Tuesday, October 28, 2008

free of charge!

1
Series: Conversations with Jesus
John 7:53-8:11
“Free of Charge”
Of Human Bondage is the story of Philip Carey
- A sensitive boy born with a clubfoot, a deformity where the foot is turned to the side - At nine years of age, Philip entered King’s School in Tercanbury, and soon discovered it was less a school of education and more a house of torment
- For his foot fascinated the other students - Turned them into mimics and voyeurs - On his second day, the kids played a game called ‘pig in the middle’ during recess - A game that called for one to roam the field, tagging the boys who dashed across, and Philip was the pig - Philip tried miserably to tag them, but they were too quick and he was too clumsy - Soon the other boys started clumping exaggeratingly across the playground, both mocking and eluding Philip
- Limping and hooting - While a sense of deep shame raged in Philip’s soul
Shame is something we all have some experience in
- Either as givers or receivers of shame.
- When I was in high school, shame set its sights on the one who smelled, who looked differently, who wasn’t as bright as the rest.
In the conversation in John 8:1-11, Jesus confronted shame Jesus has a conversation with “a woman caught in adultery.” In response to her sin, Jesus neither condones nor condemns her, but rather extends His grace and mercy which changes her life. His loving response to this woman provides us with lessons for our lives and for how we respond to those around us.
- This is a conversation our culture, and all too many churches, largely stripped of grace, needs to hear
- The first thing we notice is that it is a story looking for a context
- Many question whether it belongs here in John
- For it is absent in some of the earliest manuscripts
- But most believe it is a story that most likely happened
- And one could say its context is the whole of the gospels
- The whole of Scripture
- For Scripture is the story of the grace of God
- Verse 2 tells us it was dawn, and Jesus was in the temple and people kept coming to Him
- The tense is intentional; His message drew people such that they kept coming even at the break of day
- But suddenly this pastoral care was disrupted by those who hated Jesus
- A young woman, most likely a teenager was forcibly brought in
- Their motives were obvious, their intent was to shame her, EXPOSE HER
- Hence the terms “made to stand in their midst”
- Suddenly, what was done in the privacy of a bedroom was undraped before the community
- Like a tree stripped of its bark, she was there for all to see inside
- And she most likely felt shame
- All of us have felt the disgrace of shame
- Either because of sin or shortcomings
- Shame comes pretty naturally, even without the help of others
- Shame, after all, was the first expression of sin
- Adam and Eve were naked and NOT ASHAMED
- But with the advent of sin, a sense of disgrace took hold
- Adam and Eve wanted to hide
- And we have been hiding ever since, covering up for the shame we feel over moral failure
- Shame for not being clever enough, rich enough, accomplished enough
- For being too fat for being too thin
- Shame for not being attractive enough
Illustration – Robbie covered up the fact he had lost his hair with an expensive toupee
- Tragically, when he came down with cancer, he accepted no visitors in the hospital
- For he felt shame over his appearance
- Some feel shame for being smaller than others, for not having good social skills
- Shame that we have lost our job
- Shame that our children aren’t as able as others
- That our car isn’t as big and flash like others
- Shame for being adopted, divorced, used-up, hurt by another
- But in this story, it was less about the shame she put on herself
- More about the shame a graceless religious system heaped upon her
- Their intent was to see her pay for her sins
- After all, they were called to carry out the law (even though what they were doing was illegal, where was the man?)
- “If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife-both the man and woman must die” (Deuteronomy 22:22)
- Adultery is was, and always has been, viewed as a very serious act
- But verse 6 tells us it went deeper
- It wasn’t so much an act against her, as it was an act against Jesus
- A trap
- A determination to “speak against”, accuse, SHAME Jesus!
- Hoist Him upon the horns of a dilemma
A) If Jesus opposed stoning, He would be viewed as soft on the law, ignoring the law, opposing the law, OPPOSING MOSES, shame on you!
B) If Jesus favored judgment, He would have been accused of OPPOSING ROME
- Usurping Roman law which did not permit execution by subject peoples
- A thousand shames on you!!!!
- People love to shame
- We live in a culture stripped of grace
- Kerry Katona, drunk on this morning ashamed of themselves, rather than care for her
- Daily papers, celebrities should be ashamed of themselves
- Some would say all of us should be ashamed
- But the worst shamers are the religious
- There is something about religion that, like milk, can eventually turn sour
- Over time, these expositors of the laws of God, allowed their learning to curdle into pride
- Their passion for obedience turned into disdain towards those less devout
- Over time, their belief system mutated into a smug superiority
- Over time, they descended from the high calling as spiritual shepherds to become religious police
- Religion requires but grace enables (repeat)
- So Jesus had a conversation that began with words in the sand (verse 6b) EXPAND
- Writing their sins? Asking, “Where’s the man?”
- Doodling, treating their question with the contempt it deserved?
- While we are not certain what He wrote, it is clear what He said (verse 7)
- Words that unnerved them, caused them to drop their stones and leave
- But why?
- The law never made sinless perfection a condition for casting stones
- Something else had to be at work here, and maybe it was this…
- That while Jesus emptied Himself of the divine
- Stuffed His divine life into the cramped space of a human one
- There were moments when the divine burst out
- He walked on water
- He stilled the storms
- And here, maybe it was something just as powerful
- HE LOOKED INTO MAN
- With a piercing look that went all the way in, not a look that could kill, but look that pierced their hearts.
- A force of both mercy and righteousness
- Such that they suddenly saw their own nakedness
- Suddenly they recognized their own adultery
- They were the ones committing the greatest unfaithfulness of all
- They had left their first love of God and got in bed with religion
- Left the essence of what ministry is about, extending His love and mercy to others to enter the work of stone throwing
- In all of this, they forgot they were supposed to be in the life saving business
- With their departure, Jesus turned to the woman
- And lifted her shame, drew her out of the depths to the heights of forgiveness and called her to live as God had designed her to live
- Jesus told Peter how he would die, saying it would never happen again, I think this is what Jesus calls out to this woman, I think this is what God is calling to us, do not let your history be your future…………….(seek response)
In this conversation, I hear Jesus asking you and me some hard questions
1) ARE WE AWARE OF OUR OWN BROKENNESS?
- Our own tendency to be deceived
- To grow a Pharisaic layer that joins with an already inbred human tendency to be judgmental, condemning, disapproving
- We begin to believe we are better than we are
- Begin to have our own disdain towards those less than us for those who are different
- Use letters to editors/blogs to rant/judge others, condemn others, and discount others
- Use the phone to talk about the shortcomings of others, someone’s marriage which isn’t working
- The pew to exclude those different from us
- And over time, we forget that we too are broken people as well, we need grace, EXPAND but also need to be wells of grace (bill’s bucket/dead sea)
Here’s a second question
2) ARE THE BROKEN WELCOME HERE?
- Would they find grace here, or condemnation?
- I’m pretty sure most driving down Eskbank road would be pretty convinced they are not welcome, unless they got a lot of things right first
- This is the reputation of the church, every church
Illustration: In one episode of “The Simpsons”
- Homer sees his born again neighbour, Maude Flanders and says, “Hey, I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks. Where have you been?”
- Maude replies, “I’ve been away at Bible camp, learning to be more judgmental.”
- The church is pretty good at creating stone throwers, can we not be grace givers?
- Jesus is asking: Are we holding any stones in our hands, or are we utilizing our greatest asset, GRACE? Gal 2:20
- For the world is full of hurting people
- Especially an emerging generation where:
- 1 of 3 have had an abortion
-1 of 6 have been sexually molested
- Most have been sexually active prior to marriage
- Most men struggle with pornography
- These are the people Christ came to seek and save
- And calls the church to do the same, to step out, invite people in, care for them in the name of Jesus
- To stand up and take a huge step of faith, not to build a museum for the saints, but a hospital for sinners
- And the only way that will happen is if in this world of hurting people
- They will come here and find:
- That this is a place where failure connects with grace
- That this is not a place for perfect people
- That it is place to “come as you are”
- That there is a rule here, where no one is allowed to have stones in their hands
- But it must start in our hearts
- In our homes
- Will you put this on your prayer list?
- “Lord, take any stones out of my hands?”

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

does your life matter?

Series: Conversations with Jesus
John 7:1-13
19th oct 2008
“Does Your Life Matter?”
John Piper, in his book Don’t Waste Your Life, tells of a time he came across an old
poem he had written in high school
- Next to it was drawn an old man in a rocking chair, and then these words
- “Long I sought for the earth’s hidden meaning
Long as a youth was my search in vain
Now as I approach my last years waning
My search I must begin again”
He wrote it, in his youth, as a description of the worst thing imaginable
- To come to the end of life and realize that everything you have given yourself to
was false
- To come to your last years and realize you have wasted them
- Devoted yourself to that which amounts to nothing more than a grain of sand in
the Sahara, a cup of water in the Pacific
- And must search again!
- To put it in other words, waited for all of life for your ship to come in and realize
you were standing at the wrong dock
- Every now and then, one can hear God whisper the same words: “Don’t waste
your life!”
- Only one life to offer
- Life is not a dress rehearsal
- “Do not run like a man running aimlessly” - Paul (I Corinthians 9)
- “Press on to lay hold of why God laid hold of you” (Philippians 3)
- “Redeem the time, the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5)
- It’s what I hear in the conversation in John 7
- Like every conversation that John records, it is set within a context
(verses 1-2)
- Jesus remains, where He has been rejected
- Steers clear of where others want to take His life
- Maybe His siblings began to think He needed direction
- So they speak to Him
- It’s hard to know what this relationship must have been like
- What happens when you live with a brother who has never done
anything wrong
- Never got home late and lied about it
- Never lost an argument
- Always brought home the correct change from the store
- Always kept his room neat, never talked back to mom and dad
- Living with Him, you never heard the words “Give it back to
her; Don’t talk to your brother that way; You will sit here until you
finish what is on your plate.”
- Always-outstanding parents evenings
- Never impulsive, selfish, lazy
- Family devotions: “Dad, that’s really not what that text is saying.”
- There was nothing but consistency, while for His brothers, their only
consistency was their inconsistency
- It had to work on them, they weren’t perfect they never could be, they had no time for him.
- And so it seemed natural to say what lots of brothers say to brothers:
“You ought to leave.” (Verses 3-4)
- They had their reasons, as is stated in the text
1) GO! Get your disciples back (verse 3b)
- Give them a fresh view of your works
- Use the holiday in Jerusalem to re-establish your reputation, get your street cred back
- Reverse your fortunes, retrieve your popularity, and reclaim your fed up followers
2) DEPART! Make a name (verse 4)
- If you hope to gain popularity, it’s important to not be so cryptic. Time to go public.
- Get out of Dalkeith. You gotta go to London if you hope to be noticed
- Galilee is nowhere; get to Jerusalem that is where you will get the fame!
- No one who seeks to be public, literally “seeks to be bold,” stays behind the scenes
- In other words, “Don’t be a wimp, BROTHER!”
- Time to get hold of yourself, sort yourself out
- And John tells us why (verse 5) they say these things
- They did not believe, well maybe a little, not a lot! But they were rejecting Him
- And so, maybe their motives were even darker
3) GO! And get out of our lives
- For Jesus had become too uncomfortable to live with
- Was viewed, in fact, as a mental case (Mark 3:21)
- What would Jesus say? How does He respond to their words?
- My first guess would be something like this…
- IT’S NOT YOUR PLACE
- To tell Me what my life should do
- A point Jesus made to another family member, his mother Mary, in His conversation with her (John 2)
- Jesus will not be dictated by anyone’s expectations, or timetable
-He does not need the advice and coaching of others
- He will not play the crowd to satisfy His brothers. If He goes to Jerusalem, it will be on His own terms, for His own purposes, in His own time
- And when He chooses to reveal Himself, it will not be in spectacular miracles, but in the disgrace and shame of the Cross
- But Jesus, instead, focused on something else
- It was a different kind of rebuke (verses 6-8)
- LIVE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
- Don’t waste your life
- Don’t let your years be inconsequential
- And here’s how
1) LIVE A LIFE THAT IS DELIBERATE
- Make your time matter
- When Jesus said, the right time, the suitable time, the kairos (God-appointed moment) HAD NOT ARRIVED he was declaring that He lived according to an intentional, purposeful plan
- A time frame determined by the will of the Father
- A theme running through John
- “No one laid a hand on Him. His hour was not yet.” (John 7:30)
- “His time had not yet come.” (John 8:20)
- “For this reason I came to this hour.” (John 12:27)
- All of which demanded careful steps—TIMING, careful timing, God’s timing
- In contrast, time for His brothers had no purpose
- For them, time was theirs to own
- The time was always there, always possible
- “Your time is always here because your lives have no reference to a divine plan.”
- “Your timetables are not regulated by any sense of God’s will.”
- They are determined merely by your own will, small as that is
- And so, your actions means nothing
- It has no consequence to anything until you realize you were made by
God, for God, to live for God
- Until then, “any time will do.” AND ALL OF LIFE WILL BE WASTED

- The second way to avoid wasting your time is to
2) LIVE A LIFE THAT CHANGES THE WORLD
A) For Jesus it meant entering this fallen world to shape its culture
- Expose the evil the kingdom of this world
- Draw it out of its shadows and into the light
- So that it can be named, rejected, and banished
- Sometimes, He directly confronted it, as when He disrupted temple protocols, went into the temple and called the religious leaders hypocrites to their faces, wolves disguised as sheep
- Told the religious leaders that little children understand more than they do
- Healed on the Sabbath to expose their heartless religion
- “In all of this, Jesus represented a counterforce, a countermovement, a counter-kingdom that will confront all corrupt human regimes, exposing them, naming them, and showing them for what they really are.”
- And because of this, He was a magnet for opposition
B) In contrast, for His brothers, who chose a path of unbelief, they consequently believed in nothing, did not take a stand on anything
- Accommodated rather than lived to shape the world
- And so the world did not hate them
- Could not hate them, for the world does not hate its own
- Jesus in effect said, “Do whatever you wish, your decisions have no significance.”
- They make no difference - they CHANGE
NOTHING!
- But if you want to follow Me, you will make a difference

- So what is He saying to us? Don’t waste your life.
1) BE DELIBERATE
- Treat time as part of God’s intentional plan
- Treat the moments as fulfilling God’s purpose
- That defines all of our parameters: when we go, when we stay
- If we’re committed to the important, we’ll avoid the trivial (which always takes up our time
- If we seize it, see the moments presented by God; it will not come under the influence of others
- Will not change that which is immediate, visible, popular, but what is vital
- You will build the kingdom
2) CHANGE YOUR WORLD
- Engage in our mission to reach the lost
- Be prophetic
- Protest the pollution of this world (I don’t just mean physically, spiritually as well)
- Be the light that exposes the darkness
- Such that your life will be neither marginal, nondescript, inconsequential, wasted
- And if we are hated for it, well so what? we will have joined great company
- As Jesus would later say, “If they hated Me, they will hate you.”
DON’T WASTE YOUR LIFE

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

bread of life

1
Series: Conversations with Jesus
Avoiding a life marked by indifference

Ever had one of those days, you need to make some phone calls and you get put through to the computer? ……………………………

- NOT THE WAY IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE.
In John 6, Jesus tells us how it is supposed to be
- Here we come to another conversation

CONTEXT (verses 1-24)
- Jesus was in Galilee (verse 1)
- With a growing crowd, impressed with the miracles
- Here, two more powerful miracles took place
- Feeding of 5000 (verses 10-13)
- And walking on water (verse 18)
- All served as road signs, pointing to something beyond themselves
- Beyond human explanation
- Something of God had invaded this world turning things upside down things were mathematically possible; heaven was coming to earth
- As Jesus warned Nathanael with His coming, “Behold you will see the heavens
open up” (chapter 1)
- Everyone was impressed, impressed enough to want to make Jesus king (verse 15)
- Once they grasped the potential power before them, they were ready to vote Him into office
- So Jesus fled, and in a near comic-chase scene, the crowd sailed in hot pursuit
(verse 24)
- It all set up one of the longest conversations in John, between Jesus and the crowd (John 6:25-60)

CONVERSATION
- Their question seemed innocent enough
- “When did you get here?” (verse 25) but what they meant was
- “How did you get here?”
- But behind it all was really this: “When will you feed us?”
- And Jesus knew this, for he knows the heart of man (verse 26)
- It wasn’t that they wanted Jesus
- Even wanted His miracles
- at the bottom of it all
- They simply wanted what Jesus could give
Illustration – ????????????
- Jesus could see this; that their pursuit had little to do with Him
- Much to do with what He could give
- Someone to satisfy their bellies, and keep it coming
- A Jesus on the telephone, where you push the buttons to get what you want
- Helpful but impersonal
- They all were preoccupied with appetite, oblivious to who they were talking to
- So Jesus gave them a challenge, He gives to us too! (verse 27)
- LIVE FOR SOMETHING, SOMEONE BIGGER THAN YOUR EARTHLY
APPETITES
- Live life on another level
- Literally, stop living for things that are dying
- For if the satisfaction of your earthly appetites is your main aim, then your epitaph will read like those in the wilderness
- “They ate and they died” (verse 58)
- Your life, in essence, will be a waste of time and wasted

- INSTEAD, desire the bread that endures
- And throughout the rest of this conversation, He repeated it over and over
- Devote your energies to that which is lasting
- To the bread which has no shelf life, that does not perish, spoil, rot
- Bread that will not leave you hungry
- Bread that will satisfy the soul (verse 35)
- Work for bread that gives life forever (verse 50)
- So what is this work he calls us all to? Jesus answered…
1) BELIEVE IN ME (verse 29)
- Words that went beyond mere assent, creeds, keeping certain laws, to relational trust
2) PURSUE ME
- I am this bread that comes down from heaven (verse 33)
- I am this bread of life (verse 35)
- Always fresh, never stale
- As the conversation continued, Jesus went deeper
3) EAT ME, CONSUME ME
- “Unless you eat this flesh, you will have no life” (verse 53)
- “The one who consumes Me will have life” (verse 54)
- “I am the real food” (verse 55)
- But what was he saying? What could this mean?
- Throughout this conversation, Jesus rearranged the words giving them a different angle
- Words that together are calling us to something, but what?
- Perhaps the same thing He is calling for when it comes to His word
- Where the same language is occasionally used
- Where its readers are called to eat this book
- Move from distancing eye to listening ear to passionate followers
- Ezekiel was called to this (2:8ff)
- Jeremiah the same (15:16)
- John, on the island of Patmos, was told to take the scroll and eat it
(Revelation 10:9)
- And Peter tells us to long for the Word as pure milk (I Peter 2:2)
- They ( and WE) were told to take the book and do more than read, do more than study, learn it
- More than tick the boxes when we have read a chapter
- They were (and by application, all of us) to masticate, chew, gnaw.
- Consume the words in such a way that these words “spread through your blood”
- Work their way into your gut, nerve endings, reflexes, imagination
- Read such that the text gets into our muscles and bones, our oxygen breathing lungs and blood pumping heart
- And for good reason
A) It is in this Word faith is awakened, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Rom 10:17)
B) It is what God uses to make us alive, the words I have spoken to you are life (John 6:63)
C) It is in these words we are set free
- “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32)
D) It is when we consume these words that prayer is unleashed
- “If my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish” (John 15:7)
- So take this book and consume so it:
- becomes a part of you
- into your heart into your head, into your soul into muscle, gristle, bone, so that it ultimately flows out intoacts of love and holiness
- Here in John 6, Jesus was challenging the crowd (challenging us) to do the samewith Him, the Living Word
- “Consume Me such I spread through your blood”
- “Work My way into your gut, into every fabric of your being such that you
feel My presence in every corner of your being”
- In all of the organs and juices
- “Come after Me. Consume Me like bread, that we might
abide, remain in one another”
- That we might live in radical connection (verse 56)
- But it all was too much, from questioning the conversation turned to grumbling, to sharp disagreement to mass defection (verse 60)
- These words were “hard”
- Not in the sense of intellectually tough, but harsh, offensive, intolerable
- They preferred the more impersonal
- The computer voiced Jesus
- Christianity apart from relationship
- They were unprepared for a call to relationship, and it maybe so for some of us
- Which should not surprise
- For it is the devil’s work to take what is endearing and perpetuate it
into DEVOUT INDIFFERENCE
- Take Jesus and shift the focus from relationship to object
- Take the gospel and reduce it to a set of steps, sanitized and correct, factual and precise
- Take faith in Jesus and make it a statement of beliefs to cling to
- Where we are more in love with words than Word
- More in love with truth than the One who is true
- CHRISTIANITY TRAGICALLY BEREFT OF RELATIONSHIP
- Is your faith a relationship?
The conversation this weekend is between Jesus and the crowd. This crowd followed him and wanted all they could get from Christ but only on a physical level. Jesus could see this but gave them the challenge of their life, one that is applicable to us, too.
Their Challenge was this
• Live for something, someone bigger than your earthly appetites
• Live your life at the God level, walk on the water of life, consume Him
Our Challenge:
• Do as the crowd was challenged to do, live for God, eat of God, let him become a part of you
• Make God personal, don’t live by rules, just factual, or sanitized, consume him, be hungry for him, feed upon him, forget the trappings of religion, discover the joy of relationship, nurture that relationship, so you miss meeting with him, receive his Spirit, devour his word, experience the joy of knowing Jesus, see your life grow purpose in ways you can never imagine, Lamp chop school.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Some years ago, Lee Strobel wrote a chapter entitled—
-What Would Jesus Say to Madonna?
-if Jesus met this Pop Mom after a London concert—
-would He ignore or condemn her?
If there is a text that tells us—it would have to be John 4
-the story of a woman with her own list of failed relationships
-her own list of outrageous behaviors (read 4-26)
What would Jesus say?
1-I’M INTERESTED IN YOU
-what Samaritan means today--listeners
-John seems to underscore this from the start-by using the word “had”-4:4
- obligation, direct route—a shorter way to Galilee, most Jews took the longer journey, for Samaria was the other side of the tracks-the part of town you avoided
racial half breeds-religious mixed breeds-it was the area where immigrants from pagan cultures of the past—Assyria, Babylon, Persia came, settled, mixed with the Jews that were there
-the place where religion got screwed up—Torah, paganism, and alternative
temples all mixed into a strange brew of beliefs
-the Jews occasionally sought to take care of the problem—like burning down
their temple in the second century BC
Hence-there was no love lost between these two groups
-these were the Sunnis living next to Shi’ites, Hamas next to Jewish settlers
-Samaria was the epitome of ritual impurity
Nonetheless, Jesus had to go through Samaria
-not because He was in a hurry
-Jesus never seemed to have a list of “Things to Do Today”
-He attended wedding feasts that lasted for days-allowed Himself to get
distracted by “nobodies”
-would accept almost anyone’s invitation to dinner
-He was always on divine standard time
“Had” can only mean one thing—He had to go through Samaria because Jesus
was interested in someone
-interested because He was in the business of reclamation—not condemnation
-and there was someone He had to reclaim
-something His compassion, His divine will, His eternal purpose required Him to
do-so He came-
And a conversation began with a woman on the fringe of the fringe-
-that it was noon and she was isolated suggests she was socially isolated, living
on the periphery-detached from the lifeblood of the community
What John is painting here is the ultimate picture of disconnect
-if John 3 was a story of the ultimate INSIDER -the learned, powerful respected, orthodox—a man, a Jew, a ruler named
Nicodemus
-John 4 is the story of the ultimate OUTSIDER -an unschooled, without influence, despised, unorthodox, Samaritan, woman, sinner—with no name
And both needed Jesus
-but unlike the insider—who sought after Jesus
-Jesus went to the woman at the well—because He had to
-because HE WAS INTERESTED-particularly in those marginalized by others
-making the first move—He always does—it’s never us who find God—He finds
us
Here’s the second thing Jesus would say—
2-I’M INTERESTED—NOT SO MUCH IN WHAT YOU CAN GIVE ME—BUT
WHAT I CAN GIVE YOU
-it doesn’t begin this way
-Jesus-it appears-was wanting something from her (read 7b)
-but then-she was used to someone wanting something from her-particularly if it
was a man
-but this conversation was still a surprise
-Jesus’ request brought suspicion, maybe even animosity to the surface-read vs
9
-these were people they did not associate—lit “use together with”
-touch one another’s dishes, touch one another’s lives
Common was the saying—to eat the bread of Samaritans was to eat the bread of
swine
And then—Jesus, as He is prone to do—turned the conversation on its head—
reversed all of the assumptions-read vs 10
-it turns out—He was less interested in what she could offer
-far more interested in what He could give her
-it wasn’t about what He wanted at all
Here’s a third thing Jesus might say—
3-I’M INTERESTED-NOT SO MUCH IN MEETING YOUR TEMPORAL
WANTS—BUT IN MEETING THE DEEPEST NEED OF YOUR SOUL
-living water is language that seems cryptic—not because Jesus is intentionally
unclear
-He is describing something that cannot be easily explained
-Jesus is speaking in metaphor—there are no literal words to describe what He
offers
-it is far too profound
-our language falls short
-like born again, bread of life
At best—all it can do is serve as a pointer to the thirst quenching life mediated by
the Spirit
But this woman remains on the earthly-read vss 11-12
-vss 13-14-she can’t get past H2O-vs 15
She has failed to grasp the true dimension of her need
-that even if Jesus brought physical water to her every day
-she would still be thirsty
In an interview in Vogue some years ago, Madonna acknowledged her own thirst
for something that satisfies—
“I’m always struggling with fear. I push past one spell of it, thinking I’m special,
then find myself thinking I am mediocre. That’s always been pushing me,
pushing me. Because even though I’ve become somebody, I still have to prove
I’m SOMEBODY”
-so she keeps reinventing herself, developing a more daring version—a treadmill
of doing something more outrageous to keep her fans
-a treadmill that leaves her more and more thirsty
In the story of John 4—this woman kept pursuing relationships
-a treadmill that left her in the desert of relational thirst
-Jesus pointed this out (read vss 16-18)
Jesus started rummaging around in her injured spaces
-and touched her pain
-her guilt, despair, need
-He understood the failing cycle she had experienced
-multiple relationships, serial failures
-year by year accumulating wounds and scars—the kind that come from being
the source of someone else’s gratification—leaving her dry
But it is much more preferable to switch the conversation-read vss 19-20
-talk about another subject—safe things—like religion-
-get Him off on some controversy
-pre-trib/post trib?
-once-saved-always saved?
-cessationist/non-cessationist?
-it was much safer to keep the walls up
-but it only opened a door for Jesus to talk about an even deeper thirst
-if relationships left her dry—religion left her dehydrated
-so He moved her past form to function
-past the place of worship to the nature of worship
-past law and confusion
-to spirit and truth
-from ritual to relationship with Him
APPLICATION
So what is Jesus saying to us in this conversation?
1-God is very interested in you--compelled
-His passion for our lives, His commitment to justice, demanded that He leave
His neighborhood and enter into ours
-we are that valuable-are you convinced?
2-God is not so interested in what we can give Him
-our tendency is to assume that a relationship with Jesus is largely about what
He wants, what He expects, what He needs from us
-lots of us live with this notion it’s largely about what Jesus needs from us
-our money, our service
-when if we really -it’s actually about what He wants to give us—are we asking?
3-God is interested in satisfying our lives at the deepest level
-will we settle for less?
-let sin and religion get in the way?