The Supremacy of the Gospel – redefining family (Mark 3:31-35)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon

The story of Joyce’s dad… adoption into a new family… illustrates the supremacy of the gospel that redefines family as more than based on blood relationship.

As I have mentioned to you last week, I am devoting the month of March to explore God’s vision for our church, Cornerstone Mission Church. In order to understand what God envision for CMC, we must understand the exclusive demand of the gospel to share Jesus’ commitment to God and radically inclusive nature of the gospel

When family is understood as connection built on blood relationship, you will find these definitions for family.

A group of individual living under one roof and usually under one head

A group of persons of common ancestry (clan)… < a people or group of people regarded as deriving from a common stock (race)

The basic unit in society traditionally consisting of two parents rearing their children… a single-parent family[1]

But, the supremacy of the gospel taught and lived out by our Lord Jesus envisions family quite differently. There is another dictionary definition of family that is not defined by blood relationship.

A group of people united by certain convictions or a common affiliation (fellowship)[2]

The gospel envisions family not just as relationship defined by blood relationships. The gospel envisions God’s family beyond the boundaries of the nuclear family ties, extended family ties, beyond clan, tribal, ethnic or racial ties. The gospel envisions radically inclusive family, God’s family based on the exclusive demand to share Jesus’ commitment to God’s will.

The supremacy of the gospel demands exclusively sharing Jesus’ commitment to God

Let’s consider how the supremacy of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ redefines family.

Do you know what family values are? Family values are so highly regarded by churches that most of the Christians believe that it is essential and foundational for churches. Wikipedia defines family values as “political and social beliefs that hold the nuclear family to be the essential ethical and moral unit of society.”[3] When we as Christians focus so much on the values of building nuclear families, we become desensitized the biblical vision for God’s family, spiritual family.

Paul uses the language of “God’s household” to describe the biblical vision of God’s family.

“God’s household” in Ephesians 2:19, Galatians 6:10, “those who belong to the family of believers,” 1 Timothy 3:15, “God’s household”, 1 Peter 4:17, “the family of God.” Oikos of God.

So, how is the biblical vision of God’s family different from family values?

We can see the clear difference when we consider how Jesus explained about why he came to live with us.

Matthew 10:35f-36, “For I have come to turn “’a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law- a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”

Luke 12:53 reads, “They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Jesus is not saying that family isn’t important. Family defined by blood relationship was God’s idea and it is quite important. But, what Jesus is saying is allegiance to family, blood relationships, is only important if it honors Jesus’ commitment to God. The gospel carries the vision of division and strife over family relationship because the gospel demands complete allegiance to Jesus’ commitment to God. Let me illustrates this from the Wall Street Journal article from March 6.

The article is about an interview with Mosab Hassan Yousef who is the son of Hamas founder and leader, Sheikh Hassan Yousef. Mosab said, “I absolutely know that in anybody’s eyes I was a traitor… To my family, to my nation, to my God. I crossed all the red lines in my society. I didn’t leave on that I didn’t cross.” He explains his encounter with the British cabbie who gave him an English-Arabic copy of the New Testament. Reading through it, he said, “I found that I was really drawn to the grace, love and humility that Jesus talked about… I converted to Christianity because I was convinced by Jesus Christ as a character, as a personality. I loved him, his wisdom, his love, his unconditional love.”

And, he had some very harsh words to say about Muslim; there will be people who will try to kill him for what he said about Muslim. “At the end of the day a traditional Muslim is doing the will of a fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist God… The problem is not in Muslims… The problem is with their God. They need to be liberated from their God. He is their biggest enemy. It has been 1,400 years they have been lied to.” About these dangerous words that he spoke against the religion of his family, Mosab said, “Palestinians have reason to kill me. Some Israelis may want to kill me. MY goal is not to defeat my enemy. It is to win over my enemy.”

His father Sheikh Yousef issued a statement that he and his family “have completely disowned the man who was our oldest son and who is called Mosab.”

Family values are only good if they serve the greater purpose of our Lord Jesus Christ to advance God’s will. But, if family values demand allegiance to families over Jesus’ commitment to God, he will not compromise, but will bring division and strife.

The supremacy of the gospel envisions inclusive family of God

Let’s consider now the story about Jesus and his family from Mark 3:31-35. What we see leading up to our text is Jesus actively engaging the world beyond the boundaries of social norms. While religious Jews were afraid and refused to associate with anyone beyond their ethnic and religious boundaries, Jesus touched and healed the leper, liberated demon possessed men, healed the sick, dined with social outcasts, and sinners. Jesus was even accused of casting out the demons because he himself was possessed by the prince of demons, named Beelzebul. To which Jesus dismissed their accusation as silly nonsense and sternly warned them of blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.

And it says in Mark 3:21, “When he his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”” They thought Jesus was going mad. The family believed that Jesus had to be stopped.

To “take charge” is to force. They showed up in order to force Jesus to abandon his madness. When they arrived, they stood outside and send someone in to call him. They were outside looking for Jesus in order to take charge of him, to force him to leave what they considered as craziness.

To this Jesus replied, “Who are my mother and my brother? …Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Do you get the picture? Jesus’ biological mother Mary and his half brothers were standing outside; they were outsiders because they opposed Jesus and his mission. Those who were inside of Jesus’ family circle were those who did God’s will.

This would have been utter shock to the first century mindset. The family defined by blood was the foundation of society and economy; unlike us, they couldn’t envision their own identities apart from identity that of belonging to a group, their family.[4]

Jesus rejected the priority of biological family relationships; he rejected putting family values first, family values to preserve their family lines, family wealth, family honor…[5]

Jesus rejected the belief in exclusively defined family; instead, he completely redefined family inclusively to include anyone who shares Jesus’ commitment to God. Family defined by Jesus cuts right through the boundaries of class, race, or ethnicity as long as there is the obedience to God’s will.

Only one qualification matters to belong to God’s family… “Do you share Jesus’ commitment to God?” Do you see how Jesus redefined inclusively?

• The vision for CMC

Envision family inclusively- We must work towards the vision of inclusivity to expand God’s family beyond the boundaries of ethnicity, race, or social class. This means, we must consider the future of CMC beyond the immediate family relationships many of you have with KCUMC. Will we be able to fulfill effectively the inclusive vision of God’s family as CMC or as a part of Korean church? I believe that we can be much more effective in realizing God’s vision of inclusive family by not defining our church as an ethnic church.

Envision family exclusively -We must focus on sharing Jesus’ commitment to God for this is how the biblical family bond can grow. The biblical family grows through the inclusive vision with the exclusively sharing Jesus’ commitment to God.

“Our shared commitments to God tie us more closely together than biological kinship.”[6]

Envision family beyond nuclear families- We must envision the purpose of nuclear families as the means to realize the biblical vision of spiritual God’s family.

“The French novelist André Gide, in Les nouvelles nourritures, bitterly expressed against the selfishly ingrown nuclear families: “Families! I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessors of happiness.”[7]

Envision family to grow - We must work towards growing the family by diligent and creative evangelism. We have experienced a lot of natural births in our church. Imagine what would be like to share the joy of spiritual new birth and grow church that way! We must become church where people can experience adoption into God’s family.

Envision family to belong - We must become a church where lonely and people of differences can find meaningful family relationship in Christ through doing God’s will together. We must adopt each other as family.

Envision family to restore -We must become a church where healing and restoration is possible for people who have been wounded in their broken and dysfunctional families.

Envision family to love - We must envision the family of God that extends grace, forgiveness, acceptance, and hospitality to each other and also loves enough to confront sins in each other.

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[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/family

[2] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/family

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_values

[4] NIV Application Commentary, New Testament: Mark. By Garland, 131. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, © 1996.

[5] NIV Application Commentary, New Testament: Mark. By Garland, 131. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, © 1996.

[6] NIV Application Commentary, New Testament: Mark. By Garland, 145. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, © 1996.

Prayer that seeks God’s eyes… (Psalm 17)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon, August 16 2009

There are two great commandments from the Bible that sum up what it means to be Christians, to love God and to love people. Christian life is about being in love relationship with God and with people. And, the latest encouragement to read God’s word in my sermons and to spend time with God has its goal set on growing relationship with God. One of the key ingredients for growing relationship with God is prayer. I like how Warren Wiersbe framed Psalm 17 in his short message. He framed the prayer in Psalm 17 in what we need from God, namely his ears, his eyes, his hand and his face. We pray because we need God’s ears to hear our petition, his eyes to examine us, his hand to deliver us and his face to satisfy us.[1]

For the purpose of speaking clearly without jamming in too much stuff into one sermon, I am going to speak in two sermons. Today, I will touch on our need for God’s ears, eyes and his hand. Next week, I will speak on our need for God’s face.

1. Prayer of callous hearts

Before I talk about prayer that seeks God’s eyes, I need to speak to you about what might be a typical way people pray. A typical prayer is prayer that seeks God’s ears and his hand; it seeks results from God. We want him to hear to us and to do something for us, to help us to do well on test, to do well at work, to keep us in good health, to help us succeed… Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting God to hear us and lend his hand to help, to rescue, to deliver us. Seeking God as the one who hears us and helps us with his mighty hand honors him.

David sought in his prayer for God’s ears and his hand in Psalm 17. David is asking for God to “hear” him to “give ear” to his prayer (17:1) and to save him by his “right hand” (17:7). He doesn’t write about the details of the problem he is facing; but words like “vindication” from 17:2, the descriptions from 17:10, “the wicked with “callous hearts” who “speak with arrogance” and 17:11, how they “track him down and “surround” him like “Lions hungry for prey” and “crouching in cover” to ambush him… all these indicate some kind of attacks unleashed against David by the wicked people around him. And, he is asking for God to hear him and to life his hand to deliver him.

So, we know that there is nothing wrong with seeking God’s ears and his hand to help us. But, if this is all that we seek, God’s ears to hear us and his hand to help us, then something isn’t quite right about this. When we seek God’s ears and his hand, but not his eyes and his face, we treat God as our personal genie who exists for our wants and needs.

David, in Psalm 17:10, describes the attackers as ones with “callous hearts.” Literally, “callous hearts” speaks to closed up hearts in fat. A commentator sees the "fat" of the hearts of the wicked as their greedy, self-loving, and insensitive nature.[2]

I got my blood test result back last week and it showed that I have abnormally high triglycerides level. I did some quick web research and found out if this abnormal triglycerides level persists I have greater risk of suffering strokes and other heart complicated illnesses. Triglycerides level is directly link to high Carbohydrates consumption, high calorie diet, along with low exercise. Basically, I am talking in too much calories, too much carbohydrates without burning it up in regular exercises. I have callous hear sort to speak.

Spiritual fatty, callous hearts are hearts that want things from God without being responsible to him. Fatty, callous hearts only want God to hear them and extend his hand to help them out, but otherwise they see no other need for God. It is seeing God as a genie, a personal assistant available to assist us in our troubles, like On-Star systems that some cars have or AAA. Callous heart of an ungrateful child wants whole lot of things from his parents, but has no sense of responsibility.

Are you suffering from fatty callous heart? How would you know if you are treating God as your personal assistant to show up at moments notice when you are in trouble? If your prayer language focuses mostly on God hearing you and God doing things for you, then you should suspect the condition of fatty callous heart! If you persist on asking for God’s ears and his hand without his eyes and his face, you will experience spiritual strokes or heart attack.

What you and I need is the kind of prayer that does away with fatty callous heart. And the way we are going to turn this potentially life threatening condition is by seeking God’s eyes and his face. As I said, today, the focus will be on seeking God’s eyes.

1. Prayer that seeks God’s eyes

What is prayer that seeks God’s eyes? In David’s prayer, what we see is “righteous plea” that is “not rising from deceitful lips” in Psalm 17:1. Prayer that seeks God’s eyes is prayer that his honest, not deceptive.

Many of you who are following M’Cheney’s Bible reading schedule would have read Jeremiah 42 this past week. There you would have noticed the Israelites asking Jeremiah, “Please hear our petition and pray to the LORD your God for this entire remnant… Pray that the LORD your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do… Whether it is favorable or unfavorable, we will obey the LORD your God… we will obey the LORD our God” (Jeremiah 42:1-6). It is a beautiful prayer of petition to God to lead; it is a prayer of confession in their willingness to trust and submit to his guidance.

Jeremiah told them that they should go into exile to the foreign land of Babylon and there God purposed to bless them. He told them that they should not go down to Egypt, falsely believing that they would be safe in Egypt from the Babylonians. But, their reply reveals the true nature of their earlier prayer. Jeremiah 43:2 reads their response, “You are lying! The LORD our God has not sent you to say, ‘You must not go to Egypt to settle there.’”

This is praying with “deceitful lips”, praying dishonestly. It rose from their callous hearts, fatty hearts that were bent on using God for their own gains. So, when they heard differently from God than what they really wanted to do, they dismissed God completely. How do we prevent this kind of deceitful prayer? We need prayer that seeks God’s eyes to evaluate us and refine us.

• Prayer that seeks God’s eyes… take alone time with God at night.

Psalm 17:3, David talks about God probing his heart and examining him at night. Night is when usually work is no longer carried out, when normal social relationship are at rest. Night signifies time of aloneness when no one is around you, but God alone.

Not only do we need the time in the morning, but we also need the time at night when you and I are alone and apart from the seeing eyes of the people, but not from the seeing eyes of God.

After long day, often temptation is to veggie out, checking emails, reading news, watching TV and to fall asleep. But, David’s practice was to during the aloneness of his nights to come to God who saw him.

What was David doing in his aloneness of nights? He came to God for two things, evaluation and refining.

• Prayer that seeks God’s eyes… let God evaluate you.

Psalm 17:3, David talks about God who sees him probing his heart and examining him. To probe is to investigate, to interrogate, and to evaluate what otherwise would be hidden away from our conscience. It is not that God doesn’t see or God needs time to evaluate us. He already knows our character, our days, the condition of our hearts and our lifestyle. The problem is that unless we come to God and draw near for evaluation, we won’t know what’s going on in us. God has to reveal his evaluation to us in order for us to know what’s going well and what’s not going well.

• Prayer that seeks God’s eyes… let God refines you.

David also talks about in Psalm 17:3 God testing him. Testing here comes from the language of metal worker refining precious metals like silver and gold to take out dross in order to produce highest quality of silver and gold. Psalm 66:10 says, “you refined us like silver.” Testing and refining are the same Hebrew word translated differently. So, this language of refining describes what God does in his people. Isaiah 1:25, “I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities.”

You need God’s eyes to search your inner make up of who you are. What gave rise to your anger during your day? What gave rise to lustful thoughts today? Why did you lie today? Why did you waste your time? What hurts you today? What fears did you have today? How did you hurt, sin against others?

As the Lord searches our hearts and reveals the dross, the impurities, then you and I can take them to the cross where Christ covers them with his blood and he cleanses us. When this takes each night, when this refinement process repeats each night, you and I will become purer each day.

1 Corinthians 3:12-14 says, “If any man builds on his foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.”

When the time when God will account you and me, what will you and I have to show for?

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[1] http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=10242

[2] VanGemeren, Willem A. “III. The Wicked (17:10-12)” In The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Volume 5. 165. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, © 1991.

Fight for change in grace (John 4:1-42)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon February 8, 2009

This week, I picked up a book titled “Growing Healthy Asian American Churches.” I want to quote from this book for you. It says,

congregations grow most optimally when their explicit (theology, that is proclaimed faith) and implicit theologies (practiced faith) are congruent with one another and thus reinforce one another[1]… when our congregations’ belief and actions mirror one another, when our churches are orthodox and engage in orthopraxis, our churches will continue to grow as healthy households of God.[2]

Along with this book, I just finished reading, “The Emotionally Health Church.” And, here is a quote from the book about the author’s reflection from the movie, “The Apostle” by Robert Duvall. He plays Sonny, a preacher, an evangelist from his boyhood, but terribly marred by his temper, lust, addiction to alcohol, and in rage he killed a man with a baseball.

Sonny, like most of us, is a complex individual. He is a zealous committed Christians whom we admire, and yet he is also terribly inconsistent. Most painful, perhaps, is his lack of awareness of the harm that will come from appearing more than he really is. In some ways he is an imposter. He easily compartmentalizes his faith and spirituality from the totally of his humanity.

Does believing about the right stuffs, orthodox, explicit theology, proclaimed truths get readily translated into the right living, orthopraxis, practiced faith? What we believe and how we live our lives… are they congruent, or is there a gaping disconnection between them? I’ve been doing quite of soul searching lately. This gaping disconnection between what we know as truth and living out this truth, Jesus calls it hypocrisy. When hypocrisy rules, we measure the spirituality with the yard stick of whether we’ve done our quite time, whether we prayed, whether we attend serviced, whether we abstained from the obvious moral failings. We neglect the whole vast domain on how we treat each other, strangers, the poor, the people who are different. When hypocrisy rules, we don’t want to deal with the angry heart that resents, attacks, lying heart that betrays trusts, lusts that erodes purity, the numbed emotions that only gets excited over entertainments. When the gaping disconnection takes place between what we believe and how we live, we would become “disturbed by the thought of an alcoholic, adulterer or exconvict sitting in the pew next to them in Sunday’s worship service,” to quote from Nancy Sguikawa and Steve Wong.[3]

I am asking myself, if God is truly awesome in his incomprehensible love for us in his Son, why isn’t there growing affection for God, why are we not getting restless in growing excitement for him, why are we not zealous and passionate, why are we not jumping up and down and dance like David when the Ark of God returned?

I am convinced that unless I attack this gaping disconnection of head and heart, orthodox and orthopraxis, proclaiming truth and living out truth, we as church will grow dead, we as individual may be nice, but become cynical hypocrites who are no good for the kingdom of God.

So, I’ve been looking for the truth that will help me draw this gaping disconnection of hypocrisy. And the Lord led me to today’s passage. The remedy for hypocrisy, the gaping disconnection of head and heart is to fight for change in grace.

1. Fight for change in grace of Jesus who connects with you.

Imagine sitting next to you now is an alcoholic, sexual addicts, homosexual person, filthy and dirty homeless guy smelling like urine, and imagine your unspoken reactions. In many ways, this is how the Jews felt towards Samaritans.

John 4:9, the Samaritan woman speaks to Jesus about this disparity, distance, disconnection, even hatred, “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)”. Let me speak to the historical background that might help you see this disconnection.

Samaritans were not pure Jews. After the northern kingdom of Israel were conquered & exiled by Assyrians in 722 B.C., Assyrians repopulated the Samaria from all different places. So, purity of Jews ceased to exist, instead Samaritans were the Jewish remnants mixed with Persians and other conquered peoples. By adopting relationships with non-Jews, Samaria also adopted the many practices of paganism. Eventually, Judaism won over the paganistic beliefs and practices, but severely affected their belief system.

Samarians rejected all scripture except Pentateuch that is the first five books of the Old Testament because other books emphasized Judaism centered on Judea and David’s line. Samaritans rejected the worship in Jerusalem, but instead created their own center of worship on Mount Gerizim. By Jesus’ day, a smoldering tension existed between the regions of Judea and Samaria for racial and religious and even political reasons.[4] “Samaritan woman” represented this off shoot of Judaism, hostile to the Jews; Jews too found the Samaritans as appalling moral failures to be shunned away.

And, add to this the culture of Jesus time when it was not common at all for men to speak to women in public, even if they were married, and the absolute taboo for single men to speak to or touch women at any time.[5] What you have is a shocking account of Jesus, a Jew, talking with a Samaritan woman.

This is why John 4:27 says that when the disciples returned, they were surprised to find him talking with a woman.

John 4:6, “Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour,” that is noon. We see a glimpse of Jesus’ humanity here. He got tired just like we get tired. In his humanity seeking for rest from his tiredness turned into the divine moment. He crossed the cultural, religious, political, emotional barbed wires to engage the Samaritan woman, unthinkable to human eyes, but it just the sort of thing Jesus did all the time.

“Will you give me a drink?” Jesus asked in John 4:7. He was countercultural and reached out to the Samaritan woman; and he did it by asking for her help. This is how Jesus began reaching out to the untouchable, through his humility of acknowledging his human need as the Son of God.

This is how Jesus connected in grace counterculturally and humbly!

2. Fight for change in grace of Jesus who gives you the living water.

The Samaritan woman knew all the locations for every water source around Shechem, but here was Jesus talking about “living water.” John 4:10, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Living water is water that is kept fresh through constant streams of flowing like a spring or river. The Samaritan woman knew that in Shechem there was no fresh living water source with steady streams. That is why going way back even Jacob had to dug well for water (John 4:12).

But, we know that Jesus wasn’t talking about physical living water, but spiritual living water.

Concerning this living water Jesus said in John 4:13-14, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirst again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

What Jesus said about him being the source of this living water is reflected in what God said about himself in Jeremiah 2:13 says, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

The living water is offered to all who are thirsty and it was already envisioned in older days of Isaiah. Isaiah 55:1 says, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the water.” And, Zechariah 14:8, “On that day living water will flow from Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea and half to the western sea, in summer and in winter.”

Jesus picks up the theme of living water again in John 7:37-39, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believed in me, as the Scripture had said, streams of living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.”

It is this constant flow of living water, the Holy Spirit from Jesus, his grace overflowing, the key remedy for the disease of the gaping disconnection of the head and the heart.

3. Fight for change in grace of Jesus who overcomes your shame and isolation.

When the Samaritan woman asked Jesus in John 4:15, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water”, we see that she was thinking literally physical water.

It is interesting that instead of answering her directly that she was mistaking spiritual living water with temporal physical water, he told her to bring her husband. What may have been a benign request since it was a common understanding for a woman to talk with a man only with her husband present, now became a moral probing over her life that has been crippling her with deep spiritual shame and social isolation.

She drew water at noon which was far from the ideal time; early morning or at dusk was when the women came to the well to avoid the Mediterranean heat. In John 4:18, we see Jesus revealing why this woman isolated herself. She was socially stigmatized as morally loosed woman; she had five husbands and the one she was with currently was not even her husband. Ill-informed theology, her immoral lifestyle disconnected from her knowledge of what was right from wrong, her misplaced hope in men… she tried very hard to hold on to these false securities. But, Jesus kindly but firmly dealt with her sins.

But, the heat was too much. The Samaritan woman did what any of us would have done if someone were to encroach into our personal space and yet we don’t want to completely close the door on conversing with this person. Her strategy was to take the focus off herself, and to talk about something else. In her case, she deflected the focus from the reality of her shame filled life of sexual promiscuity and isolation to an impersonal and lofty theological controversy of her days.

John 4:20, the woman deflected Jesus’ omniscient probing eyes; “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” The Samaritans argued for the superiority of worship in Shechem rather than in Jerusalem because they rejected all the books of the Old Testament except the first five books. According to Genesis 12:6-7, it was at the site of great tree of Moreh at Shechem, the LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.” And, by rejecting the rest of the Old Testament that speaks to God’s choice of Jerusalem for worship and the line of David to rule, the Samaritans legitimized their false worship.

Jesus refuted them by affirming the inadequacy of Samaritan worship in Mount Gerizim because salvation is from the Jews (John 4:22). But, to Jesus this argument over where God should be worshiped either in Jerusalem or in Schechem was irrelevant because worship was no longer restricted to certain places; instead worship was to take place in one’s relationship to Jesus. John 4:23, Jesus said, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.” The time Jesus referred here is the time of his crucifixion and his resurrection from the dead. His sacrificial death and his rising from the dead was the key pivotal moment in the history where we now get to worship God in Jesus and through the enabling power of the Spirit regardless where we may live.

So, the notion that we only worship on Sunday right now here in the church is misnomer. You are called not only to acknowledge God’s loving rule over you with his Almighty power in this given moment, but in 24/7 anytime, anywhere. This is why we must attack the hypocrisy of reducing worship to the domain of Sunday worship services. It also means we can fight for grace of Jesus who overcomes our shame and isolation without limitation.

The Samaritan woman didn’t grasp the truth about Jesus. So, she tried to deflect him. She said in John 4:25, “I know that Messiah… is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Essentially she was saying to him, “Well, you have very good points, but really the Messiah will decide on who’s right about this.”

The Samaritan woman tried very hard to deflect Jesus from seeing her shame and isolation. But, Jesus already knew. The fact was that he knew her better than she knew herself. Jesus shined his light on her but in shame she sought to isolate herself from him. But, Jesus didn’t pull back. He didn’t give up because he knew that what she really needed was his grace to break her from shame and isolation. So, he declared to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

To a woman who lived with deep shame and lonely isolation, Jesus offered to her his grace to overcome her shame and the power of isolation.

4. Fight for change in grace of Jesus who gives you testimony.

John 4:28 says, “Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? They came out of the town and made their way toward him.”

She was touched by Jesus. Jesus helped her to move from seeing Jesus as an ordinary Jewish man, countercultural, possessor and dispenser of eternal life, the Messiah. And in Lean Morris’s word, “She abandoned the bringing of water for the bringing of men.”

She went from a woman who lived in isolation poisoned by in shame and guilt to a woman who now invites others to discover the Messiah who knows her so completely. She went from a woman in deep shame who picked the hottest noon time to draw water to isolate herself from the judging eyes to a woman who now was zealous to tell others about the person she met at the well; she met the Messiah who knew everything about her, yet didn’t distance himself, instead drew near to her. Shame and isolation no longer defined her; she was now a transformed, changed woman in grace of Jesus Christ.

This narrative about Jesus and the Samaritan woman is interrupted by the disciples who returned. Jesus told them in John 4:35, “open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” As Jesus was speaking about the plants ready to be harvested at any moment, the Samaritan woman was leading the crowd to Jesus. They were making their way to Jesus because of the testimony of this woman.

What was the effect of her testimony? John 4:38 shows the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” Their faith journey did not stopped here. They believed in Jesus because of her testimony, but later they said to the woman in John 4:42, “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.”

When a person is gripped by grace, giving testimony isn’t done out of obligation, but out of living relationship. In that living with relationship with Jesus, he gives us testimony about him.

Conclusion

Do you have a testimony of what Jesus is doing in your life? Is your gap of disconnection being narrowed? Is Jesus changing you? Let’s fight for change by staying in grace of our Lord Jesus.

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[1] Peter Cha, S. Steve Kang & Helen Lee, ed., Growing Healthy Asian American Churches. IVP, 2006, p. 13.

[2] Ibid., p. 14.

[3] Ibid., p. 30.

[4] Burge, Gary M. “Jesus and the Samaritan Woman (4:1 – 26)” In NIV Application Commentary, New Testament: John. By Gary M. Burge, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000. p. 141.

[5] Ibid., p. 142