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True Worship
When the nation of Israel was sent by God into captivity, the Bible says
that their captors, the Assyrians, took foreign peoples and transplanted
them in Israel’s land. The king of Assyria then thought it best for an
Israelite priest to go to these people to “teach them the
rituals of the God of the land.” After being instructed in
these, the Samaritans (as they came to be called) “feared the Lord.”
“Yet,” we are told, they “served their own gods.” They
practiced the “rituals of the God of the land” -- yes -- but as
well grafted in their own worship practices to please themselves (2
Kings 17:24-41).
On one occasion some 700 years later our Lord spoke to one of the
descendants of these people, a Samaritan woman. Knowing what we do about
the religious history of the Samaritans, it should not surprise us that
Jesus told her, “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true
worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father
is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him
must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24).
From a contrast of the Samaritans’ worship with the “true worship”
mentioned by Jesus, please consider a few points:
First, there is a certain type of worshiper who is acceptable to God.
Not just any type of worshiper
will do. Does not the term, “true worshipers,” imply
that there would be some worshipers who would not be such? It is a fact
that in every dispensation of time there have been those whose worship
was not accepted by God (Genesis 4:4-5; Isaiah 1:13-15).
Second, true worship must have the right
object, that is, the LORD God. Worship is not about you, nor
is it about me. God is the One to be worshiped.
Third, true worship of God is to be “in spirit,”
not viewed as some “ritual” or motion to be gone through
completely devoid of the feelings of the heart. Jesus said that “the
first and great commandment” is “You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind”
(Matt. 22:37). God wants the “spirit” or the “heart”
behind the worship, a spirit that is tuned in to the praise and
adoration of Him.
But equally as important, the worship of God is to be in “truth,”
or according to God’s word revealed in Jesus Christ (John 1:17; 17:17).
We cannot worship according to our own whims and desires. Just because
we may worship according to some of “the rituals of the God of the
land” does not mean that we are somehow allowed to add our own
“rituals” as well. The Pharisees did this with their “traditions,”
and the Lord condemned their hypocrisy. “And in vain they worship Me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:9).
Let us engage ourselves in “true worship.” Let us worship with
engaged spirits, but let us as well recognize that such worship must be
as God directs. If we add anything to the pattern of worship as revealed
in Jesus’ New Testament, is our worship any more “true” than the
Samaritans?
“Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ,
does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the
Father and the Son” (2 John 9).
--Mike Noble
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