(036) The Gospel of John VII: The Prodigal Daughter

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The Gospel of John VIII: The Prodigal Daughter

John 4:1-26

June 29, 2008

Prep:

·         Sermons: Last week (glory), previous week (spirit realm), Phil XII (grace), Driscoll.

·         Samaritans, John 3 vrs. 4 chart

Opening

·         Work parties and communities.

This is one of my favorite stories about Jesus, “The Samaritan Woman.” Jesus bridges social, religious, gender, and ethnic divides to reach out to a woman even rejected by her own people.

·         Last week: the glory of God; we enjoy God by glorifying him.

·         Stories like this show us how glorious he is.

There are two significant themes in this story, so two sermons: 1) Jesus reaching out with love to an outcast, and 2) how we outcasts now reach out to each other.

Prayer

·         Show us your love, acceptance, mercy, and grace.

·         Help us extend these to even the difficult people.

nicodemus and the samaritan

Ä  Comparisons and contrasts between this chapter and last – A wealthy religious Jew and a sinful, poor sinful Samaritan.

·         God welcomes both the Fundamentalists and the party girl!

·         It was the party girl that responded quickly and eagerly.

John 4:1-26 NIV  The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John,  2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.  3 ¶ When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

The Pharisees, not being wild about John or Jesus, had already began to play off of potential rivalry. John and Jesus felt no such competition, but their disciples did, so Jesus moves along.  

 4 Now he had to go through Samaria.

history lesson: Jew and Samaritans

Jews and Samaritans didn’t like each other (like Arthur and Japanese).

·         Israel’s deportation and resettlement.

·         Mixed religion.

·         Spurned offer to help with temple.

·         Theological: Where to worship [Mount Gerizim (left)], Bible

·         Destruction of Samaritan temple, desecration of Jewish.

·         Slaughter of Galileans. 

They just didn’t like each other. When His enemies wanted to call Jesus an insulting name, they called Him a Samaritan.

 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.  6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

John is careful to show that Jesus, while being God, was also a human and experienced the weakness of humans.

We are not exactly sure where Sycahr was, but we do have a pretty good guess about the well. This is it.

 7 ¶ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”  8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

For some reason it took all 12 disciples to go shopping. It seems that Jesus weariness had a divine purpose.

This was a very odd time to get the water. It was probably about a ¼ to ½ mile walk, and the sixth hour means it was around noon. In village life, everything was done together, so her seclusion and the time of day makes it seem that she was an outcast.

 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Immediately she is surprise and suspicious. This guy is not the norm, but she doesn’t know the half of it.

 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Living water” is an expression for running water, but Jesus has a double meaning.

 11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?

I wonder if this was amusement, sarcasm, or surprise. I think surprise and sarcasm mixed, because of the next question.

 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

A little bit of irony here: She assumed the answer was no, but it is actually yes.

 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,  14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Jesus answers yes by pointing out inherent inferiority of Jacob’s well: It will only postpone, not quench thirst.

The water that Jesus is offering is the Spirit.

John 7:37-39  37 ¶ On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”  39 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.

And by offering the promise of the Spirit, he is offering salvation, “water welling up to eternal life.”

 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”  16 ¶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

She misunderstands Jesus, but a yes is a yes, so he sends events down a path that will result in her finding “living water”

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

This is her shortest statement, three words in Greek.

 Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband.  18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

This is the second example of supernatural knowledge, the first being with Nathanael. Both cause people to follow him.

This was far less acceptable at that time than now. This gives us a good guess as to why she was walking to the well at noon.

 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.  20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

I had always believe that this was a classic “evasive maneuver,” but now I think this question is perfectly on task, and is actually a sign of repentance.

The place of worship was also the place of forgiveness. Confronted by her sin, she needed to ask this prophet the most burning issue in her mind: “Where can I be forgiven?”

·         Perhaps she wasn’t allowed into their place of worship.

 21 Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

The question is no longer “where.” As Jesus has promised, he would become the temple.

The question becomes “how,” and the first part of that we worship him as father. In that day, it was uncommon to call God father and it is uniquely Christian to display this sort of affection and closeness to God.

 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

Theirs was an idolatrous mixture of religions. Having the rest of the OT, the Jews had a more complete understanding of God. The prophets foretold the elimination of the temple.

·         The Messiah would come through them.

 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

“In spirit” means being of the spiritual realm, not earthly, in keeping with what was said earlier:

John 3:5-6   Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.  6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

There is an unbridgeable gap between sprit and flesh. We cannot bridge it ourselves, so the Father must seek us so that we can worship him in spirit. Furthermore, he must reveal himself so what we can worship him in truth, for he is unknowable.

·         God is spirit so his worship won’t be linked to a locale –neither the Jews, nor Samaritan (nor the pagans) had it right.

God is spirit, and the worship that he delights in is not physical rituals, but spiritual things: devotion, love, humility, delight, repentance, justice.

It is not that physical actions are always bad, but are only valid in as far they reflect an inner reality. Even the OT prophets clearly stated this.

·         “Material things could at best be vehicles of true worship, never the essence.”

Notice “time is coming” (v. 21) and “is coming and has now come” (v.23). Jesus was still waiting for the time that God would no longer be worship at the temple, but people were already beginning to worship in spirit and truth.

 25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”  26 Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

This seems a bit much to take in, she’s out of her league, so she appeals to a religious expert who’d make sense of it all.

·         Rather than offering more argument, Jesus offers himself.

·         He reveals himself with the words “Ego eimi.”

Ä  That is the exegesis of the passage, but even more powerful is the story. It is the story that magnifies God’s glory.

The prodigal daughter comes home

You are probably familiar with the “prodigal son,” this is even better, a real life prodigal daughter embraced by Jesus.

As a Samaritan, a Jew would want nothing to do with her. She was worse than a pagan, just as a traitor is worse than an enemy soldier. Worse, she was at the bottom of the Samaritan’s ladder. If you’re kicked out by the Samaritans, you’re completely alone.

·         She was town slut – all the wives hid husband from her.

·         Being married five times meant you’re not wanted, not loved.

In a culture where women did not work, a woman’s livelihood and security came from being married. Divorce was actually given a protection to women so that they could be free to marry again and not starve to death.

·         For a woman to live with a boyfriend meant that she had no legal protection or rights.

This guy must have been a real scumbag to take from her but not give her any security. He was taking advantage of her. I have to image that she was also abused.

The only I reason I can think of for her to choose that was if she had no hope, no real future.

In walks Jesus

So as she trudged to the well on another hot afternoon, each lonely step a reminder of her isolation, she had no idea that everything was going to change.

Her conversation with this stranger may have been the first real conversation that she had had for a long time.

·         It’s not surprising that she is defensiveness in her words.

Ä  I see 3 elements in Jesus’ conversation that both show us his love and show the church how to be like him.

1. Demonstrated Grace

His love for this wayward daughter is clear, as he bridged great gaps to reach her. This entire conversation is seasoned with grace rather than condemnation, even though it was deserved.

·         Jesus did not come to condemn but to save.

The greatest expression of God’s love and grace is seen in Jesus Christ – God become a man and lived with us, and bore the penalty of our sins by his death.

·         Even if Jesus confuses me, and if I don’t understand many things about God, I rest in his demonstration of love.

Our turn

We are now called to offer that grace to everyone we touch.  We accept and love people where they’re at regardless of their lifestyle, without endorsing their sin.

We seek to avoid being judgmental or condemning, but rather imitate Jesus’ compassionate response to sinners. He was gentle with the adulteress and prostitute, but harsh with the legalist.

Ä  But the flip side of that is that he also confronted her sin. I say “flip side” intentionally because grace and confronting sin are two sides of love.

·         God loves us the way we are but too much to leave us there.

2. Confront her sin

We can guess that her sin was no longer fun, it was misery. We can guess that because we see it so often today.

·         Sin is that which destroys us.

Ä  But we are frequently in too deep to see our real situation.

It is not surprising that she misunderstood Jesus offer for

“living water,” so often it is very basic human needs that bring us face to face with God’s love and mercy and our sin.

Her thirst was deeper than she could imagine. Our true thirst is for God’s glory. We have in us an innate longing for his goodness, for love, for hope.

·         We try to fill that thirst with shadows of his glory – “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

And these shadows end up being the furthest thing from what we truly want. They are like drink salt water.

Ä  Jesus gently confronted her on her salt water. It is interesting to see how differently he works with each person.

Our turn

There are times when love calls us to confront. But this requires great wisdom, because done wrong it communicates that we must be cleaned up before God will accept us.

The sort of confrontation that is called for is that which drives people to God’s mercy, not away from it. Frankly, very few people can do it well, and if you think that you are good at confronting, there is a fair chance you are not one of them.

·         It requires even more grace, humility, and acceptance, and the leading of the Spirit.

3. Offered himself

At the end of the passage, Jesus reveals himself as Messiah to her (the only person in Gospel of John). In doing so, he is giving himself to her.

Likewise, the entire discussion of worship is God giving himself to us. Last week: glorifying God (worship) is not adding to his glory, but more clearly seeing it and showing it to other.

·         The more we see the glory of God’s goodness and love, the we love him and enjoy him.

When Jesus said God is seeking worshipers, it does not mean he wants more fans, but that he wants a bigger family to love. It means that God is offering himself to us.

Our turn

Being true worshipers is the most important way that we can reach out to the prodigals, because as they see God’s love, goodness, and holiness, we have good hope they will be drawn in.

At the same time, as Jesus offered himself, we also offer ourselves sacrificially to the prodigals.

Closing thought: What credit is it to us if we extend these things to the lovable? When we show love and acceptance grace to the unlovable and unworthy, we are acting most like Jesus.

Prayer:

·         Two audience, prodigals and former prodigals.

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