Text: John 4
Theme: Meating between Jesus and the Samaritan woman
Preacher: Thomas Dreyer
Date preached: 15 August 2004
Amazing. This is one word that we can use to describe this gripping meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. And yet, it shouldn’t be more gripping, more amazing than our own meetings with our Saviour. Isn’t that what we are here for this morning? We are here to meet God. It is true, Jesus isn’t present here in the flesh like he was with the Samaritan woman, but through the Holy Spirit He is here with us just as certain as he was that day.
Do we believe this? Do you believe that Jesus is present here? Do you realize that you are here to meet God? Just as Jesus was with the Samaritan woman almost 2000 years ago, He is present here with you and me this morning. He has the same message for us as for this woman. He wants us to realize that we are lost without Him. He wants us to look inside ourselves, and see our own sin. He wants us to repent and turn to him. He is saying to each of us: “I who speak to you am he.” I am the Messiah. I am your Saviour. Only I can save you from your sin. How are we going to respond to our meeting with Jesus?
Let’s look at this meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the fountain in Sychar.
Our meetings with God are no coincidence. He seeks us and he doesn’t show favouritism.
Is it merely coincidence that we find Jesus there at the fountain in Sychar? No. Jesus was there to meet someone. After deciding to go back to Galilee, we read in the beginning of verse 4: Now He had to go through Samaria. They didn’t have to go through Samaria because it was the only way to Galilee. In fact, for the Jews it was by far the unpopular route by which to reach Galilee. Travelling through Samaria made coming in contact with Samaritans a sure thing. For a Jew that was one of the worst things that could happen. The last bit of verse 9 affirms this. It says: For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. The Jews looked down on Samaritans. They saw them as a lesser nation. Coming in contact with Samaritans would render a Jew unclean and force him to go through a lot of purification rituals. Therefore they didn’t even walk trough a Samaritan town. Jesus wasn’t in Sychar by coincidence. He made a deliberate choice to take the road less travelled because he had an appointment with someone.
It wasn’t very long before this someone came walking up to the fountain: Being not only a Samaritan, but a woman as well. Why is this significant? In this day woman was seen as lesser people. A Jewish man wouldn’t even speak to his own wife in public. To associate with a Samaritan woman in public was unthinkable. What does Jesus do? He associates with this woman, who because of her way of living as we shall later see, and her being a Samaritan and a woman, had no place in society. He asks this woman for a drink of water? Why? Why does Jesus do this? When Jesus looked at this woman, he saw right through her outward appearance, straight into her heart. He looked past her place in society, her race, her gender, and what he saw in front of him was a broken human being, full of sorrow and sin. He isn’t in the right place at the right time by coincidence. He came to reveal himself to sinners of which she is one. And because of this the rules and customs of society, doesn’t hold him back. He wants to show this woman who He is, and why he came to this world.
Is our meeting with the Lord this morning a coincidence? Certainly not! God had an appointment with you and me. As we sit here today in His presence He sees right through our race, our gender, our position in society and in the church, into our hearts. We show favouritism towards other human beings al the time. Jesus doesn’t. What he saw in front of Him at the well is no different to want He sees here today: Sinners in desperate need of grace. That is why he doesn’t walk past. He doesn’t choose a different route. Jesus is here and through his Word and by his Spirit He is speaking to each of us and revealing Himself to us anew.
Jesus came to show us our sin, our need for grace and that He is the only saviour
No one would have blinked an eye if Jesus turned his back on this women, or scolded her. But that is not what He does. Even when she reacts negatively on his request for water and says: “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” He doesn’t get angry. In a calm way he says. “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.” She doesn’t get the treatment she was used to as a Samaritan woman. Jesus stays calm even when she goes on and sarcastically says: “Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”. He uses her own emotion and frustration manifested in her words as a gateway to reveal Himself to her: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,” he says “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.”
To understand the woman’s following words better we need to know more about her specific situation. In those days it was the custom for woman to go to the well and get water for the house. They did this early in the morning or late in the evening, and for them it was a big social event. This Samaritan woman came to the well at the sixth hour which meant it was 12 o’clock in the afternoon. She was all alone. Why? Because of her immoral way of living. She couldn’t stay faithful to one man, and therefore none of the other woman wanted to associate with her. Can you imagine what her life was like? She was an outcast in every aspect. Walking to the well on the hottest time of every day all by herself constantly reminded her of her hopeless situation. Her initial attitude towards Jesus, a Jewish man, is therefore understandable, but as she spoke to Him she realized that he wasn’t an ordinary Jew. When He spoke of water that could quench her thirst for ever she could see a glimpse of hope: “Sir,” she says “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Clearly she doesn’t understand the full implications of Jesus’ words. In his words she sees only relieve form her immediate circumstances. Maybe this man could tell her of a place where she could find true love, where there wasn’t any discrimination because of her race and gender, a place where she didn’t need to fetch water all by herself every day. This is however not Jesus’ intent. He came to save people from their sin and not necessarily from their circumstances. He came to rescue people who know that they are lost from the power of the Devil and eternal death. His next words, which may seem as change of topic, is therefore perfectly in line with what he has been doing all along. He shows this woman what her real problem is: Her sinful life and her desperate need for salvation.
“Go, call your husband and come back.” He says to her. Through this request of Jesus she is suddenly brought back to the big issue in her life and clearly Jesus has touched a sensitive subject. It is something that she doesn’t want this strange Jewish man involved in. She doesn’t tell a lie, but she keeps the truth from Him when she says: “I have no husband.” Jesus’ reply must have taken the wind right out of her sails. “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
Doesn’t this make you very humble and quite in the presence of the Lord? God sees and knows everything. As we sit here Jesus sees deep into our hearts and minds. Each one of us is like an open book in His hands. All our secrets that we have hidden away so deep, all our life inscriptions that we think we have written with invisible ink, he sees. He sees everything, every sin that we try to hide away.
The good news, the gospel Jesus was slowly preaching to this woman and which he is preaching to us today, is: You don’t need to hide your sin anymore. You don’t need to run away. Our sin is what Jesus came for. He came to save us from what we deserved and give to us what we could never earn by our selves. The punishment we should have faced for our sins he faced on the cross. He saved us from eternal death and gave us eternal life.
Do you know what happens if you believe with your heart and confess with you mouth that Jesus is your Saviour. Do you know what happens if you realize your own sinfulness and brokenness and confess it to the Lord? Then the words of Psalm 103:12 is true of you: “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” 18 “Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. This is the gospel, the good news. This is the water that will quench your thirst for always.
We need to recognize that we are lost, confess our sins and cling to Jesus
What was the woman’s reaction when she realized that Jesus saw right through her? Yes, she acknowledged him as a prophet, but then she did what we so many times do. Se tried to get out of the situation. She tried to get his eyes from what’s going on inside her. And isn’t one of the best ways of stilling your conscience to act tremendously religious? That is exactly what she does. “Sir,” she said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
The well where this conversation between Jesus and the woman was taking place was at the foot of Mount Gerisim. She Samaritans believed that this was the place where they had to worship God. The Jews believed the only place of worship to be the temple in Jerusalem. Because of Jesus’ Jewish background the women hoped to get him involved in a deep religious argument of why Jerusalem is the only place of worship. In this way he would most probably forget her and her life of sin.
Once again Jesus uses her words for his purpose. His revelation of the truth is becoming more and more direct: “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
With these words Jesus was saying that neither the Jews nor the Samaritans was worshiping God in the way he should be worshiped. Yes, both of these groups had something of the truth. The first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateug, formed the bible of the Samaritans. The Jews acknowledged the whole Old Testament as the Word of God. The Jews also had the privilege that salvation would be from them. God chose Israel as the nation from which the Saviour would be born. Yet, neither Jews, nor the Samaritans worshiped God in spirit and in truth.
What does it mean to worship in spirit and in truth? Listen to the words of Psalm 51:12. David says to the Lord: “16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” To worship in spirit is to agree with the Holy Spirit when he convinces of your own sin and brokenness. If you don’t recognize your own sin and desperate need for salvation, you are not worshipping in spirit. On this point the Jews and Samaritans went desperately wrong. They kept clinging to ritual and holy places and their individual sets of laws. They thought that because of this, because they were following religious rules, they were in the right with God and that God smiled down on them in favour. They never realized how lost they were and because of this, they didn’t worship God in truth. If you don’t know you’re lost, you don’t need a saviour. The truth was that they needed a saviour. Jesus says in John 14:4 “I am the way and the truth and the life.” You can only worship God through Jesus, the chosen saviour. Through his death on the cross he put al those who believe in the right with God. The Samaritan woman might have thought that she got Jesus off track but he was right there dealing with her sin. He was saying to her: Worship that doesn’t spring from a heart that is convinced of sin and therefore convinced of its need for salvation and that doesn’t look to me as the only Saviour is not worship at all. Such worship is not in spirit and truth.
For this in depth answer of Jesus the woman wasn’t prepared. His words forced her to fall back on the religious knowledge she had. The Samaritans believed that there will come a Messiah. They expected a prophet like Moses, one who will restore their nation and reaffirm their place of worship to be the only one. Therefore her words: “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” With this answer she has however opened the door for Jesus to reveal Himself to the full. And therefore we hear his words: I who speak to you am he.
It is difficult to say what exactly happened to the woman after this meeting with Jesus. When Jesus’ disciples arrive she goes, leaving her water jar. Is this a symbolic way to indicate that she by faith grabbed hold of the living water and therefore didn’t need the water that she came for anymore? According to her last words written down in the New Testament she still had some doubts. We hear her witnessing to her fellow Samaritans: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? Because of her testimony, many of them went to him. We hear their words to her: “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world.” They recognize him as the Saviour of the world, not only of the Samaritans. They have realized their own sin and grab hold of Jesus as their Saviour. They worshiped Him in spirit and in truth. What happened to this woman? Has her conversation with the Lord led her to see her own sin and need for salvation? Was their any remorse and repentance? Did she confess Jesus to be her personal Saviour? We don’t know. But then, I guess this is not the most important question to answer. The important question to answer today is: What about us? What do we believe?
Conclusion
Through his Word and the Holy Spirit, God is present here with us today. We heard Jesus say: I who speak am He. He confirmed to us this morning that he sees right through us. We mustn’t think that we can escape God wrath by being religious as the Jews and Samaritans did. We mustn’t think that we can hide our sin from Him like the Samaritan woman did. No, God’s purpose with this meeting is clear. He wants us to recognize that we are lost, dead in our sin. He is calling us anew to confess our sins and grab hold of Jesus as our only Redeemer and Saviour. What is our reaction going to be?