Spiritual and Truthful worship

John 424 “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

I asked a good friend of mine what the most literal translation of John 4:24 was from the original Greek.  The most literal rendering of John 4:24 is as follows: "God is a spirit and the ones who are continually worshipping him must (it is necessary) continually worship in spirit and truth."  God is Spirit and therefore it is necessary for the worship of the believer to be in spirit and truth. 

Our God is a great God and is more than worthy of the worship that man can give.  Certainly the high priests understood that the offerings were to be the best of the cattle in the land and the way that the offering was to be conducted was certainly to be presented the best that they knew how, however, the Old Testament priests did not have John 4:24.  The Lord Jesus revealed this verse to us, so the worship that we bring to the Lord not only needs to be our best, but also needs to be yielded to the Holy Spirit and contain as much truth as possible, and not just our worship, our whole life needs to be yielded to the Holy Spirit and contain as much truth as possible.  Obviously, we are human and have that fleshly nature in us until we see Christ, but until then the Lord demands our reverent worship towards Him and our life and bodies to be yielded to Him.  If we are God’s children, then we need to have a distinction in the way we live and in every facet of life.  Our behavior needs to be different than the world’s behavior, our language needs to be different from the world’s language, the way we dress, the way we treat people and even the music we choose to listen to needs to be distinct from the world’s music.   Being different from the world is a testimony in itself for the Lord and the children of God should be willing to be different and distinct.  The worship that a true believer offers to God should be the closest in which a Christian can portray the worship that will be experienced in eternity.   John 4:24 tells believers that worship to the Lord needs to be spiritual and truthful.  Worship that is not spiritual or truthful is not really worship at all, though it might feel like it or look like it.  There are requirements in the Bible of how the worship of God’s children needs to be done.  Any other ingredient added to, or detracted from God’s recipe for worship towards a Holy God, will only deplete that worship.