What’s Driving You?

Good morning, friends. For those of you who don't know me, I am Gail Parker. I'm a retired pastor that calls this my church home and you my church family. So wonderful to be able to bring you God's Word this morning for sure. Mark Labberton, who is the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, was in Phoenix several years back and he said something that I remember this way. I don't know that it's 100 % accurate, but in my memory what he said was that prior to becoming a Christian, he was really turned off to the faith because he thought that being a Christian meant making your life really small, that Christians were all about.

Things that you can't do or that you have to do. And a lot of them were just stupid and picky and legalistic and judgmental. And so he was just turned off because he didn't want a life that was small like that. But I think it was when he was in college, he got exposed to Christianity in such a way that all of a sudden he realized, gosh, that was totally wrong. That Christianity really doesn't make your life small, but boy, the more devoted you are to Christ, the longer you walk with him, the larger your life is because you're invited into this life of the mission of the kingdom of God, which is infinitely loving and compassionate and caring and redemptive and so incredibly involved with this broken world that God is crazy about. That it's so, so important. I remember it because it so spoke to me because I do not want a small life. But if I am honest with you, the pull to smallness is incredibly strong.

If I am honest with myself, taking care of me and mine can be a full time job. By small, small, that's what I mean. I mean that a small life is driven by this me and mine, protecting me and mine, making sure that me and mine get what I hope we deserve, that we get the lifestyle that we want, that we're able to do the kinds of things I want. And it's small. It's this little bubble of smallness of me and mine.

We're in this sermon series that we're calling The Search, Living Water in Desert Lives. And this is the third sermon in four. And here's what I want to say this morning. It's pretty simple. I want to prompt us to live into the largeness of God's will. Listen for the word of God as we find it in John chapter four.

Just then, Jesus has been talking with this woman at the well. Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, what do you want? Or why are you speaking with her? Then I'm going to skip to verse 31. Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Jesus, Rabbi, eat something. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you don't. I don't know anything about. 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 to complete his work. Do you not say that four months more, then comes the harvest? But I tell you, look around you. Look around you and see how the fields are filled with fruit. The fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true. One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored. You have entered into their labor. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Pray with me. Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus, I pray that you would open our ears that we might hear what it is your Spirit is saying to us. I pray that you would open our wills and that wherever we are clogged up, Lord, that you would unstop us. That we would be able to not only hear what you're saying, but that we'd be able to do what it is. That whatever you have us to do in the largeness of your will. I pray it in the name of Jesus. Amen.

If we're going to live into the largeness of God's will, the first thing I would do I want to say is we've got to adopt God's values. The disciples and all of us actually were born into a set of values, deeply ingrained values in their culture, in their families, in their faith. We're all born into a set of values. The disciples were born into this set of values that Clint has talked about often in the last couple of weeks. They're things like men don't speak to women in public. Jews don't have anything to do with Samaritans to the point actually that they would walk miles out of their way to avoid going to the city of Samaria, going through the city of Samaria.

It's not terribly unlike the Hatfields and the McCoys or the Trump haters and the Trump lovers. These are people who are unclean. They are ugly. They are so other that we just need to avoid them if at all possible. No, talk to them. Go as far as we have to out of the way to avoid them. And that's the value that the disciples were raised with.

There's a writer by the name of Soren Kierkegaard who writes about a vandal who broke into a department store one night. He didn't steal anything. He just changed the price tags. So the next day when the owner of the store showed up, a diamond necklace was five bucks. And a costume jewelry was thousands of dollars, a costume jewelry necklace, say. He changed the price tags all throughout the store on all kinds of things.

Kierkegaard's point is that's exactly what the gospel does. That when Jesus shows up, we're going to be able to see the price tags. So what he does is he just changes all the price tags in this area of life, in this area of life, in this area of life. He's changing the price tags. If you think about it, just think if you know things about Jesus or the Bible. He says the rich are poor and the poor are rich. He says you're supposed to love your enemies, not hate them. He says all kinds of things.

He says you're supposed to love your neighbor, not hate them. He says you should love your neighbor, not hate them. All kinds of things in all areas of life. It touches everything, but one of the most profound ones, and I think personally for me, one of the most difficult places to adopt God's values is what has been so blatant in John 4. He changes the price tag on the value of people. People that everybody else avoided. People that everybody was afraid of. People that nobody saw. They just walked right by. Those Those are people that are of infinite value to Jesus. And he shows us again and again and again.

Think of the Gerasene demoniac that people were scared to death of. He stopped and healed. The woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, who was unclean and she couldn't be anywhere near the rest of society, Jesus stopped and talked with her, healed her. And this woman at the well, even the people in her own culture, friends, avoided her because of the kind of woman she was, let alone good Jewish boys.

Jesus comes in and he just starts changing all the price tags. But especially, he changes the price tag that we have on people who are not in our little small bubbles.

Up till now, the disciples have not been part of what's been happening. They haven't seen or heard what Clint's been talking about for the last two weeks. They left Jesus at the well. He was hungry, he was thirsty. They went into town to get some food. So now they've shown back up. And the scripture said, they were astonished to see him talking with the woman.

But they didn't say what they were thinking. You know, sometimes it's smart not to say what you're thinking.

Especially when what comes into your head has to do with the woman. It has to do with values that have nothing to do with Jesus' values.

I was talking with a friend who told me that she was working in an urgent care. And it was summer. And this guy who was clean cut and nicely dressed walks in and he's got this huge egg lump on his forehead. And without even thinking, she said, well, I know why you're here. You know, you must have gotten hit with a baseball or something. And the guy looked at her and he said, oh, this? I've had that for years. I'm here because I have a sore throat.

She really wished she wouldn't have said that.

Now think about that. It wasn't just that she made an assumption. But she made an assumption because she had value. She had a value underneath that. Which was, if you have a knot on your head, you know, you care about how you look in this culture. And so you get that taken off.

Years ago, somebody that I loved and who I really respected her opinion.

This is 40 years ago. But she said to me at a really vulnerable time in my life, she said, you'll never be a pastor. Because women can't be pastors.

Now we would call that value having something to do with sexism today.

And really, what the disciples were thinking but not saying had to do with their values of their upbringing, which was sexist in orientation and also really racist.

They wouldn't have called it that. But that's really the value that Jesus is trying to change the price tag on, right? It takes a lifetime to get our values aligned with the values of Jesus. I can't tell you how often, I am reading the scripture, or I'm praying about some angst that I have in my life. And I realize, oh my gosh, that's because I have this value that I didn't even realize I had. And Jesus is trying to change the price tag on that value.

It takes a lifetime of that. But for Jesus and the disciples, and I really think for you and I today, he's really trying to get at that. How infinitely valuable people are who are not in our bubble. If we are to live into the largeness of God's will, we've got to adopt God's values.

But secondly, we've got to be driven by the will of God to do the work of God. In fact, to complete the work that God has put us on this earth to do.

You know, the disciples start out with, you know, um,

I've got this food we want you to eat. And Jesus says, I've got food to eat that you don't know anything about. And they get all literal on him. Well, you know, there must be, somebody must be giving him food. Did somebody really come and give him food while we were gone? And Jesus just calls him right back, no, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete the work, to complete it, to finish it. This scripture really speaks to me in a personal way this week as I've been preparing this message. Because, you know, I'm, I've been around a long time. And it is so tempting as you get older, I think, to, to think, you know, I've done, I've done it. You know, I finished my work. Then I remembered this week, the scripture that says, even in their old age, they will bear fruit.

Even in my old age. And the few of you in this room that are, you know, over 40.

But I digress. So I'll get back to this.

My food is to do the work of him who sent me and to complete his work. That's what drives Jesus.

I sat with a woman who's a new Christian. She's real excited about how much God loves her. She'd never heard, she didn't, she'd never ever grown up around the message of Christianity. And she was so excited. So I'm meeting with her and I'm saying to her, okay, you know, you have now said Jesus is your Lord and Savior. But I don't know if anybody ever really talked to her. But I want to talk to you about what that looks like. You know, what are the next steps? Where do you go from here?

So in the context of this lunch, I'm talking to her. And I'm saying, you know, Jesus is your Savior and that's the most wonderful thing in the world. And you'll praise him for the rest of your life. He's also your Lord. And what that means is that instead of your life being driven by what you want to do now, it's driven by what he wants you to do. And so that means, you know, your time is no longer your own, that you've given it to him. And that means that your time is no longer your own to determine what you do with it. But you're always asking God, you know, here's my day, Lord. What do you want me to do? You're brilliant. This woman was brilliant. Your mind, this incredible mind gave you. What is it going to do with this mind? Your talents, your gifts, your body no longer belongs to you, but it belongs to God. It's the temple now of the Holy Spirit. So what you do with your body, what you do with your money, it's no longer yours. It's just, it touches every area of your life and it transforms you so that more and more and more as you are driven to do the will of God and to complete the work that he's put you on this earth to do, you'll look more and more like Jesus. It takes you out of a small life and it puts you in a large life. I thought the lunch went great.

You guys, I never saw her again. I never saw her again. I tried to find her. I knew some people who knew her. I asked about them. I really tried. And finally, what I gathered was I got the hint, first of all. She didn't want to see me again. And also, her friend said, you know, that Christian thing, it lasted about two weeks and then she was gone.

If we're to live large, if we're to live into the largeness of God's will, then we've got to be driven by what he wants, by his will, to complete the work that he's given to us to live. What's driving the disciples' life in this text? You know, it doesn't tell us exactly, but we can know because we know where they came from. We know that their teachers were the scribes and the Pharisees of his day.

I don't know if you have read the Bible or know much about the scribes and the Pharisees, but in my mind, they would be the epitome of people who live small lives.

They were driven to keep the traditions, to keep the religion safe.

They were very careful about purity, to keep themselves pure, and unstained from people who were unclean, those people. They were very careful to protect their own space in the culture and in the society, very careful not to ruffle the feathers of the Roman officials who might mess with their power and their authority and their place in the world, their status. They were very careful. Friends, Jesus was not careful like that.

He wasn't careful. Not like that. He was constantly breaking down the walls that their religion put up. And in particular, in this instance, the walls between Jews and Samaritans, clean and unclean, between men and women. He was just, he was breaking them down because God's love is so much bigger than what they thought God's love was.

God wanted to reach people that they never ever would have wanted to reach, ever. Never, never, never, never. But it is risky, and friends, it's uncomfortable.

It is really uncomfortable to adopt God's values for other people that are not in our bubble.

Some of you know that the elders of this church are very seriously thinking about moving from this location to a location south of here. And when they talk about it, they talk about the fact that the neighbors in that neighborhood would be our neighbors, that we would become part of that neighborhood and they would become part of us.

Most of us have never driven through that neighborhood. Most of us don't know anybody that lives in that neighborhood. From what I understand, the neighborhood does not look like the vast majority of people that are in this room.

Now the elders have to discern, number one, is God calling us there? But the other thing the elders have to discern, and we have to discern, is do we really want that?

Do we just want to worship in a building and drive in and drive out with our air conditioning on and our windows out?

Or do we want to be the love and the grace and the presence of Christ to people that are not already in our fellowship and in our bubbles, who don't look like us, are very different? Do we want that?

It's risky. It's frankly uncomfortable. It's so much more comfortable to just live small, isn't it? And the truth is, if we choose to live large, we will be living larger than almost everybody we know because the pull is just to be with people in our bubble that are like us. The pull is so strong for that.

Jesus is saying, not out loud, but I think what he's saying to the disciples is, I'm going here. Are you with me or not? If we're going to live into the largeness of God's will, we've got to adopt God's values. We need to be driven by what drives him, the will of God, to complete the work he's put us on this earth to do. And finally, we've got to lean in, to jump in to the opportunities that he gives us.

Jesus says, look. Lift up your eyes and look at what God is doing outside of your bubble.

The harvest is ripe. It's not four months from now. It's right now.

Now, we know what the disciples don't know. We've got the scriptures right, so we know that he's been talking to this woman, that he's offered her living water, that she's all excited. We know that she's gone back to tell everybody in the town. We know that they're on their way right now to talk to Jesus.

Disciples don't know that. Jesus knows it, and we know it.

And the question is, are you with me or not? Look. Look at what's about to happen.

They don't have a whole lot of time to think. They don't have four months till the harvest. It's right now. And I think an awful lot of times when God puts an opportunity in front of us, you know, those of us that like to take a little time and think it over and process it, sometimes we're going to miss those opportunities, right, because they're now.

I have a friend named Diana who loves costume jewelry, loves it. And she's always worn, like, big, chunky earrings and chunky necklaces and lots of bangles, and she just loves it. And she, for a long time, she was traveling quite a bit, and she always carried her jewelry with her whenever she traveled. Her jewelry would always set off the TSA, you know, random search kind of deal. Always. And every time it did it, the people were not very nice, and she would get defensive, and she's found herself just dreading going through the security. So this one day, she's in the line, she's dreading it, and she just says, Holy Spirit, come upon me. Help me not be defensive. Anoint me to be your person with whoever stops me. She gets up there. She gets to the security line. Sure enough, random search. Opens her bag. Woman's in a bad mood. She's rumbling through, rumbling through her stuff, and she looks at Diana. She says, How long are you going to be gone? And Diana says, Three days. Well, there is no way in hell you can wear all this jewelry in three days.

Now, at this point, Diana usually gets defensive.

But this day, something about this woman,

something about the Holy Spirit, she looks at the woman, and she says, Do I remind you of someone you know? And the woman says, Yes, you remind me of my mother -in -law. And my husband is always saying, You need to be more like my mother. You need to wear jewelry like my mother. You need to wear clothes like my mother. You need to be, You don't look good. My mother looks good. You need, And she's just going on and on and on. And Diana's like, When she gets a word in, she says, Would you have time for a break? Maybe you and I could go get a cup of coffee, and we could talk about it. No, I just got back from a break, and I don't want to go talk to you. And she's rummaging through her stuff. And Diana says, Well, would you mind if I pray with you? I'd like to pray for you. The woman starts to sob.

She says, Nobody has ever prayed for me before.

Diana said, Nobody? Not your mother or your grandmother? Nobody ever prayed for you? She said, Nobody ever prayed? And she's just sobbing.

pulls out a card. She had a card in her purse that had the name of her church on it. She wrote down her name and phone number. She said, I will meet you here at 930 on Sunday, and I will sit with you. And I'm going to pray for you now, and I'm going to pray for you and with you on Sunday.

Diana didn't have four months to think about what she was going to say.

God gives us opportunities. All the time. If Mary hadn't into the opportunity, she would have never broken that alabaster jar open and anointed Jesus' feet. If those four guys hadn't jumped at the opportunity, they would have never ripped off the roof of that house and lowered their friend in so that Jesus could heal him. If Matthew hadn't jumped at the opportunity, he would have never left his tax ledgers and gone and followed Jesus. If Luther hadn't taken the opportunity, he would have never stood up at Worms and said, Here I stand. I can do no other. God, help me. If Damian had not jumped at the opportunity, he would have never ministered to the lepers for years until he got leprosy and died among them.

If Martin Luther King Jr. hadn't jumped at the opportunity, he would have kept his mouth shut. If Mother Teresa hadn't jumped at the opportunity, a lot of people would have died without anybody caring for them in Calcutta. You can go on and on and on. he says. Look at what God is doing outside of our little bubble. Are you with me or not? He's saying. Are you with me or not? You know, most of the time we're just sowing seeds. Most of the time we don't get there after everybody else is in all the rest of the work like Jesus said that had happened with the disciples. We're just sowing seeds. We stay 15 minutes longer to talk to somebody. We bring a meal in. We bring a meal to a neighbor who's in need or take someone to the doctor or take care of somebody that nobody is there to take care of or we speak up at work when everybody else is silent about something that is really wrong. We're just sowing seeds most of the time and we don't see the harvest. And we will, of course, one day when we're finally in the kingdom of God when Jesus comes back. But sometimes, sometimes,

lots of people have already done the work.

And all we got to do is reap the harvest.

Lots of people had already gone. I don't know about lots of people in this instance in Samaria, but the woman had. She'd already told everybody. The disciples don't even have to tell the people. The Holy Spirit had already gone. All you have to do is accept them and bring them into our faith and into our fellowship. That's what Jesus is saying to the disciples. It's not four months from now. It's today. They're on their way.

Sometimes we get to reap where we didn't even sow. And you're the one that gets to pray with somebody who comes into the kingdom of God and gives their life to Jesus as Lord and Savior right with you. Sometimes it's our community that brings hope and healing to another community. And we get to see the action of what God's done because lots of people in the Holy Spirit have worked way before we ever got there. Sometimes so many people have spoken up about something that is really, really wrong, but finally when you do, something changes. Sometimes we get to reap the harvest.

Look, Jesus says, look.

Pastor Bruce Thielman said to his congregation many years ago, he said, you know, a lot of people just very carefully construct their lives.

Nice little job. Nice little house. Nice little marriage. Nice little children. A nice little boy. Nice little girl. Nice little house. Nice little garage. Couple of nice cars in each half of the garage. Nice little retirement plan. Nice little summer home to get you out of the heat and get you somewhere nice. You know where that ends up? On a nice little hill with a nice little mound with a nice little stone on it with your nice little name carved in it and a couple of nice little dates and a couple of nice little things. And he said, you know what? You know what would have happened here? You know what you've done?

You've pampered yourself into mediocrity

when what you could have done is lost yourself in immortality.

I first heard that and I thought, I will never say that.

Because I was kind of offended by it. Because I want all those things. Everybody I knew wanted all those things. But you know what? There's so much truth to that. Because if that is all you want, you live in a small life.

Jesus invites you to the largeness, to the largeness of his will, of his kingdom, of a love that knows no bounds, of a redemption that's going to restore the entire world. He invites you into the largest life of anybody. Anybody that you know. You can choose to live small. But why would you?