Forensic Faith and Scandalous Grace

John 4
David Stockton - July 26, 2020

Good morning, Living Streams. Another Sunday here, July 26. It’s good to be with you. It’s real important that we continue to do this. I’ve been thinking about this. It’s so different. I mean, I’m here talking to a camera—you’re looking at your phone or a TV, something like. It doesn’t necessarily feel the same, but I know that, at least in the spiritual realm, but I also believe in the natural, it is bringing us together when we take the time to do this: worshipping together, hearing from the word of God together, having this common experience together. I really think it’s important we continue to push into this. 

I know we’re going to be getting a new Executive Order or some new details from the governor as this last 30-day deal comes to a close. I want you to stay tuned to our website, and also on Sunday mornings we’ll be announcing what’s going on, what’s next for us at Living Streams. But please continue. I know summertime is going and school’s going to fire up, and all these changes, it’s easy to let this type of thing slide. But it’s really important we stay together as we go into whatever the Lord has for us, but also whatever the world’s going to throw at us. We need each other. Thanks for sticking with us.

Today we’re going to be in the book of John again. As we’re trekking through, as we’re trying to hear from the Apostle John about Jesus. John actually was writing his gospel, his book about Jesus long after the other three writers. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are called gospels, written about Jesus. And the three of those, Matthew, Mark and Luke were written probably a little closer to about 60 A.D., thirty years or so after Jesus was gone. And yet John was more like 90 A.D. It was the end of his life. The Roman persecution of both Jews and Christians had just been rampant. John and many other Christians had been forced out of Jerusalem. He landed up in Ephesus where there was a church going on up there. 

As he was writing this book he had probably had that cultural context in mind. It was not necessarily Judaism he was writing into. He was probably more writing this gospel for the Greek mind as he was trying to translate to them who God is. We see that in John Chapter 1 when he says that Jesus is the “word.” The “word” in Greek is “logos” which is this powerful, intense Greek word that basically has to do with God’s logical argument used to convince the world that he is loving and just. That’s one of the definitions of it. It’s a logical argument.

The Greeks really valued philosophy and all those things. So he’s appealing to them saying, basically, the word, Jesus was God’s logical answer to all the questions humanity could ever have. In another place it says that the logos is the universal principle, the controlling principle of the world. Again, that’s a real ode to the Greeks that would be reading this later on.

We know from the book of John that his whole premise in writing this book, the thing that he wanted so badly—and he says this in John 20:31: “that you may believe. I have written every single word of this book, I’ve written all these stories, these signs and wonders that have taken place, these ‘I am’ statements of Jesus. All of this eyewitness accounts of what I experienced. I interacted with Jesus. I’m writing these things down so that you may believe in him.”

We’ve done some work to try to define what belief is. Obviously there are a lot of different things people say when it comes to belief. Is is more of a heady thing? Is it more of an experiential thing? And the way I really believe John and the New Testament writers try and define faith or believing in Jesus is to have a pledge of allegiance.

We do the pledge of allegiance to America. We know our country right now is experiencing a lot of division, a lot of unrest, a lot of challenge, a lot of stress, a lot of anger, even guilt. There are a lot of those things going on. And yet we pledge allegiance to this country that we will stand up for her, that we will fight for her. Though I don’t think that’s bad, the Scripture calls us to pledge our allegiance to Jesus and his kingdom. It calls us to no longer associate ourselves as Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free is what Paul was writing in his day and age. And we could say we’re not supposed to be identifying ourselves and camping primarily in black or white, Democrat or Republican, rich or poor. None of those matter when we come to the cross of Jesus Christ. We are now a new creation. We are now people of God. We are now citizens of his kingdom and we have to remember that that is our call. We are pledging allegiance—not to some political party, not to some social justice organization. What we’re called to do is pledge our allegiance to Jesus and his Spirit and what he’s at work in this world.

I want to remind you, church, to make sure and be careful not to get all caught up in the vain jangling, in the convincing philosophies of our day. But remember to keep about the gospel. Keep about what the Bible teaches and make sure that we’re really citizens of his kingdom above all else. It’s not wrong to be Irish. It’s not wrong to be African or to celebrate those things. That’s great. But when we come into the house of God, what we are is One. We are all the same at the foot of the cross. We’ve got to remember that as we go forward into this divisive time.

Not just pledging allegiance to God, but in some ways we order our lives in accordance with his, with his word. That’s what faith means. We reorient our lives. We set up our lives in accordance with who he is and what he did.

Ultimately, I love how John has this idea of building trust over time. When he first met Jesus he was the Son of Thunder. He was this fiery guy. But towards the end of John, and as we go on, he’s the one laying against Jesus’ breast. He’s the one that Jesus loved. That’s how he was identifying himself. No longer this fiery kind of—maybe even arrogant or whatever he was—but now this person who is totally thankful to be part of the family of God, to have known Jesus. 

I hope that’s what stirs in us in this time. We’ve called ourselves to this. From the very beginning of this COVID season, that God is asking us to be humble and to be generous. I really want us to be good at that and known for that as we through this. Both in our individual lives and as a church as a whole as well.

John 3:31-36 kind of sums this up, this whole concept of faith. Once again John reiterates what he’s trying to do: 

The one who comes from above is above all; 

Again, philosophical. You can see him speaking to Greeks here. The Logos.

the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, 

Only Jesus knows what is true because he has been with the Father. He has been outside of this corrupt world.

but no one [in this corrupt world] accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. 

Has basically pledged their allegiance. They’ve stamped their card in the truth. They’ve basically said, “I’m for the truth.” If we put our allegiance, if we put our faith in Christ.

For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God[ gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.

So that’s the heaviness of what happens. Our faith really does determine our standing with God. By faith we can enter into his love and grace and mercy because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross, the price that he paid. Or without faith in Jesus we find ourselves remaining under the wrath of God, where the punishment that was poured out on Christ is not taken on our behalf. So the wrath of God remains.

Faith is so important, so valuable. It really is what pivots us for all of eternity. So we need to continue to learn about faith, practice faith, teach our kids about faith. All of that.

That being said, let’s go to John 4 and we’re going to get another story from John about a person who came to faith in Jesus. He’s already given us John the Baptist, who came and put his faith in his cousin, that he was the Messiah. The reason he did that is because God spoke to him and said, “The one that you see the dove descending on, the Holy Spirit descending on, that is the Messiah. And John was out there one time and he baptized Jesus and, sure enough, the dove came down and descended. The Spirit like a dove descended on him. So John knew at that point, “This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

The next story we have that John tells us about is he and his disciple friends were going with Jesus to a wedding at Cana. There, at the wedding at Cana, Jesus turned water into wine. It says right after that story, “This is when the disciples began to believe in Jesus.” Because of a sign that he had done. They had been following and hanging out with him and listening to him because of the things he was saying and teaching. But now they knew there was something more than this being a man who was doing something special. They knew that this was God in the flesh. They knew that this was the Logos as John would later call him.

Now many believed on him after the signs and wonders and cleansing of the temple that he did. Which is interesting because they’re not hearing Jesus speak about the things of God. They’re not seeing some miraculous sign that we get recorded. They’re just seeing the righteous indignation of Jesus as he’s cleansing the temple, as he’s standing against the oppressors. He’s fighting with them. It says many began to believe that he was more than just a man, more than just someone who was coming doing something good. That he was the Messiah. He was God’s answer. He was God’s one that was coming to save and redeem the world. 

So we have all of those and then today we get a story about a woman that Jesus meets at a well. So kids, before we jump into it, I want you to draw me a picture of the Samaritan woman at a well. I’m so thankful again for all the pictures that you’ve drawn. And adults, you could draw me pictures any time you want. One time I had adult draw me a picture. It was pretty cool. I liked it. 

Just so you know I’m taking this seriously, I drew one. And you’re going to have to beat this, okay? This is my drawing that I’m going to show you right now Bam. What are you going to do about this? I would like to say my kids drew this, but it was me. I’m not great at it. My wife, she’s really good at it. This is my woman at the well and it ain’t pretty. But that’s okay. You’ve got to beat that. If you do, if you give me the picture and it’s the best one for whatever reason, you’ll get a little something in your mailbox. Many of you have already. And thanks for telling me thanks for that, but I’m really thanking you for what you’ve done, so we’re good there.

All right. John Chapter 4. The woman at the well:

Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

So after talking to Nicodemus, after cleansing the temple, Jesus had a lot of people following him. And he did exactly what his cousin John the Baptist was doing, he would baptize them. There’s something very significant about baptism. I’m not going to talk a lot about baptism, but I do want to say, if you are someone who wants to pledge allegiance to Jesus, you believe in Jesus, you want to associate your life with Jesus, you want to hide your life in Christ, baptism is something that is all over the New Testament. In the life of Jesus, Jesus himself was baptized. So please don’t hesitate. Don’t wait. Contact us. Let us know you’re ready to get baptized. Bam. We’re going to do this thing. I know guys are getting baptized this week. I know there’s a few people we’re going to do a baptism for in the next few weeks. I think I might be baptizing one of my daughters tomorrow, which is exciting. Baptism is real, it’s biblical, it’s Jesus and if you’re ready to follow Jesus, Jesus would say, “Come into the waters. Die to the old life and be born again to the new life.” That’s the death under the water and resurrection coming out of the water. We’re following Jesus. You gain something in the waters of baptism you cannot gain any other way. So get baptized.

Verse 4:

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

So it’s hot. Not a great time of day to be hanging out. And yet, he’s thirsty. So he stops at this well. And then it says:

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

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.)

So here we’ve got to really understand some context. Jerusalem is here. Galilee is here. Right in the middle is this place called Samaria. Samaria was a place that, basically, when the Assyrians came down and took all the northern ten tribes into exile, and later the Babylonians took the two southern tribes of Israel (twelve tribes of Israel) and took them into Babylonian captivity, the people that were left—they left the people that were impoverished, the people that were unable to make the journey, they left the people that basically, they rejected certain people and said, “You stay here. We’re not worried about you at all.” And those people ended up intermarrying with nations around that started to come into that time, as the Jews evacuated that place, people of other nations came in. So this is where the Samaritan group became part of Israel’s history.

So now, as the diasporas come back, as the exiles return, and Israel is filled with Jews who returned, now there’s this kind of separation. There are the Jews that would call themselves purebred Jews and then there’s the Samaritans that would be like halfbred Jews. And so there was this real separation, segregation. There was this real prejudice, racism, whatever you want to call it, that was taking place at this time, even to the extent where now, Jesus, who was a Jewish man, was sitting at a well and he’s thirsty. It’s noon. There’s a lady coming who’s a Samaritan, to the same well. She’s got a bucket and Jesus says, “Can I have a drink.

That seems very innocent. It seems innocuous. However, for this woman, it was startling. It was scandalous. And Jesus would have known that. His disciples had gone and so, now there’s one man, a single Jewish man, with a single Jewish woman, and you could only imagine what the tabloids would say that were following Jesus, how they would spin that. But this is a little bit scandalous all by itself, because of the way the traditions the culture of that day would have viewed the situation.

So Jesus actually extending this invitation to say, “Hey, can I have a drink? Can you and I join each other in this,” is actually a very, very provocative type thing. You can only imagine what started to spin in this Samaritan woman’s mind. She could have thought, Maybe this guy’s hitting on me. She could have thought all kinds of different things. But Jesus is asking her for a drink, obviously with pure intentions, and you will see all of that as it goes on. 

But she kind of says, “How could you do this?” And maybe she’s being a little coy. Maybe she’s really offended. We don’t know any of that. But we know it’s startling. She just basically says, “How could you do this?”

John Piper, as he was unpacking this a little bit, he has this quote that I think kind of helps us understand a little bit about how intense this was.

He is standing by the fountain marked “colored”…

He’s harkening back to that segregation time, before the civil rights movement. 

He is standing by a the fountain marked “colored” watching a black woman fill her water bottle and then, for all to see, says, “Can I have a drink from your water bottle?” She says, at the end of verse 9, “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” But more literally it says, Jews don’t “use together” with Samaritans…

 We’re trying to create a separation. We don’t want anything do with each other.

…You can’t be asking me to use the same bucket. That isn’t done. –John Piper

And so here, I’m just trying to give us a little context, but to ultimately say Jesus didn’t play by these rules. Jesus was someone who saw people for who they were. He knew that all people were created equal and he valued them. He loved them. He was not worried about maintaining culture or maintaining really stupid cultural ideals He saw through all of that. He saw people as people. We, as the church, in particular, we’ve got to be better than this. We’ve really got to watch out for the divisions that are in our society seeping their way into our church, our family. It is not to be for the people of God. We are to be united. We are to, like we said, be citizens of heaven. We are to be at the foot of the cross. And all men are equal, all woman are equal at the foot of the cross. There is no difference. No difference at all.

We’re trying to say, “We’re on the good side. They’re on the bad side.” But here’s a news flash for you. All of us are on the wrong side. God is on the right side. God is the only one who’s not corrupt. God is the only one who sees things clearly. All we can do is hope to land ourselves on his side by his grace and mercy. By the filling with the Spirit and the revelation that he gives us in the word of God. We might be able to be on his side here and there, off and on. That’s the goal. But we should never try to villify each other or start to speak ill of each other. We just need to realize that we all come to the foot of the cross the same. 

And here’s Jesus just shooting right through all these prejudices, all of this racism. He just shoots right through it and goes straight to the heart. And we’re going to see this unpacked a little more here. Verse 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.”

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

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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.”

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.”

So in this next section Jesus is basically saying to her, “Hey, I know what the world has told you. I know what maybe your own soul has told you. I know that you feel like I think I’m superior. You think you’re superior. There are all these arguments that go back and forth between Samaritans and Jews.” But he’s saying, “Look, if you had any idea of this moment that we’re in right now. If you had any idea who it is that is offering you living water, you wouldn’t be worried about buckets. You wouldn’t be worried about prejudices, stereotypes, you wouldn’t be worried about all of those things. You would be able to receive water. You would be able to receive refreshment that would last forever. Not just today. Not just a few hours.”

He’s obviously speaking to her of the spiritual water that comes when he brings salvation to a person. That, like we said, with faith, she could pivot into eternal life. That’s what Jesus is offering her. She doesn’t get it at all yet. She’s still caught up in theology, or the political stances of the day. But Jesus is saying, “No, no. It’s not about that.” 

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

We don’t know the emotion that she says that with. We know because of what’s about to happen that it was a loaded statement.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 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.

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

You can see this moment where all of a sudden the air gets so thick and so tense, as Jesus says to her, “Hey, go call your husband.” 

Whether he knew because of something he’d observed, or she’s coming a strange time of day so he knows there’s something off there, whether it’s a revelation the Spirit has given him, but he speaks to her about this place in her life that is painful. And she has had five husbands that either she has left, but that’s probably not true in that society. It’s more likely that she has been rejected by them. And maybe she’s a very beautiful woman. We don’t know. Maybe she’s really given herself to these men physically. We don’t know exactly. But we know that five times she’s been rejected. And here she is in a new relationship. Thirsty as can be. Trying to find some satisfaction. Trying to find something in what a man, what a husband can give her. And the one that she has now is not legitimate. 

In this moment you can see her eyes probably were widening a little bit. She might have started sweating a little bit more. And she says to him, “I see you’re a prophet.” And instead of saying, “I would like to know more about living water. I do need help. I have a problem,” she says, “Well you Jews say this and that. And we say this and that.” So she goes to kind of this religious, theological division, and philosophies that have gone on. Again, totally missing the point. Totally deflecting. 

In the New Testament it says that we are supposed to watch out for “vain janglings” in the King James Version, which I think is such a funny phrase. But we’re also supposed to watch out for endless genealogies and cunning philosophies. And you guys, please know, what you’re seeing on your social media feed, what you’re seeing on the news, it really has to be taken with a lot of filtering. You can’t get caught up in what’s going on. It is exhausting. It is humanism. It is not of God. Jesus speaks of things of God that are not corrupt They’re not human. They’re not temporal. But right now we have just go so many “vain janglings” going on. 

So please remember to every once in a while get out of there. Take a deep breath. Read some scripture. Put on some worship music. Just cleanse your mind. And before you go into those worlds, before you turn on the news, before you do social media, pause, relax, say, “Am I ready for this?” Pray before you go in. I really think it’s an important practice that we’re doing because of how powerful these things are in our day and age right now.

She’s got Jesus in front of her and she’s still not able to connect because she’s so caught up with these things. Then they go on and Jesus begins to talk to her. He says:

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

I am statement. Jesus is using this powerful Jewish language to say, “I am he.” That’s this moment of truth right there. Where Jesus kind of just drops the bomb and he says, “Look. We talked about living water and what I can offer. We talked about where you’re at truly in your life. Now I’m telling you you’ve got to get off these things. What God is interested in is you and your worshiping him in Spirit and in truth.”

In Spirit and truth, there’s a lot of ways to define it. It simply could be worshiping with your emotion, with your expression, all of that. And truth could be more your mind. I think that’s the safest way to unpack a little bit of Jesus’ teaching in the other gospels, that we should worship the Lord our God with all our heart and our soul and mind and strength. I think this is the way that God is saying to this woman, this is what God is after. He wants you to worship him. As you do, you will find in him all that you need to satisfy your soul.

Really an intense moment. It’s funny. Just then the disciples come back. We’re not going to get into that. But I want to pick up in verse 39. The disciples just got back. They were totally wigged out. Why is Jesus talking to this woman? What’s been going on? This is not going to look good in the press reports. All this stuff. Then the woman, she’s wigging out because of this moment. And she runs back into town. And then it says in verse 39:

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.

They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

So many more began to believe. At first ,they believed on her word as she was wigging out. Again, this lady in that society was probably not known as someone who was very trustworthy as she’s gone from husband to husband. But here she comes. And there was something so compelling about what she was saying about her interaction with Jesus. And many more believed. But they did the right thing. They didn’t leave it at that. They actually went out to where Jesus was. They sought him out and said, “We want to know for ourselves. We don’t want to just live off the testimony of someone else. We want to know for ourselves.”

So they came and they got to spend two days with Jesus, the Logos. The guiding principle of the world. God’s logical argument. To show that he is loving and just. Jesus, God in the flesh. They got to spend two days with him. And according to his words, they heard his words and they really started to believe. They even declared that. “We no longer believe because of what she said. We believe because we’ve heard with own ears, seen with our own eyes who you are.”

This week, again to try to unpack this idea of faith, my wife was actually listening to a podcast. I’ve told you before she’s my teacher. She teaches me almost everything I’ve ever learned. As I was listening to it, there was this concept that this guy was putting forward. He was saying there’s reasonable faith, there’s blind faith, and then there’s forensic faith. This guy actually was a forensic scientist. He was a cold case detective. He sought to disprove Christianity but ended coming to Christianity because he said it’s the most logical, reasonable thing he’s ever experienced.

I think it’s important for us to unpack. Unreasonable faith is the kind of faith where, against the evidence you see, you continue to believe. Flat earth. Sorry some of you out there. I know you still love it. But it’s against all the evidence that we’ve seen. Now you can discredit the evidence or whatever. But the evidence shows that the earth is round. We’ve seen pictures and all of that. But if you continue to believe in that flat earth, you’re going against what evidence would say. So it’s an unreasonable faith. I would apply to that to people who believe that there isn’t a Designer, all those type of things. But again, that’s a whole other thing.

Blind faith is where you’re believing based on something you’ve heard from somebody else, or something you haven’t experienced or you haven’t known firsthand. Or something you believe without really caring about evidence. Maybe it’s just the way you were raised so you continue to go that way, believing in Jesus, or believing in whatever else you believe or you were raised to believe. Or, like these people, some them could have believed according to this woman’s testimony. Blind faith is not necessarily bad, because sometimes you end up in the right spot by blind faith. But it’s still not the faith that I think John is writing to help people experience It’s not the faith that I think the New Testament writers and Paul would really encourage.

Forensic faith is faith that is based on evidence. It’s, “I believe and yet I’m going to test this belief. I’m going to try these things out. I’m going to try and go get my own experience and understanding and revelation.” I think this is an important thing to remember as Christians in our day and age, that we need to spend time with Jesus.

Right now you can go online and you can hear the greatest bible teachers. You can hear worship songs that really are powerful and somebody you know, out of the secret place with the Lord they’ve brought these things out. You can feel like you’re having a secret place experience with the Lord based on a song. Nothing is wrong with these things. But if that’s all there is, it could be that our faith is a little blind. And my fear is that, as our faith gets tested, and I believe testing has come and will continue to come for a season, if our faith is not really forensic, if it’s not rooted and grounded and deep and strong, then it’s going to get blown away, washed away. Like Jesus said, “Those who build their house on the sand, when the storm comes, it’s over.” 

So I really want to call our church to really try and dive into a forensic faith. Really put our faith to the test. Really study the scriptures. Really search things out. When you hear somebody say something, don’t just take it because they’re cool looking or whatever. But actually process it through. Put it through the filter of the scriptures. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral. You can look that up later if you want. It’s really helpful to filter it and help us understand truth. 

That’s the call from John. He’s really trying to get us to grow in faith. My call as a pastor, and to myself and my own family, is to help us grow in faith, not just have easy answers or kind of, “This is the way it’s always been.” I’m always trying to tell my kids, when they say “Hey what do we believe about that?” I say, “Well, your mom and I have decided that we believe this because the scriptures say this, but you’re going to have to decide what you believe.” I’m trying to encourage that because the faith that we have, I think for a season might cover them, or sanctify them as the scripture teaches, but there’s going to come a day when they have to express their own. They have to have their own relationship with God. So we need to be helpful in that regard, as well.

We’re going to wrap things up. We’re going to have a response time. A slide will appear on your screen. You at home, if you’re in a group, you can interact with that. Someone step up and be bold and say, “I’ll take the lead and do this,” If you’re by yourself you can just interact with it as well. As always you can put comments down below. We love to hear from you in any way, shape or form, what the Lord’s been speaking to you, what you need a prayer request for. We love all of that. Go ahead and take a little time to let this word settle in and respond. 

Jesus is pursuing you just like the Samaritan woman. He has time for you and wants to give you living water.

Take amount and see if you feel pursued by Jesus. If not, ask Him to show you His love.

Take another moment and assess if your faith in Jesus is strong right now. If not, ask Jesus to help you believe.

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Cleansing and Zeal

God is Good, Evil is Real, and the Devil is a Liar

David Stockton
Series: John
Chapter 2

Well, here we are again. Welcome, Living Streams! It’s good to be with you. I want to say a prayer real quick as we jump into this. It’s kind of a wild world out there. Sometimes it dan be a wild world inside our own bodies. Let’s take a little moment and pray.

Lord Jesus, we do thank you for today. Lord, we want to hear from you. We need your word. We don’t need anymore words from mankind. We just need to hear from you—truth. We need heaven’s perspective. Lord, we’re hungry for your word. We don’t live by anything but the words that come from your mouth. We want to live, Lord. We don’t want to just exist. So please come speak to us.

Thank you for your Spirit that can speak to us. Thank you for the scriptures that have so clearly laid out for us your plan and how you work within humanity. Be with us, Lord, I pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, we’ve got 2020 still going on. In 2020 we’ve got the COVID-19, the death toll, the quarantine, the Donald Trump, the liberal, the conservative, the Black Lives Matter, the cisgender privilege. We’ve got riots, defunding police, it’s 115 degrees out there sometimes, and Disneyland is closed! 

So. Yeah. All of those words probably make you kind of catch your breath a little bit, or lose a breath, or your heart pace quickens a little bit. I understand that and I want to end that kind of wildness that we’re all experiencing day in and day out.

I want to say these words. This is 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 from the Message. Just let this wash over you:

The world is unprincipled… 

As my grandpa used to say, “God is good, evil is real, and the devil is a liar.” And that’s an absolute truth. 

The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.

You remember that commercial that used to just go, “Ah, the power of cheese.” When it would talk about satisfying your hunger, I just feel like reading the scriptures these days has been just like, ‘Ah, the power of God’s word to just come in and satisfy a weary, thirsty or confused soul.” 

And I just love this verse. We’re going to get into a whole bunch more verses. But right now, as this message is going on, as you’re listening to this, in our Sanctuary, there is what we’re calling kind of a “worship attack” going on—a “prayer attack” going on. That sounds kind of weird. I understand that. But basically, the concept is we’ve been opening like we said in the announcements, our sanctuary for in-person, on-campus gatherings for a limited capacity of people that are coming. The whole point is they are coming to just pray. They’re coming to intercede. They’re coming to engage in spiritual warfare as the Bible teaches us. They’re coming to kind of see what we can do. Like Moses, Aaron and Hur, to lift our hands to turn the tide of the battle that’s going on in our society, and to make sure that all of the division and corruption that is in our society doesn’t find its way seeping into our church, let alone the Church of God as a whole.

So I’m so excited about what’s going on there. And with the homeless stuff that’s going on. I had some great conversations with some homeless brothers and sisters that have been coming. They’re very thankful for the relief. They’re very thankful for being able to kind of take a nap and then wake up without some startling thing where someone’s kind of hitting them, telling them they’ve got to get out of here. Or someone’s trying to steal their stuff. They can wake up in peace. They keep mentioning, “It’s just so quiet in here. So comfortable in here.”

It’s been a real blessing to be able to spend time with those men and women and to see maybe if there are some ways we can help them in a more longterm way.

We’re going to jump into John Chapter 2 here. We’re going to start in verse 13. 

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 

The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.

And so here we have again this concept that God is good and evil is real. Mankind has a problem. It’s got this depraved nature within us. And then we have the devil and the deceit that comes from that regard as well.

So Jesus is here in the temple courts and he does something fascinating. He does something wild. He’s watching this gathering take place. It’s the Passover time, so there are probably close to two million Jews that have gathered in Jerusalem. So the city is just bustling. And there at the temple, which is the central focus, people are coming to make sacrifices. According to Judaism that’s what was required. A sacrifice needed to be made to kind of show penance—to get forgiven of your sins. That was the deal that God had made with the people. 

So they would come to the temple courts with some sort of offering. That was to admit that they had been guilty, they had sinned. It was to admit that God is good and God is right, and they want to be right with God. And they were thankful that they could do something to actually make themselves right with God. So they would come and offer these sacrifices. And they would come with a dove. Or they would come with a cow. Or they would come with sheep, or whatever it might be. 

What they experienced as they got there, though, was the people who were running the temple, the priests, all those, had realized that they could make some money off of these people. So one of the things that was required is your animal would have to be perfect. It would basically have to be inspected by the priest. And if there was any fault found in it, they would not let them sacrifice that. So what the priests did was, they came up with their own kind of priest-inspected cattle, sheep and doves. So, if you wanted to come and purchase one of those, you wouldn’t have to carry an animal from wherever you came from. You wouldn’t have to worry about the unscrupulous priests who would come and find fault. You could just come and pay for an already-approved animal to sacrifice. The only problem was, it was a lot more expensive. There was quite a service fee added to it.

So Jesus was watching this take place. And not only that, but the money changers that Jesus was dealing with, they would also say, “We as the priests, we can’t receive that money that has Caesar’s image on it because it’s not holy money.” So they actually made up their own money. So not only did you have to purchase a priest-approved sacrifice, but you would also have to exchange your money into priest-approved money so that you could purchase your priest-approved sacrifice. Basically, people were just getting totally, totally ripped off.

So Jesus has come with his family. Jesus is thirty years old. Jesus has not gone public with his ministry. We talked about two weeks ago in John 2, at the beginning, really the first kind of revelation outside of his own family structure was to his disciples and to the people at the wedding at Cana when he changed the water into wine. That’s how John introduces us to Jesus. The first miraculous, first revealing of his glory wasn’t in some grand standing way. It was a very small town.

So now, here’s this other kind of revelation that’s happening, where Jesus is revealing a little bit more of who he is and the authority that he does have. So he’s just pulling out this whip as he’s watching person after person getting ripped off. Maybe he was getting to the front of the line. Maybe he was just thinking of his own mom and what she has done as she has come and been ripped off. We don’t know what it was that finally just kind of broke free in him. But he actually went over and found a cord and made a whip. And he just started making a scene. He was wild. He was whipping…I don’t know if he was whipping people or just kind of cracking the whip. We don’t know. 

We know he was throwing the tables over and he was just really attacking this whole enterprise that was going on. He was driving all the animals out, kind of causing all of that commotion. People running out watching for the stampede. He comes over to those with the doves. I guess he didn’t want to just let them go, so he just pushed them all out, got them all out. He threw the tables over, got the money changers out. He just basically went on a rampage. 

Then, when it all settled, or whatever happened as he was walking out, we don’t know exactly when security came. We don’t know exactly what happened, but they said, “What authority do you have to do this?” Like, “Who do you think you are coming in here and doing this?”

Obviously they didn’t know—no one knew at that point, but Jesus just says, “You have turned my Father’s house into a den of thieves. Get out of here. Stop turning my Father’s house into a market.”

So he’s saying, “My Father’s house.” He’s starting to allude to this connection that he had with God that was very offensive to the people. What John writes here is that, he remembered later on as he’s kind of remembering the scriptures, in Psalm 69, in talking about this Messiah, it’s a messianic Psalm. It says that the zeal for his house will consume him. So they’re kind of putting these pieces together, that something is happening, that something more than meets the eye is going on with this Jesus guy. And he’s fulfilling these messianic prophecies. Zeal for his house and what takes place there. Righteous indignation and this rising up to stand against oppression. And to stand for the people of God. 

I think about the times in my life where I’ve probably been most zealous, where I’ve been most enraged. As a grownup I don’t feel like I get enraged real easy. It takes me a while. But as a young boy, I had two older brothers and I don’t know if they loved picking on me, or if they loved seeing me lose it. I’m not sure which one they loved more. But they loved one of those very much. There were many times, as the smallest, and scrawniest of my clan, my brothers would pick on me and pick on me and pick on me. Ultimately, I would get to a point where I would just scream. I would just start throwing fists and they said it didn’t hurt bad, but my tiny little fists would hurt them, so they would go running as I was throwing my fists everywhere. I remember one time my brother locked himself in the bathroom. I was so mad that I got a butter knife and stabbed it through the bathroom door. I was so enraged. So enraged. 

Obviously Jesus was not losing it in that regard. He was still under control. We see where he kind of comes to the birds and those people and he’s able to say, “Hey, you need to go off this way.” So he was still in control. But he was so filled with this outrage. Zeal is the word used in the Bible. Actually, in the Greek the word is zelos. It really is kind of righteous indignation. It’s jealousy, but not in the sick way, but basically like a husband and someone is coming to take his wife, or maybe even to rape his wife, and the amount of angst, the amount of rage that would be built up in a husband in that situation. It’s protective. It’s standing against. It’s this zeal that Jesus shows in this moment.

For you kids, real quick, before we go on. This is the picture that I would love to see you draw. It sounds kind of interesting to draw a picture of Jesus with a whip. But I think it’s important because I want you to understand this aspect of God. That he will fight for what’s right. He will stand against evil.  So go ahead and try to draw a little temple, and maybe a picture of Jesus holding a whip. I think that would be a fun thing for me to see. So if you do that, go ahead and email it to me at david@livingstreams.org and I’d love to see that. Again, whoever kind of wins the day will get something in their mailbox. Some of you should be receiving some of those things if you haven’t already.

That’s what’s taking place. That’s the story. It’s so interesting to me because John introduces Jesus in John Chapter 2 as someone who turns water into wine, as someone who brings this conversion from water to wine. And then in the very next breath he shows Jesus as this one who cleanses. 

In the commentary I was reading, they were talking about how that’s the way of the Lord. We don’t get cleaned up before conversion. First we come to Jesus and we are converted. And then as we walk with him we start to find the temple of our own lives cleansed. It’s so important to remember that. 

And if you are someone that has not surrendered to Jesus, if you have not given your life to Jesus, if you have not said, “Jesus, I need you, I need you, please come and save me from myself. Wave me from my world. Save me from my family history. Save me from whatever it might be. Save me from my anger. Save me from my greed.” Whatever it might be. If you have not called out to Jesus and allowed him to come and convert you into one of his own children to transform your mind and heart, to help you be born again as Michael was talking about from John Chapter 3 last week, like Nicodemus.

It’s not enough to just try. It’s not enough to just fight, We actually need conversion. We actually need to be born again. We need the Spirit of God to come and dwell in us, to overcome our own sinful nature. It’s the only way we can go forward. As we do, as we make that pledge, as we make that pledge of allegiance to Jesus, as we put our trust in him, as we receive him into our life as Lord and surrender ourselves to him, then what happens is cleansing begins. That’s what happens in John 2, as well. 

I want to talk a lot about the cleansing today. The cleansing of the temple. There are a couple of quotes here that I think are really helpful in helping us understand Jesus, which is the whole goal of every time we preach. To understand who God is. And understand a little bit of how this message can apply to us today.

But first I want to put up a quote from G. K. Chesterton. He is just someone who is really good with words. Here’s what he says about Jesus in regards to what he has heard about Jesus and what he reads in the scriptures. He says:

Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament, I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not of a person with parted hair in the middle, or hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry God—and always like a God. The diction about Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive. But the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; It is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea. Morally it is equally terrific; he called himself a sword of slaughter and told men to buy swords if they sold their coats for them. … Here we must remember the difficult definition of Christianity already given; Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other.

I love the song that we were singing this morning, talking about there’s nothing stronger than the love of God. There’s nothing stronger than the love of God. And it is so true. God’s love for you is the most fierce, powerful thing the world has ever known. It is absolutely true. But at the same time, God’s desire for justice rages just as strong. In God we have this razor’s edge where he is perfectly loving and kind and good; but at the same time, totally, totally given to destruction of evil. And that’s in Exodus Chapter 34. We see the image of God. He is abounding in love and faithfulness to thousands of generations, but he will not leave the guilty unpunished,

Sometimes in our gospel message, sometimes in the reading of our scriptures, and sometimes in today’s preaching, we hear about the love of God. And it’s good and it’s right and it’s wonderful, but it almost becomes in exception to the justice of God, the zealous and jealousy of God for his nature, for his righteousness, for his people. And how angry and how wrathful he becomes when evil is allowed to prosper. Or when we play flippantly with sin. It’s very upsetting to him. Exactly what’s happening here. And the zeal of God… so it’s both together.

The words here, inside God, the dualistic nature, the opposite passions are love and justice. Or, as John Chapter 1 says, Jesus came with grace and truth. He came with eternal mercy and everlasting judgment. Both are valid. Both exist. Both are real.

It’s this razor’s edge that we find in the nature of God. So please don’t ever forget about Jesus with the whip. At the same time, don’t forget about Jesus turning water into wine. AT the same time, don’t look at the cross and forget about what wrath was being poured out. What suffering Jesus was going through. That the scriptures would actually say it pleased the Father to punish the Son. Those are hard, hard verses. But it’s the justice of God saying, “I need to deal with sin. I have to punish sin.”

And that’s what’s so amazing about Jesus. He stood there and said, “Then punish me, Father. Put it all on me so that David, and so that all those people at Living Streams Church would not have to feel the full vengeance of your wrath, your righteous indignation.”

So when you look at the cross, you’ve got to know it’s the love of Christ being poured out for us, absolutely. But it’s also the wrath of God being poured out and satisfied in the sacrifice of the Son. Some very important things to remember. So don’t forget about Jesus in this regard.

Another quote here comes from a guy named Alan Scot. He is saying about this cultural moment we’re in:

There is something about this national moment that is resetting the altars of our lives. It feels poignant. Everything is stripped back. It’s like a cleansing of the temple. God is resetting worship.

The reordering of worship overturns the current popular practices of worship. It delights those who value covenant above commerce. 

Which is so true of these Pharisees and these religious leaders here, these priests.

It throws off everything not aligned with the heart of the Father.

Jesus is trying to bring them back into alignment with the heart of the Father.

It moves worship from he focus upon the horizontal to the vertical.

And then he does on to talk about how:

Every platform to man removed. Every effort at popularity removed. Every idol of promotion removed. Using ministry to gain wealth removed. Using ministry to increase visibility removed. Every exploitation of people to fulfill our dreams removed. Every ignoring of the poor and seeking the friendship of the powerful removed. The cleansing of the temple has never been more necessary. The idea that Jesus would be impressed by what we have built to make him famous, or that he would  leave our models of worship intact is vain, We are too timid to tear down the temple ourselves, too afraid to confront the excesses, edifices for our own importance born from our ego rather than by his Spirit.

The cleansing of our modern temples has begun. It will continue with great acceleration.

That’s what has been so interesting about this COVID 2020, especially this summer. It’s not something that the church has to watch the world have to navigate. But it has drastically and dramatically affected the way that we go about our church services, our interactions with each other, our worship times, our prayer times. And that’s why we’ve spent the last two months trying to emphasize taking ownership for your own spiritual formation. If you’re whole religious activity, if your whole Christianity was based on that one hour a week of meeting at church, there is nothing left for you. 

I love it because I’m hearing story after story about Living Streams’ people and how there is a lot of meat on the bones, even though we’re not meeting that one hour a week on Sunday morning. The life groups are thriving and meeting still, and ministry is happening here and there from our interns and other people volunteering here and there. And the evangelism that’s going on. And the care. Some of our police officers are seeing so many opportunities down at the police force to share the hope that is in Jesus, because they’re feeling pretty hopeless these days. And the outreach toward the black community and the kind of pain that they’re navigating right now, and all the messages they are being filled with, and helping them and loving them and making room for them. It’s just been awesome to see. I’m so encouraged. I’m so proud of you, Living Streams Church. But we are not through this thing. We have got to ramp up even more and let the zeal of the Lord fill us for more and more, as we go forward.

I want to talk to you quickly as we’re coming to an end here. The biblical concept of zeal. If you read in the Old Testament about zeal, it and be troubling. One of the main stories is this guy Jehu in 2 Kings 10. What he does is, he uses the sword. He actually is filled with the zeal of the Lord and he goes and he attacks people with the sword and he kills people. And he tears down idols and he comes against Baal worshippers. Obviously it’s a completely cultural lens that we’re looking through versus what they were. It was a dog eat dog world, way more so in that regard. Yet, the zeal of the Lord was causing him to want to come and fight to the death against the things that were set up against God.

Then you think of David in that moment where this Philistine giant is speaking evil of the name of the God of the armies of Israel. David just can’t take it anymore so he runs after this giant. And he hurls this stone at him and takes him out. He says, “You will not be able to sit there and defy the name of my God.” 

He was filled with this zeal. Even to the point when Goliath falls, he goes over and he chops off his head and he carries it back to Jerusalem. This is gruesome, heavy stuff, especially from our cultural lens. In that day and age it probably would not seem that far-fetched. But the zeal of the Lord was causing people to rise up and stand up against the evil that was trying to pervade, trying to overcome. 

Realizing that what Jesus said is “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence.” The evil is not unwilling to be violent or aggressive, and those who are of God need to understand that “the violent take it by force”, that we advance by enthusiasm, by aggression. 

Again, now please hear me out. Please hear me out. Because this is Old Testament context and we’re talking about the life of Christ and he pulls out a whip. He didn’t kill anybody. He didn’t hurt anybody that we know of. But he was definitely causing a scene. He was definitely inflamed and he was making people really upset and challenging what they were doing and standing against them.

But we even times like when Hitler was on the rise. There was a guy named Bonhoffer. He’s definitely worth reading and studying about. He was a Christian. He was wrestling with this same thing. What is the church’s role in the face of this evil? Millions of Jews were being killed and others. It was so clear that it was evil. And yet most of the church just kind of stood aside and was passive in the face of it. Some of them were even complicit. 

And yet Bonhoffer knew this was not right. And he actually ended up putting together a plot to assassinate Hitler. It didn’t work, but he got found out and he ended up losing his life because of it. But as he wrote, it was a really hard thing to wrestle with. But he knew evil had come and he needed to stand up against it. So he did what he could. He did what he thought was right. Only history can tell whether it was right. Only heaven will reveal what was really right,

I think of Rosa Parks sitting on that bus. And she just was so filled with indignation about what was happening in the society around here. She says, “I will not give my seat up. I’m not going to just play along anymore. I’m going to stand against, no matter what it costs.” The zeal of the Lord consumed her. And something beautiful was brought about. A shift was made because of her courage. And she suffered for it. And many others did, as well.

So we have these times where God calls us to stand up. I just really feel like this is a moment where our church, we need to not be passive or complicit. When there is all of this swirling around us. Evil, I really do believe is trying to come in to America, to our society and to our church. It’s coming in the forms of deceitful divisions. It’s wanting us to vilify the other, no matter what we do, and to put ourselves in different camps that aren’t necessarily Christian. We’ve got to stand against it. We’ve got to know better.

Romans 10 talks about zeal. Paul was talking about these Pharisees, these people that he was with. He said they had so much zeal but without knowledge. They were just pledging allegiance to all kinds of things that were not of God. So we need the zeal, but we need it to be with knowledge.

Here’s what I think we need to be zealous for right now. Please hear me out. I don’t think we need to go around and kill anybody. I’m not saying anything like that. 

What we need to get zealous for is real simple. It’s always the same. We need to get zealous for prayer, We need to get zealous for God’s word. We need to get zealous for morality. We need to get zealous for evangelism. Church, it’s our time. This is what we need to apply all of our energy towards.

First of all, prayer. Prayer is listening to Jesus, worshiping Jesus, letting our attention, our affection be on Jesus, and interceding for others. Please schedule it into your week. Schedule it into your day—times for this. Don’t be caught with your hands down while the battle is going on. That’s that Moses, Aaron and Hur analogy. 

We need to get zealous for God’s word. This is study the Bible. Don’t have zeal without knowledge. Don’t listen to all the different things happening the media, and social media. Don’t let them tell you what the Bible says. Read the Bible for yourself. Get to know this thing. Get solid in it, because if you don’t, you will be washed away by the cunning and craftiness of the deceitful schemes that are being perpetrated in our world. You’ve got to know the Bible. It’s our anchor. It’s what’s going to keep us steady in the storm.

Recognize Jesus’ voice among all the other voices and revelation from God’s Spirit. Seek for him to speak to you. I’ve been hearing some cool visions. I shared about it in the weekly email, something that God was speaking to me.

We need to get zealous for morality. We need to uproot the compromises we’ve been making in our lives, and uphold the personal convictions God has given us. I had someone tell me, “Now, you know what? I love Jesus. I’ve been doing great. But I’ve been allowing alcohol to have too much of a place in my life. I just need to take it seriously.” 

We’re not going to get away with loose compromises and loose living, playing games with sin. It’s time for us to shore up. Like John the Baptist who had such intense morality and simplicity, but it caused his word and message to have such intense authority and clarity. 

We need to take ownership of our own spiritual formation, as well.

Lastly, evangelism. There is nothing that makes Jesus more proud of us than when we tell people about him. There’s nothing that fills his heart more. There’s nothing that puts a party on in heaven like when one sinner repents. 

We need to engage in society’s pain. Find out who’s hurting and go be with them. Try to find a way into their lives through hospitality and kindness and generosity. 

We need to defend the truth of our faith. Don’t let people come and tell us we have to prove we’re not a racist by compromising our biblical values. That’s ridiculous,

Lastly, we need to proclaim the good news of God every day. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be a message. But continue to just let people know that Jesus is the answer. Jesus has the answer. The gospel of Jesus is the power of God to actually bring about salvation. And everybody wants to be saved. 

We’re going to have a time like we’ve been trying to do for you at home to take some ownership of your own spiritual formation. To practice being the priesthood of believers. Whether you’re at home by yourself or if you’re in a group, we’re going to put up a slide and we want you to just take communion in your home. If you’re in a group, have someone who’s supposed to lead, you can all just look at that person right now. And be like, “I think he’s talking about you.” And that person, you can go ahead and lead everyone in this communion time. We’re going to put up the slide and take three or four minutes for you to do that at home. 

Slide:

Jesus, we pause to remember and thank you for the intensity of your love and justice towards the world.

Now we hold this bread and cup to remember the cross, when the fullness of your zeal for love and justice came together. 

As we eat this bread please fill us with your zeal for love and justice. (Take and eat Jesus’ body broken for you.)

As we drink this cup, please cleanse the temple of our lives from greed and pride and deceit. (Drink the cup. This is Jesus’ blood shed for the remission of your sins.)

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©️2020 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture marked MSG is taken from The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

The Practice of Hospitality

David Stockton
Series: Church Around the Table

We’ve been trying to unpack this concept of Church Around the Table. We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about Jesus, which is a good thing. We talked about Jesus’ Last Supper and what was really going on in that moment. We are trying to get into us as Jesus’ followers 2,000 years later what Jesus was trying to get into his disciples in that last culmination meal with them, those last few hours he had with them.

We’ve been taking it really seriously and diving in. And we are going to continue doing that a little bit today. But today will be a little different. I’m trying to just make sure we don’t get all this stuff in our heads, but we’re going to have some pauses in our time together. I’m hoping that stuff will get distilled down into our hearts a little more today. So this might be a little bit slower. If you fall asleep, that’s okay, we’ll just go straight to your heart. We don’t need your brain anyway.

We’ve shared some concepts in this regard. We’ve shared some inspiring stories. But what I’ve been praying is that God will help you understand how this applies to you in your daily routine. There’s this phrase: What would Jesus do? It’s a good phrase; but one of my friends says it’s totally insufficient and actually a really heavy burden if we just leave the question like that. He says the true questions is: What would Jesus do if he were me, and he lived in the context that I live in today? It’s a little longer thought process, but it’s more valid. Because you are you and you are facing the things you face. You have the job you have and the calendar you have. 

I want us to figure out what it could mean for you. At the end of this thing, I’m going to pray that Jesus would just show us what the next step is, because we are following him. He is leading us from being one thing to something much greater. It’s just one step at a time. So we’re going to try to do a little bit of that in our message today.

Luke 4 is where Jesus comes on the scene and he sits in the synagogue with all the other believers at that time. At one point he is called to the front and he’s given a passage from Isaiah and he reads it:

18 
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And then he sits down and says, 

21 …“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

He’s basically saying, “From now on you can judge everything in my life based on this criteria. This is what the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to do. Proclaim good news to the poor. Set the oppressed free, to heal people, to help people, and to let them know how much God loves them, that his favor rests on them.”

That’s what he said. And then, a little later on, John the Baptist—who was Jesus’ cousin—was trying to figure out, “Jesus, are you really the whole thing? Or are you just part of it?” 

And Jesus said to him, “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who doesn’t stumble on account of me.”

Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor and to heal people.” And then, later on, John the Baptist was saying, “Jesus, is it really you?”

And Jesus said—same test—“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor and to help and heal people. And if you’re seeing these happen you know the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

Then, as we get to that Last Supper, Jesus is basically saying to his disciples—in John 13; he washes their feet, John 14, 15, 16, is the discussion they had in that time, recorded for us. Jesus is saying, “The same Spirit that is on me is going to be on you. Therefore, the same measurements are going to be applied to you.” 

The Spirit that is upon Jesus caused Jesus to walk in the way that he did. And the same Spirit now rests on us, thanks to the resurrection. And so the Spirit of the Lord is upon you and me to do what? To proclaim good news to the poor, and to help and heal people. That’s the transfer that was taking place in that moment. We’ve talked about that, leading up to this.

As we’ve gone through, we’ve talked a lot about the life of Jesus showing up. We’ve talked about a lot of giving body and blood and washing people. But this one phrase is constantly jumping out at me, saying, “Don’t forget me.” And I go on to the next one and, “Don’t forget me.” Because when we talk about Jesus, we have to remember that, one of the main things that he was about was proclaiming good news to the poor. Proclaiming good news to the poor. So, if you want to follow Jesus, then one of the things that should show up in your life, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis—however you measure your life: proclaiming good news to the poor. That’s what it means to have Church Around a Table. To proclaim good news to the poor.

So we’re going to unpack that a little bit; because, obviously, good news is kind of a funny word, and poor can be defined in a lot of different ways. First of all, let’s define the word poor. Matthew 25:31-40 in the Message translation (MSG):

31-33 “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.

34-36 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’

37-40 “Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King… 

The Lord, as Allan Meyer talked about last week. The Lord of all.

…will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’”

So, in this definition, the poor would be those who are overlooked and ignored. I married a lady fifteen years ago, in Brittany, she’s my wife. I live with her still today after fifteen years, which I guess is progress, something to celebrate in our world. But I live with her and I link my life with her. Prior to marrying her, I was not married to her for twenty-seven years. Seventeen of those years, I really, really loved myself. I thought a lot about myself and I considered myself more highly than I ought. I was just absorbed with myself. I really was. I thought I was great and if everything was going my way then everyone should be happy. And if they weren’t, I didn’t even know, because I didn’t think about them at all. It’s true. Just very arrogant, prideful, selfish, self-absorbed. 

Then, at seventeen, Jesus started messing with my life. He started to say that he wanted to do a work in my life. I thought, Cool. You want to care about me? Well, I care about me, you care about me, this is going to be great. I’ve got God now thinking about me, and what I want, and how important it is. 

But it didn’t happen that way. He actually saved me. When I talk about the salvation that Jesus brought into my life, yes, it’s true, he saved me forevermore. Yes, it’s true, he saved me from living a life not knowing my Maker, knowing my Father. He saved me from so many things that I didn’t know about; but, in that moment, he saved me from my selfishness and pride. And he started to all of a sudden make me care about other people. It was a radical thing for me. I really did, I started to care more about other people and the stuff they were going through than even the stuff I was going through. 

I don’t get it right all of the time. But that was really important because then I got married. And I married someone who also cared about herself and not me. We kind of had this tug-o-war, where all of a sudden I had to care about her all of the time. She had feelings about everything all of the time. I didn’t have much space in my life for all of her feelings about what she was going through; because I had all my feelings about what I was going through. 

So that was a big trip, and in some ways I would say she saved me again. God was saying, “Okay, David, it’s not working just me and you. I’m going to bring Brittany.”  And Brittany is strong and powerful and she won’t put up with crap. I remember her just sticking up to it, and me having to adjust. It’s been an awesome thing.

All of that is to say that Brittany is someone who cares for the overlooked and ignored. She has taught me this in such amazing ways. And it’s funny because, sometimes it comes out where she doesn’t really care that much for people who aren’t overlooked and ignored. If you’re someone who’s not overlooked and ignored, sometimes you’ll be like, “I don’t know how she feels about me.” Just keep it there. Who knows? She doesn’t hate you or anything. Her life is just so driven towards the overlooked and ignored. She loves them and cares for them. I always describe my wife as, she’s like the real Peter Pan. She’s just looking for lost boys so she can teach them how to fly. It is absolutely true. I’ve seen it over and over and over again. 

I feel like God has been constantly trying to teach me these lessons. What I’m sharing with you today is just from the deepest parts of me. I’m wrestling with this all of the time because I’m so prone against it, but I’m so in love with what Jesus is trying to teach me. And Jesus has been teaching me for years. He’s a great teacher, and I’m going to try to jam it all in and I’m not that great. So just bear with me on this. I’m going to try to give us some pictures, trying to distill this for how this can be expressed in your life.

I married Brittany, and we ended up building this house together. We moved in about 30 months ago, so we were building it before then. I remember her praying that this house would not just be used for us, but that it would also be used for others. I didn’t really know what she was talking about and didn’t care that much about it at that time. I just thought, “Whatever, as long as we get to live there it will be better than living in this master bedroom with all five of us.” 

Just last week I woke up to lots of barking dogs, because we have a lot of them. And I was thinking about our situation. I remembered her prayer. Because, right now we live in this house with our three daughters, which is a lot of her fault, some of my fault but a lot of her fault. So there’s all of us living in the house now. We also live with two foster boys, which was a dream and a prayer of hers all of her life (and it became one for me, too). We also live with her mom. Her mom’s cool, so there’s no problem there. And then we also live with her sister, and she has a husband and they have five kids. Okay. You know? They have two dogs, the mom has two dogs, and we have two dogs. That’s not that abnormal, but that’s six dogs when you bring them all together.

And this guy, he’s working with the kids upstairs. I could understand if you don’t feel comfortable with this, but this kid is nineteen years old. He lived in California. And for some reason, he wanted to move in with us. He’s been with us a few months now. I’m trying to find something wrong with his brain. But he wanted to move in with us. So he lives in this little garage side room thing at the kibbutz that we call home. He’s loving it.

We have a chicken. We used to have eight, but we have coyotes that come around, so we’re down to one. It’s not funny. We also had a goat at one point. And to describe my wife even more—somewhere in Phoenix there was a goat that was born to a mama goat and the mama goat rejected the baby goat. Which is sad, right? And the person who was there to witness that, for some reason in her mind thought, “I should call Brittany.” I still have no idea how that happened; but all I know is this goat was overlooked and ignored, literally, and this person said, “I’m going to call Brittany.” 

And I came home one time and there’s a little baby pigmy goat. For the next two weeks, every two hours, the goat needed to be fed. So all throughout the night, “Here you go, baby goat.” So God is just laughing at how self-centered, self-absorbed and prideful I am, and here I am, years later, at 3:00 a.m, feeding a baby goat a bottle inside my house. And loving every minute of it. Not true. Loving when I’m in the right mind, ever minute of it.

I’m not saying that this is what the Lord’s calling us to. Please. Do you hear me? Do not do this! Do not do this. But God has led me step by step on a journey to where now I can check off some these. Somehow I’m learning and I have to rely on the grace of the Lord. We have to take breaks from time to time.

We were sitting with our daughters last Sunday night and they’re saying, “Hey, you know. Whenever this works out this way, can we just take a break for a little bit?” I was telling them, in thirty months of living in this house, twenty-six months we’ve had someone living with us. That’s only four months of building this house and getting to enjoy it just ourselves. And then I told my wife to stop praying. No, I didn’t. I didn’t say that. Thought it. But didn’t say it. 

Caring for the overlooked and ignored, even baby goats sometimes. 

Isaiah 58 (MSG) is the Old Testament perspective, but it’s kind of saying the same thing:

6-9 
“This is the kind of fast day I’m after:

So the people were fasting with no food and thinking that God was so pleased with them because they weren’t eating. And God was saying, “Look, if you want to know what really is important to me, it’s not that you don’t eat food, it’s this:

    …to break the chains of injustice,
    get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
    free the oppressed,
    cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
    sharing your food with the hungry,
    inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
   putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
    being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
    and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
    The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
    You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

So in this passage, “care for the poor,” is care for the exploited, the oppressed, the hungry, the homeless, the cold, the in-debt, and also those maybe in your household that are overlooked or ignored or neglected, whether you’re willing to admit it or not. 

So what we’re going to do right now is to be quiet for about forty seconds. And I just want to see if God might be able to bring to mind someone in your life that could be described as overlooked, neglected, or any of these other things; and for you to take a mental note of what God might be speaking to you. Maybe someone’s already come to mind. That’s fine. Just begin to pray for the person and begin to ask God, “What can I do?”

I pray Lord, that we really would hear from you. Amen.

So now that we’ve described who the poor might be, I want to talk about how do we present good news to those people? Is there some way we can learn what might be a first step or a simple step—or start the creative process between the Spirit of God and you, and maybe your wife, or your roommates, or whatever, how we can begin to walk this out. 

Hebrews 12:18-24 (TPT) is going to be the beginning of diving into this. We’re going to take some more distilling moments as we go through this, as well. This is good stuff right here. You should read this every day, or at least every time you’re sad. 

18 For we are not coming, as Moses did, to a physical mountain with its burning fire, thick clouds of darkness and gloom, and with a raging whirlwind. 19 We are not those who are being warned by the jarring blast of a trumpet and the thundering voice; the fearful voice that they begged to be silenced… 

This is the writer of Hebrews in the New Testament harkening back to the library of Scripture where we learn that Moses was out at this mountain called Sinai one time, and God came near to the people of Israel. He came as this big fiery cloud that sat on the mountain, and he spoke in this powerful, thunderous voice out of the cloud and spoke to the people. And all the people were like, “Ahhhh! This is freaky!” 

And God was saying, “Come up to me. Come up here.” And the people were like, “No! Moses, why don’t you go up there, because it’s scary up there.” And then Moses went up there, and we learn in Exodus 33 and 34 that Moses had this deep, intimate, powerful moment with God. For forty days he was with God experiencing the love, compassion and kindness of God, in the midst of all the power and wonder that was taking place.

So he’s saying “We’re not this, where we need to be afraid. What we have come to is this:

22 …we have already come near to God in a totally different realm, the Zion-realm, for we have entered the city of the Living God, which is the New Jerusalem in heaven! We have joined the festal gathering of myriads of angels in their joyous celebration!

This is what heaven is like. God is not super concerned about the election cycle that is happening. Heaven is not going, “Oh, yi yi yi.” I know we are. But right now, in heaven, the holiness of God is being celebrated because nothing on earth could never change that.

23 And as members of the church of the Firstborn [Jesus] all our names have been legally registered as citizens of heaven! And we have come before God who judges all, and who lives among the spirits of the righteous who have been made perfect in his eyes!

We are being made perfect in his eyes. Yes! And then this:

24 And we have come to Jesus… 

Not to that scary mountain. We’ve come to Jesus.

…who established a new covenant with his blood sprinkled upon the mercy seat; blood that continues to speak from heaven, “forgiveness,” a better message than Abel’s blood that cries from the earth, “justice.”

So how do we preach good news to the poor? We’re able to come to them and speak out a message of forgiveness. Forgiveness instead of justice. Contrasting that Mount Sinai mountain with all that power, we have the babe of Bethlehem, that was born into this world soft and kind. And then he walked among us, not with heaviness. Full power though, but the power was not to condemn. The power was not to provoke. The power was not to hurt or punish. The power was to heal and to forgive. 

In Isaiah, it speaks of Jesus. It says “as a smoldering wick he would never put out and a bruised reed he would never break. He came with a softness and lightness and a kindness to the poor—whether they were poor in their relationship with God, poor financially, poor physically, poor in their righteousness. Whatever they were poor in, he would come around them with kindness and a message of forgiveness. It wasn’t a forgiveness that forsook justice. It was a forgiveness that was born out of him laying down his life to produce justice.

In that moment when he took on all the sins of all humanity—the most disgusting, horrific, murderous, raping sins—he took them on his body. Out of that came a message of “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Preaching good news to the poor is coming around the poor. They already know that they’ve failed. They are already wallowing in their own shame and guilt. They don’t need us to point it out. They need us to come and show them a path of forgiveness. 

There are these two books that have taught me a lot along these lines. One is called Tattoos on the Heart. It’s a Jesuit priest. If you want to check it out later, the story is amazing, the writing is beautiful. In it, he says, 

“Here is what we seek: A compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.”

I would add just one little phrase:

And then we should lend our own shoulder to carry the burden for a while.

Because, as we go to approach the poor, which we know Jesus wants us to do, the Spirit of God is upon us to that end. We shouldn’t look at the poor and see them in their sinfulness, see them in their poverty, see the bad decisions they made, the way that they’re carrying themselves, the way that they are speaking out. We have to come to them and not judge them. God’s the judge.

We come to them and we provide forgiveness. We come to them and we stand with them in their poverty. Instead of saying, “Wow. Look at all that heaviness all over you. You’re not carrying it right, you should carry it like this;” we just say, “Hey. Do you want me to carry a little of that on my shoulder for a while? Let’s walk together.” This is what it means to preach good news to the poor.

There’s this phrase I’ve been chewing on: “Empathy must be stronger than condescension.” 

I’m a master at condescension. I am. I’m awesome at it. Always have been. I have to fight it all the time. I’m so good at it. I can just see it coming. It’s something the Lord is constantly having to work on in my life. It’s something that I basically have a limp that I’ve had to learn to limp with, and make sure I don’t live into it. The opposite of condescension is empathy. Empathy is foreign to me. Empathy in the sense of being able to put yourself in another person’s shoes to feel what they feel from their point of view. 

Just last night one of my kids was having a real pathetic moment. And I was just like, “I don’t want to feel what you’re feeling, because you’re crying and moaning and groaning and whining. I want you to feel what I’m feeling.” But that wasn’t true because I was actually starting to get stressed because I was like, “I’ve got to preach tomorrow and I’ve got to get my message together and you’re over here moaning and groaning.”

And I just felt like the Lord was saying, “Go there!” I was like, “Argh!” And I did a horrible job of it. But I tried. I just sat on the bed and said, “All right. Tell me what’s going on.”

“You don’t care.”

Already? I haven’t even started! “I want to hear what’s going on.” It’s crazy. 

Here’s a few more things to finish. This comes from a different book called The Gospel Comes With a House Key. That’s pretty good. In this book, this former lesbian, now follower of Christ, Rosaria Butterfield, is describing some of her experiences with something she calls radically ordinary hospitality. This is good stuff. These are meaty, so you’ve got to buck up. Everybody sit up straighter a little bit—if you need to stretch a little bit. We’ve got some long phrases here, but it’s the distilling process.

“Living out radically ordinary Christian hospitality means knowing that your relationship with others must be as strong as your words. The balance cannot tip here. Having strong words and a weak relationship with your neighbor is violent. It captures the violent carelessness of our social media-infused age. That is not how neighbors talk with each other. That is not how image bearers of the same God relate to one another. Radically ordinary hospitality values the time it takes to invest in relationships, build bridges, repent of sins of the past, to reconcile. Bridge building and remaking friendships cannot be rushed.”

“Just get better.” “Stop feeling what you’re feeling.” No! But taking the time. Here’s another one:

She’s describing the first moment she encountered what she called radically ordinary Christian hospitality: 

“I breathed hard and hoisted myself out of my truck, nursing a tender hamstring from my morning run. I waded through the unusually thick July humidity to the front door of these Christians and I knocked. The threshold to their life was like none other. The threshold to their life brought me to the foot of the cross.”

Hallelujah, right?

“Nothing about that night unfolded according to my confident script. Nothing happened in the way I expected. Not that night or the years after, or the hundreds of meals we had together, or the long nights of Psalm singing and prayer, as other believers from he church and university walked through the doors of this house as if there was no door. Nothing prepared me for this openness and truth. Nothing prepared me for the unstoppable gospel and for the love of Jesus made manifest by the daily practices of hospitality undertaken in this one simple Christian home. Long before I ever walked to the doors of the church, the Smith home was the place where I wrestled with the Bible, with the reality that Jesus is who he says he is and eventually came face-to-face with him on the glittering knife’s edge of my choice sexual sin.”

Way to go, Smiths! Way to go, Smiths! Way to go, Smiths! And the last one:

Radically ordinary hospitality describes those who see strangers as family and neighbors as the family of God. They recoil at reducing a person to a category or label. They see God’s image reflected in the eyes of every human being on earth. They know that they are like meth addicts and sex trade workers, they take their own sins seriously, especially the sins of selfishness and pride.

They take God’s holiness and goodness seriously. They use the Bible as a lifeline with no exceptions. They practice radically ordinary hospitality. Those who practice radically ordinary hospitality do not see their homes as their own, but as God’s gift for the furtherance of God’s kingdom. They open doors. They seek out the underpriveleged. They know that the Gospel comes with a house key.

And one last thing from Acts 28 (MSG) as we close:

30-31 Paul lived for two years in his rented house. He welcomed everyone who came to visit. He urgently presented all matters of the kingdom of God. He explained everything about Jesus Christ. His door was always open.

Again, I’m not telling you to do something specific here. I’m just saying that we’ve got to begin to understand what this means to live out radically ordinary hospitality. To live out the love of Christ in this world. To proclaim good news to the poor.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, I do pray in this moment that you would continue to distill some of this. Not only would you bring to mind the people that you have given to us, that you are putting on our radar, that you are assigning to us, just like you assign people to Jesus. But Lord, I pray that you would also stir in us some creativity of how we could begin to be hospitable, be empathetic, be compassionate—not just concerned, but compassionate. And you’d help us know that it’s going to take time. There’s no quick, easy way to do this. 

I wrote this during the music time during first service. I just want to share it, in case it applies to some of you. Not only are we called to do this, but the beauty is that Jesus has done this for us. He left glory to come and enter into our pathetic state, and to feel our pain.

“The blood of Abel and all the others cut off by the knife of sin or burned by the fires of injustice cries out because the guilty are left unpunished and wrongs are not made right. But in Christ crucified, forgiveness and justice happen. All the wrongs are made right by the forgiveness and healing released by Jesus’ sacrificial love. You might think today that no one cares about you or loves you or whatever sacrifice for you, but the scars in Jesus’ hands and feet speak a different word. 

There will come a day when you and I will see those scars. The Bible teaches we will see Jesus as a Lamb who has been slain. But you can feel his love today and forgiveness and healing can start right now.”

Jesus, please come close to those who don’t know you. Lord, please, for those who are willing to admit that they are poor in their relationship with you, they are poor in righteousness, they are poor in so many ways, I pray that right now they would cry out to you and you would answer with the full weight of your love and salvation would come. And they would become new creations, robed in your righteousness, and they would really know what forgiveness is. I pray this in your name. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture marked MSG is taken from The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

Scripture marked TPT is taken from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017 by BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC. Used by permission. All rights reserved. thePassionTranslation.com