Meditation on Text of the Week

Worship that is Both True and Spiritual

But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in Spirit and Truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in Truth.
John 4: 23,24

Our Lord made this declaration amidst a discussion about the right way to worship God. Such a discussion is vitally important, although in modern days little thought and study appears to be given to such things. Today, so much worship within the Church is focused upon man, his ideas, desires, impressions, and upon human impact. This is what our ancient fathers called “will worship”—that is, worship practices that arose out of human desire and determinations, not from God's direction, instructions and commands.

Our fathers also declared, truthfully, that God alone can determine how and where He is to be worshiped.
It is a divine prerogative, not a human determination. The Second Commandment explicitly forbids worship that is “graven”—that is, crafted or made up by man.

Worship which comes from God and which is right and honouring and pleasing to God has always been in the Spirit and in Truth. This was equally true under the Older Covenant as in the Newer Covenant. Thus, when David worshiped before the Lord in Jerusalem at the Tent of Meeting, he was worshiping as the Lord had commanded (that is, in Truth) and he was being led by the Spirit and enabled by the Spirit of God to worship. All worship under the Older Covenant was required to be in Spirit and in Truth, if it were to be pleasing to God. This is the clear import of our Lord's declaration that “those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in Truth.”

The discussion in which Messiah was engaged in our text was with a Samaritan woman, who was arguing the cause of Samaritan worship—that is, worship upon Mount Gerazim, not in Jerusalem. It turns out that Samaritan worship was neither in Spirit, nor in Truth. It was not worship as commanded by God: therefore it was neither in Truth, nor being led by His Spirit. Messiah underscored this, when He declared to the woman: “You (Samaritans) worship what you do not know.” They worshiped in error and ignorance.

The Jews, however, worshiped in Truth, for salvation was from the Jews. They were worshiping in the place commanded by the Lord, where He had set up His Tent of Meeting. Jerusalem was where the Lord required His people to meet with Him. All worship in Spirit and Truth, therefore, had to be focused upon that holy place—under the Older Covenant.

But change was in the air. This is to say that God's directions and commands concerning worship were changing. An hour was coming, and now is, said our Lord, when God would not be worshiped neither at Mount Gerazim nor in Jerusalem. Why? Although Jerusalem had been the place where the Lord had established His Name and Presence, it would soon be no longer. Jerusalem would become as benighted and cursed as a place and order of worship as Mount Gerazim had always been. The Jews had made the temple a den of thieves. They had utterly corrupted the true worship of God—even as they had in the days of Ezekiel and Jeremiah.

Would this mean an end to the true worship of God? No. True worship would continue: it would continue according to His commands and direction and as led by His Spirit. But, coincident with the Gospel being on the cusp of being taken throughout the whole earth, to the uttermost parts of the earth, no one place would be designated as where the Lord would cause His presence to dwell.

Worship under the Newer Covenant would involve pilgrimage no longer. Pilgrimage would no longer be part of worship in Spirit and in Truth. Under the Newer Covenant, there was to be no one holy place. The whole earth was to become holy as He would come to be be worshiped everywhere. “For where two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them,” He declared. (Matthew 18:20) The hour of which He spoke has come indeed.

Those who under the Newer Covenant mistakenly believe there is one (or more than one) holy place to which faithful pilgrims must repair in order to be blessed by God and to appear before Him are worshiping neither in Spirit nor in Truth.