Episode Transcript
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Please remain standing if you're able,
and let's turn to John, chapter four
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and continue our reflection and exhortation from
John for Miss Woman, this for this
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meeting Jesus has with this woman at
the well. I'll begin in verse seven
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and Read Through Verse Verse Twenty Six, but the sermon will focus particularly on
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sixteen through twenty six. So I'm
going to begin reading here in John.
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For Verse Seven, a woman from
Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said
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to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into
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the city to buy food. The
Samaritan woman said to him, how is
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it that you would Jew ask for
a drink from me, a woman of
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Samaria, for Jews have no dealings
with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, if
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you knew the Gift of God and
who it is that is saying to you,
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give me a drink, you would
have asked him and he would have
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given you living water. The woman
said to him, sir, you have
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nothing to draw water with and the
well is deep. Where do you get
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that living water? Are You greater
than our Father Jacob? He gave us
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the well and drank from it himself, as did his son's in his livestock.
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Jesus said to her, everyone who
drinks of this water will be thirsty
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again, but whoever drinks of the
water that I give him will never be
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thirsty again. The water that I
will give him will become in him a
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spring of water welling up to eternal
life. The woman said to him,
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sir, give me this water so
that I will not be thirsty or have
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to come here to draw water.
Jesus said to her, go call your
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husband and come here. The woman
answered him, I have no husband.
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Jesus said to her, you are
right in saying I have no husband,
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for you have had five husbands and
the one you have now is not your
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husband. What you have said is
true. The woman said to him,
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Sir, I perceive that you are
a prophet. Our Father's worshiped on this
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mountain, but you say that in
Jerusalem is the place where people ought to
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worship. Jesus said to her,
woman, believe me, the hour is
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coming when neither on this mountain nor
in Jerusalem will you worship the father.
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You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for
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salvation is from the Jews. But
the hour is coming, and is now
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here, when the true worshippers will
worship the father in spirit and truth,
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for the father is seeking such people
to worship him. God is spirit and
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those who worship him must worship in
spirit and truth. The woman said to
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him, I know that the Messiah
is coming. He is called the Christ.
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When he comes, he will tell
us all things. Jesus said to
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her. I who speak to you, am He sends the Reading of God's
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word. You may be seated a
title this sermon if you look in your
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bulletin's. You don't need to.
I'll tell you if you I titled This
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sermon and Awkward Conversation, and you
could probably guess why. But I'd actually
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like to take it back, though. There is perhaps a high likelihood that
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this was an awkward conversation. Perhaps
not. Perhaps both Jesus and this woman
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were equally comfortable with confrontation. It
wasn't awkward for either of them. I
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don't really know. The more I
thought about that, but what we do
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have is in our text a very
strongly a conversation that is confrontational. This
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is a very, very confrontational conversation
in in a lot of different ways.
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This meeting that Jesus has with this
woman at the well is not an easygoing
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chat to strangers sitting at a bus
stop, just waiting for the next thing
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to happen, sort of catching up
or chit chatting. No, from the
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very first interaction that we have in
Verse Sixteen, we see that Jesus in
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this woman at the well or in
a confrontational conversation. They are at odds.
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Jesus says, give me a drink
and she doesn't say how much,
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or let me help with this other
thing first, or are of what do
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you want? Or there's no question. There's no discussion really about the drink
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it. It's immediately about their relationship. Right, he says, are she
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says to him, how is it
that you are asking me for a drink?
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She doesn't even say she'll give him
one. She just immediately says there's
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there's a problem here. And that
confrontation continues to begin or to can or
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continues on. It continues with Jesus's
remark and which he assumes that she and
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rightly so, that she does not
know the Gift of God. He says
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in response to her question, if
you knew the Gift of God, parentheses,
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which you don't, you would ask
of him and he would give you
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this eternal water, or living water. In an important thing to note there
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is that the gift of God is, yes, the water, but,
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even more properly, Jesus himself.
You do not know the Gift of God.
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He is standing before you. Her
response to this is she replies with
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an assumption about his lack of status
and ability. Are You greater than our
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Father Jacob, she says. Right, you see this back and forth,
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back and forth. He gave us
the will, he drank from it himself,
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as did his sons and daughters.
Are you better than him? Are
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you able to give us something that
he did not give us, something that
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Jacob has passed down for generation after
generation after generation? Well, Jesus answer
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is of course yes, he says
in verse thirteen and fourteen. Everyone who
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drinks of this water will be thirsty
again, but whoever drinks of the water
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that I will give him will never
be thirsty again. In a way,
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she kind of accepts this, perhaps
assuming the best, but she misunderstands it.
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He offers her living water, water
that neneever ones runs dry. But
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what does he say about the water? Look carefully at verse fourteen. It's
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a water that is internal. The
water that I will give him will become
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in him a spring of water welling
up to eternal life. This water that
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never runs drop dry, begins at
least as an as an internal work.
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But what does she say? She
says, give me this water, that
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I don't have to come to this
this well again. The confrontation then continues
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on when Jesus responds by saying,
go call your husband, I have no
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husband. You're right, you have
no husband. You have fed five husbands
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and the husband you are now a
lift, is not your husband, the
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man you are with. And then, of course, a there's this.
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If you've ever felt this awkwardness,
be between verses Twenty One and twenty two,
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where Jesus, I'm sorry, not
twenty one and twenty two, nineteen
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and twenty, where Jesus says this
thing about her life and she says,
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Sir, I perceive you are a
prophet. I always kind of track there
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and I'm like, okay, she's
responding to what he says. She sees
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right that he knows her insides,
her internal life and things that maybe no
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one else knows. But then the
next thing she says is kind of weird.
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She says our father's worshiped on this
mountain and she gets into this discussion
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about worship. If you had trouble
tracking there and you're kind of asking the
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back of your mind, why is
she saying this? That's a good question.
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Why is she saying this? Jesus
just exposed her sin and she sort
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of tracks left and asks a theology
question. Right, this wouldn't be the
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last time this would happen. Interestingly, Jesus. However, that does answer
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her question. As we continue tracking
through this story, Jesus accepts her question,
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but he turns it on her head, on its head rather, and
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he says, our father's worshiped on
this mountain. You say that in Jerusalem.
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Is the place, he says.
Ultimately, neither of these are going
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to matter because God will be worshiped
well, through him, is what he's
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getting at. He is the one
who brings these things and it talks to
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her about this worship and she basically
says, yeah, I know, yeah,
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yeah, yeah, I know that
the Messiah is coming and he's going
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to tell us all this. So
she asks this question. I perceive you
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are a prophet. I have a
theology question. He gives her the answer,
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which she then ignores basically and says
yeah, yeah, I know,
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the Messiah is coming and he's going
to reveal all things. And then Jesus
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says, I am he the one
you're talking to, I am the gift
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of God. I am, he's
telling her, the one who gives this
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living water. I am the prophet
that you are looking for. Like I
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said, sort of confrontation from beginning
to end. I wonder if you've ever
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had a conversation, or perhaps a
moment like this, or maybe even years
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like this, with God. Many
of us who come to trust Christ later
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in life, I think, can
particularly resonate with this woman's experience, but
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all of us can in different ways. A lot of us go through life
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believing in God or a God or
a higher power of some kind, believing
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that he's mostly good, that he's
mostly powerful, which means that he probably
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has the ability to make our lives
easier, and it sure would be nice
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if he did. If I didn't
have to come out to this well every
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day or every few days, if
I didn't have to do the dishes and
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the law and laundry over and over
again, or work with this dumb boss
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or have to deal with this relationship
in my family. Of God would just
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fix this, it would be sure
Nice. And then we come into contact,
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we come into contact with some sort
of sense of the divine not that
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God is sort of in and out
of the world, it's just that our
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eyes are more or less open at
different times. But we get a sense
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of his presence in our lives and
we say, oh well, maybe I
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can ask him for this, give
you this water, but I don't have
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to come out to the well anymore. Of course, most of the time
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people don't trust God, they don't
really ask him for help, they don't
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really seek things from him, they
just kind of complain and are mad at
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him in the back of their minds. But then when this sense or realization
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of his power, of his goodness
comes into our lives, perhaps somebody tells
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us about something that happened in their
lives. Perhaps we see something or hear
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something in the word. Perhaps there's
something that happens in your life. You
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bypass a car wreck or you feel
like you you sort of avoided disaster in
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some way and you feel like I
hear sometimes people says someone must be looking
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out for me, and in those
moments we think now, maybe maybe he
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is as good as he says he
is, maybe he is as powerful as
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he says he is, and so
we respond with a kind of prayer that
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isn't really trusting and isn't really faithful, but just as sort of a GIMMI,
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Gimmi Gimmy. A lot of people, a lot of us, think
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of God like a divine vending machine. We have something we want, he
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has something to give. It's a
relationship made in heaven, right, this
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is going to be great. No, of course, this kind of thinking
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is is from Hell. Why?
Because it's not true and it turns God
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into something he's not, and it
thinks of us as ourselves is something that
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we are not. We do need
things, of course. A God can
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supply them, of course, but
this thinking of God as a divine vending
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machine is devilish for a couple reasons, even more, but I mentioned two.
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The first thing is it turns our
relationship with God as it really is,
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on its head. God into our
servant, into our slave. In
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our minds, we strip him of
His Majesty, of His Holiness, of
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his rightful ownership over us, of
his kingly right to demand anything he asks.
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Take a look at Psalm thirty three
for a moment. I want to
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read to you some verses here in
Psalm thirty three we are if you listen
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to verses thirteen, for example,
and following. We read this. The
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Lord Looks Down From Heaven. He
sees all the children of Man. From
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where he sits in throne, he
looks out on all the inhabitants of the
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earth, He who fashions the hearts
of them all and observes all their deeds.
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The king is not saved by his
great army. A warrior is not
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delivered by his great strength. The
war horse is a false hope for salvation
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and by its great might it cannot
rescue this picture of the Lord. Or
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if you look up in verse six, by the Word of the Lord the
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Heavens were made and by his breath, of his mouth and all their hosts,
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he who gathers the waters of the
sea as a heap and puts the
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heaps in the store house, says, let all the earth fear of the
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Lord, let all the inhabitants of
the world stand in awe of him.
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You don't stand an awe of vending
machine, you bang on it, give
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me my chips right. But with
God, he is not our slave,
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he is not our servant. We
are to stand in awe before him as
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the one who, by the breath
of his mouth, made us, who
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sits in his heaven enthroned, and
knows and observes all of us and all
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our deeds. You are right to
say you have no husband, for you
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have had five and the one you
are now with is not your husband.
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He knows it all. There's nothing
that we can hide from him. We
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wouldn't even ask our dog to bring
us our slippers and then ignore it for
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the rest of the day, and
yet people do this all the time with
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God. There's this kind of unholy
reversal. It's it's like turning the world
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upside down, making heaven on earth
and Earth and heaven, exalting ourselves to
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the place of God and seeing God
as our our servant, as our bloy
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that runs errands for us, or
something like that. That's a big problem.
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The second problem is that not only
does this kind of thinking do this
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unholy reversal with our relationship with God, it also denies a break in the
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relationship that actually exists. It denies
that all mankind has this break that all
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man has kind has had with God
ever since we sinned with sinned against him
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in the garden of Eden. From
that moment on, what was once a
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close, intimate relationship, with US
ruling under him as his vice regions or
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little kings and Queens. When sin
came into the world, it became confrontation,
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a war in sin. We hid
our sins. Adam and Eve,
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what did they do? They tried
to cover themselves up, they tried to
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hide from God. Instead of speaking
openly with God, they began a long,
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long history of evasion, of manipulation, of trying to get things from
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him while not really serving him or
loving him or being with him as he
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has called us to be. God
says to them, have you eaten of
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the tree which I commanded you to
eat? He says to Adam, the
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woman that you gave me, she
gave the fruit of the tree and I
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ate it. Evasion Right. Where
is your brother Abel? God says to
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Kane. I don't know. Am
I my brother's keeper? Hiding sins,
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evasion, confrontation. Go Call Your
husband, God says. I have no
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husband. Evasion, hiding but of
course Adam did eat of it, Kane
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did kill and this woman has had
five husbands and is living with a man
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who does not belong to her.
Jesus points this out, she responds by
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avoiding the issue with a theology question. So you see what I mean.
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You see what we do. Sin
Takes a good, intimate, rightly ordered,
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a relationship with God that is full
of blessing and joy and it turns
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it into conflict instead of peace.
It turns it into war, and that's
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why we treat him worse than we
treat our dogs. In Our sin and
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stupidity, we want God to leave
us alone, but we also want him
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to give us what we want,
if we can manage to get it from
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him. That's the reason for the
confrontation on our side. What's the reason
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for the confrontation on God's side?
Well, that one is a blessed one.
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That one is a gracious one.
God says the uncomfortable things, he
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asks the hard questions, he puts
on the pressure because he's saving us.
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Like a doctor who asks you the
hard questions, who gives you difficult tests,
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God could have scored simply ignore us, observe our deeds, and say
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I want nothing to do with them, and he would be perfectly just in
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doing that. He's holy. We're
not. He is righteous and everything he
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does good in every way. We
are not. But what does he do
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instead? Our God and savior blesses
us with the hard questions, with the
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uncomfortable situations, which exposes, which
expose the problem in our hearts, and
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also begins to change them. Why
did you hide from me? Where is
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your brother? Go Call Your husband. We're afraid of the Hornets Nest of
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sin that is in our hearts,
so we ignore it because we're scared,
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we're embarrassed, we're ashamed. And
then God pokes at it with his question
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stick, not to hurt us,
but so that we can't ignore the problem
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anymore. The problem of our unholy
is the problem of our broken relationship with
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him, and that's why Jesus doesn't
ignore her evasive theology question, but he
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does turn it on its head and
he implicitly calls her to become a true
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worshiper of God, not by adopting
or affirming this Jewish identity or a Samaritan
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identity, but by coming to God
in Christ, by receiving the Gift of
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God that is standing right in front
of her. Jesus is teaching her,
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as he is teaching us, that
the only way to the father, the
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only way for true worship, for
true intimacy, is through the sun.
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It's through him, through the spirit
and the truth that he brings. It's
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not by becoming more of ourselves or
more Jewish or more Samaritan or more American
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or whatever, it's by believing in
him. The only way to believe in
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him is are to believe in God, is through Jesus. Yeah, yeah,
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yeah, she says, I know
that when the Messiah comes, he'll
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tell us all these things. I
who speak to you, am he Jesus
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says. Now it might be tempting
to ridicule this woman, when you hear
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of her excessive marriages, to dismiss
her as immoral and foolish. It might
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be tempting to be proud. I've
only had four husbands, you might say,
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but listen, the specific immorality of
any particular person, though it might
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be a little different from yours,
is connected to the same root of sinfulness
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that is in all of us.
The Bible says that no one is without
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judgment, none of us have an
excuse. We all fall short of the
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glory of God. We come from
the same stock, the same root.
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All of us have this Hornet's nest
of sin that God could poke at with
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his question stick. And this is
true of sexual sin as much as anything
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else. Jesus says in Matthew Five
hundred and twenty eight. I say to
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you that everyone who looks at a
woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery
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with her in his heart. This
is true of anyone who looks at anyone
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in this way. We're all guiltrey
of these things. We're a room full
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of adulterers. But here's the Gift
of God standing in front of us.
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Jesus gives himself to us. And
what is the Gift of God? Forgiveness,
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peace, eternal life, intimacy with
God, true worship. Remember Psalm
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Fifty one that we sung earlier.
David, the ADULTER, the murderer,
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going before the Lord and saying,
create in me a clean heart, renew
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a right spirit within me, cleanse
me, make me holy, restore to
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me the joy of my salvation.
Why is that possible? Why Can David
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Ask for those things as someone who
is just as unworthy and unholy is this
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woman, or is you or me? It's because he believed in the Gift
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of God, the promises that God
had made, promises that we also read
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earlier when we read Ephesians five.
The Christ loved the Church. He took
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an adulterous woman and made her his
bride. That's that's some deep love.
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Why? That he might sanctify her, having cleansed her and washed her with
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the water in the word, so
that he might present the church to himself
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and splendor, without spot or wrinkle
or any such thing, that she might
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be holy and without blemish. So, when you hear about the woman at
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the well, the last thing you
want to do is stand away from her,
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stand apart from her, stand over
her in judgment. No, instead,
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you want to join this confrontational conversation. Why? So that your sins
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can be exposed to so that the
great physician and healer can identify the wounds
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that are in your heart and bring
about restoration. If you stand away from
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her, if you put yourself in
a different category than you miss the gift,
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the one that's standing in front of
her, the teaching, the water,
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the eternal life. Our husband Jesus. The Jesus that spoke to her
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then, is also that Jesus who
would go to the cross to be stung
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by the sins that are in our
hearts, to suffer the consequences for us
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so that we might be washed,
that we might be cleansed, so that
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we wouldn't have to suffer the penalties
that he faced for us, so that
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we could have his life instead of
our death. The Jesus who went to
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the cross is the same Jesus who
speaks to you today now through the Holy
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Spirit, as you've heard in his
word. Don't treat God as your slave.
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Hold fast to him as your savior. Let's pray
