Sermon Discussion Questions:
1. Read John 4:19-42. Try to stitch together the flow of the main ideas: The gospel is for all kinds of people --> We must be willing do hard things --> We need food to sustain us.
2. What's the difference between the ministry of sowing and reaping? Which one do you think is harder work?
3. Think of what God is asking of you, today. What is right but feels hard?
4. How does Jesus discussion about "spirit and truth" push against the idea of Christianity being a "monocultural" religion?
5. What is the distinction being content with obedience, not the results of obedience?
Where can God be found?
When I was 15, maybe 16, I knew at that point that I wanted to become a pastor, which the rest of my family took as kind of a strange novelty, kind of like if I told them that I wanted to go into the traveling circus. It was at first amusing and then concerning to them. But by God's grace, I stuck with it.
While I was at a family function, a distant relative of mine found out that I was going to go into the ministry, or at least aspired to. And this woman decided to pull me aside and wisen me up. She wanted to teach me what happened to her the day that she tried to find God. She sat me down, the wine just rolling off of her breath, and she proceeded to tell me that she went on a trip to the Holy Land, Israel, because she wanted to go to the place where Jesus had walked, to see the sites, the sacred places, to put your hands on the stones that had been there when the apostles were there.
And as she visited these different sites, she had hoped that by walking in to these kind of hollowed spots, there would be a deposit of the divine there. She would sense intuitively, immediately, an electricity, God is there.
But there, in the holiest of all the holy places, she put her hand out and found nothing but an empty void. And so, she told me, don't waste your life, selling something that's not true.
If you were looking for God, where would you look?
Our passage in the Gospel of John today tells us where we can look. Turn with me to John 4:19-42
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The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” 27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him. 31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” 39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
- John 4:19-42
Three misconceptions Jesus confronts in this passage:
- Jesus only works for a certain kind of person
- I shouldn’t have to do hard things
- God doesn’t satisfy
Misconception #1: Jesus only works for a certain kind of person
Imagine you—Evangelical American—were on a walking tour of Afghanistan and sat down next to a well. Up walks a fully veiled muslim woman. That is close to the kind of gap between Jesus and this Samaritan woman. The Samaritans and the Jews have a long history of tension, both are very suspicious of the other because of how they (and their ancestors) have treated one another. And there is a massive religious divide between them. But also, of course, this woman not only stands opposite of Jesus (and the rest of the Jews) religiously, politically, and racially; she stands apart even from her own people through her immoral lifestyle. She has had five husbands and is currently living with a man who is not her husband.
If you were trying to fill out a bingo card for the least likely recipient of the message of an orthodox, Jewish Messiah, the Samaritan woman would be a great candidate. And yet, the story ends with her not only believing in Jesus, but in becoming a kind of missionary for Jesus.
How?
The woman is a Samaritan, which means that she believes that the true holy site of worship is to be found in her own home country, on Mt. Gerizim. Jews disagree. They say that the their land is the place of true worship, upon the hill of Jerusalem. The woman, who at this point has come to see that Jesus is no ordinary person, tosses this religious knot Jesus’ way to see what He will do with it.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.- John 4:21-22
Jesus believes that the Samaritan religion is wrong, but He doesn’t start there. His argument is: very soon, this argument is going to matter anymore. Surely this would take the Samaritan woman off guard, when she would have expected to hear all the normal arguments a Jewish rabbi would have provided for why Jerusalem is the true center of worship. No Jewish rabbi would say: It doesn’t matter where you worship. Worship God wherever you feels most authentic and real to you. Nope. There is one place that God has prescribed where He must be worshipped: at the Temple in Jerusalem. When Jesus states that “salvation is from the Jews,” He is saying that the Jewish religion, in contrast with the Samaritan, is correct. She is wrong. She worships what she does not know.
And yet, Jesus says “an hour” is coming when the temple in Jerusalem will be obsolete. If you remember, back in John 2, Jesus dramatically cleanses the temple and proclaims that His body is now the temple (John 2:18-21). What is the temple used for? It is used as a physical location for where God can commune with mankind, where worship can be made, and where atonement for sins can be offered. Jesus is now that. He is where heaven and earth meet; all true worship now funnels through Him, not the temple sacrifices; He is how sin can be atoned for…because “the hour” is coming.
In John’s gospel “the hour” always refers to His crucifixion.
Sin is rebellion against God. It is a violation of His holy righteousness. When you break the Law, there are penalties. The penalty of sin is to be eternally and permanently separated from God. But God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to bear that penalty on our behalf so that whoever believes in the Son, whoever comes to Him with simple faith, will not perish but have the everlasting life of communion and reconciliation with God. This reconciliation, reuniting of God with man, was what the temple was all about. But it was given to mankind as a shadow, the substance is Christ.
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” - John 4:23-24
What does “spirit and truth” mean? Remember the context: the Samaritan woman asks about worshipping on this mountain or in Jerusalem. Jesus replies that because of “the hour” that is at hand, when neither location will matter. We struggle to connect with this, but we have to remember that worship was explicitly located with geography, with a physical location. Jesus overtly tells the Samaritan woman “You worship what you do not know,” and then contrasts it with “true worship” which takes place in a new domain: “spirit and truth.” So, what are those?
- Often worshipping in “spirit and truth” is taken to mean something like “worship with sincerity, with deep feeling.” But Samaritan worship was not criticized for lacking authenticity or sincerity. It was criticized because it did not accord with God’s truth, with reality. One can be a false worshipper and worship in the temple at Jerusalem (as Jesus demonstrated in the cleansing of the temple). Hypocritical worship that has the appearance of obedience is just as false as worship outside of God’s prescribed means. So, worshipping in “spirit and truth” at a bare minimum means worship that is true worship, in the sense that it corresponds to God’s truth.
- We are helped by the Jesus’ explanation that “God is spirit.” Meaning, God is not hemmed in by a temple. Solomon prays at the dedication of the temple, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). God exists in the spiritual realm, a reality that overlays the material world the way an author overlays the whole of the story he has created—the author is not contained within the story, the story is within the author, so to speak. This is part of the reality that we worship in accordance with, that God is spirit, and so not limited by physical location. You do not need to visit Jerusalem to worship the Father. So, the question we should ask is: If God is spirit, how can I enter into his spiritual realm?
- The epicenter of meaning of worshipping the Father in “spirit and truth” is found in the Trinity. Jesus, who is full of truth (John 1:17), IS truth (John 14:6; cf. John 18:37-38), is the One who will give to all who believe in Him the Living Water of the Holy Spirit (John 4:10; 7:38). True worshippers are those who can approach the Father, who resides in the heavenly, spiritual realm, because they have received the Holy Spirit through the work of Christ. We worship the Father by the Spirit given through the Son.
Prior to Christ, if you wanted to worship the true God you had to come to the temple and abide by its regulations. Not only that, you had to adopt the many cultural customs attached to the Jewish religion—dietary laws, civil laws, ritual laws, sabbath laws. In that sense, it was a monocultural religion. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son born under that law to fulfill that law. And then He sent the Spirit of God into His people who are then compelled to go and tell others about Him. That’s how the story the ends. The woman is compelled to run back to tell the rest of her village about this Man, and they come and they hear His word, and they believe, and they tell the woman: “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” (John 4:42)
Salvation, Jesus told us, is from the Jews. It is from the line of Abraham, of Moses, of David; it is the religion of the prophets, the priests, and kings of Israel. But the Old Testament faith was a meticulous and intricate system created by God, prepared over time to lead to Jesus who tips the bucket of salvation out upon the entire world, so that now Samaritans, and Greeks, and Romans, and Americans and all peoples could be saved.
God’s presence was never limited to the temple. But that was the ordinary place where God’s people would go to worship and experience His presence. Where is that ordinary place where God makes His presence known? It is no physical location—it is now a people. Jesus said that when the church gathers in His name, there He is among them. Paul and Peter explain that the new temple of God is the people of God, the church. And the church can be found in the suburbs of Kennewick, Washington, and in the barrios of Brazil, and the business district of Milan, and the streets of Chicago, and the underground networks of China, and the islands of Papua New Guinea, and the deserts of Dubai.
It may be easy for us to believe that Jesus is limited to a certain kind of person. Maybe you are here today thinking, I don’t know if I am that kind of person. The story of the Samaritan woman is in the Bible to show you that anyone can get in on what Jesus has to offer. Remember: The Father is seeking such people to worship him.
Misconception #2: I shouldn’t have to do hard things
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” - John 4:31
Okay, why are they “urging” him? They sound like concerned parents, worried that Jesus isn’t getting enough food. Look back with me at the beginning of the interaction with the Samaritan woman. In John 4:6, we see that Jesus is “wearied” from his journey, so he sits down. He is so wearied, that he cannot accompany his disciples to go buy food (John 4:8). Couple that with the disciples urging Jesus to eat, and it seems likely that Jesus was extremely hungry. Maybe he had skipped breakfast, maybe a poor night’s sleep beforehand, maybe exhausted from other teaching and ministry, Jesus feels too weak to walk with his disciples into town and needs to rest.
And along comes the Samaritan woman, the persona non grata that every cultural custom of the day told Jesus to ignore. And exhausted and low-blood sugar Jesus, too tired to go on with his disciples into town, enters into not only a polite conversation of exchanging niceties, but an intentional conversation aimed at inviting this notorious woman into God’s plan of salvation.
How do you tend to respond to people when you are very hungry or very tired? Maybe at best, we are politely quiet, or at worst we are outright irritable. Jesus shows us that there are times where our own comfort, how we feel in the moment, ought not dictate what we do. A poor night’s sleep, a missed meal, a headache does not give us a blank check to treat other people poorly, to insist on our own way, or even to ignore evangelistic opportunities the Lord puts in our path.
Before we go forward, we should think carefully. God commands us to rest. We are limited creatures and attempting to transcend those limits—to act like we don’t need food, rest, and sleep—is actually a sinful rejection of limits, an attempt to be like God. We do not need to repent for failing to solve every problem…we are to repent for trying to. Only God can do that. I think the story in Mark 6 where Jesus sends the twelve apostles out on a kind of mission trip (Mark 6:1-13). They return, and Jesus tells them: “And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat,” (Mark 6:31). But when they arrive at the retreat, they find even larger crowds there, and Jesus does not turn them away (Mark 6:32ff).
The principle: we need rest, we have limits, but God may sovereignly ordain to interrupt that rest. As you catch your breath at the well, He may bring a Samaritan woman along your path.
“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own,” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s “real life” is a phantom of one’s own imagination.” (Lewis)
The ‘unpleasant thing’ is actually the life God has sent you. Jesus offers an analogous perspective shift:
Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.” - John 4:35
Harvest time is a time of bounty, a time of joy, and above all, a time of work. Hard work. Maybe we assume that Jesus’ phrase: Look…the fields are ready for harvest, just means something like, “look at how easy this is!” But the time of harvest is the exact opposite of ease. The time of harvest is the time of intense labor!
Why are we surprised when our discipleship to Christ leads us into hard places? Is it because Jesus didn’t tell us? What did He tell us?
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. - Matt 7:13-14
27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. - Luke 14:27-33
The path of discipleship to Christ has always been hard. But it has been especially hard for us today because we live in a time of unparalleled comfort. Everything is ease, frictionless, seamless, cushy, soft, entertaining, optimized, shiny. And worldliness for us today looks like: I shouldn’t have to do hard things; life should be easy.
So, added onto the normal difficulty of the Christian life, we have this additional plague, this voice telling us: It shouldn’t be like this, this is too hard, things should be easy.
But you know what? You matter too much to God to let you slip into the paralysis of ease. You have gifts, you have a voice, you have strength, you have a presence, you have time and energy to give, and there is work to be done.
Children need to be raised in the instruction of the Lord.
Members of this church need to be discipled.
The depressed and discouraged need encouragement.
The wayward and wandering need to be sought out and called to repentance.
The lonely need a friend.
The poor and needy need help.
The lost need to know about the Savior.
And if you undertake all of that IT WILL BE HARD. We will be a church of tired people. Tired pastors writing sermons. Tired moms caring for babies. Tired employees working jobs. Tired missionaries sharing the gospel. Tired church members volunteering in the children’s ministry. Tired discipleship group leaders prioritizing gathering. Tired couples opening their homes for hospitality.
Let’s live for God, be tired, and do something with our lives! We need endurance.
37 For here the saying holds true, One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” (John 4:37-38)
Here is the distinction: there is the labor of sowing the seed of the gospel. That is, not only sharing the good news, but also living a kingdom life, demonstrating with both word and deed the truth of Jesus Christ. Some people sow for a long time before the harvest. Some people just show up, and the harvest is ready. It is hard work to sow, and sow, and sow, and sow, and keep on being faithful when it seems like you see so little harvest. But, it is also hard work to harvest, to see now converts come to Christ and then the growing pains of discipleship take place. You will need to likely set aside your own comforts and needs to respond to the needs of the moment. And because Jesus savior of the world, and anyone from any place and any walk of life can believe, that means that the mission field is enormous. Which means that life will be hard.
Misconception #3: God Doesn’t Satisfy
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. - John 4:31-34
What's the Father's will? He's seeking people to worship him in spirit and truth. Anyone can get in on this from any place, anywhere, and Jesus is able to sustain himself in the hard thing.
He's tired, he's hungry. He finds existential, realistic energy in doing God's will. I want our church to be a church that does incredible things for God.
I want us to build proverbial towers and win proverbial wars. We will only do that if we are nourished by the food of God's will. If our only energy source is the assumption that, okay, we're going to go really hard for like a couple of months, and then we know that's when harvest is going to come.
Well, what happens when the couple of months go by and there's no harvest, and you still keep sowing and keep sowing and keep sowing, right? And you're parenting, you realize you got to work really hard suddenly to really teach your children about God. And, you know, what happens when a year goes by?
And you feel like, what good did that do? What do you do? You give up?
We have to find our food in doing God's will, which means that we are satisfied with our obedience to God, not the results of our obedience. Does that distinction make sense? We are satisfied by obeying God's will, not by the results of our obedience.
That's in God's hands.
Jesus has sent us out with a great mission. The mission field is literally as wide as it possibly could be. There is no one excluded from God's plan.
No one outside of His purview. And so, it's a hard thing, a hard path, but it's a worthwhile path. And it is a path that our Father will sustain us on, with food, day by day, as we seek to do His will.
