Encountering Jesus (2)
Scott Bayles, pastor
Blooming Grove Christian Church: 1/11/2015
I read a story this week about an Amish family visiting the big city for the first time. They were amazed by everything they saw. Having grown up and lived all their lives on a rural farm everything was completely new to them. Arriving at a fancy hotel, the father and son went inside to check into their room, leaving Ma with the horse buggy outside. While waiting at the reception desk, an old lady hobbled towards the lobby elevator and pressed the button. They’d never seen an elevator before and so they just watch the old lady to see what would happen. A moment later the doors slide open, the women stepped inside, pressed another button and the doors close. Curious, the father and son kept watching. About a minute later, the doors opened again and out came a stunningly attractive young woman. Without turning his head the father patted his son’s shoulder and said, "Boy, go get your mother."
Real life transformation isn’t quite that easy. But it isn’t impossible either. Last Sunday we learned about a man named Nicodemus who had a life-changing encounter with Jesus. And Nicodemus isn’t the only person to experience radical transformation thanks to an encounter with Christ. Everywhere Jesus went he left changed-lives in his wake.
In John 4, we meet another person—an anonymous Samaritan woman—whose entire life is about to be transformed by her encounter with Jesus. But before we can get to her story, we’ll have to set the stage.
Jesus was tired. He and his followers had left Judea and headed north for Galilee. “But on the way,” the Bible says, “he had to go through the country of Samaria” (John 4:4 NCV). Glance at any map of the Holy Lands and you’ll notice that the most direct route from Judea to Galilee takes you right through Samaria. However, the average Jew would never have gone that way. Most Jews would have crossed the Jordan River and traveled along its eastern shore just to avoid Samaria, then crossed over again into Galilee.
Jesus, however, was anything but average. So, he traveled westward through the region of Samaria. He and his followers walked in the arid desert heat for roughly thirty miles, and although Jesus is God, he is also a man. The feet that used the mountains as their footstool were weary. The throat which called into existence the heavens and the earth was dry and soar. Jesus was tired. He was also thirsty.
So Jesus and his followers approached the small Samaritan town called Sychar. Jesus knew of a running spring in the village that feed a well which had been dug out centuries before by Jacob, Abraham’s grandson.
The Bible says, “Jesus was tired from his long trip, so he sat down beside the well” (vs. 6 NCV). Meanwhile his followers went ahead of him into town to buy some food. Now, the curtain opens, our unnamed woman enters stage right, and her story begins with a scandalous conversation.
• A SCANDALOUS CONVERSATION
As the first scene begins, the Bible says, “It was about twelve o’clock noon, when a Samaritan woman came to the well to get some water” (vs. 7 NCV). The conversation began innocently enough; Jesus asked her, “Please give me a drink” (vs. 8). His request seems insignificant. He was tired and hot. He’d walked a long distance. He had nothing with which to draw water himself (no buckets or pails), so he asks for some water. What’s so scandalous about that?
Although we might have missed it, the woman immediately recognized the taboo nature of his solicitation and was a little taken aback by it. “I am surprised that you ask me for a drink, since you are a Jewish man and I am a Samaritan woman.’” (vs. 9 NCV). For one thing, it wasn’t proper in those days for a man to just start talking to a strange woman in public. But more importantly, racism was just as rampant then as it is today. A parenthetical statement at the end of this verse explains, “Jews in those days wouldn't be caught dead talking to Samaritans” (vs. 9 MSG). For Jesus to speak to a Samaritan woman and even to ask for a drink from the same cup that she used was, well… scandalous. But listen to his reply, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water” (vs. 10 NLT).
And this is where it would be nice if the Biblical writers had included some details about the woman’s demeanor or inflection, because I think I detect a bit of sarcasm in her retort: “But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water? And besides, do you think you’re greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?” (vs. 11-12 NLT).
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give will never be thirsty. The water I give will become a spring of water gushing up inside that person, giving eternal life” (vs.13-14).
The woman said to him, again I think with a bit of sarcasm, “Sir, give me this water so I will never be thirsty again and will not have to come back here to get more water” (vs. 15 NCV).
Jesus told her, “Go get your husband and come back here” (vs. 16 NCV). Now, the word translated “go” here was a present participle, not an imperative. It actually means “as you are going,” so apparently she was already turning her back on Jesus. So Jesus is actually saying, “Hey, since you’re leaving, go get your husband and bring him here.”
Now that got her attention. The woman answered, “I don’t have a husband” (vs. 17 NLT). And this is where we learn, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. It’s not that the woman lied. In fact, she told the truth—for which Jesus commends her—but it’s not the whole truth.
Jesus said to her, “You are right to say you have no husband. Really you have had five husbands, and the man you live with now is not your husband. You told the truth” (vs. 17-18). Five husbands!? Five! Five different marriages. Five different beds. Five different rejections. The original language stresses the word your—is not your husband—implying that the man she was living with was someone’s husband, just not hers. This woman was a mess—and everyone knew it.
By now, perhaps you’ve noticed that Jesus and the woman are the only two people at the well. Well, there’s a reason for that. In villages like this one, it was customary for the women of the city to visit the well early in the morning to draw their daily ration of water. By going to the well early they avoided the heat of the noonday sun and it allowed them time to socialize with the other ladies of the village. So why didn’t this woman draw her water then with all the other ladies? Was it that she just needed an extra pail? Maybe. Or it could be that she wasn’t welcome when the other ladies gathered in the morning. She was an outcast. A long walk in the hot sun was a small price to pay to avoid the giggling and gossiping of the social hour crowd. So she came to the well at noon. She expected silence. She expected solitude.
Instead, she found Someone who knew her better than she knew herself. Despite her history, Jesus offers no criticism. No anger. No what-kind-of-mess-have-you-made-of-your- life lectures. When Jesus looked at this woman, he didn’t see a Samaritan, a second-class citizen, or a five-time divorcée. He saw a soul in need of salvation.
The same is true when he looks at you.
Jesus doesn’t define you by your failures. Maybe you’ve got a sordid past yourself. Maybe you’ve made a mess of your life. But it doesn’t matter. Jesus knows everything there is to know about you and he loves you anyway.
I think this Samaritan woman could sense that about Jesus. So she asked him a question that revealed the gaping hole in her heart. She asks, “Why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped?” (John 4:19 NLT). Translation: “Where is God? My people say he is on the mountain. Your people say he is in Jerusalem. I don’t know where he is.” This is the question of God-hungry hearts everywhere. And it’s the kind of question Jesus loves to answer; which brings us to the second chapter in this encounter—a secret confession.
• A SECRET CONFESSION
Jesus begins by saying , “The time is coming when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, and that time is here already” (John 4:23 NCV). Jesus clued her in on an important reality. There was a new age dawning and neither Jerusalem nor Gerizim would have exclusive rights on worship. There was an air of expectancy in his words, as if something big was looming on the horizon. And she picked up on it.
She replies, “I know the Messiah is coming—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us” (John 4:25 NLT). I’d give a thousand sunsets to see the expression on Jesus’ face as he heard those words. Did his eyes water? Did he smile? Did he look up into the clouds and wink at his father?
Of all the places to find a hungry heart—Samaria? Of all the Samaritans to be searching for God—a five-time divorcée? And of all the people to be chosen to personally receive the secret of the ages, an outcast among outcasts? The most “insignificant” person in the region?
Remarkable. Jesus didn’t confess his secret to King Herod. He didn’t request an audience of the Sanhedrin and tell them the news. When the Jewish crowd demanded, “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly” (John 10:24 NKJV), he refused to give a straightforward answer. It wasn’t within the colonnades of a Roman court that he announced his identity. No, it was in the shade of a well in a rejected land to an ostracized woman. His eyes must have danced as he whispered the secret: “I Am the Messiah!” (John 4:26 NLT).
What makes this confession even more startling is that in the original language, there is a pause after the words, “ I Am.” This was a reference to the book of Exodus, when Moses asked God what he should tell the people of Israel. God spoke out of the burning bush, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14 HCSB). Jesus was confessing himself to be not only the promised Messiah, but the great I Am—the God of Moses, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus wanted this weary woman to understand that he wasn’t just a good man; he’s the God-man—divinity cloaked in humanity.
And isn’t that the kind of Messiah we need? A just-man Jesus could love us and sympathize with our sorrows, but never save us. A just-God Jesus would be so far above and beyond us that we could never relate to him or approach him. God knew we needed a Savior that walked among us, but also had powers and abilities far beyond us. As the God-Man, Jesus is everything we need in a hero.
“Just then,” Bible says, “his disciples came back. They were shocked to find him talking to a woman, but none of them had the nerve to ask, ‘What do you want with her?’ or ‘Why are you talking to her?’” (vs. 27 NLT). Then, all of a sudden, “The woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village” (vs. 28).
That brings us to the final chapter of her story—a startling conversion.
• A STARTLING CONVERSION
After running back to town, the woman says to anyone she can find, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. Do you think he might be the Christ?” (John 4:29 NCV). An encounter with Jesus transformed this woman from the town tramp into an enthusiastic evangelist. Suddenly the shame of the tattered romances disappeared. Suddenly the insignificance of her life was swallowed by the significance of her message. “God is here! God has come! God cares... for me!”
Maybe I’m reading between the lines, but I think that’s what she meant when she announces, “I just talked to a man who knows everything I ever did… and he loves me anyway!” That is why she forgot her water jar. That is why she ran to the city. That is why she grabbed the first person she saw and announced her discovery.
As the drama continues, people come streaming from the village to see Jesus. The Bible says, “Many of the Samaritans in that town believed in Jesus because of what the woman said” (John 4:39 NCV). After two days of testimonies and transformations, the people of the Samaria collectively said to the woman, “First we believed in Jesus because of what you said, but now we believe because we heard him ourselves. We know that this man really is the Savior of the world” (John 4:42 NCV).
Like Jesus, the woman at the well had been tired and thirsty. She hadn’t walked thirty miles through the desert. She hadn’t spent the better part of the day under an Arabian sun. Her thirst was different. Her thirst came from a dry and weary soul searching for love in all the wrong places. This was a woman who was seeking something—but she didn’t know what. With each new relationship she probably thought that she would find some sense of fulfillment. But when the newness wore off and infatuation subsided, she was left with feelings of emptiness, loneliness and discontentment. So she would go from man to man, bed to bed—each time hoping that this relationship would bring with it the love that she so desperately needed.
But then she met Jesus and everything changed. She was changed. Her heart was changed. Her whole village was changed because of her encounter with Christ.
Conclusion:
For some of you the story of this woman is touching but distant. You belong. You are needed and you know it. You’ve got more friends than you can visit and more tasks than you can accomplish. Insignificance isn’t a significant issue for you. Be thankful.
But others of you are different. You paused at this story because it sounds familiar. You know why the Samaritan woman was avoiding people. You do the same thing. You know what it’s like to have no one sit by you at the cafeteria. You’ve wondered what it would be like to have one good friend. You’ve made a mess of your life more times that you can count. And you, too, have wondered where in the world God is.
Maybe you long for the same kind of life-changing encounter this Samaritan woman experienced. Maybe stepping into an elevator won’t transform your life, but an authentic encounter with Jesus will. The Good News is, He’s already told you who he is—our Messiah and Savior. He knows everything about you, and he still loves you. He still offers you living water and eternal life.
Invitation:
If your heart is ready for an encounter with Jesus, he’s ready to meet you. While the rest of us stand and sing, I want to invite you to stand and pray. Open your heart to Jesus; tell him all about your troubles and invite him to change your life. If I can help you do that, then come forward while we stand and sing.
