The Right Questions
Notes
Transcript
What’s behind Jesus’s imagery?
What’s behind Jesus’s imagery?
Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”
So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.
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 no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?
*** Spring flowing
*** N/S Living water refers to God himself; the salvation God offers to his people; the Wisdom God provides to keep
Jeremiah 2:13 (NRSV)
[M]y people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.
O hope of Israel! O Lord! All who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who turn away from you shall be recorded in the underworld, for they have forsaken the fountain of living water, the Lord.
What about the husbands?
What about the husbands?
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”
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 have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”
God’s omniscience, which … has been attributed to his omnipresence, is now attributed to his omnipotence. God can search man out not only because he sees him, but because he made him.
James Montgomery Boice
*** Woman at the well
Jesus knows what cannot be known without supernatural knowledge
Jesus knows what has gone on in the woman’s life and her present circumstances
He states the woman’s history and condition matter-of-factly, without shaming and without excusing
The Lord who knew her knows you and me
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
What is worship?
What is worship?
Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
*** Worship
*** Temple
*** N/S: The question is where (Jerusalem, or Samaria?) but Jesus answers how
John 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 1–6 4:1–42; Jesus Among the Samaritans
“No, for this man, like those others, has gone astray from the road that accords with true piety (εὐσέβεια), deeming it to be ritual (θρησκεία) instead of holiness (ὁσιότης), and offering gifts to Him who cannot be bribed and will not accept such things, and flattering Him who cannot be flattered, who welcomes genuine worship of every kind, but abhors all counterfeit approaches. Genuine worship is that of a soul bringing simple reality as its only sacrifice.”
The worshiper sees the Father
through the Spirit of truth
in Jesus, who is the truth.
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Who is Jesus?
Who is Jesus?
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”
Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’ ”
*** Ancient icon of Christ: He is the messiah, the one in whom the salvation of God is known, the one who knows all things, the one whose words are truth, the one who says, “I AM.”