SHE LEFT HER WATERPOT
John 4:4-30
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: DISASTER STRIKES TWICE
1. A cruise liner was blown off course by a hurricane and sank in the Pacific and the shipwrecked passengers swam to an island inhabited by cannibals. Only 3 passengers survived the shipwreck and they all happened to be members of the same church – Pastor Smith, Sister Strange, and Chuck Wagon. They were pulled from the water and brought before the chief of the cannibals.
2. "We’re looking forward to eating the three of you," he said, "but before we do, it’s our custom to grant you a last request. So each of you tell me what you would like to do before you die."
3. Chuck Wagon, who sings alternately off-key and screeching, said, “I want to sing the 2 hour version of the MESSIAH musical. I’ve always wanted to sing it, but the Pastor wouldn’t let me. I would like to sing it here, before I die." The chief said, "Granted."
4. Sister Strange said, “I want to tell – without being interrupted – about all the sicknesses I’ve ever had in my body. I’ve wanted to tell them all at church, but the Pastor wouldn’t let me. So even if it takes 3 hours, I want to tell them all before I die." "OK, granted," said the cannibal leader.
5. He turned to the Pastor and said, "And what about you? What do you want?" The Pastor replied, "I request to be eaten first, before they sing and recite!”
B. TEXT
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So [Jesus] came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “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.” 11 “Sir,” the woman said, “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 livestock?” 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “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.” 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.” John 4:5-19. 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…speaking to you…am he.” 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
C. THESIS
1. We’re going to look at the Samaritans, a woman there whom Christ personally singled out, and why this woman lost her head after their meeting.
2. The title of this message is “She Left Her Water Pot.”
I. THE PLIGHT OF THE SAMARITANS
A. THEIR HISTORY
1. Who are the Samaritans? Samaria was the capital of the Northern 10 tribes after they split away from David’s line (Judah/Benjamin) after Solomon.
2. The Assyrians & Babylonians conquered them and deported many Jews to other countries, and imported many other peoples into that area. The remaining Jews married into these people, making a race of half-breed Jews.
3. Feeling unwelcome in Jerusalem, these Samaritans built a copy of the Temple on Mt. Gerizim in 330 B.C. & offered sacrifices & the Passover (even to this day!).
4. Later (175-163 B.C.), during the reign of Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes – to avoid persecution – the Samaritans renounced any connection to the Jews and renamed their Temple the Temple of Jupiter Hellenius.
5. So because of their corrupted lineage, their rival Temple, and disowning the Jews – they were hated by the Jews and avoided as evil spawn and God-haters.
B. WHY JESUS WENT THROUGH SAMARIA
1. Vs. 4 in the KJV says that Jesus “must needs go through Samaria.” Why? The Jews routinely went around it.
2. Some have thought Jesus went through Samaria because going around would take too much time and He was running behind schedule.
3. But I doubt that Jesus, who knew He’d only have 3 years of public ministry, had lost track of His schedule!
4. There are good reasons why Jesus decided to go through Samaria:
a. Because that’s how important one woman is to God, that Jesus prioritized His schedule to minister to a key woman hungry for spiritual things!
b. Because Samaria had for too long had wrong ideas about God, and God cared about that. God didn’t want the sins of the parents to continue in their children!
c. Because people who’ve been told they don’t count, really DO matter to God! Maybe some of you here today, feel like you don’t matter to God. I guarantee you that’s not true. You are very important to God!
5. God cares about every person regardless of their background. He probably loves those MOST that are loved the least!
II. THE WOMAN IN CHRIST’S FOCUS
A. THE WOMAN WAS THIRSTY
1. We find this woman making her way to Jacob’s well to get some water. No doubt she was thirsty. But she wasn’t just physically thirsty, she was spiritually thirsty! How do we know?
2. The Lord Jesus told her in John 4:18, “The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.”
3. This woman had gone through five husbands and was currently with number six. Evidently this woman was searching for something but wasn’t finding it. Yet she kept trying.
4. What she was searching for was not a man, but a relationship -- with God. She couldn’t seem to find it.
B. SHE CAME TO JACOB’S WELL
1. She came to the same place, for answers, as her ancestors before her – Jacob’s Well.
2. “Jacob” means “deceiver” and this woman is a picture of the thirsty world seeking satisfaction in the wrong place, at a deceptive source/ well.
3. She’s like all the people who try to fill their emptiness with personal successes, achievements, with money, sex, friends or hobbies.
4. They may turn to drugs and alcohol, gambling and other lifestyle choices. But at the end of the day, there is still an aching void. (Sychar is from ‘shekar,’ “intoxicant.”)
5. There’s a God-shaped vacuum that only God can fill!
C. JESUS WAS THERE
1. But this time, beside the deceptive well sat the Son of God, the “fountain of Living Waters.”
2. Jesus pointed out to her that she had come to draw water from the Well that had no life.
3. Jesus then made an eternal declaration; "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." (John 4:10, NKJV)
4. My question is – “Are we modern Christians still going to the wrong well for satisfaction?”
III. WHY DID SHE LEAVE HER WATER POT?
A. AN AMAZING THING BECAUSE IT WAS…
1. A VALUABLE PIECE OF PROPERTY. A large clay water pot had to be cast by a professional pot maker and then baked in a kiln. There was a big demand for this common necessity, so the price for one was steep for the average poor worker. She wouldn’t normally have left it!
2. SHE ABANDONED HER ERRAND, after walking there from town! It appears she simply forgot what she’d come for. How do you forget you’re thirsty; your chores at home?
B. REAL REASON SHE LEFT IT?
1. Because, as she stood there looking into the eyes of Jesus and hearing His voice, she began to feel a Presence of God she’d never felt before.
a. Like the 2 disciples on the Road to Emmaus, her heart began to burn within her;
b. Like Peter, James & John on the Mountain of Transfiguration, God came down around her!
c. Like the Centurion at Christ’s crucifixion, she found herself moved to say, “Truly, this IS the Son of God!”
d. Like the disciples in the boat when Jesus stopped the storm, all she could think was, “Is this Jesus a Man? For even the winds and the waves obey Him!”
2. IT WASN’T UNCOMMON FOR PEOPLE WHO MET JESUS TO LEAVE THINGS BEHIND;
a. The disciple-fishermen left their boats & nets behind;
b. Matthew left his Tax Collection Booth behind;
c. Luke left his Dr.’s office behind;
d. Paul left his Sanhedrin position behind;
e. Healed CRIPPLES left their crutches behind; the BLIND left their tapping canes behind; the RESURRECTED left their empty coffins behind; the PARALYZED left their begging tins behind, and the formerly DEAF threw their hearing devices away!
3. I hope when YOU met Jesus, YOU LEFT SOME THINGS BEHIND! Maybe a wicked lifestyle, a person not good for you, that old habit or addiction, judgmental/ critical spirit.
4. You see, if you really meet Jesus, you’ll never be the same again!
C. IMPRESSIONS OF JESUS
1. Albert Einstein, Physicist and Professor, Princeton University, 1879-1955. “I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene....No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.” [George Sylvester Viereck, "What Life Means to Einstein," The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929.]
2. Solomon B. Freehof, Author and Professor at Hebrew Union College, 1892-1990. “The years have not diminished the urgency of the question: "What do you think of Jesus?".(..The significant fact is that time has not faded the vividness of his [Jesus'] image) Poetry still sings his praise. He is still the living comrade of countless lives. No Moslem ever sings, "Mohammed, lover of my soul," nor does any Jew say of Moses, the teacher, "I need thee every hour." [In Stormers of Heaven (New York: Harper and Row, 1931).]
3. Why? Because Mohammed is dead! Moses is dead! But Jesus Christ of Nazareth is alive forevermore!
4. WHO IS THIS JESUS?
a. You see, when Jesus was a 12-year-old boy, He spoke to the learned doctors at the Temple. One said, “Son, how old are You?” “Well,” Jesus said, “On My mother’s side, I’m 12-years-old, but on My Father’s side, I’m from everlasting to everlasting.”
b. You see, He was both God and man. Now, on His mother’s side, He got thirsty; on His Father’s side, He said, “I am the water of life.”
c. On His mother’s side, He got hungry; on His Father’s side, He took a little lad’s lunch and fed 5,000.
d. On His mother’s side, He was homeless, and didn’t have a place to lay His head; on His Father’s side, He owned the cattle on a thousand hills.
e. On His mother’s side, He wept at the grave of Lazarus; on His Father’s side, He said, “Lazarus, come forth,” and raised him from the dead. [Jerry Vines]
5. He’s the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!
D. FINAL REASON: SHE CARED FOR OTHERS
1. The last reason she left her water pot was because she knew she had finally found the answer to life’s biggest need.
2. She immediately thought of all the lost and dying people in her town and how much they needed Jesus!
3. She wasted no time. She didn’t just “go and call her husband,” she told everyone in town. And droves of people became believers because of this woman’s testimony!
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION
1. A young couple was on their honeymoon. They were driving through a small town at night when a deer ran in front of their car. The man swerved and hit a telephone pole.
2. He was alright, but his young wife was bleeding profusely. The man knew if he didn’t get her to a doctor right away, she would bleed to death.
3. He looked down the street and saw a sign that said, “Dr. Rufus Jones, Internal Medicine.” He picked up his wife and ran down the street.
4. He pounded on the door. “Dr. Jones! Dr. Jones!” An old man came to the door and said, “Yes?” “My wife is bleeding. She’s dying. Please save her!”
5. Much to the young man’s surprise the old man said, “I’m sorry son, I can’t help you. I stopped practicing medicine many years ago. I don’t have any equipment or medical supplies here any more.”
6. Overcome with emotion, the young man said, “Dr. Jones, if you can no longer help hurting people, then please take down the sign!”
7 If we’re not going to really walk with Jesus, we need to take down the sign of “Christian.” If we don’t have enough of God to help others, we need to repent and get back our First Love!
B. THE CALL: HOW LONG IS YOUR LIFE?
1. A woman took a package to the post office to mail and was told it would cost $15.40 for fast delivery, or $1.30 for slower delivery.
2. "There’s no hurry," she told the clerk, "just as long as the package is delivered in my lifetime."
3. The postal employee smiled and said, "Well, then, maybe we need to send it overnight express!" Point? None of us know how soon we will die!
4. How many’ve felt like something disqualified you from the blessings of God? Like You could never have the relationship with God others have?
5. Are you tired of going to the wrong well – can’t satisfy?
6. Want Jesus to give you boldness to witness? Give a Salvation call!
