By Michael A. Milton
In fact, Jesus here teaches on a vibrant, "spirit and truth" worship, and He even uses the phrase "true worshipers," indicating that there is a true worship and a false worship.
A great Puritan named Jeremiah Buroughs wrote a great book called Gospel Worship, and that is certainly a name for the worship Jesus was describing. In the last century, A.W. Tozer wrote about this kind of worship being the "Missing Jewel" of the Evangelical church. A worship service that focuses on the presence of Jesus Christ is most definitely a Missing Jewel in many of our churches. But, some years ago I came across a quote of John Stott's in which he referred to this sort of worship as "Living Worship." Living Worship is genuine heart-felt posture of the soul, which moves beyond questions of mere form to expecting an encounter with the Living God.
Advertisement
In John 4, Jesus teaches about "Living Worship." If we are going to be a church that is being used of the Lord to achieve supernatural ends, we will have to major in this supernatural means: Living Worship.
I find here four defining features of Living Worship.
1. Living Worship is not about a prop, but a Person.
In verse 20 we read: "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship."
Jesus then responds to her by telling her that a day is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will not worry about locating a mountain, but locating a Person. And I think we may say that our first point on Living Worship could be that "Living Worship is not about a prop, but a Person."
The Samaritan woman seems to be using worship as a diversion in order to avoid the person of Jesus. Arguing about worship is nothing new. In Jesus' day, it went on as well. The Samaritans believed that true worship had to happen on Mount Gerizim, which is where Abraham and Jacob had built altars (see Genesis 12.7; 33.20; Deuteronomy 27.46). The Jews didn't like that restriction, and so when the Samaritans built a temple on Mount Gerizim in 400 BC, the Jews destroyed it in 128 BC. Today we hope that a guitarist won't go over and sabotage the organist, but you can see that worship wars are nothing new. And neither is the tactic of arguing about worship rather than worshiping in spirit and in truth.
The writer to the Hebrews wrote of living worship when he wrote: "But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels" (12:22).