Join Our Mailing List 

John 4:7-26

 

There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock." Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water." 

 

Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." (ESV)

 

Sins of the Flesh

Tuesday After Pentecost

30 May 2011

If worship only shapes the body and does not shape the heart, it is idolatry. Our Lord Jesus Christ seeks worship that is in spirit and truth (Jn 4:24). For Jesus there is no distinction between spiritual worship and truthful worship. Spiritual worship is truthful worship and truthful worship is spiritual worship. They are a package deal. God is the one who defines both spirit and truth. Our ideas of worship or spirituality are often off beam, because they are defined by our perverse flesh. The flesh tends to extol itself and its works as valuable. It myopically thinks that as long as it bows at the right time and in the right way, it is providing right worship to God. The flesh tends toward formalism, that is, as long as the form is "correct" there is the presumption that there is true worship. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

 

Ancient Israel went down that road, when she presumed that the sacrifices of the temple were sufficient to satisfy the holy God, when they were performed according to the letter of the law, no matter what was in the hearts of the worshippers. Certainly, God had conveyed to Israel the worship form of the temple, but He did not give it to substitute for faith in the promise that sins would be forgiven through the coming Messiah, who was only signed in the acts of the temple. They were to believed and trusted as signs of God's gracious attitude toward them and His desire to substitute the once and for all perfect sacrifice of Christ for them. They, however, thought their acts were sufficient. They were not. They are not.

 

Ancient Israel created a false god; an idol, by presuming that God would be satisfied by their own works instead of the substitutionary work of God's Son, the Messiah. The god that desires works for salvation is not the God who reveals Himself in the pages of the Old Testament or through Christ in the pages of the New. This false god has a completely different way of salvation, one that agrees with the teaching of every false religion and view of divinity that humans have ever invented. True spiritual worship then must reject this idol as a fleshly enemy of the divine truth in Christ.

 

The body must conform to the hope of the heart. Our acts of worship must remain testimonies of our human weakness and depravity and a sign of God's righteousness given to poor sinners for the sake of Jesus Christ, God's Son, who gave Himself to ransom us back from sin and death. There can be no other worship. It must focus on Christ and what He has done for us, not what we should for Him. If we focus on what is done for Him, then we have fallen into the sins of the flesh, and perhaps the worst of all: idolatry.

 

Martin Luther

 

"Paul clearly enough calls 'the flesh' whatever is in man, including all three powers of the soul, namely the lustful will, the angry will, and the understanding. The works of the lustful will include adultery, fornication, etc., the works of anger are rages, contentions, battles, etc., the errors of reason or understanding are false religions or worship forms, superstitions, idolatries, heresies, that is, sects, etc. The former are easily recognized and understood because the term 'flesh' by the entire reign of the papacy has been so obscured that a work of the flesh is understood as nothing other than sexual intercourse or explicit sexual desire. It is not surprising then that they cannot understand Paul.

 

"Here we clearly see Paul including among the sins of the flesh idolatry and heresy, which things, as we said, reason considers the highest virtues, wisdom, religion, holiness, and righteousness. Paul calls it the 'worship of angels' in Colossians 2(:18). But however much it seems holy and spiritual; it is nothing other than a work of the flesh, an abomination and idolatry against the gospel, faith, and the true worship of God. Believers, who have spiritual eyes, see this. The self-righteous cannot see it. Just as it is not possible to persuade a monk that his vows are works of the flesh, likewise the Turks are able to believe nothing less than the observance of the Koran, baptisms, and other rites which they observe, which are works of the flesh. It is very important to account idolatry among the sins of the flesh."
 

Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians, 5.20

 

Prayer 

O God, who gave Your Holy Spirit to the apostles, grant us that same Spirit that we may live in faith and worship You in spirit and truth; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

 

For Kathy and Bryan Janhsen, whom our Lord joined in holy marriage this past weekend, that they might have a life of joy in their service to church and family

 

For Nino Sommerfeld, who is in hospital undergoing medical testing, that the Lord of the church would grant her health and healing

 

For those who are experiencing inclement weather, that they would be kept safe by the holy angels

Art: DYCK, Sir Anthony van  Pentecost (1618-20)

Find me on Facebook                                                                                       � Scott R. Murray, 2011