John 11:45-57
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John
John 2:1-11
Sermon
John 4:19-24
John 17:11-19, Acts 7:54-60
11 I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of[b] your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by[c] that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.
13 “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. 14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by[d] the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
Listening guide
What risks did you take? ________________________________________
“I protected them and kept them safe”. (verse 12)
Quick, if you could take one great risk, what would it be? ______________________
“Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me.” (verses 11-12)
“Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” (verses 17)
You can have _______________ _____________.
Go take a risk
Discussion questions
Sermon
During the pandemic, plenty of people have said things like, “that doesn’t make me feel comfortable.” “is that safe?” “What can we do to make this safer?” Or even just the plain statement, “I don’t feel safe.”
Suddenly safety was on everybody’s mind.
I know people aren’t saying, I feel like I might fall down and hurt myself. Or I feel like I might get a scratch, get a booboo, get an owie. No, we’re talking something much deeper. We’re saying, my very existence doesn’t feel protected anymore. I don’t know if I can handle being alive.
I thought about this as I considered the request to be a pastor in Milwaukee. I didn’t just think, what would be a good opportunity for me, like career development. I didn’t just think, where does the kingdom need to get served. I thought, where does my family have safety and security? Where am I going to make a stable income so I can provide for their needs? Where are they going to be physically safe? Where is an emotionally and psychologically safe environment for them to develop?
I know that thousands of people think about this all the time. We make decisions all the time about where we’ll live, about who we’ll invite over into our houses, and about what activities we do based on the physical and emotional safety we feel.
Then I look at the story of the 1st Christians (and today is one of those lessons) and I realize they took all sorts of risks. For example, in Acts 4, Peter and John were arrested and put in jail. After they stood trial and were released, they were told to stop preaching. Acts 5, we find they are still meeting in the temple. They are told again to not preach and are flogged. But Stephen keeps preaching and he gets arrested. Then he is put to death. At that point, they leave the city of Jerusalem but they keep preaching wherever they go.
Or do you remember the line that says all the believers held everything in common and someone would sell everything when someone had a need? I wonder how many of us would risk our finances for someone else.
Put it this way: Do you remember all the risky things you did in high school and college and your younger years?
I remember driving way too fast. That was probably a bad choice.
I tried to pursue, date this gorgeous, popular girl in college. Yeah, that I didn’t have a shot at.
We drove to Lincoln NE and back in 24 for a friend’s father’s funeral.
I spent college spring breaks, when everyone else was in Florida, knocking on doors at churches around the country to share the gospel with people.
At 16 I took a job working in all kinds of cities in the Midwest, living in hotels, and doing steel work in college dorms
I moved my barely one year old daughter and wife to no man’s land China.
What risks did you take? ________________________________________
Did we take those risks just because we were “young and we didn’t know better”? I think there was more to it than that.
Promise/Discover
We knew, even if we couldn’t talk about it, what Jesus said today, “I protected them and kept them safe”. (verse 12)
Friends there is a safety out there that is so great, it will let you take the greatest risks you ever imagined.
Quick, if you could take one great risk, what would it be? ______________________ If you were willing to take a great risk, what would do? Would you quit your job so you could pursue your dream career? Would you stand up to your coworkers? Would you move to a new country? Would you sacrifice for a friend or spouse? What risk do you want to take? ___________________________________
There is a safety out there for you and I that is so great. That’s what we want to discover today. We want to see two things: the world is so much more fragile than we realize it is, we can be much more safe than we thought we could be
Development
The Bible shows that we live in a fragile, dangerous world.
We already heard today Jesus said, “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me.” (verses 11-12) If he wants to protect us, it’s because we need protection.
I think I really need to wrestle with this, because it is so easy to imagine I can keep myself safe. Something that’s made me think about it lately. I've been reading this book from Nassim Taleb about randomness and chance. He has this illustration. It goes something like this. Imagine you have $10,000 you want to invest. There are 10,000 traders standing ready to invest for you. You give each one $1. Do you know how many will have made money in 5 years? The odds are basically 50/50 for each trader each year. If they lose their money, they’re out of the game. That means that after 5 years there will only be 269 traders.
If you want to check the math all out, you can read his book. His exercise doesn’t quite match real life because no one starts at zero and we all get more than one chance to succeed. Still, I was so surprised. If I have money to invest and so I pick a trader, the odds are incredibly small that I’ll pick right. (basically 1 out of 50 people will make money)
Or take work. Do you know the median time a person works for one employer in America? Just over 4 years. That’s the median tenure with an employer. You think your job is stable? You have longevity? You think you’ll have a job in a decade? Try again.
One of the examples that has really hit me lately is to think about what some scientists call the fine tuning of the universe. Cosmological constant (which controls the expansion speed of the universe) refers to the balance of the attractive force of gravity with a hypothesized repulsive force of space observable only at very large size scales. It must be very close to zero, that is, these two forces must be nearly perfectly balanced. To get the right balance, the cosmological constant must be fine-tuned to something like 1 part in 10to the 120th. If it were just slightly more positive, the universe would fly apart; slightly negative, and the universe would collapse.
Some people are very convinced the fine tuning of the universe speaks to the existence of God. How else could there be such precision? But even if it doesn’t, the world is incredibly fragile. If the forgive of gravity was just a little bit stronger, everything would disappear.
This is something God has said for a very long time.
Peter “For, "All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall,”
Jesus said, “you fool. This very night your life will demanded from you.” (Luke 12:20)
James “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” (4:14)
There is a reason Jesus says, “I protect them.” It’s because the world is so much more fragile than we think about.
Now what do we do about this? How do we respond to this?
Jesus said, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” (verses 17) What does sanctified mean? Sanctified means “set apart”. It means set aside.
What is Jesus doing? He is keeping us safe. He is setting us apart from whatever it is that hurts or damages us. That’s what he is doing. He is keeping us safe. That’s what happens when you set something aside. You put it in safe keeping.
At first it sounds like...Let’s say you have some money you want to keep safe. Let’s say you’re trying to save for a new car. What do you do? You set aside the money.
You put in the bank. If you’re old school, you put in your mattress. If you’re cool, you put it in Dogecoin. You set it aside.
And that’s great, until you want to buy your spouse a birthday present. Then you need to buy your kid a new bike. Then you’re paying for school. And on and on. Pretty soon, that money you set aside, it’s not set aside at all.
This is what so many of us do when we want to keep ourselves safe. We set ourselves aside. Now sometimes that might be a good thing to happen. It might be a good thing to do. If you and your kids are being abused, you should pull back. Cut off that dangerous relationship.
The things is, this impulse, isolate, separate. It’s pervasive. We build houses that isolate ourselves from one another. Have you noticed how garages are put on the front of peoples houses? We destroy the common meeting grounds of society. (basically speaking of protectionism). Tell me, where do you go to meet new people? That’s not me saying this. Someone like Robert Putnam writing in Bowling Alone said this long ago.
We’re trying to do what Jesus says. We want to set stuff aside for safe keeping. We want to keep ourselves safe.
Jesus teaches that we really get set apart not when we get taken away from everything, but when something really great comes into us. The way to be safe in it, is to not try to run away from it. It’s to actually put something else into you to become part of a different world.
What Jesus says to put into is the Word. You notice he doesn’t say, sanctify them by the truth. My family is truth. The Bible speaks really well of the family. I think it speaks of us more highly than anyone else in the world. But family won’t make you safe.
He doesn’t say sanctify them by the truth, your house is truth. The Bible loves homes and your home is a great place. But your home won’t keep you safe. The best Christian homes are wrecked by the ravages of sin.
Jesus says, I'm going to put something into you that will take you to a different world. My Word. Here is an illustration.
My wife and I generally get along well. We like each other. We enjoy our time together. We do have our challenges. Sometimes the kids get us going. We debate work. We get to the point where like a lot of people we find ourselves in a very heated discussion. We go at each other.
One way we’ve tried to solve that problem, you can probably guess, is we take a break. We separate ourselves. Then we try to set apart time for that conversation later.
We’re in the middle of a conversation and we stop. We say, we’ll come back to this later.
I’m really skeptical of that idea now. You can guess why. We almost never have that conversation. If we do, do you know when we end up having it? Usually the next day with another heated conversation.
Do you know what does work? We’ve gotten much better by including a mentor, a counselor, a pastor, or a good friend in the conversation. We’ve literally said, hey, we want you to be a referee. Make us fight fair. Your words will change our conversation. Put your words into the middle of us.
When we do that, we almost always fight fair. Just those words make us safe.
Now imagine what would happen if you would put the words of the one who came from another world into your world? Can you imagine how great that could be?
He set himself apart from sin and from death and from the devil himself. None of those things can touch him. He sits at the right hand of his Father. He does not belong to this world.
Can you imagine what might happen if his words would come and set you apart?
Do you know how unstoppable, how absolutely unbreakable you could be? We heard this great story today of a man named Stephen. He was arrested. He was falsely accused. He was eventually put to death. He was stoned by his own people. The last thing he said as he died was, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
There is one thing that can make you and I absolutely bulletproof in this fragile world. And that is to realize that the one who was crushed to death by this fragile, crazy world sits at the right hand of God. The whole world collapsed on him. He was not safe from it. That same man reigns in heaven for you.
Bottom line: You can have certain safety.
Action
I’m going to do something a little dangerous today. It’s a good thing we have insurance and my pastoral counsel is covered by insurance.
I was talking to my dad this week about our family history. My great great great grandpa moved to this country when he was 63. He had 6, maybe 7 year old son. I don’t know what brought them. I do know that in the end he came.
And you’ve got me as a pastor, we’re in this together, because 140 years ago one senior man took a huge risk. I can say senior because in those days, if you made it past 40, you almost certainly weren’t going to hit 70. That man took a risk.
What risk did you write down before? If you could take one risk what would it be?
I want you to get out there this week and take a risk. Your safety is certain.
John 20:19-31
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Jesus Appears to Thomas
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus[a]), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
The Purpose of John’s Gospel
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe[b] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Listening guide
“On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” (verse 19)
What do you think “peace” is? _____________________________
“Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe” (verse 27)
God _________ up for us.
“What is God saying to me? And what am I going to do about it?”
Sermon
(picture of letter)
If you received a formal letter in the mail from a legitimate law firm saying that you were the long lost heir of an important family and had just inherited the family name and many millions of dollars....wow. You would be skeptical for sure. You would probably think it is too good to be true. I still think you would investigate that kind of a claim.
You would look at the letter and see that it had a return address and a real signature at the bottom of the page. You would get on the website and see that the firm looked legit and that the lawyer existed. You would check the better business bureau. You’d look the family up. You would think, this can’t be true! This has to be a scam...It looks so real.
Finally you would call and say, hey, I got this letter. It must be a joke. It says I’m part of this other family and I’ve inherited millions. It’s a joke, right? The lawyer might say, no joke, no scam. Come in, I’ll show you the will and the evidence.
So you would. You’d get the millions. You’d get the name. You would walk out of that office as someone else.
At that point, you’re just getting started. If you want, you can go back to your old life. Your old family, old ways, and old routines. The better way, I think most of us would say, is you go forward. You learn what it means to live with millions. You learn what it means to live with a new name and a new family.
I think a lot of us would find that really hard. We’d say, I don’t want to give up my old life, my old friends, and my old family. I like it. But we know we really should go forward. We should learn how to live with money. We should embrace our family.
We got to start by learning our new family facts. Who are our parents. Where they’re from. What do they value. Our siblings.
We need to learn the rules. We say, I always thought murder was wrong. Is it wrong for you? What about stealing? Do you lie?
I think most of us would find hardest part changing the behaviors that make us who we are. For example, I think all of us are used to financial scarcity. Our entire life is dictated in part by how much money we have. How do we live differently when you can do whatever you want?
Or I think all of us are used to having other people tell us the rules and how to behave. We don’t have much authority. How do we live differently when we’re important and we’re making decisions?
I think this is the tough part. Getting the inheritance and the family is just the first step. Becoming a new person is a whole different thing. That’s what we want to do for the next few weeks.
Adventure/Promise
I would say Easter is the best letter from a law firm you could ever get.
With Easter, Jesus says, I give you the greatest fortune you could ever imagine. You can be God’s long lost child. I want to give you a new family, a new identity, and a new fortune.
And especially if you’re just starting out, you’ve got to learn all the doctrines of this family. Who is the father, who is the mother, what do they value, and all that. Maybe you already know that.
You’ve got to learn the rules as well. They’re the 10 commandments. They tell us what’s right and wrong, what we can and cannot do.
(small steps picture)
I think the hardest part, you have to figure out how to behave like you belong in the family. We have to live like we’re worth more than we’ve ever imagined as long as we’re connected to Christ. We have to live like we’re part of an eternal family. And we have to learn to depend on Jesus’ goodness, his righteousness.
That kind of life doesn’t happen in a moment. You don’t change like that overnight. You take small steps. That’s what we’re going to do.
Let’s take smell steps.
Development
We’ve got a great lesson here today. The lesson leads us to a man named Thomas. He could very well be the person most overwhelmed by Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus invites him to take just a small step.
That is the only way anybody can process what happened. Small steps. Jesus rising was basically more than everyone could handle. Let me remind us of a few of the people.
The first people at the tomb were a few women. They did not leave the tomb with joy and laughter. They were trembling and fled from the tomb and did not talk to anyone right away. The first men did not know what to think about it and ran to see for themselves. Jesus met a woman named Mary who did not even recognize him after he rose! The first men who got to talk to Jesus were so overwhelmed by the experience that they left the village they had walked to and ran a few miles back to Jerusalem at night. Men in ancient times didn’t run. There aren’t many middle aged men who could run a few miles at night. The most overwhelmed people … Let me read you this verse.
“On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” (verse 19)
Did you see this? Jesus has just risen from the dead and the disciples were locked in! They had no idea how to process what was going on. That could have been Jewish religious leaders arresting them for stealing the body of Jesus. That could have been the Jewish mob coming to kill them like Jesus. They could have been afraid that all the people were going to rise up in rebellion and insurrection. Whatever it was the resurrection of Jesus was more than they could process. And here is how much more.
Jesus showed up and he said to them, “peace be with you”. This is the common Jewish greeting. It really isn’t that surprising. What is surprising.... Jesus never announces peace to his disciples until he gets to his death and his resurrection.
Jesus has always said, I didn’t come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword and division. He brought it.
He brought conflict. He brought justice. He brought death. He stirred up the hatred and the violence of the people. He let them pour out all their anger at the injustice of life against him. He took it in his body on the cross.
He took their wrath. He took their rage. He took their sickness. So when he says, “peace is yours” you know he isn’t talking about a smooth lake on a Saturday morning where you can sip some coffee and catch fish.
What do you think “peace” is? _____________________________
I’m guessing because of American culture, we all imagine peace wrong. Here is how Walter Brueggeman describes peace in the Bible. “In the NT the word “peace” indicates more than the absence of war. .... šālôm included “everything necessary to healthful living: good health, a sense of well-being, good fortune, the cohesiveness of the community, relationship to relatives and their state of being, and anything else deemed necessary for everything to be in order” (Westermann, 24 [cf. Brueggemann, 13–23]).” (Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, peace)
“everything in order”. Jesus has just risen from the dead and for the first time, he says to his disciples, peace. You cannot overestimate what Jesus did when he rose. He has finally started to make everything right.
Let me just give you one example. When the apostle Paul tells us what it means that Jesus has risen from the dead, he writes, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here!” You look at what Paul says here.
He says if you are in Christ, a new creation has come. “in Christ” doesn’t mean inside of Jesus Christ. It means connected to Christ or in relationship to Christ. Paul says if you are connected or in relationship to Jesus, a new creation exists.
I’ve had people say to me, not a lot, say to me, I don’t feel much different after knowing Jesus than I did before. Some people say that. I would say by and large, far and away, the people who stay around say, I am not the same person I was. I’ve been transformed.
Some people say, I behave differently. I used to ___ and now I act this way. Other people say, I feel differently. I’m more compassionate, more thoughtful.
Friends, this is God’s peace breaking in. This is the new creation remaking you. This is everything, even you, in order.
I want you to imagine for a moment one of those movie scenes where a team of people rush in to take over an office that isn’t really theirs at the moment. So there is an office, let’s pretend it is financial counselors and belongs to Fred and Fred. Then a team of people rush in. They have a new sign that says, “Jane and Fred”. They cover over the old one. They change all the nameplates on the doors. They swap out the business cards. They throw away the old fake plants and put out fresh new flowers. They dump the silly magazines and put out a nice array of public interest publications, newspapers, and even a few books.
At first it all feels out of place. It feels weird. It doesn’t feel right. Over time you get used to it. And over time you change to feel like you belong.
Friends, this is why you and I have such a problem with Christianity. It’s not because there aren’t enough facts. I would be glad to talk with you about the facts and the evidence for the resurrection of the dead.
What is the problem? Someone has rushed into our world and changed all the signs, all the flowers, all the magazines, all the newspapers, and the couches and everything else. It’s all still the same size and shape. But it’s new. And we feel out of place.
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead isn’t something you can wish away. You can just learn to embrace it.
You can see the signs that he puts up. You can touch them and see. You can notice how the flowers look different. You can read the books and the magazines and the articles. You can notice every piece of new life in this world and say, this is where God is speaking to me of a new life that is so much greater.
What I mean is, Jesus comes to Thomas and says, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe” (verse 27)
Jesus has put everything in order, everything right. You can simply begin to touch all the marks of the new life
One of the neat stories of Easter is a woman named Joni Eareckson Tada. She was in an accident at 17 and has been a quadriplegic ever since. While she was getting around in her wheelchair, she went to church. The problem was she couldn’t kneel at any worship events. Everyone did except Joni. She said, “With everyone kneeling, I certainly stood out. I couldn’t stop the tears.”
She wasn’t crying from pity. She said that the sight of hundreds of people on their knees before God was so beautiful – “a picture of heaven”. She went on to say, “the first thing I plan to do on resurrected legs is to drop on grateful, glorified knees. I will quietly kneel at the feet of Jesus....Can you imagine the hope that the resurrection gives someone who is spinal cord-injured like me?”
Friends, Easter means God shows up for us. He is showing up for you and me with his new resurrected life. He is showing up as he puts everything in order. He is showing up with his peace.
Action
And like Thomas, like Tada, I want you to look at those signs and say “What is God saying to me? And what am I going to do about it?”
Easter is this great letter that says you and I have a new fortune and a new family. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it?
This is where God has shown up.
John 13:1-17
Listening guide
“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (verse 2)
(picture of foot washing)
“Now that I … have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” (verse 14)
“Teacher and Lord, that is what I am” (verse 13)
These are ____________ to ______________.
(communion hands)
Sermon
On the night he was betrayed, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. I agree with people that it was a magnificent way for him to serve them. I’ve never been particularly interested in washing your feet. Or the feet of anyone else, for that matter.
That’s why we don’t do it. Not because I don’t want to serve you and serving the people of Otsego Plainwell. I do. I just don’t see the value in it. We don’t wash our feet when we come home. The only time I wash my feet is in the shower.
I want to serve people in appropriate ways. I’m always trying to figure out what that looks like based on people’s needs, the Bible, and the way people respond to me. In my mind, as a pastor, serving people in appropriate ways looks like:
· Listening and encouraging as we candidly discuss the sorrow and joy when a loved one dies
· Providing guidance for following Jesus at home, at work, or as a citizen
· Being a listener, a sounding board, and a little bit of an advisor when someone needs to discover their identity
· Giving hungry people food
· Installing ramps for people who need help getting in and out of their house
· Assuring guilty people they are forgiven
And the list would go on a lot from there. You can imagine that I am frustrated a lot because not only do people skip this kind of relationship with me. Often they even reject me. They refuse to allow me to serve them.
What I mean is, there certainly are plenty of times when I tell someone,
· “Let me know if I can do anything” and they ignore me.
· I say, “let’s get together and talk about this” and they never accept my invitation.
· Or I tell them “I’d love to go through this with you” and they never ask for advice
And the frustration is not just that, but often
· I express concern and people say get out of my life.
· I send positive encouragements like “hey, I’m cheering for you today” or “God bless you” and things like that, and they say, “what do you want”
What I want is to serve people appropriately. And I know I’m not alone. I know I’m not alone in wanting to make a difference in people’s lives.
That’s a very common theme. Many people want to make a difference.
Adventure
And that’s what Jesus wants us to get today.
Maundy Thursday is a big day. Jesus says, let’s take on some of your biggest problems – sin, death, and the devil. Here is why we’re doing this. Not so you can “make a difference in the world” as good as that might be. But to actually help people.
Let’s get some hands that help.
Development
This is the thing that Jesus got more than anyone else, I think. This event we call the foot washing … We have some problems timing it. I think a good time is right before the Last Supper. Jesus was quite busy.
He didn’t concern himself with the supper preparations. He wasn’t distracted by all the conflicts with the Jewish leaders. And he didn’t lash out at the man who was going to betray him. He focused on the people right in front of them. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (verse 2) I know that this gets mentioned constantly. I find this so impressive.
There is this story from Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov that illustrates it well. A wealthy woman asks an elderly monk how she can know if God exists. He tells her no explanation or argument can achieve this, only the practice of “active love”. She confesses that sometimes she dreams of a life of loving service to others. At such times she thinks perhaps she will become a nun, live in poverty, and serve the poor as humbly as possible. But then she imagines how ungrateful some of the people she would serve are likely to be. She imagines they would complain that the soup wasn’t hot enough or that the bread wasn’t fresh enough or that the bed was too hard. She admits that she couldn’t bear that much ingratitude. Her dreams about serving others vanish and she finds herself wondering if there is a God. The wise monk responds, “Love in practice is a hard and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” (Pete Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, pg 165)
He could have said, one of them is betraying me. He could have thought one of them will deny me. They’ll all run away. Jesus was not distracted from serving the real people right in front of him.
(picture of foot washing)
He loved them up to the end of his life. He accomplished his goal of loving them. And now he was loving them to the purpose of their lives.
He got down on his hands and knees. He went around the table. He washed their feet. I think a lot of us know this. Washing someone’s feet at that time was something only slaves did. It was illegal for Jews and even slaves to do it. Yet Jesus Christ took the position of a slave below slaves and he turned to his friends and he said, this is what I’m all about. This is even what life’s all about.
Jesus wraps it up; “Now that I … have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” (verse 14)
I’m sure a lot of us are saying, is that what life is all about for all of us? Even for me? That’s a fair question.
Someone might say, I want to take care of my family. I don’t want to worry about serving. Someone else might say, I just want to do my job. I don’t want to worry about serving.
So to say, is all of life really about serving, that’s a good question. We don’t have time to answer it all.
Let me give you just one way to frame this. One way to think about this.
Let’s say you find a machine. It’s all full of lights and wheels and beeps, and they said, “Here, this is a present for you …” And it’s big. It’s very impressive. You’d say, “Well, it’s very busy, it’s very impressive, but what is it for?”
Let’s say a friend asked, “what’s it for?” And you said, “I don’t know. I wonder the same thing.” Then you would all say, “what good is it?”
What would you do? You'd have to ask the manufacturer. You’d have to ask the engineer. No matter what it does, how much it beeps and boops and everything else, you still have to ask the manufacturer. You have to do that, even if no one else wants the machine or knows what to do with it. That’s the only thing you can do.
What we've got here, we’ve got the manufacturer speaking. Jesus says, “you also should wash one another’s feet.” If you want to know what you’re supposed to do with life, this is it.
See friends, I can’t promise you that your friends, family, neighbors, and citizens will always know what you’re doing. They might look at you and say, that is the craziest machine I’ve ever seen. That guy beeps and boops and bleeps and doesn’t seem to do anything.
But they haven’t asked the manufacturer. You’ve been made by him!
What I think is so incredibly powerful about this entire event … Here we have Jesus. He is God so great that the highest heavens cannot contain him. He is the God to whom the entire universe is nothing more than a piece of belly button lint. He is the great “Teacher and Lord, that is what I am” (verse 13) He doesn’t belong on the floor.
No, as this story takes place, where he belongs is across town in the temple. Jesus should be in the temple that he cleared out a day or two ago. He should be washing his own hands in the great pool that sits next to the altar. Behind a thin curtain, he should be putting on, not a dirty towel, but the fine and ornate garments of the priest. He shouldn’t hear his disciples saying, don’t do that Jesus. He should hear all the Jewish people cheering him on and encouraging him. And he should be washing not feet, but the holy altar of God with the lamb that was sacrificed. That’s what he should be doing.
What’s going on here? The answer is that he is giving up that spot so that he can remake you.
He is the Lord who has become the slave to treat you as his lord. He is the king who has become the servant to treat you as his king. He is the priest who has become a pauper so you become a priest.
The maker of the universe has placed his hands on you in baptism, his Word, and in his Supper so that he make you into a marvelous machine for his purposes.
That way every time someone doesn’t want you and you wonder, what am I doing? Or someone ignores you and you say, what am I hear for. They reject you, someone ignores you, you can say, I’ve been made by his hands.
And you can go on and say, my hands to you are his hands. I’m offering his hands. These are hands to help.
Action
The Lord’s Supper can be the greatest place where we get hands to help. In 2015 there was a young lady who decided to attend a church service.
At the end of the sermon and prayers, the pastor announced they were going to have communion.
(picture of hands)
Instantly, the young lady panicked. She said, “my palms got sweaty and my brow furrowed as I thought to myself, what do I do?”
She had just come back to church after 14 years of pushing all religious beliefs behind her. She was filled with hurt.
Then the bread and wine came by. She had all kinds of questions, "why do I deserve this? Why should I be good enough to take part in this ceremony? I was a cast off, a sinner, and someone who abandoned religion long ago. …. I’m not good enough.” She said, I passed the bowl of bread and just looked at the seat in front of me. I knew I didn’t belong here in this moment. This was for people of faith, not for people who might want to look for faith and Jesus just because something is missing in his life, so he decides to go to Church once in a while and figure out what he wants to be and where he wants to go.
The girl was empty. She was a nobody and a nothing.
Then she felt something touch her hand. Her friend asked her for her hand and she did something I couldn’t believe, or would have ever expected. She split her bread in half, soaked it in wine… and then gently placed it in her hand. She said, “My mind tuned out everything around me, and I still, to this second as I write this, can’t recall what I thought."
That's the moment where God makes us. Hands that help remake us, empty, broken, destructive, sinful, hurting people and give us new hands.
We’re going to have communion in just a moment. Let’s prepare for that. May the hands that touch us in this sacred act be hands that help.
www.thisisvillagechurch.com/sermons-media/blog/communion-right-or-privilege/
Written February 11, 2015
John 13:21-30
21 After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”
22 His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. 23 One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. 24 Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”
25 Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”
26 Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. 27 As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.
So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” 28 But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. 29 Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. 30 As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.
Sermon
John 1:6-8, 19-28
Listening guide
He is not the Messiah, Elijah, or the prophet. He is a voice.
The ______________________ of a clear _______________
Discussion questions
No discussion questions while we work on "The End” study.
Sermon
Intro
“Watch, it will probably behave for you.” That’s what someone said when they couldn’t get the printer to print the other day. I stared at it real hard for a second, then told the printer which size paper to use, and boom, out came the page.”
They couldn’t help but say what I did and draw conclusions about who I was. I was something of a tech whizz or even more, I had a superpower
What people say about who we are matters. Most everyone gets their sense of who they are from two places.
Family, especially in more traditional circles. I’ve got a relative who is kind of important in the synod.
Work, in the modern. “Tell me about yourself” we don’t list hobbies or family. We list our work.
Who we are on the inside – our nature
The question, “who are you” isn’t the only question. Where are we going, what am I here to do. We also need to ask these questions. Some people say “identity is the most important thing.” Not true. So is purpose and origin.
There is a reason the Frozen movies have done so well. They are so great at tapping into the great questions of “who we are”. From the hit song, “Let it Go” when Elsa is working on the confidence to tell other people who she is; to the follow up “into the unknown” when Elsa is telling other people to say who they are.
Who you are is not the most important question in life
What you are here to do
Where you are going
But who you are matters. That answer matters. We know.
Promise/Discovery
Today God shows us what a clear sense of who we are can do. He shows us a man named John the Baptist.
The vitality of a clear identity
Development
John does something that I think is notable. People see this incredible movement he has produced. It really is incredible. Never before have thousands of Jews gotten baptized. They ask who he is. He answers simply. He is not the Messiah, Elijah, or the prophet. He is a voice.
If you read about this section, the commentators all point out how well John answers. He states the truth with both positive and negative statements. Good clarity. Two notable things.
The negative statements. He states he is not Messiah, Elijah, or the prophet. I don’t know if those seem like random names for you. They aren’t. These were some of greatest men in Israelite history and each was commonly prophesied to come again. You have to imagine what this would have meant for John. The appeal of it.
Imagine if the president of the United States, the Speaker of the House, the president of the Synod, and the archbishop came to you and asked you if you were Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, or Jonathan Edwards. That would fill you with pride. That would puff you up beyond belief.
They asked if John was one of the 3 most important 3 men in all Israelite history. Talk about a big head!
Then there is the positive statement. John says, “I’m a voice.” Only a voice. Nothing else. What’s a voice?
This is the thing. The people think John is this extravagant, amazing, and radical guy. Remember, Jews didn’t get baptized, but somehow scores of Jews are coming for baptism. So they come out there saying to him, who do you think are you? You must have this incredible ego or you must truly be this incredible, out of this world guy to be out here baptizing. You must have this incredible sense of personage and identity to have the confidence for this.
They weren’t even that far off. Jesus one time says that among people born of women, there is no one greater than John. And John the Baptist says, “No, no. I’m just a voice pointing to the one who is to come.” Here’s what he’s saying. “In myself I am nothing, but the one I serve is the greatest in the world. I’m just a voice, but I’m talking about the greatest one in the world. What I do, is I amplify, I expand, and I make large who he is.
John doesn’t get a big head. He doesn’t get puffed up. He’s not full of himself. Whatever you want to say. But he doesn’t back down. He is a voice. There is this scene in the movie, The Greatest Story Ever Told. In it, there is this scene where John says, “Repent, that’s adultery!” Herod replies something like, “you’re going to die for that.” John says, “you’re going to hell for that.” Herod says, “I can kill you.” John says, “I’ll finally be free.” When Herod finally does kill him, there is this voice ringing in the background.
John doesn’t look to his family and clan to tell who he is. He doesn’t look to his work. He doesn’t look inside himself. John looks to the one who stands among them. He looks at the one whose sandals he is not worthy to untie.
I remember looking at the Sistine Chapel. That ceiling is so amazing. That sight did not fill me with confidence or make me strong. It made me feel small and unworthy.
And there really are some scenes that probably make me feel stronger, almost arrogant, than I should. Like when I look at my clan at a wedding, I kind of say, yeah, that’s what we’re up to. That’s what we’re doing. Or there were a few papers, I know, right, papers, but really, papers, and a few networks I’ve built that I say, those things really make me feel good about what I am.
I have those things in my life that make me feel strong,
And some of you would probably say, yeah but pastor that is just for a moment. And those are good things.
I would say, yeah, they are good things. What I’ve got to say is, like John, I’m unworthy, but I serve the greatest one in the world. I’m here to amplify him, expand him, and enlarge him.
That’s because Jesus has said we’re worthy.
He even said, “unless I wash you, you have no part in me.” (Jesus washes feet.)
John was seeing that moment where Jesus says, yeah, you’re not worthy. You’re not. But I will give my whole self to make you worthy.
John can say better than anyone, I’m unworthy. Of course I am. There is the one who is worthy to baptize. He is my hero. He is my Savior. I put all my confidence and trust in him. I transfer all my trust to him.
He is so clear on that. That’s what clarity of identity can sound like.
Action
Do you want one of the greatest gifts this Christmas? Learn to say, I’m a voice. I’m here to enlarge, to amplify, and make him great.
That kind of clarity won’t ruin you. The opposite is true. That kind of clarity will be your vitality.
I think in many ways, this whole line of questioning of “who we are on the inside” is better. Whether it’s Frozen, Xmen Mutants, or even the whole sense of inner beauty. There is good in that. It’s better than pigeonholing people based on their family or their work. It's still not as good as just being a voice, as being that person who will enlarge, expand, and make someone else great.
Imagine if your life went like this. A man named Chad would visit this nearly blind and forgetful woman. She could never remember who he was, so he would walk into the room and introduce himself. She always said, “Who”? “Who are you?” After he told her, he would go on with his visit.
He would tell her law and gospel. He would speak of our lost condition, of our sin, of the dreadful place we find ourselves in apart from God, condemned by His law because of our transgressions. Then he would tell her of Jesus, who sought us in love, who bled out His life’s blood to wash away our transgressions, who exited the tomb alive and well that we might follow Him in our resurrection.
Every single time, after she had listened, speechless, to all he said, she would respond with shock and surprise, as if this were the first time in her life that she had heard the Gospel. She would literally rejoice, almost laugh with glee, that God loved her so much that He would do all things for her.
You would think, now, what a neat thing to have that kind of an impact on someone. What if each time the people around you forgot about Jesus and even forgot about you, you could tell them of sin and grace and they would come alive! That wasn’t the best part.
Because here is what that did to Chad. Chad was on his own way to falling apart. He went from pastor to drugs, sex and more. He didn’t remember who he was. Part of the memory of this woman saying, “who, who are you” that woke him up. He said something like, “I am a man with a life full of regret, full of failure, whom Jesus loves without regret, without fail. No matter what job I have, I am defined not by what I do but by what God has done for me in His Son.” The Blind, Demented Woman Who Introduced Me to Myself | 1517, accessed 12/12/2020)
That drove him on to be a truck driver, a writer, a public speaker, and a father. In myself I am unworthy, but I am worthy because of what God has done in Jesus. That’s the vitality of a clear identity.
John 11:17-45
17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two miles[a] from Jerusalem, 19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
28 After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” 29 When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.
32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
35 Jesus wept.
36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Jesus Raises Lazarus From the Dead
38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
The Plot to Kill Jesus
45 Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
Listening guide
The questions are coming ….
“this sickness … is for God’s glory” (verse 4).
If Jesus is the resurrection and the life, __________ ___________ comes from ___________.
“the one who believes in me will live.” (verse 25)
Real physical life is available to each person because of who ______ ________, not who _______ _________.
take off the grave clothes and let him go.” (verse 44)
Death is the _____________ ____________. Let’s live!
Discussion questions
Sermon
Questions are coming – what's going on with this? Is God punishing us? Are we in trouble? What should we be doing and learning?
That’s good.
One thing this is not. God is not weeding some out or selecting some to get rid of.
That’s what a purely irreligious or naturalist view says. “This is nature’s way to make sure the fittest survive.” I don’t know if anyone is saying that about this event. Certainly people have said it about past events.
God wants life. Real, physical life.
Adventure/Discover
What embracing real, physical life does.
This is just the right time. Nicodemus - new life; woman at the well - stop chasing
Part 1: The resurrection to life matters
How does the resurrection to life matter? If the resurrection of the dead really will happen, then what does that mean for life?
Time is linear not cyclical
Who we are is more important than what we do, because something of who we are will go on into our new person
Eternity will be a better reality.
You will someday get that new start – forgiveness is the best thing, but there is often this residual blame or shame we feel.
The people we love will live again.
The biggest thing...
Jesus hears Lazarus is sick. When he hears, he says, “this sickness … is for God’s glory” (verse 4). He doesn‘t mean every sickness is for God’s glory. Every sickness is a chance for his glory to appear. This one is special.
God’s glory is his weight, his impact. He is going to show off. When that happens we get to see who he really is. What does he show?
(verse 21, 22) The friends and the family are “sitting shivah”. He meets Martha.
She says, in short, you’re too late.
She also says, I trust you.
Jesus confirms her trust - “I am the resurrection and the life”
A few minutes pass …
(verse 33) He meets Mary
She is crying. She says, “you’re late.”
Jesus is “troubled”, in a minute he will weep with her
Jesus relates well to us. I compare what he is doing to what is going on in our life.
We on a search for some locks. I know I brought them in from the car, I just can’t remember where I put them in the house.
The other day, a kid says to me, “Which car were you driving dad?” It took everything I had to not say be snarky.
Jesus relates really well to us. He is fully God, fully man
Not 50/50 - not part God, part man.
He naturally affirms our full trust in him for life.
He naturally displays his own vulnerability.
But there is more to it.
Jesus, fully God, fully man, is the giver of life. Your life comes to me.
If Jesus is the resurrection and the life, our life comes from him.
Just think about this. One of things people have said, heck, I’ve said it sometimes is, “why should I listen to Jesus? Who is he to run my life? Can’t I do whatever I want with my life?”
That question makes all the sense in the world if we’ve come from nothing and we’re going to nothing and we don’t depend on anything else. If it’s true, we can destroy ourselves and others. Life is meaningless.
But if Jesus is the giver of life, then my life, your life, our life comes from him. That’s the place to get life.
Part 2 Life is possible for you
That’s what Jesus wants to make a reality for you.
When Jesus walked up, he told Martha, “the one who believes in me will live.” (verse 25) And I think that for the most part, we can say Martha accepted that fact. She says to him, “I believe you are the Messiah.” (verse 27) She accepts he is the one God has chosen. But she doesn’t trust him.
Jesus goes to the tomb and he says, “take away the stone.” Martha responds, “He stinks”. She basically denies.
I love. What does Jesus do? He doesn’t tell at her. He doesn’t criticize her. He raises Lazarus anyways. I love this.
God doesn’t bless you and me because we’re so great, or even because our faith is so awesome
Only unbelievers say that God both loves and accepts everyone no matter who they trust. It’s just as unbelieving to say, “God let’s good people live.” No he doesn’t. When God works a miracle to give people new physical life, he does it for people who trust him. He doesn’t measure your life, your faith or anything else.
It’s not about you. It’s about him. And he has made the life he has available to you all.
Real physical life is available to each person because of who he is, not who you are.
Part 3
Let’s get ahold of this life.
This is hard stuff. What Jesus says in verse 44, “take off the grave clothes and let him go.” (verse 44) He is telling Lazarus, you can walk away from death. Death is defeated and you can just walk away. The right way to look at death is to say death is a defeated enemy.
It’s still an enemy! Christianity is incredibly realistic about the suffering of our lives. Sin, Satan and death are my enemies. They are bigger, stronger, and I can’t control them.
If these enemies are bigger and stronger than me, then the gospel isn’t primarily a message of personal empowerment. It’s not primarily a message to make me bigger and stronger. Those enemies will always be stronger.
What the gospel says is these enemies have already been defeated for you by the grace of Jesus Christ and you get to experience that reality every day. It’s to change your whole life and death.
We can see this, as painful as this is, as hard this.
It is painful. It is hard to live in the middle of death. The gospel says your suffering is real, but your life is real too. Rise up and live it.
AN story – raised in an abusive situation – physical, emotional, verbal. She also grew up connected to a Christian church. She enjoyed the relationships with people at the church, including the pastor. She never really believed the gospel.
Later she met a young man. He connected with her. He shared the gospel with her. He also joined her in her suffering. He was with her as she relived the painful experiences and began to process the fear, guilt, and shame that she felt.
There were a lot of painful moments along the way. He was there. So was a group of Christians that she met along the way. She heard the gospel for the first time in a safe, protected environment and it started to mean something to her.
She believed it. She wanted the new spiritual life of Jesus. She got baptized.
Then a close relative got deathly sick. She was not there when grandma died.
Initially she felt a lot of guilt. Then things started to change and she said, “I don’t feel that badly.” They talked about the situation. Part of it was probably denial – one of the stages of suffering. The other part was that she could say, my relative lives, I will live, and life lives. “I don’t feel bad and guilty.”
Death is the defeated enemy. Let’s live!
John 13:1-17
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”
10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.
12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
Listening guide
Develop your purpose.
“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)
This is what I’m living for: _______________ ___________.
To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to ______ _________ into their life.
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” (John 13:8)
To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to ________ ______ ________ out of their life.
Viktor Frankl - “ I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose.”
Make his love fill us with purpose.
Discussion questions
Sermon
Nathaniel Timmermann
Peace Lutheran Church
March 22, 2020
John 13:1-17
Encounters with Jesus: Make his love fill us with purpose.
Prayer
Intro
The PG story – Found out she hadn’t eaten much lately, she probably hadn’t taken her meds. I asked if I could help out at all. She said she would be okay. After we talked, I called another person and asked her to call the first person and check on her.
A few days later, I called the woman back. I asked “How are things going? Have you been taking your meds?” She said, “I’ve been taking my meds. I ate breakfast and lunch. And some other people and I have been talking. I’m feeling better.”
The physical things are very important – food, meds, even human connection. All of that does something else for us. Behind all that, especially the human contact, reminds us there is purpose and meaning behind our existence. “I do have a purpose and meaning in my life.”
Human beings can do incredible things when we have a sense of purpose or meaning.
Stories of people lifting cars or during other heroic actions.
Viktor Frankl – Jew, captured and placed in the prison camps during WW2, including Auschwitz. Eventually become someone who started logotherapy, an important psychology practice.
He spent a ton of time thinking about this one question: what is it? what caused some people to survive the camps and not others?
Lots of factors: previous state in life - were people healthy and well before they came, their social structure, morality or lack of it, luck/fortune/grace
“Any attempt at fighting the camp’s psychopathological influence on the prisoner by psychotherapeutic or psychohygienic methods had to aim at giving him inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look forward.” (Frankl, Viktor E.. Man's Search for Meaning (p. 72). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition)
You see that? “Inner strength … by pointing out to him a future goal”.
What is that? That’s purpose.
We deeply resist people forcing on us a purpose for our lives. If you dislike your job, it doesn’t matter how much you get paid, at some point you’ll get sick of it. You’ll start to say, “This paycheck is not worth the work I’m doing.”
If you have a sense of purpose, if you have the inner strength that points you to a future goal, you can go through almost anything.
Discovery/adventure
Jesus invites us to develop our purpose.
What a great time to do it. On the one side, we’re experiencing this crisis in America that is raising many questions. At the same time, he has given us this new life, this new vitality in our study over the last few weeks.
You can see who you are, can’t you? Take the vitality you have and use it in a specific direction.
Three things: What it could be, two things for making that happen
First what it could be
Jesus is with disciples for the Passover. … John tells us what is going on in his head. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)
What a cool thing to say. What does that mean? He loved them to the end. It’s not just a time thing. It’s not just his goal to love them. He actually loves them to get them to their final purpose. He loved them into the completion. He loved them into the goal.
Jesus is about to ascend to the heights by descending to the depths. Jesus Christ is about to pull off the greatest victory by being captured and tortured and oppressed and murdered. Jesus’ understanding of power and success is so completely topsy-turvy that there is not a single culture or ideology that can really understand or accept it. It cuts against everything we know. We’ve talked about it before. Jesus says, “The way up is down. The way to power is to serve. The way to get happiness is not to seek your own happiness but the happiness of somebody else,” an inside-out understanding of greatness.
Jesus Christ here in John 13, is illustrating with his deeds what he tells them with his words in places like Matthew 20 and Luke 22. He looks at them and he says, “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served”
The word serves that he uses is a word that means the most menial and the most humble of all kinds of service. Jesus basically says, “Who is greater? The person who sits at the table at 4 Roses, or the busboy?” He says, “I walk in the shoes of the busboy, the grease monkey.” Why would he actually use that as the paradigm for his career?
What he does here in John 13 is he gets down on his hands and knees and begins to wash their feet. We know (we mentioned this a couple of weeks ago) that washing someone’s dirty feet in that environment was something only slaves did, and in many municipalities it was even illegal to make a slave do it, it was so disgusting and so low and servile. Yet Jesus Christ takes the position of sort of a slave below slaves, and he turns to his friends, and he says, “O friends, O dumb friends, how many times do I have to tell you? This is what life is about. This is what I’m about. This is what I live for.”
If somebody gave you a machine, and it was all full of lights and wheels and beeps, and they said, “Here, this is a present for you …” And it’s big. It’s very impressive. You’d say, “Well, it’s very busy, it’s very impressive, but what is it for?” What if your friend said, “Well, I don’t know what it’s for?” You’d say, “Well then what good is it? We have to find out what it’s for. Let’s ask the ones who made it. Is there a label on here anywhere? Let’s find out the manufacturers and ask the ones who made it.”
Now look at yourselves. You’re so busy. Your lives are full of lights and beeps and wheels. on steroids that nobody can turn off, and here you are in the middle of it. You’re so busy, and your life is full of lights and wheels and beeps. Some of you have beepers on this morning. The question is … What is it for?
There is a strong sense that so much of it is meaningless. Isn’t there? Don’t you sense it? Don’t you feel it?
["The works of modern authors … reveal “the persistent need for meaning and the gnawing sense of its elusiveness.” (Tim Keller, Making Sense of God, pg 62) ]
Do you see what happens? As soon as you begin to think into life more than six inches deep, you’re into religion. As soon as you start to ask any kind of substantial question … “Look at this wonderful machine. Look at my life. Look at all the wheels and the lights and the noises and the bells and the beeps.” As soon as you say, “What is it for? What really matters? What is life all about? What does it mean?” you’re into religion.
Because in the same way, the only way you’re going to find out what this machine is for is by getting in touch with the manufacturer. The only way you’re going to find out what life is for and what life is about is to get in touch with the manufacturer. Here you have the manufacturer, and he is saying, “Let me tell you what life is about. Let me tell you what I am about. Let me tell you what you should be about. It’s for this kind of greatness. It’s for this inside-out greatness. Life is about kneeling love. Life is about love that gets on its knees, that comes down out of its place.”
Jesus said, “That’s what I’m about and that’s what you should be about.” That’s what life is about. Until you understand that, all the beeps and all the whizzes and all the whirls and all the lights mean nothing. So basically what Jesus is saying here is, “Here is how life gets purpose, gets meaning. This is what I’m living for, this is what you’re living for: Kneeling love.”
Jesus puts it into action in 2 ways.
He came down
First, “so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” (Jn 13:4-5)
Jesus is thinking about his mission, about his career, and there are two parts to it. First of all, he gets down. Just as he leaves his place of honor at the table and sets aside his normal garments, in the same way, the Bible tells us that though he was God, though he was the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, though he was the God who’s so great that heaven and highest heaven could not contain him, the God to whom the entire universe is nothing more than a piece of belly button lint, that great God came down and became a human being. We sing about it at Christmas each year when we sing …
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail the incarnate Deity,
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Jesus takes the time to get down into our lives.
You haven’t yet started to serve people if you aren’t physically getting down into the mess of their lives.
That’s a lot harder than I would like to admit. Just take the simplest act, listening. Listening is physical work. But you can listen up and stay out of someone’s life, or you can get down into it.
This week, I was on the phone a lot. I called one person. Someone was talking. There were emails coming in. Someone walked through the door. I said, uh huh, uh huh. Then they said, well, thanks for the talk pastor. Have a good week.
I didn’t get down into their life at all. I stayed in my own life.
Point 1: To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to go down into their life.
I’m so thankful for all the doctors and the nurses and the medical assistants and the paramedics who are getting down into our lives. Would you join
The first step in getting meaning into someone’s life, is getting down into their life. Whether you are a doctor or a nurse or someone else, don’t we all have the opportunity to get down into someone else’s life?
Wash
But that’s only half of the career, only half of the mission. Not only does he come down from God to be a man, but secondly, he doesn’t come just as a man but as a servant.
He goes to wash Peter’s feet and Peter says, “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” (John 13:8)
I love this. Jesus doesn’t come down as someone to lead a great political party to victory, but instead he comes to take their sicknesses, diseases and plagues on himself.
To fill someone’s life with meaning, you’ve got to ________ ______ ________ out of their life (wash the crud).
One of the most powerful things that happens on the cross is that Jesus says I will take your sin, I will take your guilt, I will take your blame and put it on myself. And in the waters of baptism I’m going to wash your mess away. I am glad to do that so you can really do what you are called to do.
That is even harder to do. There are so many times I would love to wash away the junk of your life. Jesus says I will actually take the junk of your life.
When you have experienced, when you have tasted what it is really like to have that sin and that mess washed away, you will know, there is meaning to everything you do.
One of the great examples of a person who finds meaning in life not through his work, not through his skills and abilities, but because someone got down into his life and cleansed his soul, was that man Viktor Frankl.
He has a number of experiences that helped him find meaning. He tells one of them.
Viktor Frankl -- Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. . . .
Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet”—and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there.
That’s an example of what a wife can do for a husband, even if she isn’t there. How much greater can’t it be if you and I have a sense and an awareness if the king of heaven and earth has come down into our mess and cleaned away that crud? How much greater can’t the purpose and the meaning of our life be if we are aware of that?
What’s the awesome take away from this? You and I could search for meaning and purpose for our lives. I’ve asked this question as much as anyone else
Do my days really mean something to someone else? As I sit here and make my little speeches or my phone calls.
Yet it was this point...When his love becomes real, it fills you with purpose and it fills others with purpose.
Make his love fill us with purpose. When his love is real to you, that will fill you and us with purpose. That will matter whether you are a doctor or a nurse on the front lines, working in the factory, or caring for your family. Make his love fill us with purpose. We’ll have incredibly meaning for our lives.
Let’s pray
Heavenly Father, very often we turn to the weak and the shallow for a sense of meaning and purpose. Rather than receiving from you the love you want to give to us, we look to money, power, fame, family, to give us our sense of purpose and meaning. I pray that in this important time you would power us with your love. Then we can flow that love out into the lives of others, and together enjoy the meaning you have for us. We pray this all in Jesus’ name, Amen!
John 9:1-41
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some claimed that he was.
Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”
But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”
10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.
11 He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
12 “Where is this man?” they asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The Pharisees Investigate the Healing
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. 15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”
But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.
17 Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”
The man replied, “He is a prophet.”
18 They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. 19 “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”
20 “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. 21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”
25 He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
26 Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”
28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
Spiritual Blindness
35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
38 Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
39 Jesus said,[a] “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
Listening guide
Can we gain spiritual sight?
“Who sinned, this man or his father”? (verse 2)
No one __________________ sees ____________________.
Spiritual blindness =
“You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
You see differently when ________________ _________.
Sermon
I’m a slow learner. It’s taken me 10 years to recognize the spiritual effect I have in my wife. Making some area of the house clean, picked up – shame
JS – sensing her guilt, assuring her that this doesn’t mean she is a failure
Big topic of the week. Peeps are out for Easter. It’s true. Did you see Meijer, Walmart? Lots of Peeps. Just kidding.
COVID-19.
Discover/adventure
This kind of spiritual sight is more than just personality. More than training
You can each have spiritual sight that brings healing, forgiveness to relationships
Sure maybe I have more than some of you because true spiritual sight is a gift. That’s my training and experience.
Some of you probably have a lot more of it than I. All of you can have it to some extent. True spiritual sight that makes a difference in the souls of others is a supernatural gift from God
Part 1
Jesus is with his disciples. They meet a man born blind.
The disciples ask a very basic question: “Who sinned, this man or his father”? (verse 2)
We need to see where we stand with other people.
Are we good?
Are we bad?
Did I wrong you?
You’ve wronged me.
We all do this.
Then you can see what Jesus does. Jesus says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (9:3)
This blows me away. You and I living in the 21st century live in what’s caused a closed box universe.
It’s slowly reopening, but for the most part, it’s closed. What do I mean? I’ve talked to a lot of people about the coronavirus this week. Do you know how many people have asked me about the spiritual implications or even commented about them? Fewer than 5. Talked to a lot of people but the number of people who say, “what’s God up to here? What is God going for? What would cause God to let this happen.” or the people who have said, “It’ll be okay. I’ve done everything I can and I trust God to take care of me.”
You might say.... That is the very essence of a closed box universe.
A closed box universe says, “the material world is all there is. There is only physical stuff. There is nothing more than what we can touch and feel and see.”
I can completely understand someone in the 21st century not thinking about God. … meet someone in the store. .. But look at these disciples
They don’t think about God either.
I think they are a little ahead of us. They think about other people. … Listen to the people talk about coronavirus. They say, “I’ll be okay. My family will be okay.” It’s not about you. It’s about what you might do to someone else. These disciples are at least that far ahead of us. Still...
They don’t say, “Maybe God is punishing him.” They don’t ask, “Jesus, why did God let this happen.” … This is spiritual blindness.
No one naturally sees spiritually.
We all know this blindness at times. Everybody goes through a situation where you really blow something, a relationship, a job, or a project. You look back five years, and you say, “I was so blind. I knew it, but I didn’t know it. I had the data, but I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t get it. It didn’t sink in. I was such an idiot.” What is that? It’s not like you got new data. It’s not like you actually, literally, physically didn’t see something. It’s that you realize you were spiritually blind.
What is spiritual blindness? Here is how Martin Luther put it, believing we are “free, happy, unfettered, able, well, and alive” when we are not. (Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will)
Free – I can make choices for myself and they will benefit other people
No one naturally sees spiritually.
Part 2
If we are unable to see ourselves and other people for who they are,
We don’t have time for this today... Maybe you can look at this at home. But
If we don’t see spiritually naturally, if we don’t have natural spiritual sight, what do we put in place to guide these relationships?
Later on the religious leaders say, “we follow Moses.” The religious leaders have Moses – they have religious rules
His parents also get involved – family norms.
Everyone experiences this spiritual blindness. If we don’t gain spiritual sight, then we put something else in the place to help us see how we relate to other people.
Gaining sight
When it comes to gaining sight, there are really a number of things that should be said
Spiritual sight comes in a community
Faith is instantaneous and complete, sight comes in stages
Jesus went and endured the darkness. The darkness swallowed him and snuffed him out. And because the light of the world was extinguished, we can see. It’s a trade.
That’s not what we see here. This story tells us something else of gaining sight.
Jesus sees a man born blind
“After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.”
There is a physical, tactile experience. Part of gaining spiritual sight is a physical experience. And not just any kind of experience
Spiritual sight comes from physically living out God’s Word.
Almost all of us, I think I can even say all of us, deal with something physical in order to gain real spiritual sight. Money, careers, health, retirement, family.
If you haven’t gained spiritual sight, Jesus says, “Wash that away.” Let me give you the gift that washes. Not baptism. The gift of forgiveness.
At the end of the event, after all the discussions and debates, Jesus comes back to the man and says, Jesus says, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” (verse 37)
If you want spiritual sight, not only does it mean forgiveness for the physical ties you love so much. It means getting seen, being known by the one who sees all things.
He sees you and when you see that, then your eyes will be opened from your blindness.
Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. At the age of nineteen months, she became ill with what was at the time called “brain fever.” She had been left blind and deaf as a result of the illness. Helen could not see any light or objects, and her ears could not conduct sound either through bone or via air. This situation continued for almost six years. Years later, Helen wrote about that period in her life:
I had no concepts whatever of nature or mind or death or God. I literally thought with my body. I was like an unconscious clod of earth. There was nothing in me except the instinct to eat and drink and sleep. My days were a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without interest or joy.
Then Keller met a woman named Anne Mansfield Sullivan (1866–1936). Miss Sullivan had been working with Helen on spelling words over and over with her fingers. Miss Sullivan kept spelling the words over and over! Finally, she took Helen to the pump house; and as she pumped with one hand, she spelled water with the other. According to Helen:
She spelled w-a-t-e-r emphatically. I stood still, my whole body’s attention fixed on the motions of her fingers as the cool stream flowed over my hand. All at once there was a strange stir within me—a misty consciousness, a sense of something remembered. It was as if I had come back to life after being dead! … Now I see it was my mental awakening. I think it was an experience somewhat in the nature of a revelation.
That wasn’t the end. Helen went to a school.
John Hitz was the person who brought Emanuel Swedenborg and his religious teachings to Helen’s attention, giving her a copy of Heaven and Hell when she was fourteen. She writes:
The words “Love” and “Wisdom” seemed to caress my fingers from paragraph to paragraph and these two words released in me new forces to stimulate my somewhat indolent nature and urge me forward evermore. . . . I was not “religious” in the sense of practicing ritual, but happy, because I saw God altogether lovely,...The Word of God, … has been at once the joy and good of my life.[3]
As she writes: “I do not know whether I adopted the faith or the faith adopted me. I can only say that the heart of the young girl sitting with a big book of raised letters on her lap in the sublime sunshine was thrilled by a radiance and inexpressibly endearing voice.”[9] In speaking of Divine Love and Wisdom, she writes, “[it] is a fountain of life I am always happy to be near. . . . I bury my fingers in this great river of light that is higher than all stars, deeper than the silence that enfolds me. It also is great, while all else is small, fragmentary.”[10]
You see differently when you’re seen.
Conclusion
These kinds of times we see a community’s true colors.
You will see differently when you’ve been seen. You’ll have a love for the greediest, the most selfish, or the foolish out there and you will have a justice that upholds what is true and good and defends the helpless.
You will literally see things differently.
That’s what happens when you get seen.
You see differently when you’re seen.
John 4:5-29
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 noon.
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.)
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.[a])
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.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 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 livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of 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.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
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.”
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in 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, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”
Discussion notes
Phenomenal story: Jesus and the woman
What gives you life?
“you would have asked and he would have given you living water”. In short he says, “I can give you living water.” (verse 10)
Is there something physical you are looking to for life? Yes No
If so, what is it?
The ______________ __________ (physical stuff) of life cannot give life.
“the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (verse 14)
What’s driving you and filling you with life? _______________
Everyone needs something _____________ (inside) filling them with life.
Live for what gives life.
Sermon
Phenomenal story. It’s about Jesus and a woman who lives with another man. They meet at the local watering hole about noon. Literally, the watering hole. Not the bar.
When the whole thing is done, look at the end of this story. The woman runs back to town. She tells all these people, “I’ve met someone who has told me everything I’ve done. Come and see.”
Here is why that is incredible.
First, have you ever, ever met someone who said, “I met someone who told me all the bad things I did in life and told me that I was worse off than I imagined. It was so awesome. You’ve got to come meet this guy.” That’s what she was saying to the other people.
The reason she met Jesus in the first place is that whether they excluded her or she just felt excluded, she was filled with shame. She didn’t go to the well with everyone else.
The reason she didn’t go to the well with everyone else was that she was divorced five times. Even today in our free sex life, people don’t divorce 5 times. I tried to look up the number of people on their fifth marriage or divorce. Couldn’t find it. Send em over if you do. Stop googling. Do it later.
She was also one of those free religious thinkers. You know, the kind everyone hates because they’re always saying, “yeah, but what about?” By the way, I think I’m one of those. Somehow every time all the pastors get together, I get ‘em all worked up.
She basically says to Jesus, I’m thinking about which religion to be part of: Samaritan or Jewish. What do you think?
She has done all that stuff. She comes back to the people in town. He told me I’m a mess. Come and see.
Who does that? There are a few. There’s a writer I enjoy, Mark Clark. He grew up an atheist. He did drugs as a kid. He stole. He got Tourettes and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. His dad was a deadbeat who died when he was 15. When he was 17 he said he believed in Jesus. He is one of the few guys I know of who gets up, and he can kind of smile and say, “I’m a mess. I’m a wreck. This guy Jesus told me about it. You should come and check him out.”
Discover
Last week was the gospel for the insider. The person who has their life all figured out, they just need to hear, look, as long as you think you don’t need life, you don’t have it.
This week, the gospel for the outsider. The person who desperately searches for new life, tries drugs, or sex, or career, or marriage, and can’t find anything that will give them life.
The question is just this: what gives you life? Where do you get meaning, satisfaction, and vitality for every day? What gives you life?
What we need for life
First thing to get here is what we need for life. Jesus says to this woman, “you would have asked and he would have given you living water”. In short he says, “I can give you living water.” (verse 10)
This is a big deal. Water and air are our most basic physical needs. Without air a person dies in minutes. Without water they die in days. Water is so plentiful for us that we don’t even think about a world without water. One of my college classmates worked on a nonprofit that dug wells. About 10% of the world doesn’t have a basic drinking water source and almost 30% of the world drinks from a contaminated source. We’re blessed, kind of like this woman at the well, to have drinkable water. So Jesus is really talking to people like us when he says, “I can give you living water.”
What does that mean? It means the most basic thing in life – water – can't really make you alive. It can’t give you life. You need something else to make you alive.
If Jesus says, I can give you living water, what do you think are the odds that you have living money? Or a living marriage? Or a living career? What I mean is, if water the most basic thing in life is not really alive enough to give you life, what do you think is the chance that anything else physical actually gives you life?
This has been a big struggle in my life because even if you think I’m a heady guy and I like ideas, I like physical stuff as much as any other guy. I have found it so hard to get my life and happiness from something other than physical circumstances. I remember one guy who asked, are you happy? I said, eh, I’m working on happiness apart from circumstances. He said, good, that’ll help. Tough, but it’ll help. Just the other day someone asked, is that part of life “life giving”? I said, “eh”. I still have a ways to go.
Let me ask you:
Is there something physical you are looking to for life? Yes No
If so, what is it?
Here is our first takeaway for today if you’re following along. The ______________ __________ (physical stuff) of life cannot give life.
Where it is
This is just the beginning. Jesus wants to make an even stronger point. He says, “the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (verse 14)
This is another stunning point. Remember in the ancient world people basically denied their feelings. They said, the mind is everything. Control your feelings. Control what comes from within. In the modern world, we say almost the opposite. Just notice how people talk. We say, “I feel that we should do blah blah blah.” That’s probably not even correct. What they mean is, I think. Pretty much everything is about what we feel. Jesus says, I can give you something that will fill you on the inside. It’s not thinking or feeling that is right.
Your entire thinking, your feeling, and even down to the very convictions of your life can be filled with a vitality, a liveliness. I think in my own life there are a few people who have been so filled with life that is just dynamic. It’s flowing over. And it doesn’t come from outside them.
One of my favorites is my grandma …. knee surgery …. moving …. husband has heart failure and surgery …. Life is no longer flowing to them. It’s flowing from them. What he is showing her, and us...
Everyone’s life has to flow out of something. Some people get life from physical things. They know who they are from the stuff they have. They know what groups they belong to from the things they own. They know where they are going from the things they want to have. If you say to yourself, “my goal right now is life to have a cabin by the lake” what is that? That’s a goal that’s filling you with life.
And some people don’t even need physical things. I think I’ve told you about the famous comments from Bruce Becker before. The great tennis star Bruce Becker had everything, but for him it wasn’t about the possessions. It was the drive to be the best. “I had won Wimbledon twice, once as the youngest player. I was rich. . . . I had all the material possessions I needed.” But even that drive isn’t life giving. It won’t fill you with life. He went on to say,
“It is the old song of movie stars and pop stars who commit suicide. They have everything, and yet they are so unhappy. I had no inner peace.” See, Jesus isn’t saying, you can’t have an identity. He isn’t saying you can’t have a sense of belonging. He isn’t saying you can’t have goals and purposes. He is simply saying those things can’t drive your life. Something else has to drive you and fill you with life.
What’s driving you and filling you with life? _______________ Think about that a little. Maybe like Becker, it’s not even really the physical stuff. Maybe it’s the drive to be the best.
Everyone needs something _____________(inside) filling them with life.
Part 3
There is a neat illustration someone else came up with for this source of life.
Imagine a man wandering through a desert with bottles of water on his shoulder. He conserves his water careful until it is all gone and then he begins to get thirsty. That thirst gets deeper and deeper until he sees a pump and runs to it. He lifts the handle and pulls it down but all he hears is the sound of metal on metal. He starts to panic. Then he sees a tin can at the bottom of the pump and in the tin can is a message. “Dear traveller do not despair there is enough water here, just follow the instructions. Lift the handle of the pump, bring it down and when you hear the sound of metal on metal discouraging you here’s what you do. Under the pump in front of you there is buried under the sand a bottle of water. Do not despair. Pick up the bottle of water pour it into the cylinder and start priming the pump. The moisture will get the system to work. A rush of water will start gushing out of the pump. You can drink all of the water you want, fill all your bottles but do not forget to fill up the bottle again and leave it for the next passerby. Warning: you’re going to be tempted, when you see this one bottle of water, to drink it. But you’ll be so thirsty again and so will everyone else who goes by. Empty it out as instructed and you will have all the water you want and so will everybody else going by”….
When you come up against Christ he offers you that drink, that living water to free you from all your sin and give you life that lasts forever. If you take the littler water of your own life and pour it out on yourself you will soon be thirsty again and so will everybody else who comes across your path. But if you draw from the deep well of God, you will never run out of water.
But you have to ask, who filled the water bottle first? Where did that water first come from?
It was because Jesus was thirsty. It was because the divine Son of God, the maker of heaven and earth, had emptied himself of his glory and descended into the world as a vulnerable mortal, subject to becoming weary and thirsty. In other words, she found the living water because Jesus Christ said, “I thirst.” That is not the last time Jesus Christ said, “I thirst,” in the book of John.
On the cross just before he died, he said, “I thirst,” and he meant more than just physical thirst. There Jesus was experiencing the loss of the relationship with his father because he was taking the punishment we deserved for our sins. There he was cut off from the Father, the source of living water. He was experiencing the ultimate, torturous, killing, eternal thirst of which the worst death by dehydration is just a hint. That is both paradoxical and astonishing. It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied.
Live for what gives life. Everyone lives for something. Are you living for what really gives life in the end? Live for what gives life
John 3:1-16
Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.[a]”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”[d]
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.[e] 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,[f] 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”[g]
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Sermon
Do you realize that the founder of one of the great movements of Christianity, one that we’re a part of, was a 37 year old adult convert?
Did you remember that he was highly religious – a monk and a scholar – for about 15 years when he thought heaven was closed to him?
Do you know it after that time that he risked his significant political position?
I’m talking about Martin Luther. Martin wasn’t the only one.
Do you know William Wilberforce? What great thing did William Wilberforce do? William Wilberforce was the most influential figure in the end of the slave trade in England.
He was 27 when the slave trade became an abomination to him. 27 when the whole creation sang in praise on an Easter morning.
Chuck Colson
The “hatchet man” of President Nixon in the Watergate scandal.
He was 40 years old when he professed faith in Jesus.
He never read a Bible growing up. He only went to church for nominal visits. His mother said he should be a pastor for “social reasons”.
If it holds, I think probably the most radical conversion of my lifetime will probably be Kanye West.
Kanye is 5 years older than I am. He has experienced every level of fame, wealth, and significance. He is married to an American icon, Kim Kardashian.
It’s at 42 he says he is a born again Christian and is saved by faith in Jesus Christ.
In today’s lesson, we’ve got a guy just as famous, popular, and out there. And yet he is promised, and I’m pretty sure receives, an awesome, new life.
Discover
You know what is the greatest threat to your new life, a life that makes a difference? It’s not your age. It’s not that you grew up in an irreligious house. It’s not that you grew up in a religious. It’s not your education. It’s not your morality or your immorality.
Jesus invites you today not only to identify the threat to your new life, and the new life.
Part 1 – the threat to new life
If anyone had found the foundation and secret to a great life, you might think it was Nicodemus. He is a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council. Verse 1 tells us he was
Male – important in a patriarchal society
Older
Pharisee
Ruling council – one of the 70 most important men in Israel at the time – more elite than our Senate.
He calls Jesus, “Rabbi”. Could have been some sarcasm here or insincerity, but also some incredible generosity. Uneducated teacher d
Jesus tells him, “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (verse 3)
Even if you are person who doesn’t have a specific idea in mind when you think of the “new birth”, I think it’s really easy to have a specific idea in mind. It can be easy to think it’s like this:
Really bad people – drug addicts, abusers; people like Chuck Colson, maybe Kanye West
But what about Martin Luther? What about Nicodemus?
The foundation and secret to a great life, a new life cannot be more traditional morality or religiosity. It’s not immorality, but it’s not for morality either. It can’t be. Nicodemus represents everything of traditional morality and religion.
If traditional morality and religion was the secret to a great life, a new life, Jesus would tell Nicodemus, you must be born again.
This is the number one threat to the Christian faith. It is not various kinds of sexuality. It is not stealing. It’s not lieing and all the rotten things people say about one another, although that is a close second. It’s pride. I’m just going to speak for myself here for a second.
The times when I experienced the most conflict in my life, the most struggle, intense self-doubt, where the times when I thought I could do it. I had it covered.
It’s a life about me. Lifting myself up.
Everyone needs the new life. The greatest threat to the new life is thinking I don’t need it.
Part 2 – the new life
So what is the foundation and secret of a new life?
Jesus says “they are born of water and the Spirit” (verse 5). Supernatural cleansing as well as a supernatural gifting of the Holy Spirit. I cannot do this on my own.
He is flashing back to Genesis where he says darkness is over the surface of the deep and the spirit hovered. We’ve got to start creation over again. We need a new creation to happen to you.
I realize that a lot of us perhaps, most of us, were baptized as children. For many of us then, it’s a far off, a distant experience.
Basically every adult who stays around the Christian life has a time and probably multiple times when they can say, that baptism that happened long ago, it’s real. I have been born again. For me, 2 times 1) is God real; 2) do I need everyone else’s approval.
I’m going to stop trying to call the shots in my life
Jesus stops being a facet of your life and a component of your life and he starts being your life.
That’s two things.
First, Jesus says, “be born again”. No child births themselves. It’s mom’s anguish. It’s mom’s burden. She does it for you.
You cannot make yourself
Salvation is God’s labor. It’s God’s bleeding.
You can’t cause it control it
But you absolutely can benefit from it.
You know it is there. There is evidence, very clearly. Jesus says, “the wind blows where it pleases”. Do you think really the new life of God could blow in your life without messing up your hair?
You’ve got let the new life happen to you. The first thing is to just “endure” or “pass through”
The process that brings new life doesn’t just say, “I’m sorry for the bad stuff I’ve done” it also says, “I’m sorry for the good things I've done that I thought count for something.” They don’t, they don’t count at all. To see that it’s his works that have saved us.
Second, Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up”
But what happened in the desert—you find it back in the book of Numbers 21:4-9—is that the children of God had sinned. Israel had sinned. And God sent a plague of snakes, venomous snakes, and they bit them and they were dying. And in a sense, the venom represented sin in their life. Basically, the venom represented in their bodies what was killing them in their soul. And what Moses was told to do was to take a bronze serpent—an image of the thing that was killing them—put it up on a pole (you know, “as Moses lifted up the serpent”), and all they had to do was look… because some of them were so sick, and so immobilized, they couldn’t possibly go over to it and rub it or touch it or any of that. All you have to do is look. I should even just say, all you can do is look.
The second thing is to look.
You can have a new life.
Can you pass through the experience, whatever God in his Word might ask you go to through?
Can you look at someone taking your sin?
Conclusion
I ask you sometimes, “What is God up to in your life and the lives of the people around you?” Some of you look really uncomfortable by that question. Jesus says “no one can see the kingdom of God”.
You can see God’s kingdom. Not directly. You see the effects of the wind. How can the power of the almighty God blow in your life and you
Is it reasonable that the power of the almighty God would blow around in your life and it wouldn’t blow around your hair a little bit? your money, your relationships, your time, your priorities.
Bottom line: Get a (new) life.