Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The Bible tells us to love God with all our hearts, souls and minds. Today we meet a woman with a difficult past, a woman who finds, through Jesus, a very positive future. It's all wrapped up in becoming a worshiper. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, John chapter 4 is your focus as you begin a series on how to adore God. Here Jesus talks to a half-gentile woman about how God is to be worshipped. That gives hope to all of us who are not from the nation of Israel.
Dave, it certainly does. Jesus made it very clear that no matter who you are or where you are, you can worship in spirit and in truth. What a wonderful privilege we have. And the reason for this series, How to Adore God, is because oftentimes we cannot understand God.
Recently I was having a discussion with one of my grandsons and I pointed out that there are so many mysteries about God, but even when we cannot understand him and are puzzled by what he does, we can always worship him and thereby honor him. We here at Running to Win are making a very special volume available for you. I'll tell you, it's a devotional 365-color pages and it introduces you to biology, anatomy, astronomy, geology, design, history. If you were to take out 10 minutes every single day and read one of these pages, it would constantly help you to adore and worship God. For a gift of any amount, we're making it available for you. Here's what you do.
Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Remember that creation reminds us of God's wisdom, even his grace, and what a marvelous God we serve. Let us always adore him. Many years ago in a remote village, a woman was married. I suppose it's true that most women believe that marriage is going to bring some level of happiness, and I'm sure that that was true of her as well. She was in a culture where women had basically no rights, none whatever, and so there was nothing she could do when her husband decided that he would divorce her, possibly because he was more interested in another woman. So she went through the reality of a divorce, and her world came tumbling down, and then something else happened. She met another man, and for whatever reason, they were married.
And she thought I'm sure that at last she's going to be happy, at last she's going to find the man of her dreams, the one whom she really loved. But that marriage also ended in divorce. When she met a third man, she was cynical by now, and I'm sure that she had given up all possibility that marriage is supposed to be the means of happiness, but then maybe again, maybe this man, after all, hope springs eternal in the soul, maybe this man would bring her the happiness that she desired. He also divorced her. Then there was a fourth man and a fifth. When she met the next man, they decided to not even have the charade of a wedding.
Why bother? They simply decided to live together. And here's a woman with that kind of a history, and you know what happened to her then? Miraculously, wondrously, she met Jesus Christ, and notice this, Jesus gave her the opportunity to gladden the heart of God. And I want you to know today that Jesus used the opportunity of speaking to her as the basis of one of the most interesting and insightful passages in all the New Testament on the topic of worship.
So I'm going to invite you to take your Bibles and turn to the fourth chapter of John's Gospel, John chapter 4. Jesus is sitting on Jacob's well. Now, most of you have not sat on Jacob's well. I had the privilege of doing so way back in 1968 when tour groups were actually able to go there.
Now, for the most part, with some exceptions, they can't. But you can actually go to Jacob's well. We poured water down the well to see how long it would take for the water to hit the bottom, for the water to splash. We also saw Mount Gerizim, which is going to be referred to in this passage.
So I want you to paint the picture, but the best thing we can do is actually look at the text. Jesus is sitting on the well. He asks this woman for a drink, unthinkable to the Jews, that a man would speak to a woman, because women were often despised.
They were very low class. And Jesus says, give me a drink. And she says to him in verse 9, you are a Jew and I am a Samaritan. How can you ask me for a drink?
For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. The woman said, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself and so did his sons and flocks and herds? Jesus answered, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.
The woman said, well, sir, give me this water so that I don't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. Jesus said, go call your husband and come back. She said, I have no husband. Jesus said, you're right when you say that you have no husband.
Fact is you've had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true. Sir, the woman said, I can see that you're a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain and she's pointing to Mount Gerizim, but you Jews claim that Jerusalem, that's the place where we should worship. Jesus answered, believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth for they are the kind of worship the father seeks. God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.
The woman said, well, I know that Messiah called the Christ is coming and when he comes, he'll explain everything to us. Jesus declared, I who speak to you and he, wow, what a lesson, what a discourse on worship. You have to understand that in the Bible, God is relentlessly self serving. God wants all things to culminate in himself. God is the one who desires worship. He does things the scripture says for his name's sake.
He said, I chose Israel for my name's sake. And when we pray the Lord's prayer, we say, hallowed be thy name. As a matter of fact, God said in the Old Testament, I am raising up Pharaoh.
He says that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. The reason that Pharaoh was raised up, my friend is so that God's fame and God's reputation might be spread around the world, that he might be known as a great and holy and powerful God. And that's why Pharaoh was raised up to give glory to God. In fact, eventually every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. There are those who do it in this life and they will do it in the life to come.
There are others who will only do it in the life to come, but God is going to receive glory from everyone. And therefore, isn't it interesting that his desire, his great desire for us is to bring him delight by becoming worshipers. I've entitled this message how to have a passion for God or how to adore God, I should say. And in the next message, we're going to get more specific as to what worship is really going to cost us and what it's all about. But here we lay the foundation work for a marvelous discourse on worship. And I speak to those of you who are broken down, those of you who have gone through one bad experience after another, those of you who feel God has deserted you. I want you to know today that you too can become a worshiper of God.
The invitation that God gives to a broken, immoral, failed woman is the invitation that he gives to all of us. Now, the doctrine of worship is much discussed today. The last issue of Christianity Today had an article on whether we should have traditional worship or whether we should have contemporary worship. I didn't have a chance to read the article, though I'm sure it has some mighty good things to say. But those kinds of discussions have been going on for years, and they will be here long after you and I are gone.
There's one problem with them. And that is that sometimes worship is looked at as something that happens only in church. It is looked at as our verbal expression to God in reading and in singing.
So the question is, should it be contemporary or should it be traditional? And while those discussions may be healthy, actually Jesus is going to get to the heart of the problem and show us that worship is much deeper than those kinds of questions. Now, in order for us to get into the text, let's remember who this woman was. Well, first of all, she was a woman. And I mentioned a moment ago that Jewish men did not talk with women, particularly unknown Jewish women. And here, Jesus has a conversation with her. She was not only a woman, she was also a biracial woman.
Keep in mind. Now, in order to understand why, you must realize that in the year 722 BC, you have the Assyrians coming into the land and they take northern tribes to Assyria. That's called the captivity. And what they did is they took these people, they displaced them, but they brought Assyrians back into the land to live there instead. But some of the Jews were still living in the land. Not all of them were taken forcibly to Assyria. So they intermarried with these Assyrians. So what you have people who are half-breeds. Oh, how those pristine, self-righteous Jewish leaders despised these people of mixed blood. They called the Gentiles dogs. But for someone who is part Jewish and part Gentile, there was almost no word to condemn them. They were so despicable.
They were beneath the animal kingdom. This woman is part of that group. She's biracial. She was not only a woman, she was a biracial woman.
She was a poor biracial woman, obviously, and she was also known as an immoral biracial woman. And it's to this one that Jesus offers the gift of salvation, the life, the eternal life, but also the great discourse on the topic of worship. And what I'd like to do to get to the heart of this is to simply point out briefly three facts that Jesus mentions about worship, which will change our lives, which will make me a different pastor, which will make you a different person, which will change your marriage and your whole outlook, if you and I actually take these words seriously and begin to apply them. The first fact is this, that worship is a matter of heart.
It is not just a matter of geography. It's a matter of heart. I'm picking it up in verse 23. A time is coming and now has come when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit, small s, not the Holy Spirit, the human spirit, the human heart. What Jesus is saying is that there is this big discussion, should it be Gerizim or Jerusalem. Now, in order to understand that discussion, you have to go back 200 years before the captivity that I told you about, back to 931 when your member Solomon died and he had a son by the name of Rehoboam who made some foolish decisions and some of the northern tribes said, we're going to establish our own kingdom. So you have two kingdoms. You have the south with its capital in Jerusalem and you have the north with his capital in Samaria. And when Jeroboam, don't get these guys confused, Rehoboam and Jeroboam, Jeroboam is of the northern kingdom.
When he became king, he said, I don't want my people going to Jerusalem like the scripture says they should. You know, I want them to stay here and worship. We're going to set up our own worship here on Mount Gerizim and archeologists have actually found the altar that was on that mountain. And we want all the people to come here to worship, you see.
So that's the basis of the rivalry. So the woman sitting there on Jacob's well, you can see Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, another mountain in the area very close by, but she is sitting there and she says, our father said that in this mountain we should worship and you Jews say that the worship should take place in Jerusalem. Jesus said, woman, I want to tell you something. Woman, understand that worship is a matter of spirit.
It's not a matter of geography. You can worship anywhere because God is everywhere. And if you've come to God and now we're looking at it through the lens of the New Testament, if you've come to God through Jesus Christ, you can worship because your whole life should be an expression of worship, the adoration of the wonder and the glory of God.
That's supposed to be the centrifugal force of our entire existence. And that's why you can worship on the CTA. In fact, it might be a good place for you to worship. Kathy Person, many of you know her. I didn't get a chance to get her approval to tell this story, but I'm sure that I do have it.
John Person is our camp director. But Kathy Person told me that one day long before she was married, she was hitchhiking through Europe trying to find who she was and trying to find God. And she ended up at Labrie, which is where Francis Schaeffer was doing some teaching. And spiritually, she was reborn.
Her life was straightened out there. And then she said to Dr. Schaeffer, she said, you know, when I go back to the city of Chicago, what if I go back there and find out that God isn't real? And I remember Kathy telling me that Dr. Schaeffer said to her, look, if you go back to the harsh streets of Chicago and find out that God isn't real, then don't come back up here to the Alps, because he isn't real up here then either. Oh, we say, well, you know, if I were in the Alps, I could worship God because the heavens declare the glory of God. And it's true that nature makes us respond to God. But my dear friend, Jesus is saying that worship is a matter of spirit. It is a matter of heart.
And the issue isn't the Alps or the Chicago streets. The issue is the condition of our heart. That's what Jesus is saying. Now, I want you to notice that the whole thing then comes down to a matter of desire, doesn't it? Do we desire God? You say, well, we do have worship services in church, so the geography is important. Well, let's think about that for a moment. Of course, when we come together, we have a worship service and there's something that goes on here together on Sunday mornings that does not happen during the week because we are with other members of the body. And that's so important. We call it corporate worship because God is among his people in a sense that is experience that may not be true when we are alone.
We can worship alone, but God is with his people. And furthermore, the direction of our mind and our hearts and our thought intentionally are directed God word. Now, you can take our bulletin and look at it on any Sunday.
And I believe that what you'll find is that it is intentionally God directed. Look at the songs that we sung today. Jerry, can you give me a bulletin, please? I just want to point out. Well, OK, you don't have to find.
Take Darryl's them. And I can't find where we are here. I worship you, almighty God. There is none like you. I worship you, old prince of peace.
That is what I want to do. I give you praise for you are my righteousness. I worship you, almighty God.
There is none like you. Can there be anything that is more God directed than that? Speaking directly to God. And we could go through the bulletin and see it every Sunday. But here's what I want to tell you, folks. And here now you have my heart.
All right. If we are not worshiping God during the week, we can't worship God on Sunday. And dare I say, we won't worship God on Sunday. We won't come to this service with a sense of anticipation and say, I wonder what God is in store for me to learn, but also I delight to sing his praises because I adore him and I love him. And I can hardly wait to see what we're going to sing today to magnify the name of God.
Unless our hearts are right, we won't say that. You know, it's hard for us as preachers sometime to give the congregation a spanking. But today you're going to get it from somebody else. But God's going to use me to do it.
OK, now here it is. I'm preaching on worship. God knows it. Jerry didn't know it for a long time, but I knew it. God knew it. And wouldn't you know it that here's a letter that was sent to me and it arrived, at least I saw it on my desk this week.
It may have arrived earlier. Listen, it's addressed to me. I was a visitor at your church this morning and I do thank you for the provocative message. But as I first walked into the sanctuary, I heard and observed a steady chatter in nearly every direction. I sat down in a section to the right of the podium, expecting at least a few moments of quietness and meditation. The incessant talk by people both in front and behind me continued. I may tell you that what I overheard had little or nothing to do with spiritual matters.
It was largely small talk and outright gossip. Why aren't your parishioners encouraged to be more respectful of the house of worship? Are you okay if I go for the next paragraph? Are you with me here? Steven gets a little more sensitive here, but I'm going to read on. Secondly, I noticed loud applause on several occasions during the service.
He says God's house is a place of holiness set aside, especially for him. Now I want to tell you this, that I am not opposed to applause at times. It's a controversial issue. Some people think we should never have applause.
Others think that it should be all the time. I am not opposed to it, so I may not entirely agree with the letter, but this is the part I do agree with. Unfortunately, the applause seemed to be more in the nature of a response to entertainment than a reaction to God's word. I think this person has something to say to us. Well, this is Pastor Lutzer.
Of course, when people come to church, it's wonderful that they have an opportunity to interact, to get caught up on their lives, share prayer requests, but also, as emphasized, once the worship service begins, the emphasis should always be on God. And speaking about that, I'm holding in my hands a book entitled, Without Excuse, 365 Color Photographs Showing the Wonder of God's Creation. Wish I had more time to discuss it with you, but after reading this book, you'll never believe in Darwinian evolution again. Very quickly, for a gift of any amount it can be yours, here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now because this is the last week we're making this available for you, let me give you that contact info again, rtwoffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. From my heart to yours, thank you so much for helping us financially. Thank you for your prayers because of people just like you, we're making a difference around the world. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago to help you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Next time we turn again to John chapter 4 for more about a special moment at a well in Samaria. Plan to listen. Thanks for joining us. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
