Download WOMAN AT THE WELL by Rev Mark Harris - John 4:5-42

WOMAN AT THE WELL by Rev Mark Harris - John 4:5-42 - 27/3/2011
Back when I first started @ Newcastle Uni, I moved into the only residential college on Campus at the
time,
And I’d made up my mind to do all the wrong things a farm boy can’t really do on the farm,
But God had other ideas,
I was placed by God, in a room opposite a Christian girl, Trina
A Chinese Aussie, who along with her boyfriend,
Ran the Christian fellowship group.
I looked a real heav at the time,
Dressed all in black, and with a sawn off T Shirt, and long hair.
I even had rude bumper stickers on my old HR Holden
Anyway, Trina said nothing about how I looked or anything else,
She just talked with me,
And to her amazement,
She discovered I had a church background,
And even played the church organ back home
Trina and her boyfriend invited me to the fellowship group,
And the rest is history,
I never did what I planned,
And God has been working on me ever since.
Later on Trina told me how scared she was talking to me,
But she trusted in God,
And God answered her prayers.
Today we’re going to look at how Jesus took the Good news to the Samaritans, through another very
unlikely candidate!
Firstly we’ll look at this woman from Samaria.
Secondly we’ll look at what Jesus offers her,
And Finally we’ll look at the effect the Gospel had on the Woman, and her whole community!
Now what we find here isn’t just another example of Jesus' wisdom and insight,
It’s a model for how to share the good news with others.
Here we find Jesus taking every opportunity
to bring people to a knowledge of the truth which is found in him,
So let’s look at this woman from Samaria.
What we don’t perhaps realize is how confronting this passage really is.
This woman had 3 strikes against her.
Firstly she was a Samaritan.
Secondly she was a woman,
And thirdly she was a 5 time divorcee.
Now the Jews and Samaritans were pretty hostile to each other.
Samaritans were mixed blood Israelites,
Those from the northern tribes that got carted off into captivity, and intermarried with foreigners.
They only accepted the first 5 books of the bible,
And they refused to worship God in Jerusalem,
because that command came in the scripture they rejected.
The Jews refused their help to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem,
After the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon,
And this created more animosity between them,
In 128BC the Jews burned the Samaritan temple at Mt Gerizim,
And things went from bad to worse.
[Pause]
Now as well as being a Samaritan she was of course a woman.
No rabbi would have had a conversation with a woman.
One of the Rabbinic sayings went like this: “A man shall not talk with a woman in the street, not even
his own wife, and especially not with another woman, on account of what men may say.”
The rabbi’s considered women inferior to men in every way,
A very ancient Jewish prayer for men that’s still found in a Jewish prayer book says “Blessed art Thou
O Lord, … who hast not made me a woman”
And as well as being a Samaritan woman, She was a social leper:
Jesus said in Verse 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not
your husband.
This woman was on the bottom rung of the Samaritan social ladder.
With 5 previous husbands and living with yet another man,
She was the low of the low.
Most of us here today have probably done some bad things that we’re very ashamed of.
But not everybody knows about it.
With this woman, it was different,
Everyone knew what she’d done.
And that’s probably why she came to the well in the middle of the day,
And not in the cool of the morning or evening like most women,
She most likely didn’t get on with the other woman in town too well.
Best to avoid the glares and stares!
So here we have a Samaritan Woman of social disrepute.
This woman was someone that absolutely NO self respecting Jewish man would have anything to do
with.
But not Jesus!
I wonder about us,
How would WE behave around this woman?
Would we shun her?
Would we think, she wouldn’t respond to the Gospel, so why should I lower myself by talking to her?
One of the amazing things about the gospel is that all sorts of people are touched by it, in totally
unpredictable ways.
We can’ tell who’ll respond well, and who won’t,
And so we just need to be faithful with every opportunity,
We need to follow Jesus example.
How does Jesus respond to her?
Jesus talks to her about the “gift of God”
Jesus sees a woman in great need of the gospel.
Here we start to approach the central theme of this passage.
Every opportunity to share the gospel must be taken.
But does Jesus get up on a soap box and tell his message?
No,
Does he just stand there and rattle off how to be saved?
No,
He approaches the woman where she’s at.
John 4:7 & 9 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a
drink." … 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "You, are a Jew and I am a Samarian woman. How
can you ask me for a drink?"
She knows at once that Jesus is a Jew!
And she can’t help but raise the obvious barrier between them.
Jesus proceeds to draw her out, Much like water from the well,
10 "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him
and he would have given you living water."
If she knew the gift of God, If she knew WHO HE is,
Then she would have been asking him.
She would have crossed the cultural divide herself
And she would have received living water,
What is the gift of God? What is living water?
Jesus himself is the gift of God.
Jesus brings new life to all who will put their faith in Him,
And this new life is all gift,
We don’t deserve it, We can’t earn it,
We can only receive it with humble and tremendous thanks.
As we put our faith in Jesus.
Now living water is an expression of the day that simply means running water,
The really good stuff,
A bit like Mount Franklin or evian spring water today
[Pause]
The woman initially takes Jesus’ words literally.
11 "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get
this living water?
Now that she can sense Jesus can give her something of value,
She calls Jesus Sir,
He’s gone up in her estimation!
But she knows there’s no living water in this well,
Although it’s a deep well,
Where can you get this living water?
Jesus then says to her, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the
water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
For us getting water is simple, we turn on a tap in our house!
But for this woman it was hard work.
Everyday she had to walk for ages in the heat,
To avoid the other women.
Then she had to lug it all the way back to her house.
Verse 15 "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw
water."
She’s still thinking about the water,
And so Jesus draws her in further by asking the question about her husband.
And responding with his supernatural knowledge of her life.
Now she doesn’t call him “a Jew”, or even just “Sir”
She says 19 "Sir”.... “I can see that you are a prophet.”
Her recognition of Jesus identity is growing bit by bit!
But what Jesus tells her about her life is confronting.
And so she changes the subject.
In fact she tries to start a religious argument.
But Jesus isn't deflected.
He takes her from her red herring, right back to the point.
The gift of God,
The living water goes beyond what the Samaritan religion or even Judaism understands.
And so Jesus takes her one step further.
He directs her thoughts to the future.
Verse 21 a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in
Jerusalem.
and verse 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
When will this be?
Verse 23 a time is coming, and has now come
The Samaritan woman has been drawn from thinking about water in a well,
To the time the Messiah would come.
And Jesus says that hour is now.
25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain
everything to us."
26 Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
Application:
What about us?
It’s not outward religion that pleases God is it!
It’s the state of our hearts as we come before a holy God.
Are we born from above, as Chapter 3 tells us we have to be.
Filled with the Spirit of God.
Are we looking to the Son of God lifted high on that cross,
As the penalty for our sin,
Do we draw along side people?
Do we meet people where there at?
Or do we expect them to meet us where WE’RE at.
That they have to come to us,
And do what we do,
And look the way we look.
And Worship the way we worship.
Do we care enough to move outside our comfort zones to draw along side them,
Even when their very different from us.
That’s what Jesus did,
And he expects us to as well.
Finally let’s look at the effect the Gospel had on the Woman, and her whole community!
This Woman’s been challenged on a personal level to understand Jesus as the Christ,
And he’s backed up his claims by detailed knowledge of her.
And now without any prompting or training she acts as a missionary!
Being a social leper no longer matters,
Out of excitement she leaves her water jar,
to tell people the good news of the Christ,
The one who came and spoke to her about everything she ever did!
Verse 39 says Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony,
And by her enthusiastic witness to the town folk
Her request for them to “come and see”
Even though she didn’t know everything about Jesus,
She was prepared to invite people to meet him.
And after they talk with Jesus,
They said 42 now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of
the world."
Are we like that?
Are we busting to tell people about Jesus?
I went to a camp once not long after I became a Christian,
And it seemed incredible to me, that the speaker was telling us why we had to tell people about
Jesus.
To me it seemed obvious.
I’ve been saved by a loving and merciful God,
I need to tell as many others as I can,
So they can be saved too.
As a young Christian, it was so easy to be enthusiastic and on fire for God!
The problem for many of us, I think
Is that when we’ve been Christians for a long time
We can tend to take God’s saving grace for granted,
We take for granted that the creator of the universe listens to our prayers, and answers them!
We need to be motivated afresh.
Just like Jesus our Lord,
Our “food” needs to be to do the will of God the Father.
There’s a lot of people in our community who need to know Jesus.
How can we let them know?
Well, we have two examples in this passage.
We can let them know by telling people directly about Jesus,
And we can let them know by bringing people to hear Jesus,
the way the woman did,
by bringing them to someone else who'll tell them about Jesus
or by pointing them to God's Word where they'll meet Jesus personally.
[Pause]
Because Jesus took the opportunity to tell a Samaritan woman the good news, many people came to
believe in Jesus
To sum up:
Let’s make sure that we don’t judge people by the way they look;
We don’t know the most likely people to respond to the gospel,
And God cares for all people in all walks of life
Let’s look around our neighbourhood at all the people who need to hear the good news.
People who need the living water that Jesus offers.
Let’s remember the terrific privilege that God has given us of being one of his workers,
And let’s follow Jesus’ example by taking every opportunity that comes our way to help people come
to know Jesus Christ,
Either by what we say ourselves,
Or by bringing them to others who’ll tell them about Jesus.