God Is Only Seeking Worshipers of a Certain Type, a True Type.

Jesus taught this to the woman at the well, saying, “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers” (John 4:23). In saying this, Jesus indicated that not all worshipers are true, but false in their worship, and therefore, God is not seeking them [Later, more evidence will be given about God seeking vs. ignoring certain types of worshipers].

So then, as Christians our common goal is to be the kind of worshipers that Jesus said His Father is seeking; true worshipers (Jn 4:23). Obviously, if Jesus said that there would be many false teachers (Mt 4:11), well then there would be many more false worshipers as a result of their false teachings. So beware of false teachers, but for the specific purpose to avoid false worship.

Many more compelling reasons could be given as to why we need to study the difference between true and false worship, but consider just three more:

We Must Hate Every False Way

Psalm 119:104 says that from meditating on God’s word, which is the true way, we can learn to “hate every false way”. This would include “every false way” to worship God. “Hate” means to have the greatest dislike for something, as Romans 12:9 says, “abhor what is evil.” Abhor means to shudder at it, to have a horror of it, saying, “That’s horrible.” It means to detest it and have nothing to do with it.

We Must Lay Aside Every False Way

Ephesians 4:25 says that, as new creatures in Christ (vs. 24), we need to be “laying aside falsehood”. This would include laying aside falsehood in our worship of God, falsehood which is so evident among worshipers of old [i.e. 1 Kings 18:17-40] and worshipers of new [Re 2:9]. Be prepared to correct your worship of God.

We Must Dwell on whatever is True

Philippians 4:8 tells us to “dwell on” “whatever is true”. By God, that’s what we will do in this study in regards to worship. We will dwell on true worship. For this is praiseworthy. We will carefully consider several important points that Jesus made about true and proper worship in his discussion with the woman at the well. We will compare it to the false worship of today and the past so that you can get or keep yourself on the right worship track.

But understand this, until the end of time, many worshipers will stubbornly dwell on false ways to worship God and in the end they will not be recognized by Him (Mt 7:22, 23). It seems that the seven points in this study will always be major problems, contrasts, and errors in our world of worship, perhaps increasingly so. For example:
- Many worshipers will still focus their worship towards a place, or holy places, or holy cities, etc.
- Many worshipers will still worship a genderless God.
- Many worshipers will still worship in ignorance of who God truly is.
- Many worshipers will still worship in the flesh.
- Many worshipers will still worship in error.
- Many worshipers will still be looking to other sources than Christ to tell them how to worship God properly.
- Because of these things, many worshipers will still be ignored by God; not recognized by Him.

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