“Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water”” (John 4:10).
In this passage it is interesting that Jesus bypassed social and cultural barriers in talking to the Samaritan woman, he started by asking her for a drink of water. The conversation evolved from drinking water to worshiping in the Spirit and in Truth. God is always looking for ways to bypass the barriers that in our minds separate us from Him. It is His intention to take us from what we think we can offer Him to learning to drink from His living water.
Worship cannot be limited to what we can offer to God out of our own resources and gifts. “Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life”” (John 4:13–14). What we can offer back to God is always limited, but when we learn to drink from the living water we have real worship to offer back to Him. Jesus Christ fulfilled the day of atonement because no other offering or sacrifice would ever be enough.
“But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:11–12). When we come to worship together, we come to participate and to remember what God has already done and provided for us. We come to drink and abide in Him. “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4).
“But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. “It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”” (John 4:23–24, The Message)
Leviticus 23:27–32
Hebrews 9
John 4:1-26
Ephesians 4:14
1 John 3:1-3
Hosea 6:1-3
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