Sunday Sermons
Delight
Prelude: John 4:1-24
In this chapter Jesus has stopped by Jacob’s well in Samaria near the city of Sychar and is bone-tired (4:6). Jesus starts a conversion with a Samaritan woman who was living in sin (4:18). This demonstrates that God seeks true worshippers in the midst of real life and from the least likely. Jesus basically ignores the hostility that has existed for centuries between Jews and Samaritans (4:9), and walks up and asks for a drink (4:7). Then Jesus informs this woman that the amazing thing is not that He asked her for a drink, but that she did not ask Him, for He has living water (4:10). Yet the woman does not rise very high in her imagination and can only think of water that can be obtained with a bucket (4:11). Jesus then said, “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” (4:14). This is water that makes an individual a well of eternal refreshment, and a perpetual source of inner strength, motivation, and life, a well that not only waters the soul but will water others as well (1 Timothy 4:16; Colossians 4:11). Out of such a person Jesus later noted would flow rivers of living water (John 7:38). Does this accurately describe us? Are we such wells of water? Do we refresh and revitalize the weak, weary, and discouraged? Do we bring new life into others; are we sources of spiritual refreshment? Yet again, the woman misses the point completely, all she can think of is something temporary and of very little benefit (4:15), but there is a lesson here concerning the danger of giving up on people too soon. Jesus then touches upon a very sensitive spot in this woman’s life, “Go call your husband” (4:16). John Piper noted, “The quickest way to the heart is through a wound” (Desiring God p. 75). This may be done to test the woman’s honesty, for concealed sin will keep us from seeing the truth (1 John 3:20). At this point Jesus exposes her tragic past, her foolish choices, and her present sin (4:17-18). She seems impressed by His insight (4:19), yet does not fall at His feet in contrition but rather wants an unanswered (in her mind) academic question answered (4:20). “Now watch the universal reflex of a person trying to avoid conviction. She has to admit that He has extraordinary insight, but instead of going the direction He pointed, she tries to switch over to an academic controversy. A trapped animal will chew off its own leg to escape. A trapped sinner will mangle her own mind and rip up the rules of logic. ‘Why yes, as long as we are talking about my adultery, what is your stance on the issue of where people should worship?’ This is standard evasive double-talk for trapped sinners” (Piper p. 75). However Jesus is not so easily eluded, He will follow her into the bush, or it could be that He circled around and is waiting for her as she brings up this subject. You can deter on any rabbit trail you like, but God is always waiting when you emerge from the forest. Jesus’ response is blunt, “You worship that which you do not know” (4:22). But when life and death and especially spiritual life and death are on the line there comes a point when the truth just has to be told.
John 4:24
“Truth without spirit produces a church full or half-full of artificial admirers (like people who write generic anniversary cards for a living). On the other hand, emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates shallow people who refuse the discipline of rigorous thought. But true worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine. Strong affections for God rooted in truth are the bone and marrow of biblical worship” (Piper p. 76). In the Bible we find that godly people desired and delighted in God as much as they delighted in His truth (Psalm 42:2 “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”; 19:10 “They are more desirable than gold”). Jesus said the same thing when He said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). Yet, there has always been problem of people serving God without any true love for Him,“This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me” (Matthew 15:8). Where is your heart at this present moment? Where are your affections? Where are your thoughts centered?
“In vain do they worship Me”
Vain worship includes adding human traditions and deviating from sound doctrine (Matthew 15:9), but it equally covers worship where the heart is not present, “their heart is far from Me”. “Where feelings for God are dead, worship is dead” (Piper p. 79). I gave this lesson the title of delight because worshipping, obeying, and serving God should be a natural delight. “My heart’s desire and prayer to God” (Romans 10:1); “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And besides Thee, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25); “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4). But this delight should not be some mere act of will power. When you stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon for the first time and watch the setting sun, you do not have to “will” the appropriate emotion. When a little child awakes Christmas morning and sees all the presents under the tree, he does not have to “think” about the right emotional response.
Duty or Delight?
Empty ritual has never honored God. “If I take my wife out for the evening on our anniversary and she asks me, ‘Why do you do this?’ the answer that honors her most is, ‘Because nothing makes me happier tonight than to be with you’. ‘It’s my duty’ is a dishonor to her. ‘It’s my joy’ is an honor” (Piper p. 84). This is what Jesus was getting at when He said that the greatest commandment was to, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). Consider this from God’s perspective, if you were God would you want men and women serving you only out of pure duty, as in, “I guess if I have to?” Do you want your wife or husband kissing you out of mere duty? Would you want your parents caring for you because they had to? David said, “O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee earnestly; My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh yearns for Thee…My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips” (Psalm 63:1-5). “There are three types of people in any Christian gathering. There are those who are Christians in name only. They seem to be following after God and Jesus Christ and say they are, but theirs as a false following. The second class are those who are following Jesus but are following ‘at a distance’. The third type are those who in storm and sunshine, cleave to Him and enjoy daily communion with Him. These people want God, and they want Him intensely because they know that He and He alone will satisfy the deep longing of their souls. David was a person who desired God above everything else” (Boice p. 516). “The longing of these verses is not the groping of a stranger, feeling his way toward God, but the eagerness of a friend, almost of a lover, to be in touch with the one he holds dear” (Kidner p. 224). “Many Christians go through life with a low sense of spiritual vitality. Our days are largely consumed with secular pursuits. Prayer and Bible reading are one-a-day ‘fast food’ items. ‘Real life’ is not life in the Spirit, but life in the flesh. It is reaching here and there, doing this and that, and fitting in Christian activity largely to meet our social needs. We may close the night in prayer as a ‘spiritual glaze’ over our real interests, but there is no manifest heart-hunger for God” (Williams p. 428). David does not simply want his thirst lessened; rather he wants to find a feast in a relationship with God. To Him, God satisfied his soul as much as the richest of foods. Please note that a healthy relationship with God is a feast! Therefore we must passionately oppose all attempts to drive a wedge between deep thoughts and deep feelings. We must reject the idea that profound reflection dries up fervent affection and that false assumption that intense emotion thrives only in the absence of sound doctrine.
Applications
· A healthy desire for God also opens up the doors of other legitimate desires. May I suggest that when God truly becomes our chief delight then all other desires will be intensified as well. The godly person who delights in the Lord also delights in telling others about God, “My lips will praise Thee, so I will bless Thee as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Thy name” (Psalm 63:3-4; Psalm 51:12-13).
· Our love for others will be genuine and fervent (1 Peter 1:22).
· The fervency in our marriages will only increase (Proverbs 5:19). May I suggest that when we start doing the right thing out of “duty” everything in our life starts to become a “duty” or “chore”.
Our Capacity for Joy
Often people in the world will try to claim that Christianity takes all the fun out of life, when in reality sin actually does diminish one’s capacity for true happiness and joy. The Hebrew writer noted that the pleasure gained by sin is just for a season(Hebrews 11:25). John Piper observed, “We have settled for a home, a family, a few friends, a job, a television, a microwave oven, an occasional night out, a yearly vacation, and perhaps a new personal computer. We have accustomed ourselves to such meager, short-lived pleasures that our capacity for joy has shriveled” (Desiring God p. 88). Jesus noted that Gentiles spend a tremendous amount of time and energy worrying and scrapping for the bare necessities of life (Matthew 6:32), yet He noted that life is far more than food, drink, housing, and clothing (6:25). A life apart from God really restricts our ability to experience true and lasting joy. How many people can’t seem to have fun without alcohol or drugs? Or, how many people cannot seem to enjoy the scenery present when on vacation? In contrast, Paul had learned to be content and joyful in any situation (Philippians 4:10-13). An example of the above is the life of Charles Darwin. Near the end of his life Darwin wrote an autobiography for his children and expressed one regret: “Up to the age of 30 or beyond it, poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure. Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight that it formerly did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature”.
I want the reward!
Immanuel Kant who died in 1804, wrote “an action is moral, only if one has no desire to perform it, but performs it out of a sense of duty and derives no benefit from it of any sort, neither material nor spiritual. A benefit destroys the moral value of an action”(Piper p. 89). Of course, this a horrible philosophy and one that contradicts the Bible at every turn. The Hebrew writer said,“For he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). We need to repudiate the idea that the virtue of an act diminishes to the degree that you enjoy doing it. It is spiritual and healthy to desire the reward! It is godly that one enjoys and thrives in studying the Scriptures, expressing mercy (Micah 6:8), in praying to God, in worshipping with God’s people (Psalm 122:1), in sharing the gospel, delighting in God’s truth (1 Corinthians 13:5—love does not simply practice the truth, it rejoices and delights in it) and in interacting with other Christians, and beholding their faithfulness, “I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth” (2 John 4). Thus, anytime that God asks of us anything, we should joyfully proclaim, “Yes Lord, it would be my pleasure!”
