A Message of Hope

One day Jesus and his disciples were taking a shortcut from Judea to Galilee.  As they were traveling,  they went through Samaria, a place Jews normally tried to avoid.  It was noon.  They were hot and tired, so Jesus sat down by a well.  A woman  showed up by herself, in the heat of the day, to draw water.  It’s obvious that she’s not part of the in-crowd in Sychar, or she would have come earlier in the day with all the other women.  So, quite inappropriately, Jesus, a single rabbi, struck up a conversation with this woman.

I suggest you give the conversation a fresh reading from The Message (John 4:7-30, 39-42).

Jesus had every reason to avoid this woman.  First, she was a woman.  As a single man, he really shouldn’t have been having this private conversation with her.  Second, she was a woman of ill repute – multiple marriages and now living with a man she wasn’t married to.  Third, she was a Samaritan – racially and religiously off-limits.   Yet none these things kept Jesus away from her.    Jesus, who was perfect, didn’t think he was too good to talk to this woman, and  yet sometimes we think certain people are beneath us and try to keep our distance from them.  How dare we do that?

Yet, Jesus didn’t overwhelm this woman with challenges—whether to her religion or her lifestyle.  He offered to put himself in her debt by asking for a drink.  Jesus made himself vulnerable tot his woman.  He admitted that he had a need that she could fill.  She recognized his request immediately as an act of humility, and she was shocked by it.  He was asking her, not ordering her.  The way he spoke to her was not the way she was used to being spoken to, especially not by a Jew.
 
When we relate to people, especially to unbelievers, I wonder how we come across to them.  Do we come across as though we have all the answers?  Do we come across as if we are they priviledged and they are the underpriviledged?  If we do, should we be surprised if they steer clear of us.  Or do we recognize that we also need them, the way Jesus needed what this woman could offer him.
 
Of course, she also needed Jesus.  And Jesus connects his need to  her need.   This woman was naturally suspicious when Jesus made himself vulnerable to her. She wasn’t used to be treated this way.  Her answer is a little defensive (“You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.  How can you ask me for a drink?”), but Jesus uses her response to focus on what she needed to understand – she needed to know who she was talking to.

She needed someone who could offer her living water.  Now, she was a little confused by what Jesus said.  At first, she thought he was talking about water from an artesian well – a well that wasn’t so deep, where it wasn’t so  hard to draw from.  But Jesus was talking about something inside of her.
 
In chapter 7 (vs. 37-39), we’re going to hear Jesus say, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”

John goes on to explain, “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

Jesus offers this woman an inexhaustible supply of life — eternal life — a spring of life that is fed from within her by the eternal Spirit of God.

Then,  rather abruptly, Jesus gets real personal, and the conversation gets a little awkward.  He knows about her marital situation, so he brings the subject up, to let her know that he knows.  But I don’t think he brings it up to condemn her.   I think he brought it up so she would know that he knew all about her, but her past was not a barrier to his work in her life in the present.  Notice that he doesn’t tell her that she’s got to go get her past straightened out before she could come back and talk to him.
 
We’ve made that mistake in the church sometimes.  We’ve told people who need Jesus to go get their life straightened out without Jesus, and then maybe they can come back and meet Jesus.  That’s  not how  Jesus dealt with people.

Since, Jesus knows all about her, she wants to change the subject,  so she brings up the burning religious question between the Jews and the Samaritans.  Have you ever had anyone do that?  You try to talk to them about their soul, and they throw up something like instrumental music or the book of Revelation or something some televangelist said as a distraction?  For this woman, the issue was, “ Where was the right place to worship?”   Jesus says, “Technically, the Jews are right.  But, you know, it doesn’t really matter any more.”  It seems to me that she’s a little flustered when she says, “Well, when the Messiah comes, he’ll explain it all.”
 
So Jesus blows her away when he says, “I who speak to you am he.”

Suddenly, it all clicked for her, so she ran off to tell the other people in the town.  But before she leaves, the disciples, who had been away buying food, come back and find Jesus with this woman – this Samaritan woman.  They wonder why he was talking to  her, but they don’t dare ask.  Jesus doesn’t seem interested in the food, so they urge him to eat, so he tells them, “I  have food to eat that you know  nothing about.”

Humm.  So somebody else must have brought him lunch.  They didn’t get it.  “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”

I think it was about time that Jesus looks up and sees the woman leading the people of the town; they’re coming out to meet Jesus, with their white robes reflecting the hot, noonday sun that was shining down on them.  So Jesus says to his disciples – you don’t have to wait four months until the grain is ready. Look at the fields now, they are ripe for harvest.  Get ready to reap the benefits of the work that God has already been doing in their lives.

Recently, my wife and I finally got around to watching the movie “Fireproof.”  I commend it to you with a little warning – if you want to keep your eyes dry, don’t watch it.  The movie centers around a fireman and his wife who are having serious problems in their marriage.  The fireman’s father is a Christian and so is one of the other firemen at the station.  At one point one fireman makes fun of the Christian.  But the guy who is having trouble in his marriage defends him.  He says, “You may not agree with him, but you and I both know that he is the real deal.”
 
When this woman met Jesus, she knew that she had found the real deal.  But why did the people in the town listen to her?  They knew her past, they knew her sinfulness.  But they were willing to get past all of that, because they knew that she was also the real deal.  I lot of us fail to witness to others because we are very aware of our own sinfulness.  But, you see, people aren’t looking for perfection from us, they don’t expect it.  But what they can’t stand is hypocrisy.  They  are looking for the real deal.  The people of Samaria found the real deal in Jesus, but they found it through this woman.

Just like this woman couldn’t hide her past from Jesus, we can never hide who we really are from God.  And that’s good news, because he accepts and loves us, not because  of, but in spite of, who we are.  Since he already knows us, we have nothing to hide.

Jesus loves and accepts each one of us just like he loved and accepted this woman.  And each of us has the potential to impact other people’s lives the way this woman did.  But we can only have that impact if we are the real deal.   I think that, between all of us, we know a lot of people who have already had God working in their lives, and God is asking us to go out and reap the harvest.  But people are not going to be gathered if we, the harvesters, are not the real deal.

Things had not been going well for Moses or for the Israelites.  They’d been delivered from slavery from Egypt, but with every difficulty that came along they found themselves wanting to return to the certainty of slavery rather than trust in God to get them through the uncertain times.  Moses himself, who had begged God to spare the people so many times, finally grew so exasperated that he had taken credit for himself and Aaron for bringing the Israelites water from the rock.  Because of that, God told him that he wouldn’t be allowed to enter Promised Land.  Then, the Edomites, who were the descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau, refused to allow the Israelites passage through their territory, thus forcing them to take a longer route.   Finally, Aaron, Moses’ brother who served as the high priest over Israel, had died.  Things had not been going well at all for the Israelites … and then this happens.

Read Numbers 21:4-9.  The Israelites grew increasingly rebellious, so God sent poisonous snakes into the camp and many died.  When the people decided to repent, God told Moses to put a serpent up on a pole, and whoever looked at it would live.  So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole.  Those who looked at it were healed.

Now native Texans may be used to dealing with snakes, but for this Alabama boy, having a bunch of poisonous snakes crawling around my camp would be just about the most terrifying situation I could think of.  But what does it have to do with us?  According to Jesus, everything.  In John 3:14-15, Jesus (or John, talking about Jesus, depending on your quotation marks and red letters) refers to this story and compares himself to the bronze serpent that was lifted up on a pole “that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

What amazes me is that this terrifying story of judgment, death, and salvation is the lead-in for what is probably (and deservedly)  the best know verse in the Bible, John 3:16, a verse that emphasizes the grace & compassion of God.

Jesus makes it clear that the the bronze serpent in the story foreshadows himself.  If that is true, who do the Israelites represent? They represent us, the whole world.  Like them, we are dying, comdemned, and judged.  Unlike them, however, our condemnation is not the result of some dramatic intervention by God.  We are just as rebellious, but our condemnation is a natural consequence of our rebellion.  We opened ourselves up to the bite of the serpent, and we have been bitten.  Before God, we are all rebels who have been bitten by a venomous snake. Our only hope for survival is to look to Jesus. 

Now John makes it clear (John 3:17-18) that, if we don’t look to Jesus, we’re dead.  We are as dead spiritually as the Israelites who refused to look at the serpent – even those who didn’t get the opportunity to look at the serpent – we’re as dead spiritually as they were physically.  Now we’re not dead because God kills us.  We’re not dead because God judges us.  We’re dead because our rebellion against God has opened us up to the power of the serpent and the serpent has bitten us!  We are headed for death and the only chance for rescue is to believe in Jesus, to look to the cross with faith and hope, just like those Israelites looked at that bronze serpent.
 
In the stories that precede these verses in John’s gospel, we read of people who, in the end, approached God in completely different ways.  The people who Jesus chased out of the temple, and their defenders, were trying to get to God through religion (John 2:13-24) .  They had their system set up and, so they thought, it worked for them.  But they had manipulated religion so that it was about themselves and not about God.

Now that’s something that’s easy to do–to make religion about us instead of about God,  to manipulate it so that it’s about being served instead of serving.  I guess we all tend to do it, as long as we are guided by our own nature.  More than anything else, we need a new nature; more than anything else, we need to be born again.

That’s what Jesus told Nicodemus needed to happen (John 3:1-12).  Jesus’ words to Nicodemus sound hard—they probably sounded even harder to Nicodemus than they do to us—but hard words were what it took to be clear, to move Nicodemus to faith.  Remember that Nicodemus was a religious man—a Pharisee, a member of the ruling council.  Yet Jesus told him that he needed to be born again, much like the rabbis would refer to a proselyte, a Gentile who adopted Judaism as ”a new-born child.”  Nicodemus would have been fine with the idea of proselyte needing to be “born again,” or “born from above.”  But it demanded the utmost humility to accept that he, and upstanding natural-born Jew, would need a new birth.

And what is this “water and spirit” thing?  Again, Jesus may have been referring to the ceremonial washings that a proselyte went through.  He may have been referring to the baptism of John the Baptist.  I’m sure that, by the time John the Apostle wrote this gospel, the early Christians saw the similarities between Jesus’ words and what they had experienced in their own baptisms, when they had confessed their own sinfulness, when they had looked to Jesus for salvation, when they had been washed with water and received His Spirit.

Although the apostle Paul probably never read John’s gospel, he must have been familiar with this story.  He wrote to Titus (3:5) that “He saved us by the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”  Born again of water and Spirit.  Washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.  Sounds to me like they are talking about the same thing.

Experiencing the new birth, the birth of water and spirit, is a humbling experience—especially if think that you’re pretty good to start with.  But when you stop relying on religion or anything else, and start relying on Jesus, what it takes is a new birth.  Jesus didn’t make it optional.  He said, “You must be born again” (John 3:7).

When I said that Nicodemus is the counter-example, the opposite of the money changers in the temple, I’m assuming that Nicodemus grasped what Jesus said and that he came to faith.  Why do I assume that?  Well, most of us probably know that Joseph of Arimathea was the man who took Jesus’ body and buried it.  But Joseph needed some help.  In John 19, we read whose Joseph’s helper was – it was Nicodemus.  Nicodemus even supplied 75 lbs. of spices to bury with Jesus’ body.
 
Nicodemus was a well-educated, politically powerful individual, but he accepted Jesus’ call to be born again, to humble himself as a child, to admit that he was no better than a pagan who decided to follow God.

You see, until you’re born from above, you’re headed for death just as surely as those Israelites who were bitten by the serpents.  It’s the inevitable result of your separation from God – separation that can come from arrogant religion just as surely as it can come from open rebellion.  But just as surely as God provided a means for the Israelites to be saved, he has provided a way for you to be saved.  And that way—The Way—is Jesus.
 
Remember, always remember, John 3:16.

Why do we need John 3:16 so much?  We need it because we’ve been snakebit.  We need it because we’ll die without it.  We need it because we need new birth, new life, a new Spirit.  We need it because we need Jesus.

With the movies that have come out,I guess the Transformer toys are back around these days.  I haven’t seen the movies, nor do I care to, but I can remember being impressed with the way that the toys could change from a robot-like character to some kind of machine–a race car, airplane, or space ship.  The toys were advertised as “Transformers:  More than Meets the Eye.”

As I looked at the last part of chapter 1 and the first part of chapter 2 of John’s Gospel, it occured to me that Jesus is the greatest Transformer, and he certainly is more than meets the eye.

Jesus, who was introduced to us in the prologue to John’s gospel as the Incarnate, Eternal, Living Word of God, now appears as someone who is very much in-the-flesh, doing the very ordinary activity of attending a wedding feast.  But Jesus, of course, was not an ordinary wedding guest.  He was about to perform a miracle of transformation that would demononstrate that htere is more to him than meets the eye.

I believe that the real point of the story, recorded in John 2:1-11, is that Jesus changed water into wine.  Not too subtle of a lesson, huh?
But it wasn’t just any old water that Jesus changed.  Look in verse 6.  It was the water used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, or at least that’s what the pots were for.

Jesus once had a pretty nasty confrontation with the Pharisees over these ceremonial washings that’s recorded in Mark 7.  The Pharisees were apalled that Jesus’ disciples at with ceremonially unwashed hands.  Jesus was apalled by their hypocrisy. 

Jesus had nothing against good hygiene, but he had a lot against religious legalism, and that’s what these jars of water were for.  Jesus transformed the waters of legalism into the wine of celebration,  and by doing so he was acting out a parable of what it would mean to follow him.  Jesus was starting to call his disciples and he is serving notice that those who want to be stuck in the old ways need not apply.

This was a miracle of transformation on many levels.  Jesus showed that he is the Transformer of Nature.  It shouldn’t surprise us that he one who has already been snown to be the Creator of heaven and earth should have the power to transform the physical properties of water into the physical properties of wine.  Many years ago C.S. Lewis pointed out that, in this miracle, Jesus did what God does year after year; through natural processes he transforms water into wine.  The miracle was in accelerating the natural processes.

But even more significantly, Jesus showed that he is the Transformer of Worship.  Did you ever wonder how the wedding guests did their washing after this miracle?  Where could they go to “wash up”?  The pots were full of wine!  The people who were obsessed with doing the rituals correctly must have been freaking out!

F.F. Bruce says that, “Christ has come into the world to fulfill and terminate the old order, and to replace it by a new worship ‘in spirit and truth’ which surpasses the old as much as wine surpasses water.”  Worship has to be much more than doing the right acts and doing them correctly.  In John 6 , where Jesus is going to talk about worship in spirit and in truth, the context is that of the place of worship—in Jerusalem, where God had told the Jews to worship, or on Mt. Gerazim, where the Samaritans had set up their temple.  Jesus says, “Those questions used to be important, but they aren’t any more.”  “In spirit and in truth” is what matters.  It’s not just spirit, it’s not just passion.  And it’s not just truth, it’s not just facts.  Worship that pleases God is when we are passionate about the truth.  Worship that does not express our passion for the truth is not true worship.

Most significatly, Jesus is the Transformer of Lives.  Transforming worship isn’t just a matter of changing covenants, it comes from changed people.  That’s what the last part of John chapter 1 points to – not people who are changed as instantly as the water was turned to wine, but people who started to hang out with Jesus, who started to spend time with him, who began to experience his grace, and to witness his power.  These were the people who would be changed from old creations to new ones.

These people who started hanging out with Jesus encouraged their friends to do the same.  It was pretty simple then, and it still is today.  Discipleship is about being with Jesus, and making disciples is about inviting others to be with Jesus.  It’s the experience of being with Jesus that transforms us, like water into wine.

If Jesus can turn water into wine, what can he transform in you?  The truth is that He can change anything in you that is not like him.  Do you believe that?  You may think you’re just water, but Jesus can turn you into wine.  Jesus can transform you into something different, just like the kids can take those toys and make them into something that you could never have imagined.

This work of transformation—God’s work to change you—begins with receiving the miracle of forgiveness.  The Corinthian Christians had a pretty rough background, but they were changed.  Paul said, “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”  (1 Cor. 6:9-11)

We you follow Jesus, when you are baptized in his name and you receive the Spirit of God, there is more to you than meets the eye .  And because of that, God can transform you into more than you ever were before.

In America we like to celebrate our rights.  These days, it seems that the list of rights that people want to claim just keeps growing.  Somehow, my parents forgot to tell me about “children’s rights.”  I didn’t know there was any such thing.  But now, everybody has rights, even children. 

It’s true that sometimes this idea of children’s rights is used to promote a liberal political agenda, but children do  have rights that need to be protected.   The supreme right of a child is the right to be a child – to be loved, protected, and cared for.  A child has a right not to be exploited for cheap labor (& I’m not talking about household chores), or sold into slavery to pay a parent’s debts.  A child has a right not to be forced to serve as a soldier.  A child has a right not to be forced into prostitution.  These are real issues in the world today.  A child has a right to be able to go to sleep at night without worrying about all the world’s problems, because they have a Daddy who can handle those. 
John chapter 1 talks about a different kind of children’s rights –the right to be a child of God.  But you may be surprised to know that not everyone has been given that right.  Who has it?  Who doesn’t have it?  How can you get it or make sure you have it? 

Grab a Bible, or click to read John 1:1-18.

This is simple language, grammatically speaking.  The Greek is some of the simplest in the New Testament.  But the thoughts are some of the most profound.

What or who is this “Word”?  The word “Logos” comes from Greek philosophy, but the idea that John wants to communicate is Hebrew, rooted in the OT Scriptures.  It’s no coincidence that John begins his gospel with the same words that begin the book of Genesis  —  “In the beginning;”  And throughout Genesis 1, when God wants to create we read, “And God said …” – it is the Word of God that brings about creation.  (Look at Psalm 33:6.)

But the “Word” in John 1 is personal, and his identity is made clear in verse 14 – “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”  It’s obvious that John is talking about Jesus, though he still hasn’t not named.

The Word became“flesh” – a term  used for in Scripture to emphasize the weakness of human nature–not sinfulness, but weakness. 
The Word made flesh “made his dwelling among us” – Literally, he “pitched his tent,” he “tabernacled.”   This is also parallel to another Old Testament story, when God came and dwelled among the people of Israel in the tabernacle.  (Exodus 40:34-35)

As usual, there is comparison and there is contrast.  The comparison between the accounts is the presence of God among his people.  But the contrast is that, in the tabernacle, God’s glory was hidden by a cloud.  In Jesus, God’s glory is revealed  — “We have seen his glory…” (verse 14b).

And the truly surprising thing is that God’s glory is revealed in the weakness of human flesh.

So, the “Word,” who is God’s creative power in the world, came into the world as Jesus of Nazareth.   But why does John call Jesus “the Word”? 

To me, the clearest commentary on John 1:1-2 is John 1:18, which explains what it means for the Word/Jesus Christ  to be with God, and to be God, and then  to be made flesh – “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”
Here, Jesus, is explicity called “God;” but he is distinct from the Father.  He is God  “the One and Only,” one of a kind.  The Greek word is monogenēs, and older English versions mistakenly translate it “only begotten.”  But while it doesn’t have anything to do with being “begotten” or “born,” it does have to do with being a special child. In the Greek Old Testament it’s used to translate the Hebrew yahîd, used of an only or a beloved child (Judges 11:34, Jephthah’s only daughter); it’s the same idea as Jesus being God’s  “beloved Son.”
As the beloved, one and only Son, Jesus “makes known” the Father.  The word that is translated “makes known” is the same word that gives us the word “exegete.”  That may not be a word you use every day, but to exegete Scripture means to draw out the meaning and put it on display in a way that it makes sense.  That’s what Jesus does for the Father, he puts God on display in a way that makes sense to us who are in the flesh.
So the Beloved, One and Only Son of God, came into the world, to put God on display for us, so we would really know what he was like. 
What if he hadn’t done that?  What if God had not spoken?  What would we know about God?  What would we think God was like? Wouldn’t we think of God primarily as the “Lawgiver”?  Yes, we can read the Old Testament and we can see God’s love, his grace, and his mercy – but that’s not the dominant idea that comes across.  What stands out to us is the holiness of God, a God who makes rules and draws lines and punishes sins.  That’s not the complete picture, but that’s what stands out.
What do you think God is like? 

A study done by sociologists at Baylor University about 3 years ago showed that over ¾ of Americans view God as either distant (cosmic force), or critical, or authoritarian.  Less than a ¼ describe God primarily as “Benevolent,” as forgiving and accepting of anyone who repents.

But I wonder, “What if the same question had been asked about Jesus?”  Do you think most people would describe Jesus as Authoritarian, or Distant, or Critical?  Probably not.  Most people would probably say that Jesus is “Benevolent”?
I think that most of us don’t really believe that Jesus shows us what God is like!  Jesus shows us, John says, that God is full of “grace and truth.”  We usually think that God is full of truth and Jesus is full of grace.  But Jesus shows us that God can pour out abundant grace without sacrificing truth.    Jesus didn’t sacrifice truth, but he did sacrifice himself.  As John testified about him, he is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
Jesus, the Word, the Son of God, came into the world – the world that He himself had helped to fashion, and he became a part of that world, he came as a part of the people of Israel.  And yet, John says, even though he came into the world that he himself had made, his own people did not receive him.  He was rejected.
But he was not totally rejected.   There were a few – there are a few – who receive him, who believe in his name.  In ancient cultures, “the name” was never a meaningless label.  The name stood for the person—all that he or she was.   And so to believe in the name of Jesus is not just to consent that there was a historical person who wore the label “Jesus”—it is to believe all that Scripture claims for him.  That he is the Eternal Word, that he is the Light that was coming into the world to give light to every one, that he is the Son of God, that he is God “the One and Only,” that he is the Lamb of God.  That’s what it means to “receive” him – to be absolutely committed to all that he is.

And if you are, he gives you special authority.  He gives you special rights.  He gives you the rights of a child. 

Our constitution guarantees certain “inalienable rights” that we believe are endowed on all men by the Creator – by God.  We talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  But here is another right – the word is very strong, it can be translated “power” or “authority” – the right to become “children of God.”  But this right to be a child is not an inalienable right – it’s not granted to everyone – it is granted to those who believe in his name.
The supreme right of a child is the right to be a child – to be loved, protected, and cared for.  To be able to go to sleep at night without worrying about all the world’s problems, because you have a Daddy who can handle those. 
If you believe, then you have the right to be God’s child, to be part of his family.  Some of us who believe don’t take advantage of this right.  We want to be, or we think we have to be, grown ups—and we take on ourselves pressures and responsibilities that we’re not supposed to be bearing, because we’re children.  Of course, I’m not saying that we don’t have adult responsibilities, but we often try to take on more than a human adult is equipped to handle.  Because while we may be adults in relation to our children, in our relation to God we are children, and we have the right to be.

My friend Gary Spear embarrassed me last week by asking to add my blog to  his blog roll — not realizing that I hadn’t posted anything in so long.  So, I resolved to reactivate this blog by trying to publish my Sunday sermon notes here (since we have haven’t been able to figure out how to get our podcast gadget to work).  The timing is actually pretty good since I just started a new series on the Gospel of John yesterday.

Keep in mind that these are sermon notes, not a well-written article.So here goes …