00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
I always feel like I owe you
a bit of an explanation when we take a departure from what
we're going to be covering. This morning we're going to be
in John chapter 4. We've been working our way through
the Book of Exodus and have come to the Ten Commandments, and
many of you know that we've been spending the last weeks looking
at that. But this morning we'll be looking
at this wonderfully riveting passage of Scripture in John
chapter 4. And the reason that we're doing
that is somewhat practical reasons. I just need to. Some of you know that just right
after the service today, like literally at 1230, I need to
run to the car and jump in the car and head down to Pennsylvania.
I'll be speaking at a youth retreat there for Grace Bible Church,
where a friend of mine pastors. I'll be giving six messages to
seventh through twelfth graders on the topic of evangelism and
missions. And always one to try to pair
up tasks, I thought that I could bring one of the messages that
I'll be preaching there to you this morning. And John chapter
4 is one of those messages. I appreciate your prayers as
I go to this retreat. I think it's a wonderful opportunity
for this formative time in these young people's lives to consider
a topic of evangelism and missions, to see that the Lord has called
his people to be a part of the proclamation of the gospel and
the advance of the gospel around the world. And I'm excited for
what the Lord would do. And so I'd ask you to be praying
for them, for those teens, and for me as I seek to minister
to them God's word about this topic. John chapter 4 is really
a foundational passage when it comes to evangelism and missions. When you think about evangelism
and missions, you think about the responsibility that we have
to go and proclaim the gospel, to make the gospel known, and
even to do that to the ends of the earth. And we might be tempted
to think that this is something that we do in our own strength,
that we could be perhaps the greatest missionary, the greatest
evangelist. I'm sure not many of you would think that way,
because we understand how intimidating it is. But we have to understand,
even before we come to grasp our responsibility in this task,
we need to realize that there is a greater and better missionary
and evangelist, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. We see him
as the missionary and evangelist par excellence in John. In the
whole Gospel, we see him as one who has come to save sinners,
and he has partaken in the greatest missionary task of all. Missions
could be simply defined as crossing some sort of boundary, whether
it be cultural or linguistic or geographic or political, to
bring the good news of Jesus Christ to a people you wouldn't
normally associate with. Jesus accomplished that in the
greatest measure when he, the eternal Son of God, took on flesh
and dwelt among us. He is the one who has really
overcome the greatest of all boundaries to bring us to God. And so before we even consider
the idea of how we might evangelize or how we might be a missionary,
we need to realize that Jesus Christ is the missionary of missionaries
and the evangelist of evangelists. And the gospel of John chapter
four shows us him in action. This wonderful passage that shows
us Jesus ministering to a woman by the well. It's really the
epitome of what a missionary and an evangelist is. My intention
is to bring this message to the youth tonight so that they have
the opportunity to see and understand the gospel, and that they would
perhaps be pricked in their own hearts if they don't already
know Christ, know Him as the one who offers living water.
And perhaps that would be for you this morning. Also to consider
what Jesus offers is the one who has living water, the one
who gives it freely. And so that's the first and most
important takeaway is to look at the Lord Jesus Christ and
all of his excellence and all of his glory that he puts on
display here in John chapter 4, and to believe him, to come
to him first of all, as the one who gives to us before we would
ever dare to think about doing anything for Him. But there's
another takeaway from this. As you look at the Lord Jesus
Christ and you behold His glory, something happens. you become
like him. Not in that you could ever become
the one who makes atonement for sins or sacrifices for sins,
but you see something in him and you're so stirred by his
wisdom and his compassion and his love and his tact that you
think, I want to be like that. I want to live like that, and
I want to tell others about how great my Savior is. And so it
would be my desire that you would look at this from the angle of
becoming like Jesus with an eye towards souls that they might
come to know Christ. I'd like to read for you first
John chapter 3, verses 31 through 36, which sets the stage for
us as we jump into John chapter 4. And we'll pray. And then we'll
dive into John 4 and consider what the Lord has for us in that
passage. Let me read for you John 3, verses
31 through 36. Speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ,
John writes, He who comes from above is above all. He who is
of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way.
He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what
he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever
receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.
For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives
the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and
has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the
Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son
shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Let's
bow together in prayer. Father, would you give to us
a sight of the Lord Jesus Christ as he reveals his glory through
the pages of scripture? Pray that you would let us see
him, that we might believe him, depend on him, and become like
him. We pray this in Jesus' name,
amen. John chapter four verse one begins
with this. Now when Jesus learned that the
Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more
disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize
but only his disciples, he left Judea and departed again for
Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria.
So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the field
that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there,
so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside
the well. It was about the sixth hour.
This sets the stage for one of the most intriguing conversations
that has ever happened, and we'll get to listen to it. It's a conversation
that is so important that it changes the entire course of
one woman's life, and because of it being recorded in scripture,
it has changed the course of countless lives thereafter. At
this point in Jesus' ministry, he had been in the region of
Judea, that's the southern portion of Israel, and he'd been ministering
there, having some teaching time and performing some miracles.
And while he's there, he gains a following And because John the Baptist,
who is the forerunner of Jesus and had been preparing people,
begins the part of his ministry where he decreases and Jesus
the Christ increases, there becomes a bit of a tension because the
disciples of John realize that they are baptizing fewer people
than Jesus is baptizing. Not only this, but the Pharisees,
the leaders of religious kind of contemporary religious practice
of the day are also realizing this. Jesus gets wind of this
and decides to depart and go back to Galilee, away from the
epicenter of the Jewish religion. This is most likely to avoid
premature conflict. Jesus, when he gets around the
Pharisees and teaches, just can't help but kind of create some
conflict, not because he's doing anything wrong, but because what
he says is so at odds with what they teach. And so as his influence
is growing, he decides to leave because his hour has not yet
come to go to the cross and to be crucified, which the Pharisees
and other religious leaders will ultimately do to him. And so
he departs for Galilee, which is in the north. It's the northern
part of Israel. And to get there, he had to pass
through Samaria. Samaria was a region that originally
was just the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, but eventually
as there was exile of the northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria,
the region of Samaria was then populated by kind of the lowest
class of Jews, but also resettled with Assyrians and other people
of other religions. mixed together with the people
who were there, the Jewish people, and it kind of created this hybrid
religion and a hybrid people who had a mixture of Judaism
along with paganism, and they became a group of people that
were despised by pure-blooded Jews. And Jesus passes through
that because it's the most direct course to get to Galilee. And
when he's there, he comes to a city called Sychar, which is
a kind of a town nestled between two very important mountains
in the Old Testament, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. You can look
in Deuteronomy to see what the importance of those are. It's
a place where Israel called out the blessings and curses of the
covenant. And between that is situated this town and there's
a well there, Jacob's well, and people continue to use that.
And Jesus being wearied from his journeying, sits down by
the well in that area to rest. He's experiencing, quite literally,
physical weariness in his humanity. He was not exempt from feeling
the taxing nature of all the travel and all the teaching and
all the ministry that he was doing. And so he sits down by
that well and rests. And then comes this interaction
with this woman that is, in one sense, completely unexpected. And as we work through this,
we'll just kind of handle it phrase by phrase and see how
the Lord handles this woman. It says in verse seven that a
woman from Samaria came to draw water. There's nothing unusual
about that. Of course, she would have to
come and draw water in order to just survive. But what is
unusual in this moment is that normally if there had been some
Jewish rabbi there and there had been a Samaritan woman that
had come by, they most likely would have just averted their
glances, ignored each other, and gone on with their life without
having a word between them exchanged. But Jesus is not a normal Jewish
rabbi. And a conversation that otherwise
never would have taken place comes to pass because Jesus initiates
this conversation when he speaks to her and says, give me a drink. Words that almost no one else
would have uttered. He begins a conversation that
wouldn't have taken place really in any other scenario happens
because Jesus is unlike anybody else. And he initiates a conversation. If it had been anyone else, this
whole chapter would not have happened. This chapter is placed
side by side with chapter 3, of course, which happens to contain
the experience of Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and
he came to Jesus by night, and he came and asked Jesus a question. Rabbi says, we know that you
are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs
that you do unless God is with them, and he initiates that conversation. And it places side by side this
encounter Jesus has with Nicodemus with the encounter Jesus has
with this woman. Nicodemus was a teacher, a Pharisee,
a ruler, a leader. This woman was nobody and kind
of a moral outcast. One commentator puts it this
way, John may intend a contrast between the woman of this narrative
and Nicodemus of chapter 3. He was learned, powerful, respected,
orthodox, theologically trained. She was unschooled, without influence,
despised, capable only of folk religion. He was a man, a Jew,
a ruler. She was a woman, a Samaritan,
a moral outcast. And both needed Jesus. While this Conversation has the
initial trappings of just kind of a very physical and kind of
reasonable almost encounter. There's something more that's
going on here, more than meets the eye. says at the end of this chapter
in verse 31, after his disciples come by and urge him to eat,
he says, but he said to them, I have food to eat that you do
not know about. So the disciples said to one
another, has anyone brought him something to eat? Jesus said
to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to
accomplish his work. Jesus has eyes focused on one
thing, and that is to do the will of his Father in heaven.
So when John says that Jesus had to go through Samaria, in
one sense there's a physical explanation for that, because
that's the quickest path from Judea to Samaria, but in another
sense it is because Jesus has his heart set on one thing, It
is to do the will of his father in heaven, and his will of his
father in heaven is for his son to seek and save that which was
lost, and this woman is living in darkness. And so Jesus comes
to this well, wearied from his journey, and initiates a conversation
that otherwise would never have happened by simply asking for
a drink. His disciples aren't around,
and so he has kind of uninterrupted conversation with this woman.
And so the woman responds in verse 9. The Samaritan woman
said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me,
a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with
Samaritans. Quite literally, the way that
that expression is stated is that Jews don't use the same
things as Samaritans. They consider Samaritans as defiled. They are unclean. And so if they
were to share a cup or a utensil, it would pass the uncleanness
from the Samaritans onto the Jews and the Jews wouldn't want
anything to do with that. And this woman is aware of this
kind of cultural norm and she brings it up to Jesus. How is it that you, a Jew, are
asking me for a drink It's totally unusual, and the breaking down
of a cultural norm that was pretty much standardized. Now, of course,
Jesus' disciples are in town buying food, so there are limits
on how far it goes, but to exchange water and drink from the same
cup of someone is totally unheard of. It's a little bit like rewinding
in our own culture's history when there was a division at
drinking fountains between whites and a drinking fountain labeled
colored only. Be totally unusual for those
to get swapped. And Jesus is swapping it right
now. And the woman's wheels are churning.
How could this be? Because not only was it unusual
for a Jew to interact with a Samaritan this way, but it is even more
unusual for a Jewish man to interact with a Samaritan woman. Probably
never happened. And not only that, but for a
woman with her reputation, as we'll find out later, for a Jewish
teacher to interact with a woman of this moral standing is completely
unheard of. And it reveals to us that Jesus
was, what he was doing was beyond unusual, not just in his actions,
but in his motives and in his values. Because his motive, again,
is to do what his father sent him to do, and what his father
sent him to do is to seek and to save the lost. And that is
always on his mind. And he values life and truth
and worship, so he is not afraid of interacting in a way that
others never would have. This is the kind of Jesus that
we have. One whose ways and words break
down the cultural norms into which they enter. And this, by
the way, should still be the case. Jesus' words and ways are
no less powerful now than they were 2,000 years ago. They still,
where they come, break down barriers and divisions. Paul the apostle
was basically arrested because he, being a Jew, was associating
with Gentiles. This goes on throughout the history
of evangelism and missions. Two of the messages I'll be giving
to these youth will be on missionary biographies. I'll be speaking
to them about two missionaries. One is John Payton and the other
is Lillias Trotter. John Payton was a missionary
from Scotland to what was then called the New Hebrides, now
called Vanuatu, and there are islands in the South Pacific
that were inhabited by cannibals. Missionaries had previously gone
to those islands and been killed, cooked, and eaten. And John Payton
decides that he wants to go And he lands on the island and he's
eager to meet with the people there and learn their language
so that he can put at least a few words together in order to communicate
to them the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As soon as he's
able to put a sentence together, that's what he's telling them. He's so persuaded about the power
of the gospel of Christ that those who think he's crazy for
going to islands where he could die have no sway on him because
he's going. Lilius Trotter was an upper-class
Victorian-era woman who had a life of ease and independent wealth,
could really live as easy as she wanted to, but she got caught
by the gospel of Jesus Christ, gave up a life of ease and also
expression of really gifted artistic talent that she could have become
quite famous for. and left it behind in order to
go and serve the Muslims of Algeria with the gospel, and particularly
the Muslim women who were basically kept in the home and out of the
public eye all day long. And she, likewise, with John
Payton, as soon as she could learn a few words of Arabic,
wanted to put sentences together so she could communicate the
gospel to those people who were living in darkness. Jesus and his people continue
to break down cultural norms and standards in order to communicate
the good news, the grace of Jesus Christ. And so this woman asks
this question because she just doesn't get it. How is it that
you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? But Jesus
responds to this. And as he responds, he helps
us to see something so beautiful. This woman is really scandalized
that Jesus would ask her for a drink, but Jesus is going to
show there's another scandal going on here. The woman is scandalized
because he, a Jewish man, asked her, a Samaritan woman, for a
drink. But there's something that's much more shocking going
on here. You just need eyes to see it.
What is more shocking, Jesus says, is verse 10. If you knew
the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me
a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you
living water. The real shocking thing here
isn't that Jesus is asking her for water. It's that she isn't
asking him for living water that is eternal life. That's the shocking
part. The real scandal is that she
isn't asking him for eternal life. If you knew the gift of
God, Jesus says, and who it is that is saying to you, give me
a drink, you would have asked him. Jesus, again, is viewing people
not from just physical eyes, but from spiritual eyes, seeing
the precious thing that each person possesses is their soul.
This is very akin to what Jesus says elsewhere, is what profit
is it to gain the whole world and forfeit your soul? That should
be the driving ambition of anyone's life, is to know what is going
to happen to your soul. We get so consumed with what's
gonna happen to our physical bodies, and there's certainly
a place for that, but the primary question that should be on every
human being's heart, because eternity is written on our hearts,
is what is going to happen to your soul? And the fact that
Jesus, the Son of God, the one who came to bring eternal life,
is sitting there speaking this with this woman, the scandal
is that she isn't immediately asking him for eternal life. Jesus understands that she doesn't
really know, and so He says, if you knew the gift of God,
and she doesn't, the gift of God is eternal life given through
His Son. It's really John 3.16, for God
so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes
in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. If she had
known that gift and the one who was speaking to her is the one
who has the ability to give it, then she would have asked Him. and he gives freely. Notice Jesus
asks her for a drink and she kind of scoffs at him. And Jesus
turns it around and is so free and generous that he offers her
a drink. She doesn't know the gift of
God and she doesn't know who is speaking to her. Externally,
all she sees is this weary Jewish rabbi who's thirsty and has some
peculiar cultural views. But Jesus knows exactly who he
is and exactly what he gives. But still, he speaks in a veiled
kind of way. He says he would have given you
living water. What is that? If someone offered
you that, what would you think? Well, if you know the context
of the Bible, you might have a clue, but for this woman, she's
probably thinking that Jesus is offering to get up and to
lead her somewhere where there's a bubbling brook, a fresh spring,
and he could show her that. But the way that he speaks give
further opportunity for this conversation to continue, and
for her to be drawn out by Jesus as he engages with her. And as
she responds to Jesus' statement, she shows that she doesn't know
who she is talking to, but she really needs to. She says, In
verse 11, the woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw
water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living
water? Are you greater than our father
Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did
his sons and his livestock. This woman has some points of
contention with Jesus, as she thinks he's just not quite getting
it. She first observes, that he has nothing to draw water
with. So if he offers her water, how
is he gonna give it to her? Because remember, Jesus, you're
asking me for water. You don't even have anything
to draw water with. Secondly, the well is deep. The well still exists today.
It's about 100 feet deep. So Jesus couldn't just lean over
with his hands and scoop some up and give himself water, much
less her any water. So how is he gonna give her any
water? Furthermore, she thinks that
he doesn't really have access to this living water. Where do
you get that living water? She's skeptical. She thinks it's
ridiculous that he would claim to have this. And furthermore,
she thinks that even if he did have access to water, he would
have to be greater than Jacob in order for that water to be
of any significance to her. Jacob is a key figure in the
Old Testament. This is Jacob's well and she can get water from
Jacob's well. And she thinks, Jesus, you're
not greater than Jacob because he gave us the well and drank
from it himself. You see the little jab there
into Jesus? Jesus can't even drink from that
well himself. How is he gonna give her living
water? What good did he do? Not only did Jacob get himself
water, but he also gave his livestock water and his sons. What good is this Jesus? Jesus,
of course, is better, is greater than Jacob, and he can give this
living water that he's referring to, and he doesn't need anything
to draw it with, and the source of the water that he offers is
actually so high that nobody else can access it except himself
and give it to others. takes a different approach than
answering directly in order to help her understand that this
woman and Jesus are really talking about two different things. Jesus
gives a response that is going to show her the inadequacy of
drinking only natural water. Jesus says in verse 13, everyone
who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever
drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty
again. The water that I will give him
will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. It's kind of a no-brainer, but
your body needs water in order to survive. We're going to drink
several more times today. There's that kind of fact out
there, you're supposed to have eight cups of water every day.
I don't know how legitimate that is, but the point is you need
to drink, and you need to drink a substantial amount in order
to just continue to function. In one sense, it's a bit odd,
isn't it, that every day, no matter how much we drank or we
ate the day before, we find ourselves thirsty again, or we find ourselves
hungry again. And no matter how much you eat
and drink today, you're going to come to tomorrow and you're going
to find that you're thirsty and you're hungry again. It's never
enough. It's this relentless cycle in
your life where you have to continue to eat and you have to continue
to drink. And it's also temporary. The satisfaction and the quenching
that comes from a glass of water, oh, it's great in the moment,
but it only lasts a few minutes, a few hours. And then you need
more. And so as Jesus is accused, really,
of not being greater than Jacob, he goes on to basically imply
about Jacob's well that if you come and drink water from this
well, you're going to be thirsty again. And so in order for Jesus
to prove himself greater than Jacob, he has to give a kind
of water that's better than Jacob's water. And Jesus then says, everyone
who drinks of this water will be thirsty again. And the woman
might think, well, that's the case for every well. That's kind
of just a no-brainer. It'll only satisfy your thirst
for a little while. But again, she asked if Jesus
is greater than Jacob. And he is answering that. And
the water that Jacob gives is temporary, but the thirst quenching
that Jesus gives is permanent. never thirsty again, Jesus says. Not only that, but the very water
that is given to the person by this Jesus will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life. You have in
yourself this water that is so sufficient and constant that
you never need to drink again because in your own life there
is now this bubbling up. You think, Who talks like this? Who says things like Jesus says
things? He will give you a kind of water
that if you drink it, you'll never be thirsty again. It's
like magic water. Even if you took that physically,
that you could have a drink of something that would quench your
thirst for the rest of your life, you'd wanna know a little bit
more about it. What is this drink? Some people associate drink with
just kind of the pleasure of it, like coffee or tea, and if
you took that out of your life, you wouldn't know why you're
alive. This is such a part of what satisfies you. But Jesus
isn't just talking about that which tastes good, he's talking
about that which sustains your life, especially in an arid region
like this, where of course water is needed for everybody on the
planet, but where water is scarce, it's all the more important and
you know your dependence on it. And Jesus is pointing out to
this woman that there is a kind of water which if you take it,
it will sustain you for the entirety of life and beyond into eternal
life. If you take the cup offered by Jesus and drink it, you never
have to open another bottle of water or turn on the tap again.
It's at least the way this is sounding to this woman. He speaks
the kind of water that he gives. It's distinct from what the woman
is thinking, but there's been enough suggested to her that
is provocative. And so the woman responds in
verse 15. The woman said to him, Sir, give
me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come
here to draw water. The woman's response reveals
that eternal life and having your thirst quenched is desirable
to anyone, but not necessarily desired with the right understanding
for what you're actually being offered. She asks now, she's intrigued. Give me this water. And she responds
with some enthusiasm, but not with full understanding. Because
she has two reasons for why she wants to have this water given
to her. One reason is so that she might not be thirsty again.
Yeah, go ahead, give me that magic water. That sounds pretty
good. I'll take that. That's one reason. And the second
reason is, or have to come here to draw water. This could turn
out to be better than Jacob's well because she has to come
to Jacob's well every day to get water. Coming in the heat
of the day, avoiding the crowds with the other women of whom
she is likely an outcast from because of her lifestyle. It
would be ideal in order to avoid all of that. And she's thinking about it purely
from a physical perspective. Notice that she says nothing
about eternal life, nor a real acknowledgement of who she is
speaking to. She sets her sights too low. Jesus has something
better to offer. But she still accepts her, give
me this water. And Jesus responds. And he says, in verse 16, Jesus
almost takes a left turn here. Like, where in the world did
that come from? But his response, which seems
to change the subject, is now actually just beginning the process
of giving this living water as she had asked him. Remember,
Jesus said, anyone who asks me, I will give. Well, she's asked
him. Are we to think that he hasn't
begun to give it to her? But the way that he gives it
to her is so different from the way that we would think about
doing it. It's so foreign, almost. If we got somebody in this position,
we've been talking about eternal life, and they say, give me this
water, we would say, all right, let's seal the deal. Bow your
head and repeat after me, and we're gonna pray. But Jesus is
too wise for that. The kind of water that he is
giving to this woman is so unique that it requires him to take
a path that looks so foreign to her and to us, but in reality,
it is showing that the kind of water he gives is the kind of
water that will actually quench the kind of thirst that she needs
to have quenched in her life. And so Jesus says, go call your
husband and come here. And again, we think, what is
Jesus doing? Why does he bring her husband
into this? Is he trying to bring him into this to kind of incorporate
him into this sweet deal? And there's a note of irony in
this because he says, go call your husband and come here. But
do you remember what the woman said? Sir, give me this water
so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw
water. And yet Jesus is saying the location
that you need to come in order to receive this water is precisely
the place you don't want to be. The kind of water Jesus gives
is of such a different kind. It's not that he's withholding
this water. It's that he's actually in the
process of giving the kind of water that she actually needs.
The kind of water that's meant to be taken in through the heart
by faith and addresses your real life. Jesus, with laser-like precision,
pinpoints the location of her life that this really needs to
be applied to. Jesus is so skilled at this. The woman responds, in verse 17, the woman answered
him, I have no husband. This woman has not been short
on words, She's had not too much to say, but she's been willing
to speak with some level of clarity, but this becomes the very shortest
statements that she makes in the whole conversation. It's
just three words in the Greek, a few more in English. I have
no husband. Very matter of fact. You would
think with a statement like that, there might be something attached
to it. I have no husband, but I really
like one. Or I have no husband, been divorced. Or I have no husband, I'd rather
not talk about it. I guess that's what she's implying.
It's just a statement of sheer fact. Almost looks like a closed
door. And it shows that Jesus has touched
a nerve in her life that needs to be touched, and the living
water needs to be applied there. Jesus responds, and His response
shows that He has a way of exposing His listener to their truest
need. Do you recall the incident where
Jesus has the rich young ruler come up to him, kneels down to
him and says, teacher, what do I need to do to inherit eternal
life? And Jesus says, you know the commandments. And the young
ruler says, I've kept all of those from a youth, what else
do I lack? And Jesus says, you lack one
thing. Go sell all that you have. Give to the poor. and come follow
me." Jesus doesn't say the same thing to the rich jeweler as
he says to the woman, but he says the same kind of thing where
he is able to pinpoint what that person's life is dealing with
in that moment and help them to bring it out so they can see
what needs to be dealt with in order for them to come back to
Jesus and actually follow him. And so Jesus says, go call your
husband, come here. She says, I have no husband.
And Jesus said to her, you are right in saying, I have no husband. For you have had five husbands.
And the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said
is true. Yeah, the exact place in her
flesh that she does not want to come is the exact place that
Jesus is forcing her to deal with. I have no husband. You know, I don't know how Jesus
interacts with you precisely. He's still exceptionally skilled
at addressing the very nerve of our life that needs to be
dealt with. You could be asked that question, go call your husband
and come here, and you could say, okay, fine, no big deal. But Jesus particularizes what
needs to happen. Jesus could say, go, get your
browsing history and come here. You say, I have no browsing history. Jesus would say, you're right
in saying you have no browsing history. You deleted your browsing
history. And the browsing history you
now have is not your own. It's a freight. It's a fake. I don't know how he does it in
your life. I know how he's done it in my life. His word is living
and active. Open his word, let him speak
to you, and address the very nerve of your life that needs
to be addressed. He is skillful at it. He is not
doing it to harm you. He's doing it to bring to you
eternal life. Jesus tenderly deals with her.
He doesn't slam her in the face. He says, you're right, and saying,
I have no husband. She's not lying, per se. But
he calls her passed out, for you have had five husbands. The
one that you now have is not your husband. We don't know the
history. It's fruitless to speculate.
It could be divorce, it could be death. The fact of the matter
is that Jesus points out the one that she is now with is not
her husband. It's a gentle way of saying that
she's committing fornication, adultery. Her life is a life of immorality. And again, pretty much everybody
else would have put this woman off to the side, this immoral
woman, have nothing to do with her. She's a Samaritan and she's
immoral. But Jesus is the kind of Savior
who when unclean things come to Him and He touches them, He
can make them clean. When the leper came to Jesus
in Matthew chapter 8, and everybody else would flee from that leper
and say, stay away. And the leper comes to Jesus
and says, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. Jesus
stretched out his hand and touched him and said, I will be clean. That's the kind of Savior he
is, the one who touches unclean things to make them clean. And
that's what he's doing with this woman. Jesus is not afraid to put people
into an uncomfortable position in order to help them see what
they need. And this woman is beginning to
now have the lights go on, and the one that she originally saw
as just a weary Jewish traveler is now manifesting the very glory
of God before her eyes. And so her response is in verse
19. The woman said to him, Sir, I
perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this
mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where
people ought to worship. The woman's response shows that
she's realizing there's something more to Jesus than she originally
knew, but she's not quite there yet to the fullness of who she
is. She declares him to be a prophet
based on what he's just said. She sees that he has insight
into her life that he couldn't otherwise have except by divine
access. And in doing so, she implicitly
acknowledges the legitimacy of what Jesus had just said. But the way that she speaks almost
seems like she's taking a left-hand turn now. She's changing the
subject. One pastor describes it like
this, speaking of my adultery, where is the right place to worship? Kind of want to crawl out of
this situation. Maybe it's that the motives aren't clear. Sometimes
it's our natural inclination when we're engaged with somebody
who has theological differences with us to bring those up so
we can clarify where we're at. Maybe it's that. Either way. It's not told to us why she says
this, but we do see that Jesus addresses the statement about
this location of worship. The problem was that the Jews
worshiped in Jerusalem, the location of the temple, and the Samaritans,
who rejected all of the Old Testament, except for the first five books,
and in a changed manner, thought that Mount Gerizim was the place
of worship, and they had other customs that they did to complete
their worship. And the question the woman asks
is, where are we to worship? And while we think it might be
a distraction from the main point, Jesus actually uses it as a means
to bring about the essence of what she needs to know. And so
Jesus responds not by just trying to get back to what he was just
talking about, but by addressing the crux of the matter. And he
says in verse 21, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither
on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for
salvation is from the Jews, but the hour is coming and is now
here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship
Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship
in spirit and truth." Jesus responds by helping this woman to see
what a true life of devotion to God looks like. It says, the
hour is coming, that's always in the Gospel of John, a reference
to Jesus' coming, death, resurrection, and exaltation, and all of the
implications from that. And Jesus says, basically, that
hour is so close that it's already here in the sense that he has
inaugurated a new era where a kind of worship is being established
that's unlike what has passed before. And this statement sums
up what she really needs because she needs to be a worshiper of
God in spirit and in truth. In spirit and truth, and she
lacks both of those kinds of worship. To be marked by the
spirit is to say that she needs to be a person who has been born
from above, born of the spirit, born again, that her life is
so transformed by the gospel of grace that she becomes a new
person and that the kind of worship that she needs to be offered
to God is to be in accordance with what God has disclosed through
his self-revelation in the Son. And she lacked both of those
because her life is marked by the flesh, a life of immorality,
a life of just seeing things through physical eyes and not
seeing beyond any more than that. And in truth, she lacks that
as well because she is deprived of much of the revelation of
the Old Testament. She's deprived of the reality that salvation
is from the Jews. That means it's the revelation
of God's redemptive plan throughout the whole of the Old Testament,
culminating in the Lord Jesus Christ. She needs her life renovated
by the Spirit, because God is Spirit. He is so immense, so
pure, that He dwells in unapproachable light, and the kind of worship
that He needs to receive is the kind of worship that is done
in Spirit and truth. Jesus really draws this to the
crux of the matter. She needs a new life that is
founded on the revelation of God that culminates in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And this stirs up in the woman
a realization that there is somebody someday who is going to tell
them everything they need to know. And so she says in verse
25, the woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming. He was
called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us
all things. She knows that she needs to know
more, and she knows that's located in the Messiah. Remember what
Jesus said at the start? If you knew the gift of God and
who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have
asked him. This woman knows that there's
a Messiah that's coming, And Jesus responds to her in verse
26, the apex of this whole conversation, the place that it's all being
driven towards to get her ready for this moment. I who speak
to you am He. And that's the goal. That's the
goal of missions. It's the goal of evangelism.
is to bring people to a point of realization that Jesus of
Nazareth, the one who on the outside looked like a weary journey
rabbi, is the one who is the Christ who will tell you all
things and gives living water to those who ask him. For those who have drunk of the
living water of Jesus, you know how satisfying it is. You know
that you've been given the gift of eternal life and it's a spring
welling up in you that can never be taken away. There are those
who don't know that yet. And you need to let Jesus lead
you to the place where he touches the nerve of your life, to show
you the very place where he needs to enter in and address what
you need most, namely to become a new person who worships in
spirit and in truth. And if you've tasted of Christ,
you know His goodness, you see how wonderful He is, let the
affection for Him make you like Him, that you would engage others
in order to bring them to the knowledge of this lovely Savior.
Let's pray. Father, you have given us such
a wonderful salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. So complete,
so sufficient that nothing can be added to it. To take away
from it or to add to it is to completely devastate it. So Lord,
let us keep it pure and undefiled. Help us, Father, to make Christ
Jesus the center of our whole life and to let him speak to
us. We thank you that he is the one who gives living water and
gives it freely. We thank you in Jesus' name,
amen.
The Greatest Missionary
Series Stand Alone Sermons
| Sermon ID | 723232125161121 |
| Duration | 53:12 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | John 4:1-26 |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.