A
Study of the Book of John
“That
You May Believe”
Sermon
# 10
“Love That Knows No Barriers!”
John
4:1-30
Our story today begins with Jesus on a
journey. He has been traveling and has paused for a rest and some much needed water. Here
he meets a woman at the local well. The person who met Jesus at the well in Sychar stands
in stark contrast to Nicodemus whom we met in chapter three. This was a Samaritan and a
woman and Nicodemus was a Jewish man. He was religious, she was immoral. She came by day,
not intending to speak to Jesus and he came by night, and initiated the conversation.
Jesus unmasked the spiritual emptiness of one who thought himself right with God and
revealed the maze of tangled relation-ships that left the other with no hope. She was a
social outcast and he was among the socially elite. Nicodemus hung on every word, she was
seemly indifferent. Yet both of them need what Jesus offered.
First, A Life
That Created Lots Of Barriers
In verse five we read, “So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the
plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. (6) Now
Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by
the well. It was about the sixth hour.(7) A woman of Samaria came to draw
water.”
Jesus was tired from the journey in the heat of
the day and so he decides to rest by the well while his disciples go on into the village
to get something for them to eat. It is at this point that a woman from the nearby village
appears.
· Racial Barriers
The bitter hatred between
the Jews and Samaritans was long standing – going back hundreds of years. Perhaps a little history will help us at this point. The
Jews and the Samaritans hated each other. It all went back to 722 B.C. when the Assyrians
conquered Israel and took the northern ten tribes into captivity. They brought in Gentiles
from other areas to settle in that same region. Eventually those Gentiles with their pagan
ways intermarried with the Jews who had been left behind. Over the generations those
people were called the Samaritans, and they developed their own religion that was partly
based on pagan ideas and partly based on Judaism.
The
Jews looked down on the Samaritans as racial half-breeds and religious heretics.
The Jews refused to accept the Samaritans as their kinsmen and both sides developed an
implacable, murderous hatred for one another. It’s hard for us to understand the
animosity that existed between these two groups, but if you think of the present-day
relationship between the Palestinians and the Israelis, you’ve got the right idea.
Now
that brings us back to verse three which says
that Jesus “needed to go through Samaria.”
Technically, it was not a necessity at all, and culturally, it was not even customary to
do so. Although passing through Samaria is the most direct route between Galilee on the
north and Judea to the south, but because of the animosity which existed between these two
peoples, conscientious Jews chose to take a longer route to keep from passing through
Samaria. The answer why Jesus “needed to go through Samaria” is simple
and yet profound: Jesus went because
he intended to meet this woman. He knew she would be coming to the well at
precisely the moment he was sitting there weary from his journey. This woman was
despised because of her race and she was also a person who may have been shunned by her
community because of her lifestyle.
· Social Barriers
The fact that this woman comes to the well at
sixth hour (v. 6) (or noon by Jewish reckoning) to draw water is very revealing. She was
coming during the hottest part of the day, other women didn’t do this. She was going
to the well by herself other women did not do this. She obvious was coming to the well at
a time when she would not expect to meet any of the other women of the village. Because
this woman is alone and coming during the hottest part of the day it is an indication that
she was a social outcast. As J. Vernon McGee says, “one of
the reasons that this woman is so unpopular with the women in this town is that she is so
popular with the men.”
Let me ask you, “Have you ever meet someone who was off-limits
socially?” I know the teenagers know what I am talking about. I am talking about
the kid who if you hang out with them your friends will make fun of you! In fact they may
not have anything do to with “you” any more. There are just some people that
society tells us to stay away from. This Samaritan woman is that kind of person.
This
woman had a lot of barriers in her life but now this
Samaritan woman met a man different from other men, and she was somewhat of an expert
on men! The racial and cultural (not to mention the theological) barriers present at this
encounter seemed insurmountable.
Secondly, A Love
That Overcomes Barriers
When this woman comes to the well verse
seven tells us that “…Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” In this simple request by Jesus for a drink of
water he had conveyed a powerful message. He had said, “You are not worthless. You are
worth talking to.”
The story now establishes
several things about what contact with Jesus involves.
· Contact With Jesus Is Personal. (v. 8)
“For His disciples had gone away
into the city to buy food.” Verse
eight reminds the reader that it is now just Jesus and the woman. Ultimately, it always
comes down to just you and Him. As you look back over the days of your life, how many
times have you been brought face to face with the Lord? Today may be another such occasion
in your life. In the final analysis it will not matter how much money you made or how many
awards you received or how many degrees you have, what will be of the up most importance
is what you did with Jesus!
· Contact With Jesus Demands We Recognize Him For
Who He Is. (vv. 9-15)
“Then the woman of Samaria said
to Him, “How is
it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no
dealings with Samaritans.(10) Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it
is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would
have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
Verse ten begins with a
little word that has a lot of significance, the word is “if.”
Regardless of what else she thought she knew there is something important that she does
not know. She does not know who Jesus is! People
often say, “What you don’t know will not
hurt you!” The truth is what
you don’t know could sent you to an eternity in Hell.
Jesus is speaking about
spiritual water but the woman interpreted his words to be about literal water so she
replies in verse eleven, “…Sir, You have nothing to draw with,
and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? (12) Are You greater than
our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and
his livestock?”
(13) Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will
thirst again, (14) but
whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I
shall give him will become in him a fountain
of water springing up into everlasting life.”(15)
The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here
to draw.”
Whatever Jesus meant, she thought, He could not
be speaking of water from this well, for it was at least 75 feet deep and He had nothing
with which to drawn from it (v. 11). This led her to pursue another line of questioning? “Just Who are You anyway? Do You think You are
better than Jacob? Do You think Your well better than his?” (v.12). Her question
was far more profound than she could have imagined.
The words drinks in verses thirteen and
fourteen are worth noting. In verse thirteen, the word “drinks”
is in the Present tense and means “Even if you
keep drinking from this well, you will get thirsty again.” However the word
translated in verse fourteen as “drinks” is in
the Aorist tense (one time event with ongoing results in the future) meaning, “But whoever takes one drink of the water I
give him will never thirst again.”
(vv. 16-18)
Jesus knew the truth about this woman and he
forced her to see and admit the truth about herself when He said in verse sixteen, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
By asking about her husband
Jesus cuts through to the core of her sinful lifestyle. This woman has been engaged in
lifelong pursuit of happiness. She has gone from one failed relation-ship to the next, no
doubt with the expectation that the next marriage is going to get it all right. “This time I will be happy.” Jesus goes
to the core of her problem and one that is prevalent today! We have been raised with the
expectation that if we only find the right man or woman, we’ll be happy. In a way
this woman is the symbol of our own age – lonely and desperate people going from one
manipulative arrangement to the next, always hoping that this “roommate” will
work out better than the last one. The way of our world is the way of permanent
dissatisfaction. Surely never in the course of the human race has there been so many ways
of attaining pleasure or such an abundance of devices which are suppose to make life easy
and more enjoyable. Yet never have people been so unfulfilled and unhappy.
She doesn’t want to go into detail so she responds to Jesus in verse seventeen by
saying, “I have no husband.” Now that was true but it was certainly not
the whole story. She knew that she was hiding the truth, what she was unaware of
was that Jesus knows it. What Jesus says
in the remainder of verse seventeen and eighteen although not unkind, are a verbal
slap in the face, “… Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no
husband,’ (18) for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not
your husband; in that you spoke truly.” The Lord cut through the cover-up by informing
her that she was technically correct. She did not have a husband, but she had a lover, and
he was not number one, but number 6.
But encountering Jesus means confronting what
we really are, not just want we pretend to be. It demands complete honesty. Until we come
to grips with our sin and own willful disobedience to God, we cannot be saved. And as this
woman finds out whether we realize it or not Jesus knows us completely whether we decide
to confess all we are to him or not!
No doubt she hung her head as she faced the ugly
reality of her life. She has lived with a passing parade of men, five of which were
technically her husbands and the latest was just a live-in boyfriend.
She was broken, sinful and lost. If she is
unwilling to face herself and admit her tangled, sick relation-ships are sin, she can not
drink of the living water. The gift is free, but it cannot be received without repentance.
I do
not know whether or not this woman was deliberately changing the subject (though we surely
would have been inclined to do so), because discussing religion is always more comfortable
than facing our sins! In verse nineteen she states, “Sir
I perceive that you are a prophet (20) Our fathers worshipped on this mountain and you
Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” But
whatever her reasons she brought the conversation around to the theological issue which
divided Jews and Samaritans. Where was the central place of worship? Was it Mount Gerizim,
where the Samaritans worshipped or was it at Jerusalem, as the Jews insisted?
In our day
what Jesus said to this woman about her religion would be considered “intolerant and
politically incorrect!” In verse twenty-one Jesus says, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on
this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. (22) You worship what you do not
know; for we worship what we know; salvation is of the Jews.” We live in a
world that advances the idea that no one is really right and no
one is really wrong. We say, "Everyone has
their own truth, and we should respect that by not trying to change the way they think or
believe."
Joel Osteen is one of America's most well-known
preachers; he is the pastor of the nondenominational Lakewood Church in Houston and the
author of the bestselling book "Your Best Life Now." In June 2005, during
an appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live,"
Osteen was asked about his positions on "gay marriage" and abortion. "You know what, Larry? I don't go there. I just ...,"
he said, according to a transcript. "... I just, you know, I
don't think that a same-sex marriage is the way God intended it to be. I don't think
abortion is the best. I think there are other, you know, a better way to live your life.
But I'm not going to condemn those people. I tell them all the time our church is open for
everybody." "You don't call them sinners?" King asked. "I don't," Osteen said. "Is
that a word you don't use?" King asked. "I don't
use it," Osteen responded. "I never thought
about it. But I probably don't. But most people already know what they're doing wrong.
When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change. There can be a
difference in your life. So I don't go down the road of condemning."
Our culture asserts that
truth is whatever you sincerely believe in. But Jesus did not buy into this woman’s
error, he pointed her to the truth. He bluntly told her that the Samaritans
were worshiping what they did not know. He told her that everything she had believed all
her life had been wrong. He said, "Salvation is from the
Jews" (v. 22). She was uncomfortable and thought she would change the subject
again.
In verse twenty-five
the woman responds to Jesus by saying, “I know that Messiah
is coming… – when He comes, He will tell us all things. (26) Jesus said to her,
“I who speak to you AM He.” Jesus for now identifies himself as The
Messiah.
He plainly claims to be the Messiah and He does
so in a unique way. In Greek it reads something like this, “The one who speaks to you, I AM.” But
term translated “I AM” (ego eimi) was the name given by which God
revealed Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:15 when he said, “I AM Who I AM!”
Well was He or wasn’t
He the Messiah? This is the decision that is placed before this woman. As soon as Jesus
revealed Himself to her, she apparently responded in faith, and her salvation is
instantaneous. She simply trusted and immediately had a new mission in life.
· Contact
with Jesus Demands That We Act On What
We Have Learned. (vv. 28-30)
“The woman then left her waterpot, went her way
into the city, and said to the men,(29) “Come, see a Man who told me all things that
I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”(30)
Then they went out of the city and came to Him.”
Notice how this woman’s
perception of Jesus has changed in verse nine she refers to Jesus as a “Jew” in verse eleven she uses the term of
respect calling him “sir” in verse nineteen
she sees Jesus as a “prophet” and finally in verse
twenty-nine she reaches the place that she calls him “the
Christ”
Conclusion
The question remains, “Have you come into Contact with Jesus?” That contact will always be personal, one on one. That contact will always demand that we recognize who He is? That contact will force us to see ourselves as we really are? And most importantly if we have come into contact with Jesus that contact will demand that we act upon our new knowledge.