Transcript
Tim Keller (0:03)
Welcome to Gospel and Life. How do we share what it means to truly know Jesus, not just as a historical figure or moral teacher, but as savior and king? This month, Tim Keller explores what the Bible shows us about being public with our faith and sharing the hope we have in Christ.
Scripture Reader (0:26)
Tonight's scripture comes from the Book of John, chapter 4, verses 27 through 42. Just then, his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, what do you want? Or why are you talking with her? 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 Messiah? They came out of the town and made their way toward him. Meanwhile, his disciples urged him, rabbi, eat something. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you know nothing about. Then his disciples said to each other, could someone have brought him food? My food, said Jesus, is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don't you have a saying it's still four months until the harvest? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields. They are ripe for harvest even now. The one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying, one sows and another reaps is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor. Many of the Samaritans from that town believed 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, the word of the Lord.
Tim Keller (2:18)
We're beginning a new series called Public Sharing the hope that's within. We live in a very pluralistic society. New York, particularly your neighbor, probably holds deeply, sharply divergent beliefs about things to your beliefs. Now, in a situation like that, pluralistic, everybody's so different in their beliefs. Here's the question. How can people be true to themselves and not hide who they are and still get along? I mean, no matter who you are, if you care about the social fabric, that's a huge question to answer, because there's really only Three, I think possible alternatives. Either you hide who you are for fear that your neighbor will be angry at you, or you speak out about your beliefs and who you are in such a way that you provoke anger in your neighborhood, or you learn how to share who you are and you are open about who you are, but to do it in such a way that creates peace and civility. And of course, the third alternative is the only one that has integrity, and it's the only one that really holds out a prospect of hope for a pluralistic society. And therefore, even though we're going to be looking at what the Bible says each week about how Christians should be public with their faith, this issue should concern everybody. And my goal is to show Christians how they can be part of the solution. And that means whether you're a Christian or whether you don't believe in Christianity or whether you're not sure what you believe, this will be of relevance to you. And we're also very excited about the fact that thousands of people in not only the beta groups, but the small groups in our church are studying this material every week and applying it to real life. Now, the first week, we're just looking at the very subject of what public faith is and why faith should be public. And we're looking at what was read to you was the last half of a great story about Jesus Christ meeting a woman of Samaria at the well. It starts at the very beginning of chapter four, and in a minute I'm going to recount it. But what I want to do is look particularly at the. The aftermath. And that's here in verses 27 to 42, immediately after speaking to this woman, Jesus talks to his disciples, and he gets real metaphorical, and he talks about spiritual sowing, seed and reaping. Now, what is that? What is he trying to get across in that metaphor? I want to delve into that and ask that question. What is he talking about there? And I like to look at that under three headings. Jesus here actually gives us a call to spiritual sowing of seed. And then he shows us in this passage the method of doing it, how to do it. And then thirdly, the power or the inner motivation for doing it. So the call to it, the method of it, the power for it. Okay, now let's. First of all, let's look at the call to spiritual sowing of seed. What is this? Let me give you the context. What's happened right before this part? I told you that Jesus has had a very famous and very intriguing encounter with a Woman of Samaria at the well. Jesus has been traveling with his disciples, and as he's traveling through Samaria, he stops at a well. The disciples go into town to get some food, leaving him alone at the well. A woman also comes out from the town to draw water from the well, and they engage in a conversation. And Jesus very gently and persistently tries to draw her out and get her attention. And he does it by using a metaphor, an illustration. And he says, I have water that if you drank it, you'd never thirst again. And she says, really? All right, let me have that water. And he says, okay, you want the water, Go get your husband. She says, I don't have a husband. Right, he says, and very matter of factly and non condemningly and gently says, you're right, you don't have a husband. You've had five husbands, and the man you're living with right now is not your husband. Wait a minute. Why? When she said, give me this water of life, this water that satisfies so you never have to be thirsty again, this water to me. And he says, go get your husband. What's he doing? He's brilliantly showing her that he's not talking about physical water, that he's talking about soul satisfaction, soul satiation, the satisfaction of a soul thirst. And it's what she's been looking for and hoping to get that soul satisfaction in men, in family, in romance, in sexual relationships. And it hasn't happened to her. And now, amazed with his insight, surprised at how much he knows about her, impressed with how loving it is for him to be talking to a woman in public. And perhaps sensing a hidden power, she calls him out and she says, you know, when Messiah comes, he will tell us about all these deep things. And Jesus very dramatically says, I, the one speaking to you, am He. And that is verse 26. That's the first 26 verses of chapter four. And immediately upon him telling her this, the disciples come back. See, verse 27, the disciples returned. She, verse 29, leaves her water jug and goes into the town to start talking to her, her friends, about what just happened to her. And we'll get back to that in a second. But in this context of him pointing her to eternal life and pointing her to belief in himself, and then her going off and pointing the people of the town to him, he gives this metaphor. He says, first of all, I have a food. This is down in verse 33. He's using the kind of enigmatic, cryptic, metaphorical way that ancient sages would speak to the disciples, and as a way of trying to get them to think, draw them out, focus their attention. And he says, I have a food. And that food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Now, right there, even that sentence all by itself is fascinating. Cause he's actually saying, my meat and my drink, that which gives me sustenance, the main thing I do is the work that God has given me. The one who sent me has given me this work. Well, what is this work then? He calls it my harvesting or spiritual sowing and reaping. And the reason we know it's spiritual, the reasoning we know that what he's talking about is a metaphor, is because he talks about here in verse 36, he says, we're talking about a crop of eternal life. And therefore here's what he's saying, especially in context of he's talking metaphorically about what just happened with the woman and what's happening now between her and her friends. Spiritual sowing is pointing people to eternal life through Jesus Christ. And spiritual reaping is seeing some of them believe. Spiritual sowing is pointing people to Jesus Christ and saying there is eternal life. Spiritual reaping is sometimes seeing them believe. And Jesus makes a couple of amazing statements about this. First of all, he's telling his disciples, this isn't remember, this is food. What does that mean? That being public with your faith, pointing people to eternal life through Jesus Christ is not dessert. It's not hors d', oeuvres, it's not optional, it's not a treat, it's not something special. This is meat and drink. This is what you should be here to do. And this is what God has put me here to do. And you should be doing it too. Not only does he show how important it is to be public with faith, telling people about eternal life through Jesus, but he even makes. He bursts the boundaries of this metaphor when he says, so that sower and the reaper may be glad together. Do you know how radical that is? The reason it doesn't immediately hit you is because you are not farmers. Sowers go out and months later, reapers go out, right? Even mentions the fact that very often there's months between sowing and reaping. He says, ah, but when it comes to the gospel, the message of eternal life through Jesus Christ, the sower and the reaper rejoice together. What does that mean? There is no natural seed that's so powerful that the sower and the reaper can go out together. You know what he's Talking about. He's talking about the sower going out like this and the reaper coming right alongside and picking out, you know, the sower puts in the seed, up it comes, the reaper takes, and they're working together. Sowers and reapers can never work together because there's no seed that powerful. But the gospel is. Is that powerful. So Jesus is saying, don't say this isn't the harvest time. Lift up your eyes. I'm here. Got it. This is really very, very strong. Never say this isn't the right cultural moment. Never say this isn't the time. Never say. Well, sharing faith publicly, that's something for certain people. No, it's meat and drink. It's for my disciples. It's the work I've been given to do. Don't say this isn't the time. It is the time. And do you see the power so powerful that this spiritual seed in this spiritual seed, the sower and the reaper, you know, rejoice together? This does not mean, by the way, that everybody who hears the gospel believes immediately. It's not talking individualistically. It's not just there. You can see in the book of John, you can see in your own life that people come to faith in different stages. But what he's saying is in the past, John the Baptist, the prophets, they spoke enigmatically, vaguely, you know, about it. But now I'm here. It's clear. The gospel message is here and now it's got power. So today is the day of salvation. So that's the first thing we learn here. He's calling us to spiritual sowing in very powerful terms. If you're his disciple, if you follow him, well, that makes us a little bit nervous. What exactly is it that he's calling us to? What does this mean? So let's take a look what he's talking about metaphorically. The woman is doing right now. Look at what she's doing. It says, leaving her water jar, verse 29. The woman went back to the town and said to the people, and these are people that she lives with. These are people she knows. Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? And so they came out of the town and made their way toward him. There it is. Okay, how do we analyze this? What does this mean? First of all, please notice that she doesn't get up on a box and start preaching right now. To get up and preach to a group of people at once is fine. I do it myself. Okay? And as Jerry Seinfeld has said, not that there's anything wrong with that, but she doesn't do that because, of course, not everybody's called to that. That's not the essence of what Jesus is calling his disciples to do, to get up like this. Also notice she goes to people she knows. She doesn't go grab strangers. Again, not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's still not the essence. And by the way, I don't care who you are. We'll get back to this in a minute. But you can already tell she has a kind of checkered sexual history. She is not a moral pillar of her community. But in every community, you know, there's always a ladder. Even we Americans who love to say we're part of an egalitarian, meritocratic society. There's always pecking orders. There's always ladders. You know, there's people above you in your. In your career. There's people below you. There's people older than you, younger than you. People have got more the things you want, people who've got less. And therefore, it doesn't matter if you're high up on the ladder. Talking about your faith is scary. Why? Because you got a lot to lose. What about other people up there who are going to say, what a minute? Are you a fanatic or something? If you're in the middle of the ladder, that's not easy either. Why? Because you don't want the people above you to think you're kind of, you know. And you want them to be able to open doors for you, think well of you. But even if you're at the bottom of the ladder like her, you don't want to add insult to injury. I mean, you don't want people to say, look, we always knew you were kind of a shady character, but now we know you're crazy, too. There's always something to lose. But she goes and she speaks. And this one statement actually can be broken into two parts to show us the essence of what it means to be public with your faith, what it means to do this spiritual sowing that Jesus calls all of his disciples to do. He says, come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Now, the two essentials of this, of being public with your faith are simple transparency and pointing to Jesus himself, first of all, simple transparency. Look. What does she say? He told me everything I ever did. Now, look, this is. She does not have a set of bullet points. There's not much theological content here. She's not explaining substitutionary atonement. She is Just saying, here's what happened to me. She is simply being transparent about what's going on inside. And this is the first thing you have to understand. Basically, being public with your faith simply means not hiding your heart, not hiding the wellsprings of your life, not hiding from other people who you really are. If you just stop hiding and you're just natural and letting people know how you make decisions, how you deal with your problems. If you're a Christian, you're just letting people see who you are, and then it becomes very natural. See, look, you don't necessarily talk to anybody about these things, but a person doesn't have to be a dear friend for you to share three things. One is, do you ever talk to people about how you're dealing with a problem or your stresses in your life? Do you ever say, does anybody say, I've been pretty stressed out lately, you know, and I've had to deal with it? Do you ever tell talk to people about decisions you make. Do you ever talk to people about priorities that you set? Now, you can talk to people who are not necessarily your closest friends, but when you are getting to know people, you disclose a little bit more and a little bit more. And when you get to that level, if you're a Christian and you don't disclose the fact that Jesus is always part of how you deal with your problems, and Jesus is always part of how you make your decisions, if you get to the level where you can be disclosing that, but you don't share that part of your heart, you are short circuiting the natural level of disclosure and transparency that happens as you're getting to know somebody better. So in other words, public faith is just don't short circuit it, don't hide it. Look, we all know that people don't want to hear it, especially in our culture, but the point is that it's unnatural. It's wrong. It's a lack of transparency. So, you know, you don't have to learn a bunch of bullet points or get up on a box. You just have to stop being dishonest about how you make your decisions and how you deal with your issues. Just don't hide. Just don't hide. So that's the first thing, personal transparency. But the second thing notice is this. She doesn't say, come to a seminar. Come read a book. She says, come see a man. Now, I already said this. She doesn't understand too much about Jesus yet. I mean, she says he's the Messiah, or he might be the Messiah. All right, but does she know he's going to die for her or for me and you? No. Does she know he's going to rise from the dead? No. And those are really big things. She really doesn't know too much theology here. And yet somehow she has grasped the essence of the distinction between Christianity and all other religions. She's actually grasped the genius of Christianity. What is that? Well, I would say that every other religion, the main thing in that religion is the way. The way. So for example, the founder, the teacher, the prophet, the sage, the founder of the religion comes and says, here's the Five Fold, the Five Pillars, here's the Eightfold path to enlightenment, the Ten Noble Truths. In other words, they're giving people the way. They're saying, if you want to find God, if you want to find salvation, if you want to connect to the divine, if you want to be enlightened, if you want salvation, if you want favor with God, if you want a relationship with God, here's the way. You do this and do this and do this and think about it. Buddhism has a very well laid out path. Four Noble Truths, and the last Noble Truth is the Eightfold Path. And do you have to know all about Buddha for the way to work? I mean, couldn't you find enlightenment without necessarily knowing that much about Buddha? Of course not. I mean, of course the answer is you don't need to know a lot about Buddha. Why not? Because Buddha brought the way. But the main thing is the way. There's a, you know, it's somewhat detached from the person who brought it. The main thing is, since you're the one, through your efforts that they get God's favor and get the relationship with God. Then the important thing is the way. It's the steps, it's the plan, it's the formula. That's the important thing. Not the, not the founder, not the prophet. But it's totally different in Christianity. In John chapter 14, when someone says to Jesus, Lord, you know the way. Jesus says, I am the way. Lord, you have the words of truth. I am the truth. I am the way. I am the truth. When Martha says to Jesus, lord, my brother died, but he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day, what does Jesus say? Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way. I am the truth, I am the life. Why is he talking like that? Is he just being arrogant? No, here's what he's saying. I am the way means all other religions tell you what to do to find God. I am God come to find you. All of the religions tell you what to do to find God. I have come to do what you couldn't do for yourself. I have come to give you salvation as a gift. See.