John 4:22-23

Ye worship ye know not what

The true worship

I. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE SAMARITANS AND THE JEWS.

1. Samaritan worship was offered in ignorance. They were little better qualified than the Athenians. Rejecting the prophets, their faith rested on tradition, and was given up to superstition. As they were ignorant of the object so they were of the form of worship which God had appointed. “Will worship,” however costly and apparently honouring, is rejected. So the Saviour brought home to the woman the sad fact that she had never worshipped. This is just the case of those who only repeat the words of prayer taught them in childhood.

2. The true worshipper’s worship with knowledge.

(1) The Spiritual Israel. Christ was a worshipper of God not only as Mediator but as man. As High Priest He gives to His people His informing Spirit, through whom they have an intelligent knowledge of God’s character and will, and the form by which to approach Him.

(2) The literal Israel to whom were committed the oracles of God, and such worshippers as Zacharias and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna.

3. A special relation existed between the Jews and the great Salvation.

(1) Its author was a Jew.

(2) Its first messengers were Jews.

(3) And as Salvation so the true worship was of the Jews. To that all the Old Testament worship pointed.

II. THE TRUE WORSHIP.

1. Who are the true worshippers? Those

(1) Who have Spiritual knowledge of God;

(2) Who worship with grace in the appointed way;

(3) Who are opposed to all false worship;

(4) Who apprehend the true medium of worship and so have admission into the holiest.

2. What is it to worship the Father?

(1) Not as the judge and avenger.

(2) With the fellowship of children, not the penance of bond servants.

3. What is worship in Spirit?

(1) Not mere outward worship.

(2) Not mere intellectual worship.

(3) But “praying in the Holy Ghost” in that new nature He has given and with-the help He has promised.

4. What is worship in truth?

(1) That which corresponds with the nature of the God of truth.

(2) Through Him who is full of grace and truth, by whom alone we have access to God.

5. What is “the hour?”

(1) As coming it is the object of Divine appointment.

(2) As come, the era foretold, the dispensation of the Spirit had actually arrived.

(3) Is there not a personal hint of that supreme moment which the woman made the crisis of her spiritual history! Only then can true and Spiritual worship begin.

III. ONLY THE TRUE WORSHIP IS PLEASING TO GOD. The Father has a right to determine this and has done so. (A. Beith, D. D.)

Christ’s revelation of God

I. THIS REVELATION INCLUDES THREE THINGS.

1. God is real--not a dream or picture, a thought or an abstraction. The living God is. Thou art born of Him, and thy power to think of Him is proof of His existence.

2. God is Spiritual--not a material substance or a physical force. These cannot create thought, feeling, and free will. I am greater than mountains, rivers, gravitation, electricity; I reason, love, hope, will. The object of my worship must be like me and far above me.

3. God is personal

(1) Positivism tells us that He is abstract and general. “A Being immense and eternal--Humanity” (Comte)

. But adoration fixes itself on a single person.

(2) Pantheism tell us that He is everything, the Eternal substance which appears as conscious in our thought and unconscious in nature (Hegel)

. But we can no more worship this than a leaf can a tree, or a wave the ocean.

(3) Agnosticism tells us that He is unknowable, “the Power not ourselves which makes for righteousness” (M. Arnold)

. But behind the power we seek the Will, behind the law the Giver.

(4) From these vague abstractions the soul flies to God the Father with an eye to pity and an arm to save.

II. THE INFERENCE is swift and inevitable.

1. Our worship must correspond to the reality of God’s nature.

2. The text does not condemn outward forms. Christ used and instituted them. But all forms are dead and meaningless without reality.

3. In the temple there must be a spiritual altar; on the altar a living fire--the motion of the heart towards God. As fire is manifest in light and heat so is worship in praise and prayer. Without the intercourse of the two spirits it is only a painted fire.

Lessons:

1. When you are bewildered in your religion remember that the most adorable attributes are not metaphysical but spiritual. Our Father brings Him near to us.

2. True worship is no light thing. It is not found in a careless sleepy hour; not possible to a divided frivolous mind.

3. This text does not unconsecrate the Church; it consecrates the world. (H. J. Van Dyke, D. D.)

We know what we worship

Can we be sure of God?

I. CHRIST SPEAKS OF GOD the Father, the God of salvation, God the Spirit, IN A TONE OF INTENSE AND UNFALTERING CONVICTION. “We know”--not guess, dream, desire. He knows Him not as an empty name, or a key to interpret creation, or as a central sun of the philosophy of Providence. At least, then, Jesus is not an agnostic, but knew God as God knew Him. Christ is our example as thinker and knower. Can we then climb to the height of His full assurance of understanding?

II. THIS QUESTION, ALWAYS INTERESTING, IS JUST NOW CHARGED WITH EXTRAORDINARY URGENCY. These are days of the revision and reconstruction of religious knowledge.

1. The word God is so overwhelming and vast that some thoughtful souls shrink from declaring their belief in Him. Atheism has done us this service: that it has forced on us what a great thing it is to maintain the existence of God.

2. Others occupying a different standpoint infer that we have not the faculties requisite for grasping this revelation.

3. It is essential to manhood, conduct and character that we do not trifle with this question. Either God can be known or He cannot, and we ought to settle what the facts really are and be sure that there is no chance of knowing God, or else search for Him with all the heart; for what a man knows and is sure of is the measure of His peace, power and growth. For the world’s regeneration God must be more than an enigma, He must be known.

III. THE ANSWER TO THIS INQUIRY IS NOT SO DIFFICULT AS IT SEEMS. It is not dependent upon the range of our information, but upon the use of the right organs and methods of verification. Though we know little we need not be less positive and assured about it. We may rejoice in the boundless expanse and be sure of the patch of blue above us, and of the ray of truth that shines through it: though we cannot embrace its illimitable sketches of beauty and glory. A real agnosticism is for ever being married to a practical and life-enriching positivism. Though we cannot be sure of anything, it does not follow that we can be sure of nothing. “We cannot by searching find out God.” Even Moses could only catch a glimpse of the glory of His goodness. Who of us knows his friend in his totality, much less God. Christ’s knowledge was limited and yet He knew the Father so well that He took the plan of His life from Him as a boy of twelve, and never lost it till He said, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my Spirit.” This is the secret of human progress. Men built in certitute have been creators of new epochs and saviours of men. Paul’s “I know” was the inspiration of His “One thing I do.”

IV. If God then cannot be fully known, WHAT IS THE KNOWLEDGE WE MAY HAVE, HOW MAY WE GET IT AND TEST ITS VALIDITY? Christ gives the answer, “for salvation is of the Jews.” We Jews know God because we are the depositaries of salvation for ourselves and for all men. Salvation is life, character, ethical stability, enthusiasm for righteousness, God. We are gloriously and divinely saved, and therefore divinely and surely taught.

1. This tells us that nothing assures like life and fortifies like experience. Truth is set in the clear radiance of our deliverance from false thoughts, base passions, wrong aims, and mean deeds.

2. The case cited by Christ proves His principle. From the Jews salvation has gone forth. They were a people saved of the Lord and knew Him through their salvations.

(1) Where will you find a people so completely freed from mental perplexity about God?

(2) To what people will you go for evidence of a more persistent ethical stability?

(3) Nor is there a literature of hope so rich as the Old Testament.

3. It follows that our assurance of God does not depend upon our speculative faculties, but on our practical powers which every marl can and must use.

(1) Intuition, the direct gaze of the soul on creation and life, compelling the recognition of a presence and power as the clearest and most real of all facts. Life sees life, and in life sees law, order, mind and heart.

(2) Science shows that this idea of God is the deepest and most essential of all that get a place in human thought. The total results of human inquiry is to prove

(a) The existence of an energy, infinite and omnipresent, underlying and comprehending all the phenomena of the universe.

(b) That it works for righteousness.

(c) That it is personal, a living and holy will.

(3) History is a revelation of God. “Salvation of the Jews” is only part of God’s redeeming work. Redemption is the pivot on which the entire human story turns.

(4) Life. You will derive your largest aids from personal devotion to Christ, acceptance of His discipline, and effort to do all His will. (J. Clifford, D. D.)

How we may know God

The writer asked an aged negress if she had known Washington. She answered by asking, “Do you know God? I hope I know something of Him, ma’am.” “How, then, may one know God, sir?” “We may learn something about His goodness and handiwork from what we see in yonder garden, and in these beautiful trees.” “You are right, massa; but is there no other way of knowing him?” “Yes, ma’am, we may also learn something of Him from His dealings with the sons of men, the history of nations, and the lives of individuals.” “Can we? But in no other way?” “From the Bible we gain more knowledge of God than from all the other sources put together.” “Yes, indeed! and is there no other way?” “By experience.” Laying her hand upon her heart, and lifting her bleared eyes to heaven, she exclaimed, “Ah, now you have it, massa!” (New Cyclopaedia.)

Ignorant worshippers

The Dowager-Duchess of Richmond went one Sunday with her daughter to the Chapel-Royal, at St. James’s, but being late, they could find no places. After looking about some time, and seeing the case was hopeless, she said to her daughter, “Come away, Louisa; at any rate, we have done the civil thing.” (Raikes’ Diary.)

Ignorant worship affects the life for evil

A Thug at Meirut, who had been guilty of many murders; was arrested, and cast, heavily ironed, into prison. There a missionary visited him, and preached Christ to him with such success, that he professed conversion. As he was brought before the judge, and confronted by many witnesses, he said, pointing to them, “No need of these; I am ready to avow the crimes of my dreadful life.” He then proceeded to declare, that, having been brought up among the Thugs, he fully believed, that, by the shedding of the blood of each victim, he had not only pleased the dreadful goddess Kali, but procured her favour for himself. And he recounted murder after murder in which he had been engaged, some of them attended with such cruelty, that those present who had begun to feel some pity for him again shrunk back; the judge himself lifting up his bands, and exclaiming, “How could you be guilty of enormities like these!” The only reply the poor man made to the judge was to place his hand in the bosom of his linen vest to take forth a little book; then, holding it up in his hand, he “said, “Had I but received this book sooner, the book of Jesus, my Saviour and my God, I should not have done it.”

God may be worshipped anywhere

Isaac’s closet was a field. He went out to meditate in the field at the eventide. David’s closet was his bedchamber. “Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.” Our Lord’s closet was a mountain. “When he had sent the multitude away, He went up into a mountain apart to pray, and when the evening was come, He was there alone.” Peter’s closet was upon the house-top. Peter “went upon the house-top to pray, about the sixth hour.” Hezekiah’s closet was turning his face towards the wall, and praying unto the Lord. (E. Bakersteth.)

Salvation is of the Jews

One nation and all nations

I. THE WHOLE PRIDE OF MODERN WISDOM IS THIS: “SALVATION OF MAN IS FROM MAN.” This has been differently understood.

1. Human nature formerly was each individual man.

2. Latterly human nature has been considered one person or society.

3. However, at no time could man have regarded himself merely as an individual being, for society is to man what the soil is to the plant.

4. Between the two man found a resting place in nationality, a beneficent idea when we place it in the line where individuality and humanity meet. But so far from this individuality lost its finest character. Personal religion, by being made national property, was merged in the community and humanity was almost entirely effaced.

II. HISTORY IS FROM ONE POINT OF VIEW THE CHRONOLOGY OF NATIONALITIES, AND GOD HAS RECTIFIED AND CONSECRATED THE IDEA OF NATIONALITY TO THE TRIUMPH OF THE PRINCIPLES OF INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMANITY.

1. Thus the Christian can accept Christ’s statement that Christianity is of the Jews. Non-Christians, however, object.

(1) One would not deny that salvation in a sense is of, say, the French.

(2) Others refuse to allow a particular people to be the dispenser of common felicity. But none but a Christian wishes it to come from the Jews.

2. About the term salvation there is no dispute. It is the welfare of human nature and the fulfilment of its destinies. Christ came to save humanity as well as man.

3. In what sense, then, can it come from the Jews? No one will, of course, mistake the channel for the source (Revelation 7:10). In its ignorance ancient poetry represented certain countries as the abode of the sun. This is false in physics but true in morals. In the world of grace the rising sun has a home. Salvation is of the Jews. How? Not because Christ was born and lived in Palestine, spoke its language, chose Jews as disciples, or was crucified by Jews. Salvation is of the Jews as the water of stream comes from the basin in the rock at the top of the mountain. There the water is collected and from thence it flows, but the water is from heaven.

4. This being established, let us avail ourselves of the doctrine that each people is the bearer and representative of an idea, and that each idea in order to fix itself in the world has need of a people. This truth is invariably cultivated at the expense of other truths, and thus becomes exaggerated, and is never more than part of the truth. Now if this be the case, might not a whole people in conformity with this great law be the apostle of the truth which contains all truth! Now God has dealt with a certain people in a manner favourable to the discharge of this function. The Jews were a Theocracy, a people amongst whom God lived, whom God governed, to whom He spake, and whose law was His worship, a people elected for this very purpose.

5. But why confine this truth to the Jews? Was it the whole truth? How is this national deposit reconciliable with the doctrine that salvation is personal acceptance of Christ? Let us see. Christ and your soul have met! But at what cost? You are dying with thirst; a drop of water from the river revives you. It was only a drop, not the river, but the whole volume of water was necessary to carry along the drop. The river therefore saved you. In the same way the Church saved you because it gave you the knowledge of Christ whom you savingly received. The Church by its volume and might carries forward that element by which you are renewed. How has that current been formed? Look well at those waves red with human blood and dark with martyr ashes. Your Christianity, however individual it may be, is extracted from the Christianity of sixty generations.

6. Why, then, since each of us proceeds from the Church, should not the Church proceed from the Jews. As everything ends with the individual, so everything begins. The Church was within the Jewish nation, this whole nation was in the loins of Abraham the father of us all. So the ancient posterity of Jacob find a place in the work of individual salvation.

III. OUR PROPOSITION WOULD BE TOO EASILY DEFENDED IF WE COULD SAY THAT CHRIST IS ONLY THE LAST DEVELOPMENT OF THE WISDOM OF THE JEWS. It is not because He is a Jew, but because He is God manifest in the flesh, that He is our salvation. Yet

1. The Jewish race from which He came fulfilled an important function in preparing for His advent. The Old Testament is a progressive instruction that leads us gradually up to Him. The law in the letter is succeeded by the law in the Spirit, a ritual worship by the worship of the heart, legislation by prophecy, Abraham by Moses, Moses by Isaiah, so that when the King arrives there is a people ready to receive Him.

2. This people, which will be the first fruits of a universal Father, could only be drawn from the Jewish people.

3. But apart from the spiritual Israel, the Jewish people as a whole received from God the education necessary to be the forerunner of Christ among the nations, and when Christianity, after having collected in Judaea all that belonged to it, finds Jewish colonies which Divine Providence had scattered which became the first Christian churches.

4. The Jews also carried their history with them which became an immortal lesson for the human race, viz., the manner in which God interposes in human affairs, just as a specimen of a plant explains the whole species.

5. Here we must turn to Romans 11:12. As a political society and race, the Jews had to fall away, because the new economy appealed to individuals. But the falling away is not to be for ever. It must, is, and will be gathered anew according to the principle of individuality and the law of liberty. The world will yet see its fulness, and what will that fulness be? Isaiah 49:16). (A. Vinet, D. D.)

The spiritual ignorance of the Samaritans

The assertion of this, as the great calamity of the Samaritan--that he knew not what he worshipped--is abundantly borne out by history. It was in all times a country ofsuperstition, the early home of Baal worshippers, the later home of enchanters and fanatics, and of sects putting forward pretensions to all kind of spiritual powers. The Jew, on the contrary, clung to a distinct object of adoration. He was a protestant against the worship of spiritual fantasies. This poor shadow showed what the substance was which the Jew had inherited, and which was his distinction among all nations. Salvation was to go forth from his land. And salvation, so our Lord teaches us, consists in knowing what we worship; for that knowledge saves men from slavery to the world’s idols, and to the idols of their own hearts, which is their great curse and misery. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)

The straightforwardness of Jesus

In speaking here to a Samaritan, He indicates some points in which the Jews were superior, and in which her nation might well follow them: while to the Jews, on the other hand (as in the case of the parable of the good Samaritan, and in His remark after the miracle of healing ten lepers), He takes occasion to notice some superiority in the conduct of Samaritans, wherein their nation might well follow them. Thus He corrects the failings of each by pointing out some superiority in the other: reproving each to their own face, but commending them to others: exactly the converse of that conduct which is too common among those who profess to be His disciples, who, on the contrary, are often in the unchristian habit of flattering people in their presence and slandering them behind their back: keeping their faults from themselves, but making them known to others. (G. J. Brown, M. A.)

Aptness of Christ

Our Saviour always had in view the posture of mind of the persons whom He addressed. He did not entertain the Pharisees with invectives against the open impiety of their Sadducean rivals; nor, on the other hand, did He soothe the Sadducee’s ear with descriptions of Pharisaical pomp and folly. In the presence of the Pharisees, He preached against hypocrisy;to the Sadducees He proved the resurrection of the dead. In like manner, of that known enmity, which subsisted between the Jews and Samaritans, this faithful Teacher took no undue advantage to make friends or proselytes of either. Upon the Jews He inculcated a more comprehensive benevolence; with the Samaritan He defended the orthodoxy of the Jewish creed. (Archdeacon Paley.)