Monday, December 19, 2011

Core Values, Part 3


Now in John chapter 4, Jesus was speaking to the Samarian woman at Jacob’s well (which is a significant location throughout Scripture, both historically and spiritually). This is where the bones of Joseph were finally laid to rest having been brought back from Egypt. It’s also where Joshua gathered the people of Israel to renew their covenant, and he made that very famous declaration that some of us have posted on our walls: Joshua 24:15, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” After Joshua made that declaration, the people of Israel renewed their covenant to God. And as they were pledging their covenant, Joshua said, “You ain’t gonna do it.” To which they replied, “Oh, yes we are,” and Joshua said again, “Oh, no you won’t.” You can go read it in Joshua 24. Basically, he’s saying, “You think you’re going to do it, but you ain’t gonna do it.” So they say, “Yes, only the God of Israel will we serve!”



And so Joshua says to them in Joshua 24:23, “Put away the foreign gods which are among you and incline your heart to the Lord God of Israel.” “Incline” means to “stretch, to spread out, to bend.” Incline your heart to the Lord. As important as this place was, after Gideon died, it became a center for Baal worship. Oh come on, there’s going to be worship going on, and there are certain areas where worship is predominant. I believe that. There are focal points or hot spots, and if the people of God aren’t truly worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then there are other elements that will move in.



Let’s look at verse 19 of John 4; this woman is pretty amazing. Jesus asked her, “Where’s your husband, go get him.” Now she could have looked at Him and said, “Which one?” I’ve had five of them—she could have been thinking that—which one does He want me to go get? Instead she said, “I have no husband.” He said, “Indeed, you speak truth. You’ve had five husbands and the one you’re living with now is not even your husband.” You’re shacking up. Well, this catches her attention, “Sir (that’s all it took), I perceive you’re a prophet.” I want you to think about this woman also. To have five husbands and then to be shacking up, what do you think the opinion of her neighbors were? Wonder what the folks in the neighborhood thought about her? She was probably one of those that when she went out in the backyard, wives told their husbands, “You stay in here.”



Now, the account above is interesting because the people of Samaria considered themselves to worship the same God as the people of Israel, the God of Abraham. They held to the truth of the writings of Moses, but not any of the prophets. They did not hold to the teachings of the prophets of the Old Testament. Basically, they didn’t believe that they were true. And yet here she is, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.” You start reading people’s mail, and they get real perceptive. So she recognizes that He’s a messenger sent from God. You know, there are two trains of thought here. One is that she rises up and begins to contend with Jesus. I’m not sure that’s exactly true. I think that she may be displaying a desire to learn after perceiving that Jesus is a prophet. She might be thinking, “If He is a prophet, He has something to give me, some truth to impart into my life. And in verse 20, she said, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where we ought to worship.”



You think we ought to worship in that church, and we say that we ought to worship in this one! Skip down to verse 23 for a moment. “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 a spirit and those who worship Him MUST, not should, worship in spirit and in truth. Now this woman apparently is very sincere in her desire to learn about true worship. As I said, the Samarians are thinking that they’re worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It’s not unlike certain religions today. And as I said, they rejected the teachings of the prophets, and they became involved in all sorts of idol worship in conjunction with their worship of the God of Abraham.



On the other hand, you have the Jews who were all hung up on religion, ceremony, the Law, and pomp and circumstance. So now here comes Jesus and He’s making clear: worship is not contingent upon where a person is. But what really matters as in the words of Joshua, “inclining our heart toward God.” Oh, if you don’t get anything else, my friends, this week, begin to incline your heart toward God. Let’s come down off our throne. As in Revelation 4, the same way that the four and twenty elders bow down and cast their crowns before God’s throne, we need to cast ours down! For without Him, we are nothing and can do nothing, but through Him we can do all things!

~ pg

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