(John 4:21-23 NIV) Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. {22} You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. {23} Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

Let me put it to you straight: before Jesus died on the cross, the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the religion of Deborah and David and Daniel, was the best God had to offer. Salvation came from the Jews. The covenants and the promises came down through the patriarchs and prophets of Judaism.

And the temple in Jerusalem was the heart of monotheistic worship. There were the sacrifices, the priests, the sacred articles. There the Word was read, the Psalms sung, the covenant celebrated. It was beautiful; it was sacred; it was God's. And it was soon to come to its fulfillment and its end.

Sinai has been overshadowed by Calvary. Or to put it more succinctly, Sinai is the foothills of Calvary's Everest. You have to go through the foothills to get to the heights. But if you stop there you'll never ascend to Mount Zion the mountain of God. The Ten Commandments could point sin out; they couldn't eliminate it. The blood of bulls and goats could cover up sin; it couldn't cleanse it. Even a God-established priesthood couldn't stand between God and man. It takes God himself to bridge the gap between heaven and earth, between human sinfulness and divine sinlessness. It takes Jesus.

Ah Lord Jesus! In Spirit and in truth; in Spirit and in truth. The time is come to worship you in Spirit and in truth. Make me that kind of worshipper. Amen.

—Dale Forrester
Dale1776@aol.com