Friends, these verses are tough. I hope I have done well by them and not obscured the meaning. I have checked my understanding against a couple of commentaries and found that I am not un-orthodox in my interpretation. Nevertheless, I apologize if I have made this more difficult than it needs to be.–Jerry
John 4:11-26
11″Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are 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?” 13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but 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.” 15The 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.” 16He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17″I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The 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.” 19″Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet 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. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” 25The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
I have read this story a hundred times (that is, a lot). Tonight, for the first time, I noticed something I have never noticed. Jesus said, “Go, call your husband and come back.” Why did Jesus say this to her? Was it a simple social courtesy? What was it for? Was he rude? Was he trying to make her feel bad because he knew the answer to the question? What was he hoping to accomplish with such an in-your-face demand?
She wanted the water, I think. But she also, at the outset, thoroughly misunderstood what Jesus was talking about. When she asks, “Are you greater than our father Jacob,” I wonder if she would have believed the answer. But Jesus was not talking about the sort of water that is comprised of two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms. Clearly this sort of water was in no way able to supply this woman with what Jesus was talking about; nevertheless, she was eager to have it. She did want it; at least she seems eager enough for something. Jesus clears matters up for her essentially saying, “I’m not talking about this water which could never satisfy you as completely as the water I am offering.” Everyone who drinks that water will indeed be thirsty again. The water Jesus offers is different in every way, “The water I give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” It satisfies more than the thirst; better than water; beyond this earth.
It is ‘living water’. It is ‘water that springs up to eternal life’. Still she did not quite get it: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” Translation? “I’m tired of making this daily trip. I’m tired of this work. I’m tired of all the complications of daily, redundant, life. Make it easier on me by filling my jars with water that never run empty.” Sometimes it’s true that this is the approach people take to Jesus. You know those ones who are convinced that Jesus’ goal is to make life easier, to eliminate all the stumbling blocks, to take out all the hurdles, to lower mountains and raise valleys. Well, who doesn’t want that sort of Jesus? “Peace, peace in our time.” That’s a nice, domesticated Jesus—at our beck and call, ready to serve when we ring our little bells. Maybe it’s the sort of Jesus who eliminates all the redundancy of life so that we can spend our time on our pursuits that certainly will not involve the everyday hard work of everyday hard work, and most likely will not include the demands of holiness.
If the woman had no idea what sort of water Jesus was talking about then I suspect that neither did she have any idea the sort of man she was speaking to. “I can see that you are a prophet.” Jesus will tell her that this is not enough that he is a prophet. Forsyth says that Jesus was here as more than a mere prophet, but in fact as the Creative King of the Kingdom. “And Christ went to His death in His function as King, not to become King” (Forsyth, The Justification of God, 176). She did not yet realize that Jesus was unfolding before her the identity of the God of the universe. So when he says to her, ‘Go, call your husband and come back…’ I don’t think Jesus was merely showing off his ability to know things about her that she had not told him—no, Jesus is more than Prophet; Prophet though He may be. I think he is sitting (he had sat down by the well, v 6) there by the well, talking with this woman, as King, Judge. His demand for her husband to be present was his demand that she confess her sin. I think it was his demand for her to acknowledge her un-holiness, an un-holiness that was more important to her than worship. Forsyth again, “We are all standing before the judgment-seat of Christ. And one day we shall know it. We end where we began—in Him” (The Justification of God, 187).
She did not want to talk about this aspect of her life. I agree with the NIV study note here, “His presence exposes sin and makes people squirm…” But squirming is not an end in itself. People can squirm, be very uncomfortable and never actually get to God. Jesus is getter her to God. That is, he has other designs for her confession. Bruce Milne notes, “The deeper point is that Jesus brought to her awareness the relational desert in which she was living” (John, BST, 84-85). And not just with men, but with God.
Yes she changes the subject and starts talking about Jesus’ status as a ‘prophet.’ Then she changes the subject again: “So, you are a prophet. Well, perhaps then you can tell me why you Jews say that the only place where anyone can worship is in Jerusalem.” Remember the garden of Eden? “Uh, it was the serpent. He made me eat it.” “Uh, it was the woman, she gave it to me and I ate it.” “Uh, it’s everyone else’s fault.” “Uh, it’s you Jews that prevent me from worshiping.” Jesus had cut to the heart of the matter: This woman had no relationship with God whatsoever. “She…had been furtive and unwilling to open her heart to God” (Tenney, John, 56). The evidence of her unfaithfulness to God is found in her continued unfaithfulness in marriage (regardless of the reasons why the marriages hadn’t worked). Oh, I’m sure not all those husbands were gems. But five, plus one more?! Was she Liz Taylor? Here was a woman, for all her better qualities, who was simply an unfaithful person (and not merely in an allegorical sense). Jesus brings all this out and then says, “There is no excuse for you not to be worshiping the One True God. There is no reason, certainly not the Jews, for you to be flitting around from place to place, person to person, god to god.” She was blaming someone else’s argument about the place to worship for her pathetic attitude towards worship altogether; toward God. Jesus has opened up the entire history of this woman and confronted her with her real need: It is God she is lacking. It wasn’t water. It wasn’t good marriage. It wasn’t friendship with the other ladies in town (why was she at this well, at that time of day, alone if not because she was somewhat ostracized because of her lifestyle?). Jesus was pointing out to her that her life reflects a surprising lack of God-interestedness. That was her real problem in life.
It is in this context that Jesus makes his most startling announcement yet: “I who speak to you am he.”
This is the great need of our day too. People are flitting about, like bees going from flower to flower. They gofrom person to person, relationship to relationship, god to god trying in vain to find something or someone that satisfies them, trying to find some place to perch. In the process of doing so, they alienate all those around them and they end up alone by a well in the heat of the day. They end up godless, submitted to no god, irreverent towards any god; unfaithful in all cases. They end up blaming everyone on the planet for their problems and accusing everyone else for their lack of worship and reverence for God. You’ve heard them: “Well, I don’t go to church because I can’t stand hypocrite Christians. It’s their fault I don’t worship.” And are they sinless? I think not. (There’s even a new movement going around of churches being planted with this slogan: “A church for people who hate church.” This is a rather impolite way of condemning existing churches and the people who comprise them. And, in my judgment, blaming them for other people’s lack of God-interestedness.) They’ve been hurt, burned, tricked, manipulated and angered and they take it out on God. Jesus comes along, takes all that blame and says, “I am the One who changes all that.” Jesus says, “In me, there are no more excuses. In me, there are no acceptable excuses for not worshiping God.”
But of all these verses teach us I’m settling on this: Jesus does not accept our excuses for not worshiping God. He points out that if this woman blamed Jews for their insistence on the place of worship, she herself is no less guilty of excluding herself because of her sin and flitty, flirty unfaithfulness. In other words, no one has a right to be in God’s presence, and all should be uncomfortable before Him; all are judged in Christ. Slowly, but surely, this awakening is dawning on this unnamed Samaritan woman with whom Jesus spoke that day. So if all are judged in Christ, all are also welcomed in Christ. If freedom to worship is what one looks for we have no excuses; instead, we have Jesus.
I hope this 14th Day is Blessed for you in the Lord.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Showing posts with label Judgment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judgment. Show all posts
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Friday, June 08, 2007
90 Days with Jesus, Day 8: John 2:12-25: God in the Center
John 2:12-25
12After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. 13When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” 17His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. 23Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. 24But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
Friends, after today, you will have read two chapters in John’s Gospel. This is good progress. You have taken your time, read slowly, and chewed on only a few passages each day. You have allowed them to sink deep into your heart and there take root as you learn about the Jesus you follow, and learn about how to follow the Jesus you know. Congratulations! This is not small thing in our hurry up world. The hurry up world says it has to be done today and delights in large, massive quantities. We are taking the long stroll, the far look, and the slow journey. We are not tourists visiting interesting sites; we are disciples on the narrow road, on a ‘long obedience in the same direction.’ Also, please feel free to leave me your thoughts by clicking the ‘comment’ link.
The (physical) place of worship had turned into a place of economics; the practice of worship has turned into an empty, hollow, market place where God is not at the center. As such, worshipers were marginalized, worship was de-sacralized, and other less vital functions were elevated and imperialized. It sounds strange to say it in such a way, but consider this: what dominates us controls us, what is important to us takes precedence. Here in the temple clearly what dominated people’s lives was not theology, not worship, and not the Presence, but economics, power, and control. It was a market, Jesus said, a place where buying and selling, bartering and bickering, haggling and harassing were taking place not necessarily to the exclusion of worship, but more prominently than worship and in distraction of worship. In other words, the place of worship, the atmosphere of worship, the spirit of worship were all subjected to the whims of humans. Human interraction, human function, human beings and their needs and wants were centralized; God was marginalized. Does this sound at all familiar?
Imagine you invited a friend over to your house for a nice dinner and conversation. Imagine you had planned out a nice afternoon together of fellowship, eating, drinking, making merry and simply enjoying one another’s company and conversation. Imagine, now, that your friend arrives and sets up a yard-sale in your front yard and begins hawking and hollering at other guests you had invited. There would be no fellowship, no companionship, no conversation that would be enjoyable. Intimacy would turn into rape. And, I suppose, you would be jealous that you had to compete with your guest for the affections of your friends and neighbors–in your own house! It’s not the best analogy, but I think it suffices. In the house of God there is only One Master and He is not keen on sharing the limelight. It’s His House. Now whatever else this passage teaches us I think it certainly teaches us this: Jesus’ purificaction of the temple was an act of judgment against those who had been invited guests. He wasn’t angry with a building, but with people; people he knew all too well. And His point was clearly this: The God who lives here will not tolerate competition. Would that such zeal would consume many of those who are invited guests in the house of God today. But I suspect that the same exact thing happens in many ‘temples’ today: There is competition for attention, competition for Centralization, competition for Glory & Praise. This is what happens when God is marginalized, when worship is economized, when the sacred is trivialized. God is moved out and man takes over; can man keep anything pure and righteous?
David Wells wrote, “It is hard to miss in the evangelical world—in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift from God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational. And it would have made few of these capitulations to modernity had not its capacity for truth diminished. It is not hard to see these things; avoiding them is what is difficult” (No Place for Truth, 95). I think what was happening that day is this: Jesus was not only purifying the temple, creating space, centralizing God once again (we say ‘cleansing’), he was also emptying it of all that deadness that inhabitited it and preparing it for new life. This is precisely why he ties this action to his resurrection: Destroy this temple, he said, and I will raise it up again in three days. He was saying, through actions, that the true purpose for the temple will never again be found in Jerusalem’s physical ediface, but will be found in Himself. He was telling the people, through word and deed, that the temple would be destroyed: His was also an act of judgment. But no matter! The true temple would be raised up and the function and purpose of the temple will be reestablished and never again corrupted. Jesus is the true temple and in Him, the Resurrected Lord, God will never again be marginalized, man will never be centralized, man will no longer control and ‘change’ (‘you have turned it into…something you desire’) the purpose of the temple and worship will continue freely and unabated by those who seek God. (Why do we prefer busy markets to worship?)
I think it is no wonder that Jesus would not entrust himself to man. The Bible says, “He knew what was in man.” I don’t suppose that has changed. Man has found a way to corrupt the church, to ‘turn it into something it was not intended to be’, the make man the center and life of the church, and, worse, we have found a way to do this to Jesus. I hate to say it, but man, within whom lies so many evils and ills, has found a way to corrupt the temple once again. We have found a way to make Jesus serve our purposes. We have found a way to use him. If man could not rightly serve in the physical structure the Presence inhabited, do you think we can or will rightly serve the Lord Jesus who inhabits us? Or do you think that we, like the temple rulers then, will once again turn the temple into something we can control, corrupt, and use? I cannot help but wonder if this is not already the truth. David Wells again:
“This is why we need reformation rather than revival. The habits of the modern world, now so ubiquitous in the evangelical world, need to be put to death, not given new life. [This is essentially what Jesus was saying in his judgement of the temple that day. And a new temple would be established in Himself.] They need to be rooted out, not simply papered over with fresh religious enthusiasm. And they are by this point so invincible that nothing less than the intrusion of God in his grace, nothing less than a full recovery of his truth, will suffice…In this regard, the death of theology has profound ramifications. Theology is dying not because the academy has failed to devise adequate procedures for reconstructing it but because the church has lost its capacity for it. And while some hail this loss as a step forward toward the hope of new evangelical vitality, it is in fact a sign of creeping death. The emptiness of evangelical faith without theology echoes the emptiness of modern life. Both have elected to cross over into a world in which God has no place, in which reality has been rewritten, in which Christ has become redundant, his Word irrelevant, and the Church must now find new reasons for its existence” (No Place for Truth, 301)
Judgment. Destruction. Resurrection. I wonder if it would take this much for the church to realize afresh that we are slowly killing ourselves by removing God from the Center? What will it take for Jesus to entrust himself to us? Woe is us if we try to turn the True Temple into something we can manage, manipulate, and master. Jesus, the Lamb of God, is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah. And judgment begins with the house of God.
12After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. 13When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” 17His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. 23Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. 24But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
Friends, after today, you will have read two chapters in John’s Gospel. This is good progress. You have taken your time, read slowly, and chewed on only a few passages each day. You have allowed them to sink deep into your heart and there take root as you learn about the Jesus you follow, and learn about how to follow the Jesus you know. Congratulations! This is not small thing in our hurry up world. The hurry up world says it has to be done today and delights in large, massive quantities. We are taking the long stroll, the far look, and the slow journey. We are not tourists visiting interesting sites; we are disciples on the narrow road, on a ‘long obedience in the same direction.’ Also, please feel free to leave me your thoughts by clicking the ‘comment’ link.
The (physical) place of worship had turned into a place of economics; the practice of worship has turned into an empty, hollow, market place where God is not at the center. As such, worshipers were marginalized, worship was de-sacralized, and other less vital functions were elevated and imperialized. It sounds strange to say it in such a way, but consider this: what dominates us controls us, what is important to us takes precedence. Here in the temple clearly what dominated people’s lives was not theology, not worship, and not the Presence, but economics, power, and control. It was a market, Jesus said, a place where buying and selling, bartering and bickering, haggling and harassing were taking place not necessarily to the exclusion of worship, but more prominently than worship and in distraction of worship. In other words, the place of worship, the atmosphere of worship, the spirit of worship were all subjected to the whims of humans. Human interraction, human function, human beings and their needs and wants were centralized; God was marginalized. Does this sound at all familiar?
Imagine you invited a friend over to your house for a nice dinner and conversation. Imagine you had planned out a nice afternoon together of fellowship, eating, drinking, making merry and simply enjoying one another’s company and conversation. Imagine, now, that your friend arrives and sets up a yard-sale in your front yard and begins hawking and hollering at other guests you had invited. There would be no fellowship, no companionship, no conversation that would be enjoyable. Intimacy would turn into rape. And, I suppose, you would be jealous that you had to compete with your guest for the affections of your friends and neighbors–in your own house! It’s not the best analogy, but I think it suffices. In the house of God there is only One Master and He is not keen on sharing the limelight. It’s His House. Now whatever else this passage teaches us I think it certainly teaches us this: Jesus’ purificaction of the temple was an act of judgment against those who had been invited guests. He wasn’t angry with a building, but with people; people he knew all too well. And His point was clearly this: The God who lives here will not tolerate competition. Would that such zeal would consume many of those who are invited guests in the house of God today. But I suspect that the same exact thing happens in many ‘temples’ today: There is competition for attention, competition for Centralization, competition for Glory & Praise. This is what happens when God is marginalized, when worship is economized, when the sacred is trivialized. God is moved out and man takes over; can man keep anything pure and righteous?
David Wells wrote, “It is hard to miss in the evangelical world—in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift from God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational. And it would have made few of these capitulations to modernity had not its capacity for truth diminished. It is not hard to see these things; avoiding them is what is difficult” (No Place for Truth, 95). I think what was happening that day is this: Jesus was not only purifying the temple, creating space, centralizing God once again (we say ‘cleansing’), he was also emptying it of all that deadness that inhabitited it and preparing it for new life. This is precisely why he ties this action to his resurrection: Destroy this temple, he said, and I will raise it up again in three days. He was saying, through actions, that the true purpose for the temple will never again be found in Jerusalem’s physical ediface, but will be found in Himself. He was telling the people, through word and deed, that the temple would be destroyed: His was also an act of judgment. But no matter! The true temple would be raised up and the function and purpose of the temple will be reestablished and never again corrupted. Jesus is the true temple and in Him, the Resurrected Lord, God will never again be marginalized, man will never be centralized, man will no longer control and ‘change’ (‘you have turned it into…something you desire’) the purpose of the temple and worship will continue freely and unabated by those who seek God. (Why do we prefer busy markets to worship?)
I think it is no wonder that Jesus would not entrust himself to man. The Bible says, “He knew what was in man.” I don’t suppose that has changed. Man has found a way to corrupt the church, to ‘turn it into something it was not intended to be’, the make man the center and life of the church, and, worse, we have found a way to do this to Jesus. I hate to say it, but man, within whom lies so many evils and ills, has found a way to corrupt the temple once again. We have found a way to make Jesus serve our purposes. We have found a way to use him. If man could not rightly serve in the physical structure the Presence inhabited, do you think we can or will rightly serve the Lord Jesus who inhabits us? Or do you think that we, like the temple rulers then, will once again turn the temple into something we can control, corrupt, and use? I cannot help but wonder if this is not already the truth. David Wells again:
“This is why we need reformation rather than revival. The habits of the modern world, now so ubiquitous in the evangelical world, need to be put to death, not given new life. [This is essentially what Jesus was saying in his judgement of the temple that day. And a new temple would be established in Himself.] They need to be rooted out, not simply papered over with fresh religious enthusiasm. And they are by this point so invincible that nothing less than the intrusion of God in his grace, nothing less than a full recovery of his truth, will suffice…In this regard, the death of theology has profound ramifications. Theology is dying not because the academy has failed to devise adequate procedures for reconstructing it but because the church has lost its capacity for it. And while some hail this loss as a step forward toward the hope of new evangelical vitality, it is in fact a sign of creeping death. The emptiness of evangelical faith without theology echoes the emptiness of modern life. Both have elected to cross over into a world in which God has no place, in which reality has been rewritten, in which Christ has become redundant, his Word irrelevant, and the Church must now find new reasons for its existence” (No Place for Truth, 301)
Judgment. Destruction. Resurrection. I wonder if it would take this much for the church to realize afresh that we are slowly killing ourselves by removing God from the Center? What will it take for Jesus to entrust himself to us? Woe is us if we try to turn the True Temple into something we can manage, manipulate, and master. Jesus, the Lamb of God, is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah. And judgment begins with the house of God.
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