THE CHURCH: GOD'S RESTORATION OF THE FAMILY OF MANKIND

John 4:3-7, 13-15, 39-43, 46-47.

John is quite a wonderful book of the Bible.

• It's first few chapters parallel the first few chapters of the book of Genesis, as we have indicated in times past.
• It says IN THE BEGINNING.
• We have the WORD that in Genesis spoke all into creation.
• We have the LIGHT shining in darkness as in Genesis.
• We even have the Spirit lighting upon Jesus in the waters of Jordan, during His baptism, like a dove, just as the Hebrew version of Gen 1:2 says the Spirit brooded and fluttered on the waters.

However, the parallel continues and goes much further.

• The first real miracle occurs in a place called Galilee.
• In the town of Cana.
• At a wedding.

Recall that After God created the world, He made man, and a beautiful wedding under God took place.

• He made Adam from the dust and the woman from Adam, and they came together so that, once again, Adam was complete.
• He was in union with that which was taken from him.
• His wife was made from his rib.
• They both became co-regents under God over the world.
• God gave them dominion over the earth.
• They were rulers in a Kingdom of God on earth!
• They lived in a Garden where the primary items were the fruit of life and the river of life.

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:
(John 2:1)

When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,
(John 2:9)

Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding.

• A true wedding with God's blessings is an experience that is like water turning into wine.

After God made Adam and Eve on the sixth day, He rested.

• After the wedding in Cana, Jesus entered into Capernaum.
• What is so interesting is that the name Capernaum actually means VILLAGE OF REST.
• God rests the seventh day and Jesus enters into a village of rest.

Then the next scene in John corresponds to the next events in Genesis.

• A serpent entered the garden and deceived the woman, causing them to be cast out of the Garden.
• Their God-given home was lost, because a serpent entered there and they entertained the thing.
• After Jesus is in Capernaum, He comes to Passover in Jerusalem and finds moneychangers in the temple.
• He casts them out.
• Elsewhere, Jesus referred to this as making the house of God into a den of thieves.
• SERPENTS dwell in dens.
• Just as the serpent entered the Garden, serpents were within the temple and were cast out.
• Adam and Eve veritably became followers of the serpent because they did what the serpent urged them to do.
• So the casting out of the moneychangers is similar to the casting out of Adam and Eve.

John involves different characters, but the events of the chapters clearly parallel the story of the Garden and Adam and Eve.

Jesus is involved in John, though.

• Jesus is going to spiritually restore and repair that which was destroyed in Genesis .

John 3 comes along, and like Genesis, after the expulsion from the garden, is a picture of birth.

• Cain and Abel were born after the expulsion from the Garden.
• Their lives were very troubled, though.
• Cain was disobedient to God and hated and finally murdered Abel.
• Jesus speaks to Nicodemus about new birth!

Not only is marriage in ruin in lives of disobedience without God, but children are in peril due to marriages in peril.

• God is for the family!
• God is for loving marriages.
• God is for children to have both parents raise them together.

And we reads of the Kingdom and Birth.

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
(John 3:5)

We continue read John and come to John the Baptist.

• Think of marriage, and family, and children, which has been the picture since Jesus did His first miracle at Cana, as we read some words of John.

Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease. He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all.
(John 3:28-31)

Did not Paul say in 1 Cor 15 that Adam is of the earth earthy, but Jesus is the Lord from Heaven?

• John the Baptist contrasts the same picture with Jesus.
• And John says, not only is Jesus better than Adam, but He is the Bridegroom for a Bride.

Then we come to Chapter 4.

He left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee. And he must needs go through Samaria.
(John 4:3-4)

He is going to return to the place where the first miracle occurred.

• He is going to the province of Galilee AGAIN.
• Cana in Galilee was where the wedding people saw the water turned to wine.

John's Gospel is going to now show us a restoration process of all that went wrong in Genesis.

• Adam and Eve's troubles began after they were married, and allowed the serpent to beguile Eve in the Garden.
• So John departs from the flow of Genesis at this point.
• Jesus was supposed to come due to Genesis' prophecy that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head.
• Well, Jesus is in the world by the time John is written.

He sets forth to go to Galilee again.

• But He needs to go through Samaria to get to Galilee.
• There were other routes, of course, but something particularly important had to occur before He was to do in Galilee what he set out to do.

Though the characters are different in each of these scenes in John, we see a clear series of thought that reflects the perils of Adam and Eve.

• And the thought is of Jesus restoring what man's first family lost, and caused us all to be without.

He goes to a Well in Samaria's town of Sychar.

• He sits there and a woman comes to him.
• He asks her for water, and she is shocked a Jew would ask a Samaritan who was usually hated by Jews.
• He informs her of living water that He has to offer that would cause her to never thirst again.
• Like Adam and Eve's river of life from Eden, Jesus speaks of the drink of Life.

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
(John 4:14)

Eventually He lets the woman know He knew about some very personal experiences she had.

The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.
(John 4:17-18)

Some say this woman had five husbands who died, one after the other.

• I doubt that.
• The fact that she was shacked up with a man who was not her husband in the end, tells us that she most likely committed adultery and lost all five husbands in divorce.
• It's as though the sixth relationship tells us that she tried and tried five times in a marriage, and still was not satisfied.
• Marriage should be fulfilling, but it was not for her.
• As though Jesus described her marriage relationship, He said, "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
  (John 4:13)"

She tried marriage five times.

• She was joined in holy matrimony with a man before God in vows.
• But each times, she adulterated with others.
• She finally and totally lost respect for herself and her lover by dwelling together and sharing the most treasured gift a person could give to another person in physical relationship.
• Paul calls fornication the act of sinning against one's own body.

She lost respect for her lover, because she offered no vows before God to him to stay through better or worse.

• Today people so commonly give their most precious gift without commitment or respect.
• But marriages are on rocks without God and a life of spirituality in the Kingdom.

Jesus was bringing the picture of mankind back to the Garden where the river of life flowed, in obedience to God, in this picture.

And while the woman excitedly spreads news of the Christ in her town, Jesus speaks to the disciples.

Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.
(John 4:35-36)

FRUIT UNTO ETERNAL LIFE.

• What did He tell the woman?
• He would give her a well of water springing up unto everlasting life.
• Food and drink of life.

The people bid him to stay.

And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did. So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days.
(John 4:39-40)

What number comes after 2?

Jesus stayed for 2 days in Samaria.

Where was He going when He felt to pass through Samaria to get there?

He left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee. And he must needs go through Samaria.
(John 4:3-4)

Now after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee.
(John 4:43)

What sort of day was it that Jesus did His first miracle in Galilee according to John 2:1.

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:
(John 2:1)

So Jesus entered Galilee once again on a THIRD DAY.

Jesus loved the third day.

• And little wonder.
• Because it would be on third day that the greatest of all events would take place.
• He would rise from the grave on the third day and give eternal life to everyone who would believe.

Let's continue.

So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his son: for he was at the point of death.
(John 4:46-47)

On this third day, once again in Cana where He turned water into wine at a wedding, Jesus hears about a FATHER AND SON.

• The son is at the point of death.

Watch the series of thought.

• He speaks to a woman whose marriages messed up.
• And He had to go through that experience in order to deal with this.

Let me pause and say that when marriages are messed up, children are messed up.

• Cain and Abel had problems in their own lives because Adam and Eve's home was somewhere it was not intended of God to be in.
• He had to deal with a messed up wife before He could deal with a child who was at the point of death.

But this is also true spiritually.

• Jesus already was said to be the bridegroom in John 3.
• John the Baptist told us that.
• And He speaks to a woman sadly in peril.
• The woman speaks of the CHURCH.
• The church is called the bride of Christ.
• As individuals, we are the sons and daughters — the children of God.
• As a group, we are the church, the Mother and the Bride.

Our lives as Christians will be in peril if our life as a CHURCH is not as it should be.

• If the church is not serving God unitedly and lovingly together, then the children, each of us, will suffer as well.

People, we are part of the family of God.

• We're family.
• And we need to love one another and put this family of God before everything else in our lives.
• According to this message from God, the whole pattern of emphasis is the restoration of Adam's loss.
• And that points to the family of God called the CHURCH and of each of us as the CHILDREN.

It was a third day in which Jesus chose to perform a miracle for the first time.

• And though there were many miracles elsewhere after that, it was a third day once again where another family picture was dealt with.
• A father and his son.

Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way. And as he was now going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, Thy son liveth. Then enquired he of them the hour when he began to amend. And they said unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth: and himself believed, and his whole house. This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judaea into Galilee.
(John 4:50-54)

Jesus even remarked about this healing as the second miracle in Cana.

• Jesus has as many third days to give you miracles as you require!
• He had a third day miracle at the wedding.
• He had a third day miracle to restore a boy at the point of death.

The third day refers to the resurrection power of Jesus Christ after the cross.

• God needs no new invention to help you after you are saved.
• The third day resurrection saved you from sin, and it will be the very thing God uses to help you every time you need help.

Could it be that the picture God is trying to show us is that the father of the son was the husband of the woman in Samaria?

• We know they weren't, but just as the various characters of John's first four chapters all seem to tell the story of the single family of Adam and Eve, the picture of this adulterating woman and this dad seems to shine out.

"THE CHURCH: GOD'S RESTORATION OF
THE FAMILY OF MANKIND"