Let us turn to John 4, beginning with verse 13.
Jesus answered and said unto her, Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
In verse 19, the woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that Thou art a prophet.”
Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.
Ye worship that which ye know not: we worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews.
But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be His worshippers.
God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
Let us have a further word of prayer.
Lord, we thank You. It is by Your grace that You have called us unto Yourself. We thank You for already speaking to us. From last evening until today, You have spoken to us.
Once again, like Mary, we come before Your feet. We ask that You speak to us. We look to You to speak to our hearts in this session.
Give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we may truly know You, that we would be true worshippers of the Father. Now listen to our prayer. In Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Brothers and sisters, you know that the theme of this conference is vision, worship, and service. We will have two times to share on this matter of worship.
Speaking of worship, there is probably no passage more important in the Bible than the one we have just read, because our Lord spoke in His own words concerning what worship is.
When our Lord came down to earth, before He was crucified, He revealed to us and let us know what worship is.
When our Lord explained this passage, He was having a discussion with a Samaritan woman by the well. He knew that this Samaritan woman thirsted deeply within. There was something that could not satisfy her.
Through our Lord’s discussion with her, we find what did not satisfy her. We thought that one husband could not satisfy her; two husbands could not satisfy her. Perhaps this woman sought satisfaction in this area.
But through the discussion, we find out why she thirsted. The thirst that she had represented the thirst of all mankind. In all mankind there is a dissatisfaction, a void.
To fill this void, many people enter into sin. Many people believe that the pleasures of sin can bring satisfaction. But because there is a void inside, man has not only fallen into sin; man has also fallen into religion.
Today, people believe in all different religions. This proves that there is a thirst. The Lord said to the Samaritan woman, “Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again.”
Throughout the history of mankind, this point has been proven. But the Lord said, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.”
The Lord continued, “The water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water.” In the Chinese translation, there are three words missing. It simply says that it will become a well of water.
What does this mean? Why is it a well of water springing up? The Lord was speaking to the Samaritan woman. Outside, there was a well; but inside of her, there was also a well.
If we drink the water from the Lord, that water within us becomes a well of water, a well springing up unto eternal life. In other words, all that the Lord spoke had to do with this well of water.
The Samaritan woman said to the Lord:
Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
The well beside the Samaritan woman was probably the deepest well in Canaan. This well still exists today, and many of us have seen it.
If you stand beside that spot, you can see two mountains. One mountain is toward the south, and the other is toward the north. One faces Mount Hermon and is completely green; the other faces the desert and is desolate. The well is situated right between these two mountains.
The Samaritan people worshipped God on their mountain. I remember once going to Samaria. At that time, there were still Samaritans there—at least three hundred Samaritans in Israel—and they worshipped God.
For this reason, the Samaritan woman spoke with our Lord concerning worship in that mountain and worship in Jerusalem. There were two mountains: one in Samaria, and the other in Jerusalem.
The mountain in Jerusalem is Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount as we know it today. Unfortunately, there is no longer a temple on top of it; there are two mosques there.
For the Jews, Mount Moriah is the most important mountain. For the Samaritans, the mountain in Samaria was the most important mountain.
Now the Lord replied to the Samaritan woman, “Woman, believe Me, an hour cometh.”
This hour separates the past from the future. “Neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.” Do not forget: this is a very serious word.
If you put this word into Judaism, it is like a nuclear bomb. For the Jews, of course Jerusalem was the place of worship. But the Lord said that an hour was coming.
When this hour came, it referred to the time of the new covenant. Our Lord would go to the cross and shed His blood to establish a new covenant with us.
Under this new covenant, there is a worship different from that of the old covenant. Therefore, the Lord said, “An hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.”
These two mountains represent two different kinds of worship. The Lord said to the Samaritans, “Ye worship that which ye know not.” Their worship was false worship.
But the Lord said, “We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews.” The worship of the Jewish people was directed toward the one true and living God.
When you compare Samaria and Jerusalem, one is false worship and the other is true worship. But then, under the New Testament, there is another comparison.
The Lord said:
But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth.
The word true here is not merely a contrast between true and false. In the original Greek, it is a contrast between reality and shadow.
Old Testament worship was as a shadow. When we come into the New Testament, we see the reality. In the whole Bible, there is no passage like this one, in which our Lord shows us what worship is in the New Testament.
In the Old Testament, there were those who worshipped in the mountain of Samaria and those who worshipped in Jerusalem. But an hour was coming, and now is. This has to do with our Lord’s work.
Our Lord came to earth not only to die on the cross and accomplish redemption. He came to show us how to be true worshippers of the Father.
New Testament worship is not only accepted by the Lord; it also gives us a subjective experience. It is not merely a matter of true and false. It is a matter of reality rather than shadow.
Everything was good in Jerusalem, but it was under the shadow. In the New Testament, we see the reality.
The Old Testament speaks of God’s glory. Ezekiel saw the appearance, or image, of the glory of God. The heavens were opened, and Ezekiel saw the image of God’s glory.
But Stephen was different. Stephen also saw the heavens opened, but the Bible says that he saw the glory of God—not merely an image.
When the heavens are opened, the heaven is rent, and one can see all the way to the third heaven. Stephen saw this. The Lord told the disciples that they would see the heavens opened.
All Christians want to see the heavens, do they not? This is what Stephen saw, and this is what we need to see. When you have a true seeing, you have seen God’s glory; then you have true worship.
Do you remember the book of James? James was the brother of Jesus. He grew up under the same roof as his brother.
He saw Jesus not only with a magnifying glass but also with a microscope. He knew what kind of person Jesus was. Now hear how he testified.
When you read James 2, he speaks of “our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.” In the original Greek, this is very important.
In many translations, the word glory appears to describe our Lord Jesus as an adjective. But in the original Greek, glory is a noun. What does that mean? James is saying, “Our Lord Jesus—the glory.”
In the Old Testament, they saw only the image of the glory of God. They did not see the glory itself. But John 1 tells us:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us … and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.
In the Old Testament they had the tabernacle, and God’s glory was in the tabernacle. But thank God, the Word became flesh. Our Lord is the true tabernacle. Therefore John said, “We beheld His glory.”
Shadow and reality are very different. We are so blessed.
Do you know how great the salvation is that the Lord accomplished on the cross? Yes, we are no longer sinners. But from now on, we are those who are true worshippers of the Father.
Brothers and sisters, do you see this? What we see is not merely the image of the glorious Lord. Ezekiel’s vision was glorious, but it was the image of the glory of God.
After the Lord accomplished the work of salvation, we can see the third heaven. We can see the glory of God. Now you understand how vision and worship are related.
When you see truly the heavens opened and see God’s glory, you cannot help but worship. James was a true Jew, a very zealous Jew. He prayed until his knees were like the knees of a camel.
How did he introduce Jesus? He testified, “Our Lord Jesus—the glory.” If you see this, you cannot help but worship.
Brothers and sisters, we want to use our two times together to see what worship is. Tonight, we want to see the worship of the old covenant, false worship, and worship in shadow.
Do not forget that even worship in shadow gives us some very good lessons. In Old Testament worship, we can find principles of worship, and these principles are still good.
Let us turn to another passage, Romans 1.
Because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them.
For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.
Because that, knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.
For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed for ever. Amen.
This passage speaks of worship. It shows us the history of mankind and its worship.
Paul says that what is known about God is evident within man, because God made it evident to them. How do you know that there is a God in this universe? According to Romans 1:20, creation itself proves that there is a God.
But the greatest proof is man himself. Look at man, who was created by God, and you know that there is a God.
How do we know? Because within each of us there is an instinct, and that instinct is to worship God.
What is the difference between man and animal? Animals may cry, and a monkey can eat a Western meal, but you never see an animal worship God. You never see a monkey building a temple or a cow creating an altar to worship.
What does this prove? It proves that there is an instinct in every one of us. When God created us, He built that instinct in.
Let me give you an example. When you buy a computer, certain components are already built in. You do not need to connect by a wire because there may already be a wireless component within it.
If you sit in a room with your laptop, you can get onto the internet because your laptop already has the capability to receive the signal. It was built in.
In the same way, how do you know that there is a God? When God created us, He put within us an instinct to worship Him.
No matter what, man has this instinct to worship God. One with a high education can worship God, and one who is illiterate can also worship God.
Whether people have much education or no education at all, they know how to build a temple. They know how to burn incense. Is this not amazing?
Doctors have researched the difference between the DNA of man and animal. They may say that the difference between a man and a monkey is one or two percent. But that one or two percent is as great as the gap between heaven and hell.
For example, if I stand beside a gorilla, I have two hands, and it has two hands. I have eyes and ears, and it has the same. But the difference between a man and a gorilla is in the brain.
The brain, in comparison with the whole body, is only one or two percent. What is the difference? We have been created according to the image of God.
We are all from dust. The animals also were created from the earth. But one was created according to the image of God, and one was not.
Brothers and sisters, what is the result? There is an instinct to worship God in man. Therefore, you know that there is a God in the universe.
Animals may have feelings. A cow about to be slaughtered may have tears in its eyes. But animals cannot worship God. When God created them, they lacked one thing.
Now you know what worship is. God wants man to worship Him. If God did not want man to worship Him, He would not have put the instinct of worship within us.
When God created you and me, He built something within us. According to what our Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman, outside there was a very deep well, but inside her there was also a well.
That well is very deep. Apart from God Himself, there is nothing that can satisfy it.
This shows us why God created man. If He placed the instinct of worship within us, then on one hand it proves that there is a God in the universe. On the other hand, it reveals why we were created.
We know at least one thing: God is seeking true worshippers. From the beginning, God has sought true worshippers. When God created man, He built in the instinct of worship.
When you read Genesis, it is very clear. God created Adam from the dust and formed Adam’s body.
Then the Bible tells us that God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life. God’s Spirit entered into Adam’s body, and man’s spirit was created.
That is what our Lord was referring to at the well. He said that true worshippers would worship the Father in spirit. That spirit is the well within us.
When was this well born? When God breathed into Adam’s nostrils, His Spirit entered man, and He created the spirit of man.
The spirit and the body functioned together, and the result was a living soul. When God created man, he had a body; in the middle he had a soul; and in the deepest part, he had a spirit.
Through the body, we know the world exists. Through the soul, we know ourselves. “I think, therefore I exist.” “I love, therefore I exist.” “I decide, therefore I exist.”
When we think, that is the mind. When we love or hate, that is the emotion. When we decide, that is the will.
God is wise, and He put a little spark of His wisdom in us; this became our mind. God is love, and He put a little spark of His love in us; this became our emotion.
God also has a free will. He can say yes, and He can say no. He put a spark of His will in us, and this became our will.
When you put the mind, emotion, and will together, you have personality. This is our personality. The Bible calls our personality our soul.
The soul enables us to acknowledge our own existence; it gives us self-consciousness. The body gives us world-consciousness.
When we speak of worship, we cannot neglect the spirit. If you forget the spirit, you do not know how to worship God or how God wants us to worship Him.
God created in us a spirit, and that is the well within us. Only God Himself can fill this well.
Saint Augustine said, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”
What does this mean? When we cannot rest in God, we are thirsty. We drink of this water, and we are still thirsty.
No matter how high or how low a person may be, people seek religion because they think there is a void in them that cannot be filled. We have been created for God.
What does the word instinct mean? When God created our spirit, He gave it three functions:
We have the instinct of worship because God created the spirit. A baby does not need to be taught how to eat. Whenever the baby is hungry, it cries. That is instinct.
When God created man, He created a stomach. Only food can satisfy the stomach. In the same way, when there is no God within, no wonder there is a sense of emptiness and thirst.
The function of the spirit is to worship. Through intuition we receive leading, and conscience checks us, telling us what is right and what is wrong.
Ever since God created man, the knowledge of God has been made evident within man. But very sadly, man fell and sinned.
After man fell, Paul says that even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God. This is very important.
If you want to know what worship is in the whole Bible, here is a definition: to worship is to treat God as God, honoring and glorifying Him.
Even the English word worship comes from the Anglo-Saxon word worthship. Worship is to look at the object of your worship and recognize that He is worthy.
The Lamb is worthy of our praise. When you worship, you see that the Lamb is worthy. If you do not see, how can you worship?
God’s purpose is for us to see. How do we see? God gave us a spirit, and this spirit is the inward eyes by which we see.
After man fell, man no longer knew how to worship. On the surface, there were actions of worship. People could build temples and burn incense. But they did not know what worship was, because the heart of worship was gone.
They did not glorify God. Brothers and sisters, He is God, and we need to glorify Him. If you see God’s glory, you cannot help but worship.
Isaiah was the same. When he saw the glory of God, he worshipped. Worship is to see God’s glory and therefore glorify Him as God.
God is Spirit. We must worship Him in spirit. If we worship Him as an idol, we do not worship Him as God.
After man fell, they did not give thanks to God. Their reasonings became futile, and their foolish heart was darkened.
The word translated “reasonings” carries the thought of imaginations. After man left God, there were many imaginations. Man then created many gods.
If you look at Greek religion, all the Greek gods were created according to the image of man. Worse still, they were created according to fallen man.
You can see the condition of fallen man in Greek mythology. Venus, for example, was the goddess of love. Men looked at the beauty of the Mediterranean and imagined a goddess arising from the waves and bubbles of the sea.
That is the god of the Gentiles—human imagination. Their imaginations became futile, and their hearts were darkened.
In the Bible, the heart includes the mind, the emotions, the will, and also the conscience. Therefore, when the foolish heart was darkened, man’s inward light was affected.
The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. After man fell, the spirit lost its function. The lamp was no longer giving light.
Man’s spirit died because sin separated man from God. When the spirit dies, man loses the function of fellowship with God. He can build altars and temples, but he cannot truly worship.
The function of worship toward God is lost, while man remains open toward Satan and other things. Toward God, man is blind; therefore the foolish heart is darkened.
Throughout Scripture, Solomon was the wisest man apart from our Lord. Yet Solomon did the most foolish thing: he worshipped idols.
Paul says that man “changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image.” After man fell, he still had an impression of God’s glory.
In the garden, God spoke to Adam and Eve, and they saw His glory. Even after the spirit died, an impression of that glory remained.
Cain said that he would go away from God’s presence. This shows that there remained some awareness of God and of His glory.
God’s glory is invisible, but man wanted something visible that he could grasp. Therefore, man exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image.
This is how idols developed. Man had an impression of God and wanted to grasp that impression again, but he could not. Therefore, he exchanged it for images of corruptible man, birds, four-footed beasts, and creeping things.
This is the beginning of false worship. Man worships incorrectly, but even this proves that there remains an impression that there is a true God.
If I see someone from behind and call him Ezra, but he turns around and is not Ezra, I apologize because I called the wrong person. But the fact that I called him Ezra proves that I already knew there was a person named Ezra.
In the same way, people worship idols incorrectly, but their worship proves that an impression of God’s glory remains. They want to worship, but they cannot see Him, because the spirit created in man has died.
If you read Genesis, it is very clear. God told Adam that he could eat of all the trees in the garden, but he must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the day that he ate of it, he would surely die.
Adam ate the fruit, yet he lived for more than nine hundred years. Does that mean that God’s word was untrue? No. If God said that Adam would die in that day, then he must have died in that day.
Where did he die? His body was placed in the tomb only after more than nine hundred years. But after he ate the fruit, the Bible says that their eyes were opened.
Their outward eyes were opened, but their inward eyes were blinded. They knew that they were naked. Their soul was still functioning, because they had feelings concerning themselves.
If God said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” then something in man must have died. The spirit died.
This is why we must be born again. The Holy Spirit must revive us. To be born again means that the spirit is made alive again.
You do not need to go only to the New Testament to see that spirit, soul, and body are distinct. They cannot be totally separated, but they are different vessels, different organs of our being.
Recently, a mother took her daughters out into the fields, where they encountered mushrooms. Some of the mushrooms were poisonous.
The elder daughter ate the most and was poisoned the most. Very quickly, her liver died. After one week, her whole body died.
This is a picture. Our spirit is like that liver. After man sinned, the inward eyes became blind.
This means that man lost the function of worship. It does not mean that people no longer perform religious actions. They still have the actions of worship.
But the most important thing is that the eyes have lost their function. Man can no longer see God’s glory. How then can he glorify Him? How can he say that God is worthy?
The reality of worship is gone. Yet people still have a form of worship and think that they are near to God, while God is far from them.
Even though man still had a form of worship, we see the story of Cain and Abel.
Cain had been cast out of the garden, and because man sinned, the ground was cursed. Thorns and thistles came forth from the land. Cain was a tiller of the ground.
Abel was a keeper of flocks. Before the flood, men did not eat meat. Thus, the purpose of keeping flocks was for offering.
Here were two offerings from two brothers. They came before God to worship. Sin had separated man from God, and they knew that they were under God’s judgment and wrath.
Cain thought, “I will offer the fruit of my hard labor, and God will accept my offering.” This was the impulse behind his worship.
Even though man had left God, through his parents and through creation he still had an impression of God’s glory. On one hand, he wanted to draw near to God.
One who leaves God becomes an orphan in this world. There is nobody more lonely than one who is separated from God. A person may be surrounded by many people and yet still be lonely.
Man wants to come before God. He wants to sacrifice and worship God. But we must remember that there are two different sacrifices.
Cain’s worship was religious worship. Some people think that if they do something good, they can be pleasing to God. “If I work hard, if I repair the roads, if I do many good works and give them to God, then I can be accepted.”
This is the worship of Cain. But what was the worship of Abel? Abel’s life was a life of worship.
Abel gave a lamb as an offering. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but not for Cain and his offering.
If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door.
There is a worship that God rejects, and there is one that He accepts. What does it mean to do well? Is your worship according to revelation, or does it come from your own imagination because you think you are wise?
The foolish heart is already darkened. A person may think that what he does is pleasing to God, but he may be doing the wrong thing.
Why was Abel accepted? Because there was blood in Abel’s offering.
Abel probably learned this from his parents. Adam and Eve tried to cover their nakedness with leaves, but God gave them garments of skin.
Garments of skin mean that blood was shed by an animal. How could they have the skin if there had been no shedding of blood? Through the skin garments, God taught Adam and Eve.
This is probably how Abel received revelation. If he came before God, he could not come according to himself. He needed an animal whose blood had been shed.
When God sees the blood, He accepts the offering. After man sinned and fell, there was still worship, but only the worship according to God’s revelation could be accepted.
Sometimes we think that if we are blind, we cannot live. Yet a blind person can still live in this world. He can cross the road, feel the bed, and lie down. The world is still real to him.
But do not forget: even though he can live, he lives in shadow. Much of his world is gone, and only a small portion remains.
In the spirit there are worship, intuition, and conscience. At least the Lord has preserved conscience. Conscience is like a cellular phone through which God speaks to us.
A blind person can still walk, but he may get lost. If someone gives him the right direction, he can cross the road; yet he remains blind.
This world is a world of shadows. If a blind man touches the leg of an elephant, he may say it is a pillar. If he touches the stomach, he may say it is a drum. If he touches the trunk, he may say it is a hose.
This is man’s world apart from true sight. Man may walk in a certain way, but his life is still a life in shadow.
In the Old Testament, there were two lines of worship: the worship of Cain and the worship of Abel.
Cain’s line became very different. Men began to worship things other than God. Many things became objects of worship.
They began to create the lyre and the pipe, to make music, to write poems, and to make instruments of war. When man leaves God through false worship, he establishes a culture.
This is the culture of Cain. It is the religion of Cain—a religion without God.
Some people say, “I do not believe there is a God.” That is impossible. Somebody has to worship somebody. If you do not worship God, then you worship yourself.
Many philosophers say that there is no God. How do they know that it is true? Because they say it. In that case, who becomes god? The philosopher himself becomes god.
But Seth called upon the name of the Lord. Thus, there were two lines.
In Genesis 6, man became flesh. In other words, the soul became disfigured and became flesh. Then came the flood.
In Genesis 10, we see the nations of the world. In Genesis 11, at Babel, they gathered together and built a city and a tower.
Revelation tells us that Babylon is the mother of religious confusion. Babylon is the beginning of religion and idolatry.
Man fell into sin in Genesis 3, into the flesh in Genesis 6, and into the world in Genesis 10 and 11. What is this world? It is a world of worship.
Man retained an impression of God’s glory, but he made an idol out of that impression. That is Babylon. That is the beginning of religion.
Before the Lord was crucified and before the new covenant, there were two kinds of worship represented by the mountain of Samaria and Mount Moriah.
But now the true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and truth. The question is this: man is blind. Every day he lives in shadow. Who can open our eyes?
In the Old Testament, there are many miracles. But there is not a single miracle recorded in the Old Testament in which a person born blind was given sight.
That is what the Messiah alone can do. Only when the Messiah comes can those who are born blind receive sight.
When you see, you can worship. You no longer live in shadow. Thank God. This is what the Lord taught.
The Father is seeking true worshippers. Our time has come. This is what we will share today. On Saturday morning, we will continue.
Let us pray.
Lord, we commit these words into Your hands. May Your Holy Spirit translate these words into the hearts of those who hear.
We remember the young ones among us. May they hear Your word today, because You are seeking worshippers. God is Spirit, and we worship You in spirit and truth.
Hear our prayer. We give You glory and love. In Jesus’ precious name, amen.