Resources For "Surprise! You Belong!" Series From Each Harderwyk Preacher
Pastor Bill Lindner - Celebration Preacher
CRCNA Biblical Theology of Human Sexuality - By way of illustration this morning, I mentioned the report on Human Sexuality that has been prepared for the summer of 2021 General Synod of the Christian Reformed Church of North America. As mentioned, I find it to be well-founded biblically and theologically and would want to see it adopted with few, if any, modifications. CLICK HERE for the very readable 12-page "Executive Summary Report."
CLICK HERE for the full - all 187 pages - report and a quotation: The church is facing a crisis of gospel proportions. Our failure to be salt and light through love, sexuality, marriage, friendship, and mutual accountability has deeply compromised our witness to the gospel. We are not facing just one problem, or even two or three. Our whole way of life has fallen out of step with the Spirit and with the teaching of Scripture, and all of us must be called to account. And yet in this very realization we have the opportunity, together, to repent. We have the opportunity to reexamine our lives and our communities, to confess the sins we have committed against each other, and to call one another back to the costly path of loving discipleship. - p. 9
Pastor Aaron VanderVeen - Fusion Preacher
From the Feasting on the Word Commentary - The Samaritan woman thinks Jesus is the petitioner and fails to understand that it is not he who needs what only she can provide (water from Jacob’s well), but she who needs what only he can give (living water) (vv. 7–15). She tells Jesus the half-truth that she has no husband and Jesus reveals the full truth that she has had five husbands and the man currently living with her is not her husband (vv. 16–18). She then assumes Jesus is a prophet because he knows the truth about her marital situation, but does not realize that he is a very different kind of prophet, one who not only knows the truth about her life but is himself the way, the truth, and the life (vv. 19–24). She believes in a coming Messiah but does not realize that in the person of this Jew from Galilee the Messiah is standing in front of her (vv. 25–26). Only when the woman leaves her water jar, returns to the city, and invites her neighbors to “come and see” Jesus, does she begin to discern a deeper, larger reality beyond the initial appearance. “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” (vv. 28–29). - George Stroup
This text is good news for anyone who has ever felt the humiliation of stigmatization or the pain of being a nobody, because Jesus does not turn away from this woman. On the contrary, he engages her in conversation, takes her seriously, and spends several days in her village. This woman, her community, and their welfare matter to Jesus, whether nobodies or not. That is good news. - Deborah J Kapp
From John: For Everyone Commentary - If anything, it’s our surrounding culture that brainwashes us, persuading us in a thousand subtle ways that the present world is the only one there is. This is seldom argued. Rather, a mood is created in which it seems so much easier to go with the flow. That’s what happens in brainwashing. What the gospel does is to administer a sharp jolt, to shine a bright light, to kick-start the brain, and the moral sensibility, into working properly for the first time...
The way the passage ends is worth pondering deeply. Here is a woman who, a matter or an hour or so before, had been completely trapped in a life of immorality, as a social outcast. There was no way backwards or forwards for her; all she could do was to eke out a daily existence and make sure she went to the well at the time of day when there would be nobody there to sneer or mock. Now she has become the first evangelist to the Samaritan people. Before any of Jesus’ own followers could do it, she has told them that he is the Messiah. And then, as they have come to see Jesus for themselves, they have become convinced.
Indeed, they have given Jesus a title which, as they may have known, the emperor in far-away Rome had begun to use for himself: saviour of the world. John frequently shows us how people misunderstand what Jesus is saying, but he also shows us that sometimes they can break through, with little or no help, to a statement of truth so profound that it could stand as a summary of all that John himself is trying to tell us. Jesus is indeed the world’s saviour. That is part of the task and role of Israel’s Messiah. Salvation may indeed be ‘from the Jews’ (4:22), but part of the point of it is that salvation is designed to reach outside Judaism to embrace the world. Now, with this incident in Samaria, that process has begun. - NT Wright
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