Shalom Friends,
Join us as we continue celebrating the eight-day Festival of Hanukkah. We will discover an imperative understanding in John 4, which Yeshua declares that the set apart believers are to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. We will discuss what it truly means to worship "in spirit" and "in truth." We will review what Yah told Moses in Torah, what King David testified about it, what Paul confirmed, and what Yeshua Himself commanded as well.
Happy Hanukkah & Many Blessings,
Chadwick
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Welcome to Faithful Performance. Thank you for joining us tonight as we explore worshiping in spirit and in truth. This is night number five of the Festival of Hanukkah. We hope everyone has had a great week with this festival of lights — the feast of rededication.
Tonight we are going to explore a very important topic connected to the Festival of Hanukkah: the anointing of worshiping in spirit and in truth. We will go through not only John 4, where this teaching is located, but also John 3, which addresses the Jewish people's need to come to the truth, just as John 4 addresses the Samaritan woman. Many people do not realize that John 3 and John 4 hinge together. Yeshua deliberately spoke with both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman about what each needed to correct for total alignment — what Scripture calls the one new body and the one new man.
The Festival of Hanukkah carries anointings that remain hidden unless we understand what the festival is truly about: light versus darkness, the spiritual warfare of worshiping in spirit and in truth, and the prophecies of Daniel we explored the last couple of nights. To access those anointings we must go into the Scriptures and understand what Yeshua was conveying to Nicodemus and to the Samaritan woman at the well. Wherever we may be, we need to come together as one new body and one new man — the believing Jews and the believing Gentiles worshiping together.
All of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, points to this unity. Even in the Torah, Exodus 12 speaks of foreigners and strangers coming to Israel to form the one new body and one new man. Jacob crossing his hands when blessing the two sons of Joseph — Ephraim and Manasseh, who were half-Egyptian — declared that they would be counted just like the firstborn, Reuben and Simeon. Yah has always wanted his people to be together: the Jewish people and the Gentiles who love him and love his Messiah, worshiping together in spirit and in truth.
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**Announcements**
If you would like to join us for a live Shabbat, we will be holding one tomorrow night on Zoom as a private, offline session. Please send an email to receive the link, which will remain the same each week. We are partnering with good friends in the Cayman Islands — Del Gold and the Limb Community Fellowship — to host these live Shabbats. Each session will run approximately two hours, from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, and will include teachings, blessings, the candle lighting, and open community fellowship.
Immediately following the live Shabbat, at 9:00 PM Eastern, we will hold a Courts of Heaven prayer here on YouTube on Faithful Performance. If you need prayer or want to participate in corporate intercession, we hope you will join us. We host the Courts of Heaven on major feast days: the Feast of Trumpets, Yom Kippur, Passover, Shavuot, and now at the close of Hanukkah as well.
On Saturday night, night number six, we will return for the new moon of Tevet — the tenth month of the biblical calendar. This is a significant month connected to Hanukkah, and the convergence of the new moon with the festival carries its own revelation that we will explore. Then on Sunday night, for the eighth and final night, we will teach on the glory of the New Jerusalem as it connects to the eighth night of Hanukkah and the eighth day of Tabernacles — Shemini Atzeret — which speaks of eternal life and ties directly into Revelation 21 and 22.
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**Lighting the Hanukkah Candles — Night Five**
Each night we begin by lighting the middle candle, called the shamash, or servant candle. With the shamash you then light the remaining candles, always beginning with the newest night. Tonight is night number five. As you can see, each night grows brighter than the last — and that is part of the anointing of this festival: to grow brighter and brighter as the evenings continue. The number five represents grace, making this a perfect night to soak in grace, mercy, and loving-kindness.
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**The Blessings**
The first blessing: *Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh ha'olam, asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.* Blessed are you, Adonai our Elohim, ruler of the universe, who makes us holy with your commandments, commanding us to kindle the Hanukkah lights.
The second blessing: *Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh ha'olam, she'asah nissim la'avoteinu v'imoteinu bayamim hahem bazman hazeh.* Blessed are you, Adonai our Elohim, ruler of the universe, who performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in those days at this season. In the name and blood of Yeshua, B'shem Yeshua HaMashiach. Amen.
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**Tonight's Teaching: Worshiping in Spirit and in Truth**
Tonight we are going to examine what it means to worship in spirit and in truth. We cannot have one without the other — both are required. We will work through two key passages that belong together: John 3 and John 4.
John 3 addresses Nicodemus, a Jewish leader who needed to be born again. John 4 addresses the Samaritan woman at the well, who needed to understand the right way to worship. John the Revelator placed these chapters back to back intentionally, because they speak to both sides of the same problem. The Jewish people, as a corporate nation, do not yet believe in Yeshua. The Gentiles — Christians — are in many cases worshiping erroneously. Yeshua was clarifying for both parties the standard and the criteria of the one new body and the one new man.
This study is especially fitting for this season, because the Festival of Hanukkah is itself about the contest between light and darkness — the spiritual warfare of faithful worship versus the corruption brought by Antiochus Epiphanes IV. The Maccabees, those who worshiped in spirit and in truth, were the ones who received the victory. John 3 and John 4 carry that same anointing.
As we go through these chapters in detail, our goal is to examine what John is conveying about what Yeshua communicated to Nicodemus and to the Samaritan woman, and to ensure our own heart posture aligns with worshiping in spirit and in truth. Not religion. Not tradition. But the holy Scriptures — the Torah, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the New Testament writings — always anchored in what came out of the Father's mouth: the Torah. That is the standard. That is the foundation of all morality, and Yeshua himself leads us back to it.
John's stated purpose for his entire book is this: that you may believe that Yeshua is the Messiah, the Son of Elohim, and that believing, you may have life in his name. The book of John is fundamentally about Yeshua's deity. John deliberately places John 3 and John 4 back to back to show that there is only one Messiah — the same Yeshua present in both stories — but two very different audiences: the Jewish people, represented by Nicodemus, and the Gentiles, represented by the Samaritan woman.
