Idols

The desire to worship God is a fundamental need of the human spirit as water is to our physical bodies. As children grow and mature they discover a God shaped hole inside of their own human heart. Until people surrender to their basic spiritual need for God they spend most of their life unsuccessfully trying to fill it. People are so desperate to satisfy their need for Devine guidance they  end up worshiping anything in a pseudo attempt to find fulfillment. Even God’s chosen people, the Israelites of the Old Testament, tried to fill their need for the spiritual by adopting the gods of the nations they served.

God had revealed Himself in times past to Father Abraham but it wasn’t until He appeared to Moses while he was tending the flocks of his wife’s father in the hills of Median that we glimpse God’s majesty face to face. Exodus 3:2 says that the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. Moses was compelled to stare at this sight of a bush that was not being consumed by the fire. Later he would ask God for His name and God replied to him “I AM WHO I AM.”   God had chosen fire to introduce Himself to us as an imageless but forceful, omniscient and omnipotent God.

God had indeed heard the cry of His people and divinely chosen Moses to deliver the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. After a series of miracles which came to a crescendo in the Red Sea Crossing, forty years of desert wanderings, Moses finally says goodbye to the nation of Israel as they get ready to cross the Jordan River and step into a land flowing with milk and honey. But before they get their feet wet Moses warns them not to worship other gods; gods made with human hands, gods fashioned from earth and stone. He exhorts them to only worship the One True and Living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.   

“But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the later days, when you turn to the Lord your God and obey His voice (for the Lord your God is a merciful God) He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them.” Deuteronomy 4:28-31

The Samaritan culture that would develop much later on in history, to the north of Jerusalem, was a product of Jewish culture intermarrying with their Persian captors. As a result of these two very different cultures mixing their Hebrew roots and spiritual beliefs would become obscured. This led to division and bigotry among their Jewish brothers to the south. Now, what’s interesting is that while most Jews went out of their way to avoid travel through Samaria, Jesus went out of His way to walk down its main street every chance He got.

As Jesus travels there He stops at Jacob’s well. Sitting down and thirsty He asks a Samaritan woman for a drink of cool water. This precious encounter records some of the most poignant discussing on true worship in the entire bible. Jesus attempts to enlighten her by explaining that our physical needs will last for only a short time but then after death we will all be faced with our eternity. He explains to her that there exists a well of “Living Water” and that He is the One and only One who can deliver this water to all who come to Him in faith.

Jesus told her “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.” John 4:21-24

Just like all of us this Samaritan woman had a need to fill the God shaped hole in her heart. So what are you filling your need for God with? Many try masking their need for God with manmade idols of sex, drugs and good times. King Solomon once said that filling your heart with these idols is like chasing after the wind. Take a chance and try asking Jesus to fill your heart with “Living Water” and you will never thirst again!