, you know, do we worship in Mount? Where do we worship? We're worshiping in Mount Gerizim right over here, because you see they're right at the foot of Mount Gerizim, you know, this mountain. And this happens, you know, When people begin to be convicted of their sin, they pull out the religious card and they say, Oh yeah, I pray. My dad was a pastor.

My grandma is a preacher. They say things like that. And it's diversion. They would rather be talking about some controversy than actually the state of their heart because they don't want to be exposed. And they'd like to get their mind off of that.

So Jesus does two things in this whole interaction with her. First, he declares her sin to her in a very careful way. And Secondly, he deals with her ignorance. And he thirdly demonstrates his patience and his compassion toward her. But the woman and the and Jesus they both have a doctrine of worship.

Both believe that worship takes place somewhere, but they're kind of talking around one another because she does not want to talk about what really is the heart of her matter, and that is she's had an insatiable desire for relationships that's kept her from worship, the worship of God. And he believes that worship exists in the heart and can only be based on the truth about God, not a ritual. He's trying to expose her ritualism, but She believes worship is about doing certain things in certain places. She really thinks worship is about a ritual. It's about doing the right stuff.

Going to the mountain. Praying the prayers. You know, doing this stuff. And Jesus is expanding her understanding of worship. We could talk a long time about how it happened that worship took place on Mount Gerizim, how The kingdom was divided in 930 BC.

How Jeroboam established alternative worship. He appointed alternative priests. Anybody could be a priest in the northern kingdom after the division. Anybody could be. And you could do whatever you wanted.

And you imported all this God language you still use the five books of Moses you used a lot of the elements of worship that was were commanded for the temple of God oh they still used a lot of God words and things like that but they interjected all kinds of other stuff. They imported all kinds of worldly things. They added things, and that's what was happening on Mount Gerizim. It was cooler worship in Mount Gerizim. It was just, it was hotter stuff.

It was way more interesting because it was, it was the, it imported the ways of worship from the pagan nations because they wanted people to feel good you know and relate to it but it was rebellion against God so that's what was happening Maggrizim that she was really kind of involved in sort of the hip you know the hip worship of the day and Jesus is discussing this with her And then Jesus cuts to the heart of what God is seeking in verses 21 through 24. Jesus said to her, woman believe me the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know." And that's a really important statement. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.

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. Notice what's happening here. Jesus is announcing a change in worship, methodology, and location.

And Jesus is making a prophecy that worship will no longer be in Jerusalem only. And he's speaking of a new era. He's prophesying about a shift in redemptive history, where the focus of worship shifts from the earthly temple in Jerusalem into the human heart and into the gatherings of the people of God wherever they might be from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth and Jesus is the new center of that worship he is the new temple the people of God are also the temple and each individual person now is the temple where worship is conducted that's what's changing and in John 2 22 we read that Jesus spoke about the temple, which was his body. So there's a whole redemptive shift that's taking place. And it's the difference between the new covenant and the old covenant and I think that he's also alluding to the fact that there will be no more worship in in Jerusalem which is sealed on in 70 AD when the Roman Emperor Titus came in and destroyed the temple, and there was never worship again in Jerusalem like that.

So I think he's prophesying those two things, that there is a new worship that's based in Jesus Christ and not in Jerusalem itself. But Jesus is telling her something very personally too. He's telling her of her false worship. He's telling her that she isn't really worshiping God. And that's why he says, You worship what you do not know.

You don't know what you're doing. And what you're doing isn't, it's not even the worship of God. And you use all the God words and you have all these sacrifices and all these priests running around. And you have a lot of the things that the Old Testament called for, but you don't, you're not even worshiping God. She hasn't experienced God.

She's not worshiped the true God. Now, one of the commentators said that she was just praying to a ghost. That's how he described it. She was praying to a phantom. She was praying to nothing.

No one was there. Okay? You worship what you don't even know that you're not even worshipping God. And she was praying to her dumb idol that her culture had created for her. She wasn't praying to anyone.

You know, I mean, here's an illustration. You know, the Muslim prays five times a day right into thin air. And even the Roman Catholic who is praying to Mary and the saints through the rosary is praying to nowhere, to nothing, except maybe you might say an idol because the Bible makes it clear there's only one mediator between God and man if you're praying to a Mary you're not praying to anything except a dumb idol There's one mediator between God and man, and that is Jesus Christ. So he's saying that there are lots of ways you can be really religious, really devoted, but you don't know what you're doing. You're just breathing air into the atmosphere, and there's nothing there.

This is what Jesus was referring to when he said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, me, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the true God." And he's saying that her worship isn't worship. And she might have thought, well, it feels so good, you know, when we go there and we do all these things, you know. And you know, you can go and you can lift your hands, get really emotional. Music can make you really emotional. It can pull you all over the place.

We know that we kind of love that don't we when that happens? But when that happens, what's what is really happening? Maybe nothing Like there are You know, how many times is it happening today? People are in churches and they're getting very emotional and they're lifting their hands and nothing is really happening except on the surface. And that's the difference between true worship and false worship.

It can look the same on the outside. But Jesus says to her, you don't know what you worship. And then he gives her the definition of worship in verse 23 and 24. He says, the hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. So now we learn not all worship is true worship.

And you know, there is this emotionalist ritualism, that's one kind of worship. And then there is ritualistic emotionalism. Those are two extremes that you find. But they're not, they might not be connected to biblical truth. But Jesus is saying there's a new kind of worship that is coming that's the result of the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

That's why he says the hour is coming, the hour. Now this is a technical term in the Gospels. The hour really refers to Jesus Christ's death and resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit. And you can read about it in John 7 you can read it about it in John 19 and in Luke 17 That you have this hour that's coming where Jesus changes everything at his death and his resurrection and then he tells her that the Father is seeking true worshipers. He's sending aside the fake ones and he is seeking the true ones.

He wants to make fake worshipers into true worshipers. I love this phrase, for the Father is seeking, the Father. You know, in pagan religions, it isn't a father. Like in Greek religion, it was Zeus, but Christians get a father, the father. The father is seeking such to worship him.

Not a capricious being, but a Father. And so he speaks of worship, and he is speaking of the fact that there are particulars about worship and I want to I want to show five of them that are here there are five pivotal words in verse 24. And the first is, is God is Spirit. That's the who of worship. God is Spirit.

The first word in the sentence in the Greek sentence is the word Spirit, therefore it's in the emphatic position in the sentence. The focus is the nature of God as Spirit and he's explaining God to her. He is engaging in theology and he's saying that there that God is invisible. We have spiritual knowledge of him, that he is omnipresent, that he is also indivisible. He's speaking of God, the true God, worshiping the true God who is Spirit.

When we're worshiping, we need to recognize who it is we are worshiping. Is it God? Is it the true God? Because, as is really clear from this, is you can worship, but not the true God. And so, and then there is the what of worship, and I think that comes from the word, worship.

What does it mean to worship? It means to value highly. It's acknowledging the worth of the object. That's what worship is. And it is a...

The word that he's using has to do with inclining toward the most worthy object. To incline toward, to kneel toward a person. And it's related to adoration and exaltation and exaltation and magnification of his thoughts and his ways. It is celebration, it's submission, it's humiliation, It's bowing to Him with all of those things. That's what worship actually is.

And so we have the who of worship. It's God who is Spirit. We have the what of worship. It is bowing toward Him. And then we have the necessity of worship must they must worship in spirit and in truth This is a mandate that God doesn't accept all worship.

They must worship Him in spirit and truth. If not Spirit and in truth, then it isn't worship. Now worship is meant to be a conscious and personal activity. It's different than a lot of things that you do. I'll give you an illustration.

It's different than breathing. Breathing is not a conscious activity unless there's really something wrong with your body. But no, I don't think anybody here is consciously breathing. You know, we're just breathing. We don't even know we're breathing.

It's just happening. That's unconscious activity. It's automatic. That's not what worship is. Worship is a conscious and personal engagement in the contemplation of God and his worth, his glory, his goodness, and it's exulting and exalting him.

That's what worship is. And so that's what's so nice about coming together. When we come together, it's this format that brings us into it. How easy is it for us to be distracted and not worship God during the day? We have to like jerk ourselves into a conscious activity and it's good when we do it isn't it?

But how often do we drift from that conscious activity? We're just kind of breathing our way through life. But we need to engage in conscious, intentional, personal activity. It's different than breathing. It's different than just driving down the road.

It has to do with intentionally doing something while you're driving down the road. That's what worship is. And we get to do that when we gather. This is one thing I just love about the Sabbath. To hear the sounds of the voices and singing, it's such an encouragement.

That is my favorite sound in the world, is to hear the voices of a church singing. We're teaching one another. We're proclaiming in this moment of time. We're taking the time that we have and we're focusing it on an intentional worship of God. And time is allocated, space is allocated, and an activity is defined.

And God has actually told us what to do when we come together and worship. We don't do whatever we want to do. We do what God told us to do. We sing, we pray, we preach, we take the Lord's Supper. That's what we do.

We eat together. You know, with gladness and sincerity of our hearts, we eat together every day, every Sunday. But it is also in spirit, And this is about the genuineness of worship. Now is Jesus speaking about the Holy Spirit, capital Holy Spirit? Or is he speaking about the spirit of man in small caps in terms of a man's innermost being or the heart of man?

I believe and I it seems to me most of the commentators Embrace the idea that Jesus was not referring to the Holy Spirit, but he's referring to the internal, personal, heart-level worship. That's equivalent to words like the inner man, like innermost being, like the word heart. In spirit is equivalent to Worshipping from the heart out of genuineness of the heart. It's the same thing as just having a real and genuine spiritual Attraction to him in Spirit That's true worship. So it's far beyond ritual and it's far beyond just intellectual.

It's deeper than that. It does include all those things. But when he says worship in spirit, he's speaking of this genuine inward desire to ascribe worth to God. You want to meditate on Him in His ways. That's what true worship is.

You know, and what is it that makes a Christian? You know, Is it the worship inclination of the heart the process, you know, you know the the prayerful Desire to be near him. You know, is it or is it this just delight to be with him? Well a lot, you know We we live in a world where a lot of people think that what defines a Christian is a decision. And that's not what defines a Christian at all.

Primarily, it is delight. It's desire for him. It's a love for him. It's wanting him wanting his authority It's not a decision. It's a delight You know if you've ever heard any sermon by John Piper, you know that every sermon he ever preaches says what I just said that God God calls his people to delight more than anything else and it's out of that delight comes everything else that's why Jesus said if you love me you'll keep my commandments the love comes first the delight always comes first That's what it means to worship in spirit and in truth.

You know, is the Christian life a decision or is it a delight? Well, no, it's this complete change of your affections. It's not an affirmation, It's affection for the affirmation and the one being affirmed and you know and at conversion there's a miracle that happens you're born from above a Supernatural change takes place in your affections and you want different things you delight in different things you used to delight in things that don't delight the soul, but you have, you're a new creation. That's one term that's used for this. You have a new nature.

That's another way of speaking of it. You, you know what, you have a new submission, a new obedience, and it's what the Lord was talking about when he said, your joy will be made full. These things I have written here, that your joy may be made full. You will see the kingdom of heaven and you will love it and you will want it." So these five words, first the who of worship, second the what of worship, its ascribing worth, and then the necessity of worship, you must worship, and then the genuineness of worship in spirit. But then he continues, and in truth, that's the content of worship.

Worship is based on the revelation of the true God. True worship is focused on God. It's all about Him. And it's focused on what God really is like, not what we want him to be like. You know, this is the great tragedy of the prosperity of gospel.

Everybody wants to be so successful, But in doing so, they lose God. Because God is taking you to a completely different destination than earthly success. He's refining gold. That's what he's doing. You are the gold.

It's not the gold that you get. It's completely different. And True worship has its object on the glory of God the Father and of His Son Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit. And this is the life-giving worship that this woman did not have. And so he's calling attention here to the substance, God, not the form.

Although we know that to Worship Him in truth means that you must worship the way that He has prescribed, not in a way that fits you. Whether it's the music or whatever it is, God has defined what worship is. And that's what God's people should do. So we have the who of worship, the God who is spirit, we have the what of worship, it's ascribing worth, and we have the necessity of worship, we must if we are true Christians. We have the genuineness of worship, which is in spirit, and we have the content of worship, which is truth.

So we worship in spirit and truth. That's what this woman didn't have. She had form, but no substance. And what did her form get her? A broken heart.

That's where form gets you. There are so many examples of this in the Bible. In Psalm 16-11, it's joy and it's pleasure that defines the Christian life. In your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore." In Psalm 4, it's the sense of God's goodness that distinguishes the Christian.

"'You have put gladness in my heart more than in the season of their grain and their wine increasing. In Psalm 17 verse 15 there's this picture of the men of the world who have satisfaction in this world and they love what they put in their bellies, they're satisfied with their children, but there's something that they lack. And David speaks of it when he says, as for me, I will see your face in righteousness. I will be satisfied when I awake in your likeness. True worship happens when your satisfaction is in him Not in your not in what you put in your belly or how what you do with your heritage It's it's what satisfies you In Matthew 13 44 it's the joy over the kingdom that marks you as a disciple of Jesus.

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and hid, and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." So that's the heart of worship. It has to do with your sense of where you get your sense of satisfaction Where you get your sense of joy where you where you think what you think is good what you think is is pleasurable And that's why what Jesus is teaching this woman is that Christianity is not fundamentally about making an intellectual assertion about places of worship. It's not about fundamentally making a decision. It's about affections. It's about delight.

That's what she didn't have, and that's why she wanted men so badly. Now you can replace that word men for anything in this world. Men, money, vacations, shopping, whatever it is, you know. You know, turning to Jesus, it does involve turning away from your idols. It does involve turning away from the deeds of the flesh.

But if you're thinking, I just need to get, I need, I just not see you start reading my Bible more. I need to get back into church. You know, I you know I'm gonna quit sleeping around. Okay, I'm done. I'm done with it.

I'm done with shopping Whatever it is. It could be anything You haven't really understood what Jesus is saying to this woman because I think she's been trying that She's been going to Mount Gerizim You know if you're thinking okay, I just need to stop looking at pornography. That would be a good thing. But when you say that, you may just be sort of dancing on the edge of Christianity. Because Christianity is about love for a person and his kingdom.

It's about affections toward him. That's what Christianity is. In Revelation 4 we read about this. 24 elders erupt in this voice of confidence toward God. And the 24 elders fall down before Jesus who sits on the throne and they worship him who lives forever and they cast their crowns before the throne saying you are worthy Oh Lord To receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will they exist and are created in Revelation 7 verses 11 to 12 the angels and and the elders and the four living creatures are They're like in full agreement with God and they're saying something that defines their disposition and they say, Amen.

That means we agree with you. We're with you. And all the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures and they worship God saying amen blessing in glory and wisdom and thanksgiving honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever amen They're just saying amen to the worth of God. That is worship. In Revelation 11, 16, worship is characterized by thanksgiving, where the 24 elders who are before God, they fall on their faces and they worship God and they say, we give thanks to you, oh Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come, because you have taken your great power and reigned." So worship is characterized by thanksgiving to him, agreement toward him, to him, agreement toward him, acknowledging of his worth and desiring to be submitted to him.

So In summary, there are two basic elements to true worship. Spirit and in truth. Heart, head. Doxology, theology. Those two things.

It includes sincerity. It includes orthodoxy. But true worship is greater than sincerity. And it's deeper than orthodoxy by itself. It's both at the same time.

Set one aside, you lose it all. Now God is seeking worshipers. God is the seeker in the Bible. Is He seeking you? Is He drawing you?

Is He contacting you? Is He warming your heart? Is He asking you questions that go to the deepest part of your heart? You know, there's so much we could say about this subject. We could talk about leading worship in your home.

We could talk about the kind of worship that we have here. We could talk about the kind of worship you have when you're walking or talking to your boss. You can worship God in all of these ways. That's what Jesus is teaching this woman. It's not just located on Mount Gerizim, it's not just located in Jerusalem.

But this passage has something to teach parents in training their children to worship, how they prepare their children to worship. How do you prepare your children to worship God? Is it summed up in just, be still, be quiet? Is that how you prepare them for worship? Is that it?

I hope not. That's easy, isn't it? To just do that. But to help them to sing, not just mouthing the words, teaching them to listen to the prayers, helping them to learn the blessing of saying amen in their heart to a prayer. Help them appreciate the symbolism, the beauty of the Lord's Supper, the gladness and the sincerity of heart, helping them just to appreciate these remarkable things that we can do on a day like today.

Then the woman also, she continues in verse 25, she declares her confidence that there's a Messiah coming. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming who is called the Christ. When he comes he'll tell us all things. She's declaring her sense of orthodoxy. Yeah I believe in the Messiah.

I believe he'll come. I believe he'll make everything right. Yep Jesus is gonna make it all all right. And then Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. So after revealing herself to her, He reveals Himself to her.

I am He. I am the Messiah. That famous phrase, ego in me, I am. We're going to run into many other instances of Jesus saying, I am. But He is the Messiah.

You know this woman was not seeking Him. Her heart wasn't drawn to Him. She was seeking. He was seeking her. And she was not expecting it.

This is a fulfillment of Isaiah 65. 1. I was sought by those who did not ask for me. I was found by those who did not seek me. I said, Here I am, here I am, to a nation that was not called by my name." She was a Samaritan.

She was an outsider. And she wasn't seeking him. But Jesus was there saying, here I am. Here I am. Believe in me.

What would it take for you to believe in Him? You know, would it be enough that He's full of grace and truth? Would it be enough that He was there from the beginning? Would it be enough that He turns water into wine? Would it be enough that He can cause you to be born again?

Would it be enough that He could turn, He could give you living water? And so he's saying, here I am, here I am. And it's all about the water. That's what makes your life. Whatever kind of water you're drinking is the kind of result you're going to be getting.

And Jesus comes to this woman and He says, here I am, here I am. And that's what we're doing today. We're spending the whole day just saying, there He is, there He is. And he's gathered us to worship in spirit and in truth. Would you pray with me?

Lord, we are amazed at your compassion. We are so thankful for your mercy that you would come to us and we weren't even seeking you. We didn't care about you. But you wanted us to have living water, and so we praise you, Lord. Pray that you would come and do your work among us today, that we would spend the day saying, there you are, there you are.

And Lord, we pray that you would also cause many to say here I am Send me Amen