What is Worship? Jesus Explains

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis Episode: What is Worship? Jesus Explains
Date: June 2, 2026
Host: Jonny Ardavanis | Guest: Hank

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), using the conversation to explore the biblical meaning of worship. Jonny and Hank examine what it means to worship "in spirit and truth," how Jesus breaks barriers in reaching the outcast, and the transformative response that genuine worship demands.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Context: Jesus Breaks Barriers (00:00–03:20)

• Jesus intentionally seeks out the Samaritan woman, who was both a social and religious outcast.
• “How you feel in worship is less important than how God feels about our worship.” (A/Jonny, 00:00)
• Samaritans were despised by Jews—there was profound animosity due to racial and religious differences.
• Jesus pursues individuals regardless of societal expectations:

  “Jesus goes to the last person on earth you would expect to receive the message of the Gospel. He says, this is the exact person I have to talk to.” (A/Jonny, 02:15)

• The shift from Nicodemus (religious elite, John 3) to the adulterous Samaritan woman (John 4) shows that the gospel is for both the respectable and the rejected.

2. Sin, Shame, and Jesus’ Directness (03:21–08:20)

• The woman draws water alone due to her public shame; her isolation illustrates sin’s tendency to isolate.
• “That's exactly the type of person that Jesus came to save. Jesus says, as a great physician, ‘I did not come to save the healthy, but the sick.’” (A/Jonny, 03:57)
• Jesus exposes her sin not to shame but to bring healing:

  “Only when the wound is open here can he apply the balm that only he can. As the Great Physician...” (A/Jonny, 07:10)

• Salvation is likened to “living water”—a source of purification and satisfaction.

3. Conviction Before Comfort (08:21–11:33)

• Jesus doesn’t gloss over the ugliness of sin; she must acknowledge her brokenness before receiving grace.
• The Gospel addresses different types of sinners: the outward rebel, the self-righteous, and the hypocrite.
• “We’re not going to be ready to see the answer until we admit there’s a problem.” (B/Hank, 07:56)
• God sees behind every mask and exposes us in order to draw us near.

4. Surface Religion vs. True Worship (11:34–15:22)

• The woman attempts to shift the conversation to religion and tradition to avoid personal confrontation.
• “She’s kind of still grasping for a straw of justification...she’s totally caught off guard and wrestling with, like, something divine is happening here, but she’s not totally ready to repair.” (B/Hank, 11:33)
• Jesus redirects her from the place of worship to the nature of worship.

5. Worship in Spirit and Truth Explained (14:00–20:23)

• Common misconception: worship is only singing.
• True worship is holistic—“far more than singing. It’s our very lives.” (A/Jonny, 14:09)
• Worship “in spirit” means with every fiber of our being, wholeheartedly (Psalm 103, Luke 1), not merely external acts.
• “Many people worship God with their body...But true worship, biblical worship, engages the spirit, meaning every fiber is wholehearted.” (A/Jonny, 15:23)
• Worship “in truth” means our response is rooted in God’s revelation—biblical teaching must shape worship.
• “The fount of true worship is not feeling, it’s truth...Superficial teaching produces superficial worship.” (A/Jonny, 17:08)
• A balanced church is both deeply scriptural and fervently expressive—neither dead orthodoxy nor unanchored emotion.

Notable Quotes:

• “Worship is never mindless. It is always moored to and anchored in the truth of God’s word.” (A/Jonny, 19:16)
• “If you’re full of the Spirit without truth, you get hysteria. If you’re full of the truth without the Spirit, you get stoicism...a morgue rather than a meeting place with the living God.” (A/Jonny, 19:51)

6. The True Mark of Worship: Focus on God (20:24–23:42)

• Genuine worship leads us to forget ourselves and be absorbed in God.
• CS Lewis analogy: “As long as you notice and have to count the steps, you are not yet dancing… The perfect church service would be one when we were almost unaware of it, our attention would be totally on God.” (A/Jonny, 21:19)
• Authentic worship is God-centered, not self-centered or performance-driven.
• “How you feel in worship is less important than how God feels about our worship.” (A/Jonny, 23:26)

7. Jesus Revealed: The Outcast Becomes the Evangelist (23:43–27:10)

• Jesus reveals his true identity—"I who speak to you am he"—to the Samaritan woman, not to the religious elite.
• “He’s telling the woman...I’m the God that talks to Moses at the burning bush. That’s who I am. And I find that amazing.” (A/Jonny, 24:20)
• The woman’s response is evangelistic—she tells her whole town about Jesus. Her prior shame becomes bold witness.
• “Come, see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done.” (Woman, recounted by A/Jonny, 24:53)
• God's grace transforms the most broken into vessels of His message.

8. Application & Reflection (25:03–End)

• Have you “worshiped God”—not just sung a song, but responded to Him from the heart?
• The response to encountering Jesus is worship—awe, adoration, surrender.
• Evangelism doesn't require complex arguments; it starts with, “Come see the one who saved me.”
• “It’s so amazing to just remember that God not only saves people that are wicked, he uses them. And this woman was used by God.” (A/Jonny, 26:41)
• No matter your past—prodigal, self-righteous, indifferent—the hope remains the same: it’s about what Jesus has done.

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Memorable Moments & Quotes with Timestamps

• “How you feel in worship is less important than how God feels about our worship. And he wants it to be in spirit and truth.” (A/Jonny, 00:00)
• “Every church needs to realize that failure in worship doesn’t ultimately get traced back to a misplaced chord or a pitchy singer, but wrong thoughts about God.” (A/Jonny, 19:04)
• “A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you are not consciously thinking about eyes or light or print or spelling… The perfect church service would be one when we are almost unaware of it, our attention would be totally on God.” (A/Jonny, quoting CS Lewis, 21:19)
• “Come, see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done.” (Woman, recounted by A/Jonny, 24:53)
• “It’s not you at all. It’s what he’s done on our behalf.” (B/Hank, 26:54)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00 — Opening statement on true worship
• 02:15 — Jesus seeks the outcast
• 03:57 — Sin leads to shame and isolation
• 07:10 — Exposure of sin for healing, not shame
• 11:33 — The woman shifts to religious tradition
• 14:09 — Redefining worship: beyond singing
• 15:23 — Worship in spirit: with all that we are
• 17:08 — The role of truth in worship
• 19:04 — Failures in worship traced to wrong views of God
• 21:19 — CS Lewis on true worship
• 23:26 — It's about how God feels about our worship
• 24:20 — Jesus reveals himself as Messiah
• 24:53 — The first evangelist: the Samaritan woman
• 26:41 — God uses the redeemed outcast

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Final Takeaway

Worship, as Jesus explains, is a response of the whole self to the truth of God. It is not limited to song or ritual but is a holistic, heart-engaged, truth-driven surrender. The story of the Samaritan woman exemplifies that worship flows from conviction leading to cleansing, and then to a joyful witness—showing that the most unlikely can become the most powerful agents of God's glory.

“Have you ever worshipped God—not just sung a song, but truly encountered Him with your heart and mind, in spirit and truth?” (Summation of Jonny, 25:27)

Transcript

[A]

How you feel in worship is less important than how God feels about our worship. And he wants to be in spirit and truth. The response to someone being changed by God is worship. And we know that it is possible to go through the motions without any passion of our heart. So worship that Jesus is after, and we see this in Malachi, is from the depths of our soul. And yet, unlike much of the worship in the contemporary church today, true worship is never manipulated. I hear the word encounter a lot these days, but no one encounters God without encountering the truth, both at the corporate level and the personal level. And I think sometimes people kind of pick their lane. We're going to be the truth church or we're going to be the spirit church. But you have to be both of those things with gusto in order for it to be a biblical one. Hank, how we doing?

[B]

Doing great, Johnny, how are you doing?

[A]

As you know because you're wearing it, we are featuring new dial in merch that's going to be available June 15th. How does that. How. How are you liking.

[B]

This is the best version yet.

[A]

Yeah, and we got hats. Come on, camo. This one will sh your head 100%. Come on. Hey. Well, we're picking up in a conversation where we left off in our previous episode. In John chapter 4, Jesus is having a dialogue with the last person on earth you would ever expect him to talk to. In John chapter 3, Jesus has a conversation with the most respected and the most religious man in Israel. And then the scene shifts in John chapter 4 as Jesus has a conversation with the most immoral, rejected, despised, shameful person that you could possibly fathom, and that is a Samaritan woman. Now remember, the Jews despised Samaritans. The Samaritans were a group of racial and religious half breeds. They had forsaken the true worship of Yahweh and they had formed this syncretistic way of worship, of combining gentile worship with the worship of Yahweh. And to insult someone was to call them a Samaritan. One of the common prayers that the Jews offered at the time was Lord, do not remember the Samaritans in the Resurrection. You mentioned it last time, but this wasn't Auburn, Alabama. This was deep seated animosity and hatred. But there's something you ought to know about Jesus. He isn't confined and jump in here to the so called racial or religious barriers of expectation. Meaning that as we talked about last time, there's people in our life that we go, hey, they're right for the gospel. All they're missing is Jesus. They're just one click away. And after that, their whole life will be perfect. But Jesus goes to the last person on earth you would expect to receive the message of the Gospel. He says, this is the exact person I have to talk to.

[B]

Absolutely. And we're moving quickly here, but this is kind of part two of a prior conversation. We're jumping into the story midpoint. But an important distinction as we dive in is Jesus. When we pick up this story, his humanity and his godhead is on full display. So even though he's hungry, he's tired, and he's in need of a drink, he pursues this lady intentionally, thoughtfully, with conviction, and confronts her in the interest of her long term salvation.

[A]

You're right on. So this woman comes to the well alone. And one of the things that we talked about last episode is that most women would travel to a well together. The well was like a community center.

[B]

They always travel in packs.

[A]

Yeah, they travel in packs. Isaac, Jacob and Moses, they all met their wives at a well. So if you're a single guy listening to this episode and you're looking for like, hey, where's the woman that got it? A well, potentially. But this woman is alone. And you have to ask the question, why? Well, it's because of her shame. All Samaritans were rejects, but this is the reject of rejects. And her sin, her immorality, her promiscuity, it's no secret. Her shame is public and she wants to be alone. And this is really, honestly, Hank, what sin does. It drives you to greater and greater degrees of isolation. And let me just tell you this, that's exactly the type of person that Jesus came to save. Jesus says, as a great physician, I did not come to save the healthy, but the sick. And when you are brought low to the end of your rope at that point when you realize the emptiness and everything else that the world has tried to throw in your way to offer you satisfaction and fulfillment, at that point, you are right for the offer of salvation. Now, salvation in this passage is referred to as living water. Water in the Old Testament was known as a cleanser. It was a purifier. But not only that, it's also a satisfier. And if I just was going to ask you the question, when or what's the best water that you've ever tasted?

[B]

Oh, it's when I was thirstiest.

[A]

Yeah, thirstiest. When I was the most thirsty.

[B]

No, but you're thinking about like either a football, two a day in the hot summer sun, you're coming off the turf or in the middle of the desert out in Arizona after like driving around on a four four wheeler.

[A]

And that's exactly where this woman is at. She's searching for satisfaction, she's looking for fulfillment. And she's looking to all these other lovers to find something that no individual can give to her. And that's the world that we live in. Remember that quote by C.S. lewis. We're all playing in mud pies when the sea is available to us. And so Jesus offers her living water that can satisfy her soul. And he himself is the only one that can provide this. And we're picking up in the conversation where we left off. So in verse 16, Jesus tells this woman, go call your husband and come here. And the woman answered and said, I have no husband. And Jesus said to her, you have correctly said, I have no husband. Now at times in the Western church, I think there's a propensity to chase numbers, you know, like this. Many people came to know the Lord more than we often declare the whole counsel of God. Sometimes we want people to pray a prayer and they're in, we'll count them. But before this woman can ever experience the water that Jesus is offering, she must first be confronted and convicted and repentant over her sin. It's not just that her soul is thirsty, it's that it's sinful. And Christianity begins with an understanding of our need for a Savior. And so Jesus is going to reveal the true ingredients of her sinful condition. He says, go and find your husband. And her response is, I have no husband. Now technically she's not lying, but she's also not telling the whole truth. But Jesus displays his omniscience here by saying, okay, you're right. Verse, right verse 18. For you have, he says, you have correctly said verse 17, I have no husband. For you have had five husbands and the one whom you have is not your husband. This you have said truly. So he shines the light into the darkness of her soul. And at this moment, all of her ambition to conceal the nature of her true identity were vanquished in the light of the all knowing one that she was having a conversation with. And one of the things that we touched on last episode that is necessary to repeat here when Jesus exposes our sin, he's not trying to embarrass us. He's not trying to embarrass or shame this woman just to kind of like

[B]

rub her face out.

[A]

Yeah, he is revealing that he knows what no One else knows. And only when the wound is open here can he apply the balm that only he can. As the Great Physician, some people claim to come to Christ all while hanging on to their idols. Sex, greed, ambition, materialism, worldliness, whatever it may be. But Jesus is not going after the symptoms here. He's going after the root causes. And so he's going to uncover what maybe no one else knows, but he himself does. I like what Warren Wiersbe says. He says the only way to prepare the soil of the heart for the seed of the gospel is to plow it up with conviction. So she has to come to terms with her morally messy lifestyle. And Jesus is confronting her in that and he's not trying to just bring her down, he's trying to bring her to himself.

[B]

Well, and it's kind of an obvious observation when you make it like we're not going to be ready to see the answer until we admit there's a problem. Like that's a pretty self evident fact. And yet I'm thinking personally about all the times I'm not thinking that way when I share the gospel of like, no, but actually I kind of want to skip over that part, the confrontation part, and just hop right into the good news. Absolutely.

[A]

And even when we're talking about the way that Jesus talks to different sinners, we mentioned this last time, but as the Great physician, Jesus provides different remedies for different diseases. He has a totally different conversation with Nicodemus in John chapter three, as he does with this immoral woman in John chapter 4. There are probably a few different types of sinners that the Gospel confronts. First of all, the outward rebel, the hedonist. This is someone that is plunging and jumping and diving into the iniquity of the world. You have, secondly, probably the self righteous moral person. This is someone that's shiny on the outside, thinking that maybe they can earn their way to God. This is someone that has high moral standards and yet they fall short of the righteousness of God. Then you have someone that's maybe somewhere in the middle. They indulge in iniquity secretly, but then on the outside they still appear to be the righteous individual.

[B]

And maybe there's a line they won't cross.

[A]

Yeah, there's a line they won't cross. So they justify their goodness and they justify their badness. Some are the prodigal and they're in the pig pen. Some are the older brother thinking, that guy is terrible.

[B]

Yeah, totally self righteous.

[A]

And then some people who are listening think they are neither but the point of the scripture is that you are condemned regardless of the moral bar that you set for yourself. And God sees behind every mask and every single motive, every single individual, and he exposes us inner sin once again, not to push us away, but to bring us near. As you head into the summer, one of the things that I would highly encourage you to have is some sort of digital accountability on your devices. The Puritans used to draw our attention to the reality that an idle mind is the devil's playground, meaning that when we are idle and we have time, we are more vulnerable to temptation. In this regard, I would highly recommend you. Accountable to you. It's a purity accountability software that I use personally and other members of my team do as well. You can go to accountabletoyou.com, dial in and use our code dial in to get 25% off your first year, and you can find out more information there. Find an accountability partner. And as my friend says, accountability is the friend of integrity. And that's our goal, to honor the Lord when we're alone, as we would in front of other people. And so check out accountable to you dot com. And so Jesus says, hey, you're right, you don't have a husband. You've had five. I mean, that's a lot of husbands. And the man that you're now sleeping with, the man that you're living with, he's not your husband at all. And she responds by saying in verse 19, okay, sir, I see that you are a prophet. So she's not necessarily evading him, but she's starting to think in the realm of religious lines of worship. She's basically saying, okay, I get it, you're a pastor. Verse 20. Our fathers, the woman says, worshiped in this holy mountain or worshiped in this mountain. And you people, she's talking about, the Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. So this type of line, Jesus says, I know everything about what's going on in your life. And she says, okay, I see that you're religious, you're a pastor, you're a prophet. Our fathers used to worship here. She's basically responding like, if you're sharing the gospel with someone who's living in an immoral life. And they say, yeah, I haven't been to church in a while is the type of thinking that she's saying. So she's basically confessing, I'm not doing what I maybe should. And I know that people used to worship, but I've not really been in my rhythm. Lately.

[B]

Well, it's super helpful because that's actually, at first reading, that's kind of a confusing response to me. Like, if someone confronted me and told me things that they would have no way of knowing, my instinct wouldn't necessarily be like, oh, yeah, but my ancestors worship on this mountain. But. But actually, when you put it that way, it is. She's kind of still grasping for a straw of justification. It almost feels like we're panning into this moment and she's totally caught off guard and wrestling with, like, something divine is happening here, but she's not totally ready to repair.

[A]

Yeah, I find out that you're sleeping with a woman and you live an adulterous lifestyle and you're immoral. And you go, I actually grew up in the church and I haven't been in a while. That's the way that she responds. And Jesus responds to her in verse 21, said, Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. Now what's he saying? He's saying, hey, the hour is coming when. When he dies. The hour of his death, the veil in the temple is going to be torn and the earth is going to shake. And then God himself is going to highlight with bright colors that the worship of God is no longer relegated to a specific place at a specific time with specific people like the priest. But anybody can worship God. And then he says in verse 22, you worship what you do not know. Now he says, we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews, the Samaritans. They only believed in the first five books of the Bible. So they didn't believe in the prophetic literature, nor the Psalms. And so he's saying you're literally worshiping God out of ignorance. You're following God with limited revelation. And he's not attacking the sincerity of the worship that they offer. He is saying that the object of worship, that being God, is unknown to them because they have limited revelation of that God. Contrastly, he says here the Jews worship inside the stream. They were worshiping in light of all of the revelation from God and His Word. And this is why Jesus says salvation is from the Jews, because even the Gentiles that would come to faith, they had to effectively become a Jew in the sense that they would offer the same sacrifices. They would trust and depend on the fact that God would receive the various sacrifices performed for them by a priest. So they had to become a part of the Jewish system. And then Jesus says this, and this is where I really want to camp. He says, God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. Now, if I was to ask you the question, what is worship? What would you say?

[B]

I would say singing.

[A]

Singing? Yeah. I mean, that's probably what comes into your head. You know guitar, four chords. Yeah. Come on, Lord, I lift your name on high 100%.

[B]

Jesus paid it all.

[A]

But Jesus is going to talk about worship. And this is important because he's having a conversation with a woman whose life is in the process of being changed. The response to someone being changed by God is worship. And here Jesus is going to define what that even means. It is the same thing as praising God or glorifying God. But it is, and we know this. It is far more than singing. It's our very lives. Now, if you were to ask the question, what is Christian worship? The biblical answer would be, it's worship in spirit and truth. Now, this is not two different things that need to be combined. These are two sides of the same coin. And so I want to break that down and look first at worship in spirit and then worship in truth.

[B]

And maybe before we hop to that, I want to make the observation, as we keep moving, it's fascinating to watch Jesus's interaction with this lady because again, I'm just confronted with his directness and clarity of she, oh, yeah, I haven't been to church in a while, to your earlier point of, like, putting this in the common vernacular. And he. He brushes aside, like the religion. She's ascribing. She's still missing the mark. And he's driving at the spirit and truth that we're gonna talk about here in a second. But I'm just the observation that Jesus isn't being unkind while he's being clear.

[A]

Yeah, he's being very direct. So Jesus says, worship in spirit and truth. Let's talk about that. First of all, worship is in our spirit. It means to worship God with all that we are. Psalm 103. Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me. That's what it means to worship God in spirit. Mary, the mother of Jesus, articulates this reality in her Magnificat in Luke 1. She says, My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior, meaning everything that's inside of me. Many people worship God with their body. They go to certain places physically and do certain things. They sing a hymn, they pray a prayer, they open a book, they sit in a pew, they light some Candles, they do certain things with their body. But true worship, biblical worship, engages the spirit, meaning every fiber is wholehearted. And it only happens when our hearts are attuned to the greatness and glory of God. Jesus says that in Matthew 15:8. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. This is the worship that God is after. And we know that it is possible to go through the motions without any passion of our heart. So worship that Jesus is after, and we see this in Malachi, is from the depths of our soul. And yet, unlike much of the worship in the contemporary church today, true worship is never manipulated. It's always in response to the other side of the coin. Which would be what? Truth, Truth. So our worship needs to be in spirit and truth. And only when our worship is truthful can our spirit be rightfully directed. This is, I think, fairly obvious. And yet it's becoming a cultural abnormality. The fount of true worship is not feeling it's truth. Sometimes people say we go to this church because their worship is great, but their teaching is meh. But I want people to know something. If the teaching and preaching of the word of God is meh, then the worship will never be great. I understand what people are saying when they say that the music is excellent, but the worship is only going to go as high as the people go deep in their study, in appreciation and love for the truth of God's word. One pastor says superficial teaching produces superficial worship. And I love music. I started college as a music major. But in a church service when I preach, we are worshiping. When we read the scripture, we're worshiping. When we fellowship, we're worshiping. When we pray, we're worshiping. Worshiping God in truth means that our worship is in alignment and in accordance with his revelation. And I think sometimes people kind of pick their lane. We're going to be the truth church or we're going to be the Spirit Church. But you have to be both of those things with gusto in order for it to be a biblical one.

[B]

And this is, I would just point out, like, this is not a Johnny Art of Annis or like Hobby Horse, insofar as like really high exalted view of scripture. And so we always have to kind of shoehorn the importance of scripture into every other conversation. I would say practically, like biblically, if we think back, there is no precedent throughout all of scripture of God's people worshiping them, worshiping him with all abandon, detached from his truth. And like even I'm thinking Through the psalms of. Part of how they're so potent is they're declaring these amazing theologically rich concepts about the Lord, and yet David is doing it with gusto, with every fiber of the Spirit.

[A]

Yeah, I think there's so much truth in that. I think one of the things that every church needs to realize is that failure in worship doesn't ultimately get traced back to a misplaced chord or a pitchy singer, but wrong thoughts about God. Now, what's the primary objective on a Sunday morning at church? Well, it's for the people to be filled up with the word of God. Now you might be saying, well, I thought it's to be spirit filled. Well, of course it's to be spirit filled. But you will only ever be spirit filled if you are scripture and, and truth saturated. Worship is never mindless. It can be expressive. I tell people, hey, you don't have to be Mr. Standstill. You can raise your hands, you can close your eyes. You have some liberty and freedom there. That's great. But worship is never mindless. It is always moored to and anchored in the truth of God's word. And I just mentioned this, but a lot of churches are in one spectrum or the other. Meaning that you have a church that is full of the spirit, yet without truth. And if you're full of the spirit without truth, you get hysteria. And yet if you're contrastly full of the truth and void of the spirit, you know what you get? Stoicism, a boring environment, and you have what seems to be more of a morgue than a meeting place with the living God. And Jesus says it has to be both of those things.

[B]

Yeah. And I think the challenge would be, even as you're saying, like, churches have a tendency to fall, I would make it more personal. And it's like, to me, personal. Yeah, I need to, like, churches are made up of a bunch of individuals that belong in the family of God. And so we need to respond with vigorous worship and a deep, abiding desire to be saturated by his truth.

[A]

Yeah. And I think sometimes we throw out both individuals and churches kind of judge the authenticity of someone's worship by how electric or experiential the environment may seem. I hear the word encounter a lot these days, but no one encounters God without encountering the truth, both at the corporate level and the personal level. Alternatively, you could have the right truth like the Jews and have dead religion. No awe, no wonder, no adoration, no love. We have a service planning meeting every week for our church. We talk through the week to come, I ask the guys, how do you gauge a successful service of church? And one time heard it framed this way. Well, how do you gauge a good shoe? Well, you know it's a good shoe when you're not conscious of it, meaning it's there. CS Lewis says, as long as you notice and have to count the steps, you are not yet dancing, but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don't notice. Good reading becomes possible when you are not consciously thinking about eyes or light or print or spelling. And then he says this. The perfect church service would be one. When we were almost unaware of it, our attention would be totally on God. We should pray that God will use any form of church service in which we happen to be participating to that great and essential end. Meaning you're not constantly thinking about what's happening on stage or what's happening around you. You're thinking about God, and you become unconscious of your surrounding and your heart's tuned there. But ultimately, and this is the big idea, how you feel in worship is less important than how God feels about our worship. And he wants to be in spirit and truth. And then the conversation continues. And Jesus says, the woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming, he who is called to Christ. Then when he comes, he will declare all things to us. And then Jesus says this. He says, I who speak to you am he. And it's an amazing, you know, first time we read of Jesus using this ego and me in John's gospel. He's. He's telling the woman and she's saying, hey, I know the Messiah is going to come. The one that Moses prophesied of and that anointed one is the same God that appears to Moses at the burning bush. And she says, I mean, just to think that this is the first time Jesus reveals himself. It's not to the religious elite. It's to sexually impure woman. And he says, all right, I'm the God that talks to Moses at the burning bush. That that's who I am. And I find that amazing. One of the things that we'll see if we continue on in the story is that this woman goes on and becomes the first evangelist in John's Gospel. She goes back to her town and says, come now, come see the man who told me everything I've ever done. First of all, the love that God extended to her while knowing the worst about her absolutely floored her with gratitude. One of the reasons Jesus exposes this woman says, I know everything about you. And I'm here to save you is you realize that God didn't save you based on a postured version of you. And when you understand that, you go, I gotta tell other people about this God. And she goes out to her town and tells everybody about come verse 29. See a man who told me all the things that I have done, this is not the Christ. And then it says this in verse 42, that they're all flocking to Jesus. It is no longer because of what you said. They say to the woman that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. Couple questions just as we close. Have you ever repented like this woman in the sense of turning from your sin and the true response of someone that's met God in an appropriate sense, encountered God in a real sense is worship. And that's why it's so important that Jesus defines it. Have you ever worshiped God? I'm not asking if you've sung a song. I'm asking if you've ever fallen on your knees, literally or metaphorically, in your heart in appreciation and awe for God and had your heart be filled with passion in response to the truth. And Jesus says, as you see with the woman, this is the basic response of a sinner who's been not only cleansed, but satisfied by Jesus Christ.

[B]

It's just an amazing reality to reflect on and to savor of that this story has been saved for us to read so that we could identify with this woman of known as beyond salvation. To your point, Jesus sees everything from our past and he's standing, presenting, I am the one. I'm the one who can save you. And even we can talk about worshiping in spirit and truth. And it's so easy to listen with your intellectual thinking cap on of like, yeah, I understand this worldview and the logic behind it and its coherence and actually lose in that entire conversation that it's this man, Jesus, who's talking to her relationally the God of the universe. And it's that same man that's making the same call and command to come to him, to us today.

[A]

Yeah, One thing just finally, as we close, is sometimes we overcomplicate the proclamation of the gospel. I don't know what to say. I need to take an evangelism class. Here's the first great evangelist in John's gospel. Come see a man who knew everything I've ever done and saved and satisfied me. And just through that simple message, the town is rocked because they see a woman who previously had been living in isolation and shame to going to joy. And the woman that was avoiding people is now running up to them and grabbing them by the collar saying, come see this man. And I think that's just an amazing way that God works. And you may be identifying with this woman. And it's so amazing to just remember that God not only saves people that are wicked, he uses them. And this woman was used by God.

[B]

And it's to go back to your earlier analogy, you might be the prodigal son, you might be the self righteous brother, you might be the observer who thinks they are neither and is actually both. And the beauty of it all is it's not you at all. It's what he's done on our behalf.

[A]

That's correct. Thanks, Hank.

[B]

Thank you, Johnny.