09: Denver - From "Us v. Them" to "Grace v. Sin"

And he had to pass through Samaria.

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sycher, near the field that Jacob had given his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

It was about the sixth hour.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, Give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

The Samarian woman, the Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.

Where do you get that living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob?

He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

Jesus said to her, Whoever drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will be in him a spring of water welling up in eternal life.

The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good afternoon.

Although it's pretty much evening now, the nice thing about this time change is we got to sleep in before going to church, which is a bonus.

Welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

My name is James Rastman.

I'm the pastor here.

We've got some exciting news to announce before we get started into our sermon and into uh the text for the day.

So as you can tell, we are meeting at 4:30, and uh we are uh in a location that has been our church home since we've been a church and before that, and it's it's a long story, and we can talk about it afterwards.

But we are uh looking forward to where we're headed next.

And uh, where we're headed next as a church is something we've been praying about collectively, and we've been looking through uh trying to narrow basically what our next move is going to be.

We've set as a deadline, we know we want to be out of here by at the very latest March 31st of 2020.

And we want to make that much sooner, if possible.

So uh as an elder board, we've uh done a broad survey of the neighborhoods that we wanted to focus on and pray for in Denver that we might move to.

And one neighborhood kept rising to the top over and over again.

So there are two main metrics that we were using to make this decision.

Uh we called them meaningful and attainable.

That's the type of place that we wanted to move to, a place that was both meaningful and attainable.

So by meaningful, we mean that if we had a real impact for the gospel in this town, then or in this neighborhood, then it would have the potential to infect the culture of Denver.

So that we would actually experience the very culture of our city begin to change by the power of the gospel.

So meaningful means that uh if uh there is a real move of the gospel in this area, then Satan would start to get nervous for all other parts of Denver.

Uh and attainable meant that instead of looking at Denver as a whole, you know, we want a meaningful impact.

But Denver as a whole, that's probably not attainable uh for a church to say, okay, I'm gonna aim at Denver as a whole.

You know, we want to aim small, miss small.

Uh so we wanted to pick a neighborhood that we thought we could uh in a in a meaningful way connect with uh and then impact the rest of the city through that.

So uh with those two metrics in mind, we began looking and uh we have that neighborhood.

So we're about to find out all together where it is that we are moving as a church, um, hopefully at the early part of next year.

So uh we are moving to the drum roll, please.

Good job, Berkeley neighborhood.

All right.

All right, so the reason that we're uh so of all the neighborhoods that we looked at, the Berkeley neighborhood seemed to have the best fit for uh this sort of meaningful impact that we could have in Denver.

It's got a great main street, which is Tennyson Street, and it's got a community that we've been able to network with really well already.

Uh, one of the things that we uh uh that drew us to this neighborhood in the first place is there's there's a hope of a permanent location in uh Berkeley that we've got some great connections with and that there's some great movement around already.

Um it's a building that uh the odds of us getting it are you know 50-50, which are pretty good.

And uh and the way that we've been able to network into a position to get into this potential permanent location in Berkeley has been really wonderful.

Uh, we've met with uh some great uh folks who are looking to develop in that area, and the building that we would move in is part of a property that they're looking to purchase and uh uh designate a historic building that we would be able to move into.

Uh in the meantime, before that deal shakes out, uh, and quite frankly, whether or not that deal shakes out, we are looking to move into Berkeley and adopt this neighborhood as the permanent home for Redemption Church Denver.

And the way that we're going to be doing that is we are going to become a full-on real life portable pop-up church.

Yeah, that's right.

So this is happening.

This is real life.

Uh right now, you probably don't know this, you can't tell because we're in the same building.

We're pop-up church now.

So if you're wondering, what does it feel like to be a pop-up church?

Feels like this.

The problem is, is that it we've been in this building for so long that you can't tell.

You know, we haven't been able to go through this real season in our church's history of galvanizing together, looking at a place in our city and saying, we're gonna go on mission together there.

And so that's what we're announcing today.

Today we are announcing that we are going on mission together to the Berkeley neighborhood in Denver.

You know, this isn't a missionary journey that's around the world.

Uh, this is a missionary journey that's in our backyard, but moving with that, with this new type of intentionality, I think, is gonna be a really galvanizing experience for our church.

So, some things to look forward to coming down the line.

Um, when you do a portable church or a pop-up church, um, you you the thing that you have to do every morning or every Sunday morning is pop up.

So uh we're going to need teams of people to do that.

Uh so we're gonna uh get some contract uh with a great coffee company, because I think that's gonna be a key ingredient for us being able to pull this off.

That we have coffee ready for the volunteers that show up, unpack whatever it is we're going to be unpacking, and create a church in the Berkeley neighborhood.

The thing that really pushed us over the edge into Berkeley uh is there when we we made these, well, and when I say me, we, I mean Krista, uh made these great maps uh with uh, I don't know, architecture paper.

Uh it comes from architecture trees.

And you uh we just laid out these uh like okay, here are the main traffic lines in Denver, so lay that over on top.

Here are the uh main neighborhoods that people are moving into and have a good mix of permanent homes and of apartments, okay?

Lay that over the top.

And now here are places where we know there are good committed Bible teaching churches.

We lay that one over the top.

And when we laid that one over the top, there's not one in Berkeley.

And so we really wanted to move to a place where it seemed like there this neighborhood needs a church, it needs a group of people to come in and be proclaiming the gospel, to invest in this area so that we can see what impact does the gospel have on a community of people for a long period of time.

We've connected with uh sever with two other churches that are in that area, um, both of which seem to have congregations below 10 people, and neither of which want to work with us.

Uh so it that seems to be the yeah, uh from us versus them to grace versus sin.

That's what we're getting to.

Uh and uh so it just seemed that all signs were pointing to Berkeley.

And I I'm so excited about this.

I think that there's uh just such an amazing opportunity for us to be praying specifically now, um, and particularly for the people that we're going to um hopefully minister to, be praying in particular for those who haven't been exposed to a church.

You know, one of the best strategies for winning new converts is planting churches.

And so we're gonna go plant ourselves in the Berkeley neighborhood.

I heard a great metaphor this past week for uh what church plants are like uh uh for a city.

And I like it because it's uh it's about gut bacteria.

So uh gut bacteria was something that none of us knew existed like three years ago, and now it's like we think about it.

Like, how's our gut bacteria doing?

And uh what gut bacteria is, is like you get the right bacteria in there and and it causes things to ferment, it digests, and so what means is happening is when you get the right gut bacteria, it means death is happening.

And so, what a good church is, is we're like gut bacteria.

And we move into a part of the town and we're constantly dying to ourselves.

Right?

Uh, see where this is going.

And because we're there, because we're dying to ourselves in this area, the the whole ecosystem of the place becomes healthier.

So we're like a kombucha mother.

I'll come up with something better before we get there, but for now, that that's the one that's gonna work for us.

Um uh so that's what we're going to bring, to bring uh healthy bacteria into a uh new part of the city.

So uh after church today, stick around and uh we'll all pray together.

Uh we'll get to pray specifically for the neighborhood we're going to.

We'll get to play re we'll get to pray recklessly that we get this building that we're aiming at, and we'll get to pray for all the logistics that are gonna go into pulling something like this off.

Um uh as far as timelines, our hope is early 2020.

Um so I don't want to say any dates.

Um I don't want to say January 5th.

I don't want to say it.

Um so I won't.

So I won't say any dates.

Um okay.

Uh for the time being, we're in the midst of our Redemption Applied series, so would you pray?

Father, we thank you so much for your guidance and uh the uh your guiding hand that you've given to us and just your generosity and how you've uh led us and how you've uh cared for us.

Lord, you work in all sorts of mysterious ways, uh, and you are so at work.

Lord, your spirit uh it's like the wind.

Um it's hard to tell where it's going, where it's coming from.

Uh but we can see the effect Lord, as you've brought us together more deeply as a church, as you've given us a vision, as you've uh created in us a unity that is not superficial.

Uh Lord, but uh we've seen a real authentic commitment.

Lord, we just thank you for that.

That's the work of your spirit.

I pray that you would continue that today as we look into your word and that you would show us in your word how we can move into this new city, how we can adopt the demeanor that you have, where when we just sit down next to people, uh we show them the amazing glory of Christ right where they are.

Father, would you show that to us in your word today?

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we are uh coming to the end of our Redemption Applied series.

We've just got two more sermons after this one, uh, which is crazy because the fall is just flown by.

Uh but uh what we've done is we've seen that the gospel is the power and the purpose of all that we do as a church.

And when we really get the gospel, that transforms our own hearts personally.

It establishes a community amongst us, and that community becomes a blessing and a benefit to our whole city.

So our three categories that we've moved through are heart, community, and Denver.

Here we are in our second week of looking at how the gospel transforms the city that we're a part of.

And one of the key moves that the gospel makes in our hearts is it changes us from a people who typically view the world through a lens of us versus them into a people who through the world who view the world through this new binary of grace versus sin.

So to start, uh I uh Freud, Sigmund, that Freud, has this great term uh called the narcissism of small differences.

I love that term because you know exactly what it means, right, when you hear it.

The narcissism of small differences.

And he uses it to describe these uh uh groups of people who are the more they have in common, then the more they exaggerate their differences.

So the more we tend to have in common with another group, the more that we will exaggerate our small differences.

Uh if ever there was a phrase that captured the whole history of American Protestantism in it, I think the narcissism of small differences does that really well.

Um so what we see in this tendency, if Freud is right, then uh oftentimes the most difficult lines to cross are the ones that are closest to us.

Uh the ones where the differences don't seem so great, and yet all of a sudden, in the cultural context that we find ourselves in, the line just can't seem to be crossed.

We'll see this play out uh in the text today as Jesus speaks with a Samaritan woman.

Jesus is a Jewish rabbi, and uh they have no dealings with Samaritans.

And this is the closest group of people to the Jews.

The Samaritans are uh they're a mixed race uh of Jews, and uh they have many religious similarities, but with these minor differences that make them completely unable to communicate with each other.

You know, because of this tendency of ourselves, and with our conversation regarding the church and the glory of what the church is, it's easy for us to slip into this normal mode of operation, which is us versus them.

Which is we have us who is the we are the good people in the church, and we go out to them who are the bad people, and we go out winsomely and in a loving way, and our goal is to take the bad people who are out there, the them, and bring them into us, the good people.

We think, okay, yeah, this fits the narrative of Christianity.

We need to go rescue people out of the world and into the church.

The problem is that the story starts to get messy in practice.

Because what happens is you go out into the world, and unfortunately for that clean narrative, you meet really great people.

You meet people that are incredibly impactful, positively, that are holding communities together.

You meet people that are more open and authentic than you are, you meet people that are uh a part of deeper and more real community than you are a part of, and then you go back into the church where all the good people are, and all of a sudden it seems petty, you seem like you're not able to share the things that are really happening in your life, and it's a very disorienting experience.

So all of a sudden, that us versus them paradigm no longer seems useful.

Well, in this story, Jesus breaks down that paradigm by going through every barrier that his culture had set up for him and intentionally brings in this new greater paradigm, something that transcends any of the petty differences that they were a part of.

And he doesn't transcend those differences by showing that they were so small.

Instead, he introduces a difference that is far greater than we could imagine.

So today Jesus speaks with a Samaritan woman at a well.

He overcomes the narcissism of small differences, and he talks about three things he talks about water, he talks about worship, and he talks about witnessing.

We're gonna learn about those three things water, worship, and witnessing.

It's a familiar story.

So let's jump into our text, John 4.

Uh these are verses seven through nine.

It says, A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.

For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman, a woman of Samaria?

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

So in recording the story, even where he places the story in the greater book of John, John is trying to draw our attention directly to how unlikely it would be that these two people would ever speak.

It is so wildly unlikely that Jesus, that a Jewish man, would ever speak to a Samaritan woman.

These paths would never cross.

Consider that the last dialogue that we see John record is in John 3, which is another book, which is another section we looked at in this series.

And in John 3, he speaks to Nicodemus.

Now, Nicodemus is a fellow Jewish rabbi.

And so they're just two rabbis, two theologians of the same uh socioeconomic, political, uh class, and they have a conversation.

Uh, ironically, the way John tells the story, they have a conversation in secret and at night.

The conversation with the woman of Samaria is in broad daylight at noon in a public place.

So John is just drawing our attention to the strangeness of these two people, the Samaritan woman and Jesus, the Jewish male rabbi, ever speaking to each other.

And he brings us to three barriers that Jesus just moves right through with his simple request, give me a drink.

These are the gendered barrier, the racial barrier, and the moral barrier.

So, gendered barrier, in the ancient Near East, a man simply would not have spoken to a single woman in a public place like this.

In fact, the thing, the one thing that Jesus' disciples will marvel at when they return from their errand of buying food, is that Jesus was speaking to a woman.

And John actually records, they marveled that Jesus was speaking to a woman, and then John says, but no no one asked him about it.

Which is funny, because they were like, huh.

Alright.

I guess we'll just let Jesus do his thing.

But they were marveling.

Marveling at this.

This is something that would never happen.

The next is the racial barrier.

Jews and Samaritans have no dealing with each other.

Uh the formation of Samaria to what it would become at this time is an odd one.

It's recorded in 2 Kings 17.

Uh, the king of Assyria takes some of his people, and he had recently conquered the land of Samaria, and so he says, okay, we need to populate this recently conquered land.

And so he sends in some of his Assyrians to populate this land.

And they uh begin the story is very strange.

They begin to be a Attacked by lions, you know, as it goes.

And uh so they say they're being attacked by lions because they're not living in step with the gods of that land.

And so the king of Assyria goes and captures some Jews as well, and some Jewish leaders, and says, You have to move into this land of Samaria.

Teach them how to live in accord with your God, that way we're able to actually live in this land.

So that happens, and a racial distinction happens amongst the Jews.

They were prohibited the Jews were prohibited from intermarrying with people outside of their race.

But all of a sudden that's forced.

And so this new group of people who are half Jew, half this Assyrian forced to live in Samaria forms.

And so they're now racially impure.

They're like a Gentile nation.

So there's this racial barrier, and notice it's it's it's a small difference.

They're a mixed breed, and that becomes the most hostile difference.

Finally, there's a moral barrier.

And it's a moral barrier because of the way that the Samaritans understood who the Jewish God was.

You know, the Jewish God is brought into Samaria, and instead of being taught as the one true God, the one who is over all peoples, who created the heavens and the earth and is over everything, he is taught as another God.

He is taught as the God of this land, of the land of Samaria.

And so instead of seeing, oh, we now have come in contact with the God of gods when we speak of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Instead, the Samaritans would have thought, we have come in contact with another God who is part of our pantheon.

So God now becomes just another seat at the table next to the Baals and the other ancient Near Eastern gods.

And so when a Jew says that he's talking about God, he's saying he's talking about the God of the universe.

And when a Samaritan says, Yeah, I'm talking about that God too, what she would mean is, I'm just talking about this God who is one among many, not God of gods, but one God among many others.

So using the same language, but meaning something very different.

And so in that we see that there are these three barriers that exist that John calls our attention to to say these people would never have interacted.

The gendered barrier, the racial barrier, and the moral barrier.

We can see that right in the text.

Because what is the woman shocked over?

It's not like drink for you, I only have so much water.

I don't want to do any extra work for you, it has nothing to do with the water.

What she's shocked by is how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

This barrier all of a sudden makes the conversation very strange.

So Jesus responds, in John 4, verse 10, Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

John 4:10

So I want to look first at what Jesus doesn't do, because I think this would be our tendency.

What Jesus doesn't do is he doesn't say, you know, woman of Samaria, we're not so different, you and I.

We've got, sure, these different religious backgrounds, these different beliefs, but here we are and we both need water.

So do we really have that much that isn't in common?

And I would have tried to find some common ground to start with, to start a conversation with.

If I were like to teach an evangelism 101, I'd say, look, you gotta like find that common ground, and then you'll be able to start having a real conversation.

Instead, Jesus does the complete opposite.

He says, uh, look, you think it's different that uh you think we're different because you're a Samaritan woman and I'm a Jew?

No, look, we're way more different than that.

We have way less in common than even that.

He explodes the differences between them.

He says, look, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

He introduces this huge difference.

So the woman contests the idea.

She says, living water, which would have just been another way of saying it's like an actively flowing spring.

It's like, look, if you really knew who I was, you would have asked me for just a flowing spring.

So you wouldn't have to come to this well every day.

So the woman of Samaria says, you really, she kind of pulls a geographical rank.

She says, You think that you could find a spring in this area?

Remember that this is the land that was given to Jacob, both of their forefathers.

This is a land that was given to Jacob.

And Jacob only had wells.

So you're saying that you're better than our forefather Jacob?

By the way, the forefather whose land I'm the one who lives in his land.

See what she's doing there?

So uh Jesus, in seeing this kind of move, she uh uh instead of saying, well, well, let me explain, uh, he doubles down on the difference.

In John 4, 14, he says, Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.

Now Jesus is giving us a masterclass.

This is why I wanted to start by just talking about water.

Because what Jesus is able to do is in just a conversation about water, he takes this mundane element and he informs it with its transcendent meaning.

See, so much of our job as Christians that are going out into the city is to help expose people to what God is really doing here.

And that means being able to re-enchant the world, being able to demonstrate the transcendence that is in the everyday life that we're actually living in.

The woman thinks she's just having a conversation about water, just water.

But there is no just water.

Jesus, throughout the whole story of creation, we see water move and it's telling this story of God's redemption.

God saves his people through the water.

God has the water basin around the temple courts to remind them of being saved through the water.

God introduces a water baptism.

Jesus will call himself living water, say that he gives the water of life.

The water is about Jesus.

The water is first and foremost.

Any water that you're dealing with is first and foremost about Jesus.

And so what Jesus is doing is he's refusing to buy into the normal way of seeing the world.

And instead, he's only living in the reality of the Bible's description of existence.

You know, we talk so much about how to contextualize the gospel places.

I think that we would do well to actually do a little less contextualization and a little more understanding of how the Bible is teaching us to see the world, and then helping others to see the world in that same way.

Because we live in a culture that is dying, to live in a world that is re-enchanted, to live in a world where water actually does have the meaning that it was intended to have.

Because if it has meaning, then maybe I'm part of a bigger story.

And if I'm part of a bigger story, then maybe my life has some meaning.

Jesus takes water and he turns this mundane into something transcendent.

And then Jesus is able to say, the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

And so what Jesus does is he talks about himself as someone who is radically transcendent, someone who is not marginally better, someone who is not marginally different than David.

He's not 10% better than Jacob, but he is radically transcendent.

So the woman, intrigued by this view of the world and kind of sarcastically quipping back at Jesus, says, Okay, that sounds great.

Can I have some of this water so that I wouldn't have to come back to this well every day and get water?

So Jesus responds to her and he transforms the conversation about mundane water into a conversation about worship.

In John 4, verses 16 through 18, it says, Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here.

John 4:16–18

The woman answered him, I have no husband.

Jesus said to her, You are right in saying, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.

What you have said is true.

Okay, so this may seem like a total non-sequarter for Jesus, because she he just does this whole speech on living water.

She's like, living water, okay, whatever, sounds great, weird Jew man.

But uh uh maybe you could get me some of that.

So he says, Okay, go get me your husband.

We're like, oh, come on.

Like what, she can't have water?

Like, come on, Jesus, get with the times, that sort of thing.

But it's not as much of a non sequitur as it seems.

The woman likely would have been gathering water for her household.

And if she's getting the water and he's saying, look, I'm gonna give you springs of living water, then it's not strange for him to say, look, let's just bring your household here then.

But Jesus also knows what he's doing.

And he knows that he's going to pry into the reality of her life, and they're just going to face it together.

So, what does she say?

Woman said, I have no husband.

And what does Jesus say to her?

Listen to, I want you to hear in the language just the lack of judgment, the lack of condemnation in Jesus' words here.

It says, You look listen to how he starts.

You are right in saying, I have no husband.

For you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.

What you've said is true.

Listen to those bookends.

You're right, what you've said is true.

You know, he it he he's this is such a masterwork.

Because what Jesus is doing is he's just taking he's just grabbing her by the hand and saying, let's just walk into your reality together.

And then we'll both just be able to see what's really there.

So all Jesus does is he just says what's there.

You're right.

The man you're living with now isn't your husband?

You've had five husbands before.

What you said is true.

So what Jesus does is and this is the tool that I want us to be able to grasp.

This is the move from us versus them to grace versus sin.

The grand distances between their relationship is what makes the conversation possible.

Jesus uses that as a way of introducing himself as this radically transcendent Lord.

And then the depth of disorder and sin that the woman is living in, Jesus uses that to introduce the depth of redemption that he offers.

These are the very things that we would tend to try and ignore in a conversation for the sake of making the gospel feel more comfortable.

And here Jesus gives us precisely the opposite instruction.

He says, Do you see those great differences of why you would never talk to that type of person?

Maybe that's precisely the way in.

So the key thing to see in this is that we need to become students of what God is doing, what God is calling sin in the world around us.

And we need to remember that Jesus did not come to work some theoretical redemption.

The gospel message will not be understood in someone's life so long as it takes place up here.

You know, in just like a sequence of ideas.

Okay, uh, creation fall, redemption, hope.

Oh, I get it.

Let me plug myself into that story.

No, it doesn't seem to work that way.

Jesus didn't come to accomplish a theoretical redemption.

And so he pries in and he says, look, here's what's really here.

And I came to affect that, this real area of your life, this real hardship in your marriage, this real idolization of your work, this real uh anxiety that you're living in.

Need to know those real things, because that's where Jesus came to bring his redemption.

It is not a theoretical redemption.

So the woman responds to Jesus in John 4, 19 through 20.

The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet, right?

Good call, you know.

Uh yeah, you're right about the husbands, you've had five before.

He's like, All right, things are starting to make more sense with all that water talk earlier.

You're a prophet.

So then she asks, our fathers worshiped on this mountain.

But you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.

So now that I've got a prophet handy, maybe we can go ahead and clear this one up.

Now this feels in the same way like another non-sequitur in the conversation.

Okay, what she's doing is she feels it getting really personal, and so she feels the conversation becoming uh about a real area in her life that will require actual repentance and redemption.

Uh, so she's gonna pop out and make it a conversation just about uh religion and some theoretical part of religion that's distant from her.

That may be a part of it.

But I think what's also at play here is what the religion what the worship on either of these mountains means.

Because what the worship on those mountains means and what it is, is it's atonement for sin.

It's how you actually become clean before God.

When you discover you're in sin, which she just had exposed to her, she discovers she's living in this disordered way, and now she's asking, okay, so what do I do then?

What if I want to get my life back together?

Which mountain is it?

I've got two worldviews before me, one that I'm a part of and one that you're a part of.

That is it, is it this mountain, the Samaritan mountain, that I go to, and in going to that one, I can get my life reordered, or is it in going to the Jewish mountain that I'm able to then get my life reordered?

See, there's a hopefulness in her question when we understand what takes place at each of these mountains.

And what she's also exposing, and what this question exposes, is that she is a part of a system that is disordered all the way down.

You know, it's no coincidence that uh John tells the story of the Samaritan woman who has five husbands.

Because what is Samaria doing in their relationship with God?

Well, he's just one among many.

You see, it's adulterous here at the top of the culture.

And so when you buy into this mountain, when you buy into this culture's narrative, it's going to be adulterous all the way down.

And so we see it bearing out in her life.

This is why it's so important to understand and to be able to parse out what is it that I'm doing that is uh uniquely American or uh uniquely Western, that isn't necessarily uniquely biblical, that isn't necessarily scriptural, that isn't what Jesus is calling me to do.

You know, we have a tendency to approach our problems in our life just through the Western narrative that we're a part of.

And so we don't even really use the word sin on ourselves.

We'll use trauma, but we won't use sin because those are totally different narratives.

So we need to learn how to uh understand uh the narrative that we're actually a part of, and that be the biblical narrative.

So Jesus moves in this regard, and we see this sort of disorder is systemic and personal, and so she asks a systemic question, knowing that she's a part of that system, knowing that this flows down.

So that's the difference between the mountains.

And Jesus says something that is wildly different in his answer to her.

Jesus responds with the one unthinkable answer to her question of which mountain, this one from the Jews, or this one from Samaria?

And he answers with, uh no, it's it's neither mountain.

The hour is coming when we won't worship on this mountain or on the mountain that the Jews worship on.

The hour is coming when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

Jesus is always radically transcending her categories.

He's always taking this mundane thing and saying, look, you're thinking too small about this.

There's something even greater, even bigger, that you need to understand.

This is the story that we're really in, this bigger, grander, more amazing story.

That's the one that we're actually in.

So don't buy into this, is it this mountain or is it that mountain?

You're missing it.

But he does this thing that that it's even it's even more complicated and it's even more kind of nuanced than that, what Jesus is doing.

Because earlier he says, uh, he says, uh, look, salvation, he says to her, excuse me, I got mixed up.

He says to her, you worship what you do not know.

The Jews, us, we worship what we know.

You know, wouldn't it have been much less complicated if Jesus had just said, forget the whole mountain.

Thing.

We're just going to talk about something radically transcendent.

Because that's just inclusive.

That removes any sort of exclusivity.

It's just inclusive.

But instead, what Jesus says is no, this salvation, it's from the Jews.

Radically exclusive.

It's from one place.

There's one people group that the salvation is coming from.

But then he says, but it's for anyone.

It's not going to be the people who worship on this mountain.

It's not for the people who just worship on this mountain.

In fact, it's going to be people all over the world worshiping the Father directly from their spirit, in truth.

They won't have this question anymore of which mountain and feel torn all the time.

They'll know.

So he says this in John 4, 23 through 26, but the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

For the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ.

When he comes, he will tell us all things.

And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He.

Give me some water.

Why are you talking to me?

Go get your husband.

I don't have a husband.

You're right.

You've got five husbands.

Okay, but then what's my way out of this?

Is it this way or is it this way?

No, it's me.

I can't even wrap my head around this moment.

Just this masterful way that Jesus takes this elemental thing, water, transforms it into a conversation about worship, makes that conversation about worship not theoretical, but personal.

What's actually happening in her story, and then introduces himself as the answer to all of these questions that have caused her to be in the story that she's in.

This is what, in a in an us versus them sort of paradigm, where we say that there's goodness in the church and there's badness outside of the church, so we need to just huddle down here.

In that type of paradigm, this conversation doesn't even happen.

It doesn't start.

And yet, those great differences that Jesus doesn't deny, he doesn't minimize, he expands, those differences become the means through which they're able to connect over the something greater.

We can make the mistake of thinking if the church just looked more like the culture, then it will be easier for people to understand, for people that are just, you know, unchurched, a part of the culture, to understand what's happening in the church.

And it'll be easier to share what's happening, what the gospel is like.

But Jesus doesn't seem to contextualize that way.

He contextualizes in a way that's that's wildly different.

He says, yeah, it's the same water, but I'm talking about uh I'm talking about a living water.

You know, it's it's the same, like, yeah, we're both we're both talking about relationships, but the way I view relationships, ah gosh, it's it's really so different.

Like, is my marriage fulfilling?

Well, that that's not the that's kind of not the way that we talk about marriage.

You know, we talk about marriage as it's a it's a commitment of sacrifice to one another, and and it's fulfilling sometimes, but sometimes it's not.

And I'm still in it because in hope, I'm I'm a part of something that will be even more joyful and even greater than something that's just temporarily fulfilling.

See, now all of a sudden we're exposing a new paradigm, a new way of seeing the world, re-enchanting reality.

The woman becomes a witness of this new reality immediately.

In John 4, 28 through 30, she says, So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, Come see a man who told me all that I ever did.

Can this be the Christ?

They went out of the town and were coming to him.

So uh the woman leaves, she leaves her water jar.

There's an empty water jar there.

Remember what she went to get?

I'll give you a clue empty water jar.

Water.

And then her and Jesus talk about water, and she's like, you know, this is uh uh this water is more important than this water.

I've got to go talk about this new water that I've got and go tell my whole town.

Then the disciples walk up in the next scene, and they have food, you know, it's for Jesus, they're eating the fries off the top, and they hand it and they hand the food to Jesus, and Jesus is like, I'm actually good, I don't need it.

Uh they're like, why?

Uh did you already eat?

Did she give you some food?

Uh no, the food that I live on, it's to do the will of the Father.

You know, food to me means something more, it's just well beyond this.

Like satisfaction meaning in life.

It's like what I just got to do with this woman here.

This, I just got to have this amazing conversation where I showed her that the wonder of the world that she was living in, and she didn't even know it.

She felt so trapped, and then I got to share, there's a real way out, and that's like food for me.

And meanwhile, while they're asking about food and they're eating, the woman's empty jars standing there.

It's like a testimony against them.

This Samaritan, this them gets who Jesus is.

The disciples of Jesus, these us, don't get who Jesus is.

There's sin and grace outside the walls of the church, there's sin and grace inside the walls of the church.

We're always looking to see how can grace overcome sin.

What we're doing in the church is not different than our mission outside of the church.

So uh the woman uh then goes and she tells her testimony to the whole town.

And this is the testimony that I want to zero in on as this last point.

It's in John 4, verse 39, and this is the second time that her testimony is repeated in this uh in the telling of the story.

John 4:39

It says, Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.

Here's the testimony: He told me all that I ever did.

That's all she said.

He told me all that I ever did.

Why did that land like that?

Later, all the townspeople will come and they'll spend time with Jesus, and these will be the first people after John the Baptist to say that Jesus is the savior of the world.

They spend a weekend with him.

They're like, yeah, he's the savior of the world.

What would it take?

What type of weekend would that be with somebody?

To where you'd leave and be like, that's the savior of the world, I think.

For her, she was convinced because he told her all that she ever did.

Our city's lost the categories that it needs to be able to function.

It no longer has the category of sin and death.

In fact, we only have two real functional categories.

We have we have pleasure and we have pain.

And in a life that's meaningless, then we just need to mitigate our pain and we need to get as much pleasure as we can.

But those aren't the categories that lead to life.

You know, if if Jesus, if if meaning in Jesus' life was eliminating pain, what would that mean for us?

The redemption of the world means moving into pain because there's real hope on the other side of it.

And when we don't even have the categories to know that, look, the way I'm living is is sinful and it can be repented of.

But Jesus came in and he tells her all she ever did.

Says, look, this way that you're living is actually sinful.

Like, why is it not working?

Because the Jews, we worship what we know.

God laid out a way for us to live, and the way that just flows so in line with the culture that you're a part of, the reason that it's not bringing you any fulfillment, any real life is because you're not calling it what it is.

Our culture is aching for people to sit down and say, hey, what if what if this is going so badly because it's wrong?

Saying that, so Jesus says that.

And he stayed.

He says, look, this is a completely disordered way of living.

It's sinful.

You don't, you're worshiping the wrong God.

Here's living water.

That's the difference between the way the gospel moves into a community and the way any other thing moves into a community.

Uh any other movement moves in and it starts making the distinctions between the people that are going to be in and the people that are going to be out.

The gospel moves in and it makes those distinctions.

It doesn't get rid of the distinctions.

They're really there.

Sometimes in more plain and terrifying ways than we would ever want to face.

We see those real distinctions there of sin and death, of holiness and life, and then Jesus stays with us.

When he makes the distinction, he doesn't leave, but he offers us his grace.

And seeing that, we're instructed on how to move out into the world.

Not in a place of us versus them, but in a place of having received the incredible grace from Jesus.

And realizing that that sin that we see in the world that would have otherwise been our reason to leave, all of a sudden becomes our reason to stay.

It becomes our reason to move in more deeply.

So with that, let's take a question.

How can we order our lives to ensure we are worshiping in spirit and truth instead of on that mountain or the other mountain, as understood from today's sermon?

Yeah, great question.

So Halloween was this weekend or Thursday.

Does anybody else know what that also is?

Yeah, Reformation Anniversary.

I'm just kidding, and I know that too.

So Martin Luther nailed on to the door of Castle Church his 95 Theses.

And uh the first the first thesis of his 95 says that the Christian life is to be marked by constant repentance.

That's the first one.

So how do we know whether we're living on this mountain or that mountain, or whether we're living in spirit and in truth, whether we're worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth.

Do you feel like your life is marked by constant repentance?

Do you think that in your life when you're which means which means you're coming up against things, and you're saying, wow, these are actually wrong in me.

There's things in me that these are not just, these are not just products of my history panning out, although they're probably part of that.

You know, this is not just some hurt that's happened to me, although it may be an effect of that, but this is also really from me.

I'm really coming against a wrong that's in me.

And then in seeing that reality, knowing in Christ that you can come to Jesus and say, look, there's this really bad thing in me, I repent.

And knowing that every instance of that, Jesus will say the same thing over and over again.

You're forgiven.

I've covered it.

I've covered you.

You, I've I personally, Jesus would say, have atoned for your sin.

And so you're freed to live a life that is in step with reality, which means you encounter things that are wrong, and yet is totally liberated and totally free because you know you can always come and return to your Father and receive his forgiveness over and over and over again.

It's a grace that is completely inexhaustible, 100% inexhaustible.

And when it's his grace, that atoning grace of Jesus, that becomes the fundamental aspect of your reality, that becomes the defining feature of existence in your life, the most important thing about you is that Jesus loved you so much that he died on the cross for you and atoned for the real sin in your life, then in spirit and in truth you will worship him.

But the ways that we drift are when we say, okay, you know what?

The ways that we drift is when we start to reduce the diagnosis to something else.

And you can find it as we cling to the other narratives that our culture will offer us.

Or we'll start to call pain sin, and we'll start to call happiness holiness.

Then we've slipped into a different narrative.

We're worshiping on one mountain or another.

When we start to look down on people that are in sin because we're so much better than them, then we've slipped onto a mountain of self-righteousness.

Or when we start to say, you know, I'm actually not encountering anything wrong that I'm doing.

I don't have anything in my life that I would repent of, repentance that's so archaic.

Well then we've slipped on to another mountain.

Uh it's the gospel of Jesus Christ that He atoned for our sins, that allows us to worship in spirit and in truth.

I'm really thankful for that last question.

Uh really tied ties the sermon together.

The rug really tied the room together.

All right.

Let's pray.

Father, I pray that we would not just consider the story of Jesus as uh an example, but as something that you do for us.

Lord, you sit down next to us, you show us the reality of our lives, and you stay sitting next to us.

You say that's really wrong, you're really forgiven.

Let me give you my spirit, that you might move into the world with me.

Lord, we come humble before you, trusting in your grace alone to bring our redemption, and knowing that we have nothing to offer the heart of the city, that we have nothing to offer Berkeley other than your grace alone.

That we are not coming in as people who have it all together, uh, but we are also not coming in as people who don't believe that we can become more like you, but we're coming in as those dependent on your grace.

Lord, let that create a unity amongst us.

Let us hope for people that we might have given up hoping for.

Lord, perhaps in this room that might be personal for some.

If they've given up hoping for themselves, let them sit down next to you again and receive your offer of a living water.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.