HARLOTS AND WORSHIPERS

John 4:23 – But the hour is coming, and is here already, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for indeed the Father is seeking just such people to be his worshipers.

One of the tragedies of the fall of man is our twisted vision of life, especially the enjoyment part of life. We all tend to seek for joy and ultimate satisfaction in places that can never complete us. The world sells a bill of goods that many of us have bought. We are told that we can find our ultimate happiness if we just get the right partner in life. That’s the story of the woman at the well in Samaria. She bought the lie five times and was now working on number six. The hard lesson was that no man can ever fulfill you. That’s when Jesus showed up seemingly changing the subject. He wasn’t changing the subject at all, ultimate satisfaction belongs to worshippers. Here is how John Piper explains it.

“The first thing we learn is that worship has to do with real life. It is not a mythical interlude in a week of reality. Worship has to do with adultery and hunger and racial conflict. Jesus is bone weary from the journey. He is hot and thirsty. He decides: “Yes, even now, just now, I will seek someone to worship the Father—a Samaritan adulteress. I will show My disciples how My Father seeks worship in the midst of real life from the least likely. She is a Samaritan. She is a woman. She is a harlot. Yes, I will even show them a thing or two about how to make true worshipers out of the white harvest of harlots in Samaria.”

Rather than judging this woman Jesus gave her love and understanding. What was He saying to her? She was just drinking from the wrong well. Like everyone else she saw religion as an irrelevant separate part of her life. Like most people, she had her religious beliefs but they had nothing to do with joy or the rest of her life. Sometimes we have to be stopped in our tracks by the uncomfortable truth, we have wasted our lives in unfruitful pursuits. Jesus came to lead the woman at the well to that well of living water. It was that living water that changed her from a harlot to a worshipper.