Latest / Collierville Radio Network / Admonition Podcast - Worship (Lesson 4) The Laws and Worship - Aaron Cozort - August 12, 2026

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Admonition Podcast - Worship (Lesson 4) The Laws and Worship - Aaron Cozort - August 12, 2026 · Collierville Radio Network

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Good evening.
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Running just a few minutes behind and I appreciate ~ Justin stepping
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in and starting us off with a song.
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If you would take your Bibles and open them to John chapter four.
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We're going to be continuing our study of worship and of the things pertaining
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to worship as we've been doing for the last few weeks.
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And we're going to jump into the New Testament to look at
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a few principles that Jesus establishes while he is on this earth.
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But let's begin with a word of prayer and then we'll get into our class.
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Our gracious Father in heaven,
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we come before the throne grateful for your mercy,
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your grace, your everlasting kindness.
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We're grateful for your love that has shown been shown to
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us in sending your son to die on the cross for our sins that we might have
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the hope of eternal life.
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Lord, we are mindful of the difficulties that individuals face
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on a daily basis. We're mindful of the struggles that come with health,
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the struggles that come with age,
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the struggles that come with work.
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Lord, we pray that in all of our human endeavors you will grant us your mercy
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and your grace, knowing that we strive in these areas imperfectly.
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But Lord, we are also grateful for your word,
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for its timeless nature,
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for the revelation which teaches us both how to live and how to serve you
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in a way that is acceptable.
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And Lord, we pray that we might strive diligently to apply the things that
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are in your word to our lives.
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All this we pray and ask in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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In John chapter four,
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we find Jesus and
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he travels through Samaria. He goes
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to the place where the text tells
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us he needed to go, verse four.
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He needed to go through Samaria.
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So he came to the city of Samaria,
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which is called Sichar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
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Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore,
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being wearied from his journey,
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sat thus by the well, it was about the sixth hour.
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A woman of Samaria came to draw water,
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Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.
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For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
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Then the woman of Samaria said to him,
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How is it that you, being a Jew,
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ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?
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For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
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As you see this event transpire and you
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see the things surrounding it,
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Jesus is by himself at the moment that this occurs.
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His disciples have gone to buy food in the city.
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They have gone to acquire these things,
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and the indication is they will bring them back to him.
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So as he sits there by the well,
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a woman comes to draw water. Now,
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the sixth hour of the day is not the typical time for the drawing of water.
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That's usually done in an earlier hour of the day.
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But she arrives to draw water,
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and Jesus.
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Requests of her when she arrives,
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give me something to drink. As the text tells us,
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she is surprised,
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might put it that way. How is it that you,
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being Jew, ask of me a drink? ~
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And the text tells us that the Jews had no dealing with the Samaritans.
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Now, who are the Samaritans?
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Okay.
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So ~ much like some businesses,
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they'll figure out they've got one group that is causing problems in their company,
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and so they'll split up that group and they'll put one of them here and
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one of them here and one of them here,
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and what they they they may not be able to get rid of them,
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but they could sure separate them.
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Well, that's what the Assyrians' policy was as a conquering nation,
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is the people that they left alive,
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of course. ~ they would cart away the people who were originally from a particular
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Land and carry them off and split them up and disperse them across
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the entire nation. And then they'd take people from other lands and they'd
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do the same thing and disperse them across the entire nation.
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And so ~ the Samaritans were a half-Jew or part Jew,
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part Gentile, intermarried group of people that were living in the land.
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Now, when we say that.
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Bear in mind, it's not as though the rest of the nation were somehow,
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shall we say, of pure Israelite stock.
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Were they?
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Now, if they had been obedient to God's commandments concerning marrying within
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the nations that were in the land and intermarrying with them and
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not giving their children to those nations and not taking their children
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for their sons and daughters ~ from those nations,
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they would have been. Except that's not exactly how the nation operated,
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was it?
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So this is quite a bit the height of hypocrisy that the Jews would have nothing
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to do with the Samaritans because they weren't a hundred percent Jews,
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because neither were the Jews after they had intermarried with
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all of the nations that were around them.
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Now, there are points in the Israelite history where some of that is cleared out.
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For instance, in I believe the book of Nehemiah,
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where Nehemiah will have them put away their ~ their ~ families that
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are ~ not from Israelite descent because as he brings back
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~ or returns back to the land,
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he discovers what is going on,
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says, Listen, this is exactly what got us put in Babylon to begin with,
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and now you're going right back to your old ways.
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~
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The fact of the matter is the Samaritans were considered to be worse than dogs.
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They were considered to be the people you would absolutely not spend any time with.
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And to the the perspective of that,
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the Jews would cross the Jordan River to go up on the other side of
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the Jordan River and then cross back over the Jordan River a second time
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to go to Galilee, so they wouldn't go through the land of the Samaritans.
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That's how much they disapproved of the Samaritans.
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So the woman is noticeably surprised when
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a Jew asks of her, a Samaritan,
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for a drink of water.
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Going back to the text, Jesus answered and said to her,
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If you knew the gift of God and who it was ~ and who it is,
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who says to you, Give me a drink,
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you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
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The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with,
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and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water?
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She she i i i is confused,
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first surprised, then confused,
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because he says he can give her something to drink,
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and that the gift that he could give her would be the gift of God.
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But he doesn't have anything to draw the water with.
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Now I don't know in her mind what she had imagined that somehow he would draw
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up water with some other method that would be better water than what
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she could draw up out of the same well.
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Didn't make a whole lot of sense there.
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But the fact of the matter is she sees an obvious problem.
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You have no utensil to do this with.
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How are you going to do that?
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by the way, that that should probably tell us a little bit about the nature
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of the well and how it was ~ structured in that you had to bring your
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own tools to bring the water up.
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it wasn't just that ~ the well was there waiting for you to you know,
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you see the old West idea of a well and it's got the bucket and
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the bucket goes down, the bucket comes back up,
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there's water in the bucket. That wasn't it,
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because otherwise Jesus could have got his own water and the woman wouldn't have.
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made that the the statement. So not that kind of well.
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Now notice further, we we see
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in the text she says, Are you greater than our father Jacob,
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who gave us the well and drank from it himself as well
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as his sons and his livestock?
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So who is she holding to as a as a ancestor from the past?
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Jacob. It's interesting that
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the description here is of Jacob,
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but the text earlier tells us that Jacob gave the well to who?
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Joseph. Now the reason why I point that
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out is Joseph's descendants who would have actually possessed
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the land, because you remember Joseph didn't,
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right? Joseph was in Egypt from probably age 18 until he died.
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So Joseph personally never possessed the land.
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But Joseph's descendants would have,
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except Joseph's descendants lived underneath what law?
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The law of Moses. So Joseph's descendants lived under
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the law of Moses. Did the Samaritans claim to live under the law of Moses?
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Shake your head this way.
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So under the law of patriarchy that Jacob lived under,
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where could you put an altar?
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Think back to the days of Abraham,
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Isaac, Jacob. Correct.
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You could put an altar,
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so you go look at Abraham. What did it what was Abraham's practice when
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he left Ur of the Chaldees and God said you go here?
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Wherever Abraham went, what do we read in the text that Abraham did?
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He built an altar. So under
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Principled descendants of Jacob,
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they could have their altar where they wanted it.
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They could say, Hey, our father is Jacob.
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We don't know about this whole Moses folk,
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but our father is Jacob, and this well originated with him,
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and where we worship is going to originate with him.
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In contrast, you have the Jews who say,
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No, you have to worship in Jerusalem.
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True or false? All people,
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everywhere, from every nation,
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during the time of the law of Moses,
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had to worship God, in order to worship him faithfully,
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had to worship God in Jerusalem.
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True or false. All people everywhere from every nation had to worship in Jerusalem.
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False. Okay? It's important as we go through the text that
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we do not take what
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we often envision about the Old Testament.
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And more what actually was the case in the Old Testament.
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In the Old Testament, and Paul deals with this significantly in the Book of Romans,
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there are two parallel laws going on.
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One law for who? The Jews.
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For the Israelites, for the descendants of Abraham,
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through exclusively Isaac,
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and through exclusively Jacob.
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And through exclusively his sons.
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Okay? There was a law given to them.
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And that law said that they were to worship wherever
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God put his name. Now,
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when they initially came into the land of Israel,
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where did God put his name? Shiloh.
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Who did God tell?
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that he was going to put his name there and that they would worship there,
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if you remember back to your old testament history.
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Right? so even before that though,
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you remember when Jacob has taken the birthright?
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And Jacob Jacob leaves for fear of his life from his brother,
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and Jacob goes to a place called Bethel,
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and Jacob lays his head down and sleeps and puts his head upon a rock.
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And what does Jacob see in the vision while he is sleeping?
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Angels ascending and descending from this place.
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And God will tell Jacob, when he returns,
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he will build an altar there. The indication,
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at least from what I have studied and what I understand,
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is that the location, basically,
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that the tabernacle will be built,
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will be in Bethel, in Shiloh,
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where Jacob saw that vision.
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That is the first settled location for the tabernacle in Israel.
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It is a returning to a place where
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God said, I'm going to put my name there.
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Now the tabernacle will remain in Bethel,
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in Shiloh, until the occasion where the Ark of the Covenant is taken,
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is possessed by the Philistines because of
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the actions of Eli and his sons.
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They carted it off to war and they lost it.
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It remains in the Philistines until the Philistines return it back into Israel,
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although it doesn't go back to the tabernacle.
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In one individual's house. It remains there all the way up until the days of David.
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And it is during the moving of it back to Jerusalem,
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the new location where now the tabernacle has been moved by David from Bethel
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to Jerusalem, that now you find Jerusalem being the location of worship.
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So from the days of Moses all the way to the days
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of David was Jerusalem the place of worship.
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No. Matter of fact, till the days of David,
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Jerusalem wasn't even an Israelite city.
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It was a city that belonged to
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the Jebusites until ~ David essentially told his man,
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one of you go take it. And they did.
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So Jerusalem wasn't the place of worship in Jacob's day,
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wasn't the place of worship in Moses' day.
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Wasn't the place of worship in Joshua's day,
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wasn't the place of worship in the days of the judges,
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wasn't the place of worship in the days of King Saul.
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It is only towards the end of David's reign,
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middle towards end, last half,
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that Jerusalem becomes the place of worship.
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And it is only culminated as the place of worship when the temple
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is built by Solomon, the next king.
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But, here's the interesting piece that matters.
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And it's going to matter for the remainder of the discussion.
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It was the place of worship where God said,
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in the days of David and in the days of Solomon,
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I am putting my name here.
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In the days of Jacob, God said to Jacob,
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you can worship me here. In the days of David,
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God said to David, You can worship me here.
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In the days of Solomon,
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God said, You can worship me here.
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The reason why I bring this up is it's important to realize that throughout
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the existence of the Israelites,
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who
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Gets to decide where the place of worship is.
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God. We went through this discussion a bit last week,
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and that is this core principle of God gets to decide.
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God gets to determine what is acceptable
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and what is not in worship. Now,
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notice
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As the woman asked, Are you greater than our father Jacob,
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who gave us the well, and drank from it himself,
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as well as his sons and his livestock?
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Jesus answered and said to her,
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Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again.
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But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give them will never thirst.
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But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain
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of water springing up into everlasting life.
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The woman said to him, Sir, you Sir,
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give me this water, that I may not thirst.
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Nor come here to draw. Jesus said to her,
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Go call your husband and come here.
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The woman answered and said, I have no husband.
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Jesus said to her, You have well said,
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I have no husband, for you have had five husbands,
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and the one whom you now have is not your husband in that you spoke truly.
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The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
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Now
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As we move into this part of the discussion,
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bear in mind that she is observing these things.
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She is hearing what he is saying.
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She is trying to comprehend, though she is working from a different mental model
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than Jesus is.
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So first she wants to know how you can do this physical thing,
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get down in this well and get water.
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Second, she wants to know, are you greater than Jacob,
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who gave us the well, and his sons who drank from it?
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Third thing she wants to know is,
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can you give me the water? You're offering it to me.
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I'm all right, I'm a buyer. Give it,
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give me some. And Jesus immediately turns to the question of go call your husband.
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She answers appropriately that she has none,
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but Jesus said, You're correct,
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you don't. You've had five, and the one you have now isn't your husband.
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She immediately realizes as she's gone from you have
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no physical tool to you have not you can't possibly be of greater stature
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to now.
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Y you must be a spokesperson for God.
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The moment she comes to a realization that he is a spokesperson for God,
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some things start to change. And she says,
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I perceive that you are a prophet.
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Our fathers worshiped on this mountain,
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and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.
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If you're a prophet, if you speak on behalf of God,
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then I want to bring up the age-old question that us and your people argue about
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all the time.
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She makes a statement. Have you noticed sometimes statements are questions?
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She says, I perceive you are a prophet.
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Our fathers worshiped on this mountain,
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and you, Jews, say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.
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Period. Not question mark.
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Have you ever heard the question?
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or the statement, ~ you're from the Church of Christ.
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You're those people who believe you're the only ones going to heaven.
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It's not a question, except it is.
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So the woman says,
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Hmm, you know what you Jews always say?
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You Jews always tell us we're worshiping in the wrong place.
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Now, as we get into the discussion.
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And Jesus' answer, ask yourself one more time,
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was the place where all people
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of all nations everywhere were commanded to worship in the days of
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the law of Moses, Jerusalem. And the answer is no.
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Could a Babylonian who was born
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and raised in Babylon
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Who met Daniel in the period of his exile
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was taught concerning Jehovah and began worshiping and being obedient
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to Jehovah in the land of the Chaldeans,
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a place where Abraham came from.
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Could that Babylonian worship
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God faithfully in Babylon? Yes.
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Yes he could.
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The law of Moses was given to what people?
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The Israelites.
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It pertained to them. Now, it also pertained to all those
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who converted to their nation.
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Give an example of an old testament person who converted to become an Israelite.
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Take I heard two different answers and Rahab.
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Ruth by nature of marriage,
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Rahab by nature of being obedient to God and I guess eventually through marriage.
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~ a New Testament example.
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The Ethiopian eunuch. All indications because he was going or coming from Jerusalem
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where he had gone to worship is that the Ethiopian eunuch was a proselyte.
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He was one who had converted to the religion in the nation of Israel
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in the religious sense, though he was still an Ethiopian nationally.
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Okay?
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So for those individuals who bound themselves under the law,
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to use Paul's terminology, where were they to worship three times a year?
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In Jerusalem. They were not to build places of worship all over the land,
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all over the place. They were not to build altars to God and offer sacrifices
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on every high hill, as the Old Testament says.
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They were to worship in Jerusalem,
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where God put his name. Okay?
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But everyone who wasn't an Israelite.
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So if you think about the world's population,
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how much of the world's population lives in Palestine,
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Israel, ~ and was of the twelve tribes of Jacob?
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Pretty small amount.
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All those people were never given a commandment to worship in Jerusalem.
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And yet, if they worshiped God faithfully,
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their worship was still accepted.
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Their worship was still in accordance with His will.
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Under a different law. Okay,
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so bear in mind as the discussion moves forward,
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Jesus is fully aware there's two laws.
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But these Samaritans,
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are they Israelites or are they not?
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And that's where the rub is. Because the Samaritans wanted
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to be Israelites, go all the way back to the days of Nehemiah.
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The Samaritans wanted the position of being considered part
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of the nation, but being distinct at the same time,
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they refused to go worship in Jerusalem.
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No, we can worship here, where our ancestors worshiped.
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So notice what Jesus says. Woman,
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believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain
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nor in Jerusalem worship the Father.
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Jesus immediately responds with,
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There's something coming you don't understand.
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Jesus immediately tracks her forward to the truth of
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the kingdom that He came to establish.
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But he then says, You worship what you do not know.
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We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews.
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When Jesus says that salvation is of the Jews and that they know what they worship,
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is he indicating that at the time that he was walking this earth everyone
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who could possibly be saved was a Jew?
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No.
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Rather, his point is a historical one.
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That the origination of salvation,
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that is, the one whom God was sending,
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because you're going to watch the conversation immediately,
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head straight towards the Messiah.
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The one through whom salvation is coming is of the Jews,
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is essentially what he's saying.
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Jesus says, You worship what you do not know,
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we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews,
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but the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship
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the Father in spirit and in truth,
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for the Father is seeking such to worship him.
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God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship
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in spirit and truth.
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The woman said to him, I know that the Messiah.
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Now notice she she she understood what he was saying.
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When he said salvation is of the Jews,
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she said, I know you're talking about the Messiah.
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She says, I know that the Messiah is coming,
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who is called Christ. When he comes,
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he will tell us all things.
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Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He.
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So a few things we want to gather from this in regards to worship.
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Number one, Jesus reveals the nature of the kingdom.
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That the kingdom was not like the law of Moses.
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That the thing that God was bringing in the days of
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the Messiah was not like the Old Testament law of Israel.
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Turn to Jeremiah chapter 31.
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Jeremiah chapter thirty one, a passage which the Hebrew writer in making
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the same line of argumentation concerning the old and the new law will argue from is
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And we'll quote in detail. We read in Jeremiah 31 and in verse 31,
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Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord,
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when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with
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the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers
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in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.
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Notice God tells Israel through Jeremiah,
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When I make this new covenant,
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it's not going to be like the old one.
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It is going to be inherently different from the law of Moses.
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Now they're not going to fully appreciate that,
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but Jesus is telling this woman:
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the thing that God is doing through the Jews,
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through the Messiah, is inherently different from what
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you have always known as what the Jews worship.
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But he goes on to say in Jeremiah chapter 31,
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verse 32: not according to the covenant.
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That I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand
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to lead them out of the land of Egypt,
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my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them,
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says the Lord. Now notice something else.
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Jeremiah accuses
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the Jews of breaking the covenant.
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Jeremiah makes it clear that it is not the Lord
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who is breaking the covenant.
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That it was the Jews who had done that.
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So when Jesus says to the woman,
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We know what we worship, you don't know what you worship.
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He is not arguing that the Jews have always done it right.
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He is in no way arguing that the Jews have it all figured out.
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Rather, he is establishing that there was a God.
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Given command that was being followed in
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the worship in Jerusalem. That God had said for them
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to do this, and that with the Samaritans their worship
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was not ordained by God.
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It was not commanded that they worship there in that mountain.
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They were not given that instruction by the mouth of a prophet or by
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the mouth of the Lord. So Jesus is establishing the source of authority.
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The Jews know what we do because God said,
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Do this. You have no such command.
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You are arguing back to your forefathers.
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Well, Jacob did, therefore it's okay.
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Now notice what else.
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We find in Jeremiah. Verse 33.
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But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,
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says the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts,
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and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
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Where was
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the law written previously?
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In the days of Moses.
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All right, initially Ten Commandments on tablets of stone,
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and then Moses wrote down
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The Pentateuch, Genesis through Deuteronomy.
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The law was in written form.
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Now, the point Jeremiah is making is not that there won't be a written law.
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Rather that the nature of the covenant is going to go from one where it's
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a law that you could go in and open the the Ark of the Covenant and pull
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out a scroll, or go into the tabernacle,
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or go into a storage place and pull out a scroll.
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In contrast to that,
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you have God saying, No, I'm going to put it in their heart and in their mind.
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Is going to be something internalized and not just externalized.
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But he goes on to say, he says,
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My law shall be in their minds and be written in their hearts,
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and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
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This is an interesting contrast to,
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by the way, the writer Hosea, who will describe Israel
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as not my people from God.
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He says, No more shall every man teach his neighbor,
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and every man his brother, saying,
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Know the Lord, for they shall all know me,
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from the least of them to the greatest of them,
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says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember
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no more. God says,
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Here's how you've always had it.
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You're born in the covenant.
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You are birthed into a nation,
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and by blood you are a part of the covenant.
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After you're born, somebody's got to teach you what the covenant is.
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Because you didn't have any sake.
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You were born an Israelite. So now you have to be taught the covenant.
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He said, That's not how my kingdom's going to be.
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This new covenant, everyone who's a part of it will know.
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The covenant. They will all know me.
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In other words, the knowledge will come before the birth.
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They're not going to be born into this covenant by physical birth,
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but rather they're going to be born by spiritual birth.
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Interestingly, back over in John chapter 3,
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Jesus and Nicodemus, just in the prior chapter,
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before Jesus heads to Samaria,
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has have had a discussion on this very topic.
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Because Nicodemus comes to Jesus in John chapter 3 and says,
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This man came to Jesus by night and said to him,
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Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God,
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for no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him.
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Jesus said, Most assuredly I say to you,
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unless one is born again. That's the point of Jeremiah.
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You've got to be born into the covenant.
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And it's not by physical birth.
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Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
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Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old?
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Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?
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Jesus said, Most assuredly I say to you,
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unless one is born of water and of the Spirit,
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he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
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Jesus says, You you're going to have to go through a new birth,
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and it's not going to be your mother's birth canal.
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You're going to have to go through a new birth in water and the Spirit
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in order to enter the kingdom of God.
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Because my covenant, God said,
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is a new covenant. And everyone who's in my covenant will know
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me. So as you examine and kind of piece these things
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together, understand something about worship.
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Under the Old Testament law, there was a set of laws
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and ordinances for the Israelite.
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There was a set of worship commandments for the Israelite.
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There was a set of commandments inside that Old Testament covenant.
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And the Israelite was obligated to keep those laws,
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those ordinances, those commandments.
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Those same commands were not given to Israel.
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all of the Gentile world. And so they lived under a different set
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of laws and ordinances. Jesus' point to this woman is,
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that's not going to be the case moving forward.
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There's going to be one set of laws and one set of ordinances.
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And that all those who worship God are going to worship
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Him in spirit and in truth.
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Because they're going to be a part of a new covenant.
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They're going to be part of a new relationship.
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And they're all going to know God.
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You're not going to go around saying,
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hey, you're part of the covenant,
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but let me introduce you to who God is.
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It's not how it's not how it's going to work.
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It's going to begin, let me introduce you to who God is,
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so you can be a part of the covenant.
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Okay? We need to understand that under the Old Testament.
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Jesus makes it clear God got to decide where worship happened and where
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it was acceptable. Under the New Testament,
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God gets to decide where worship's going to happen and where it's acceptable.
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But one last point,
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and that is this. Go back to what we read in verse 23.
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But the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers
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Will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
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For God is seeking such to worship Him.
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The last thing I want you to hold on to
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is this God
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is actively seeking true worship.
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God is looking for a people
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For individuals throughout the world who are willing
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to worship him in spirit and in truth.
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And we have to look at ourselves and examine ourselves and wonder,
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not wonder, but examine ourselves and consider,
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are we?
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Do we worship God in spirit and in truth?
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And can we sit down and evaluate whether or not we do?
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Because we are responsible for our end of the covenant,
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just like the Israelites were,
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and just like the Samaritans were.
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We're responsible for our part and for making sure we're
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in accordance with God's commandments.
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Okay? Thank you for your attention.