Though God’s Eyes
Community Service- Beef and Dairy Days
August 22, 2021
Scripture: John 4
Introduction- Greeting
Before we get to that central scripture, I’m going to do a A little set up
Start with a question this morning-
How many of you really hate watching the national news today?
How many simply turn it off now?
Do you know what I really hate about the news, whether it’s left or right?
The obvious pandering to one side of the political spectrum at the expense of the other. It’s not news, it’s giving information that inflames the senses of the people toward a certain view, and that view causes us to look at those who don’t hold that view as less than us.
The result is as a nation we are separating into camps. The left camp and the right camp. We never meet in the middle, but just throw verbal bombs over our walls at each other and think the other side is pure evil.
I want to give you a little clarity this morning about this tactic because the fault doesn’t lay with the media.
You need to identify the source- it’s not just foreign interference in our county, bad worldviews, or ultraliberal or ultraconservatives.
The origin of this movement to create this kind of hatred and division is coming from the kingdom of darkness.
Jesus said that the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. The bible also says that our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, and authorities, and powers of this dark world and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (John 10:10/Eph 6:12)
If we allow these attitudes about others who think differently then we do, it will affect the way we view them.
Most of us have our secret dislikes of other people or people groups. Here in rural areas, we don’t get a lot of exposure to people of different cultures, but only see snippets of the bad examples of them on the evening news. It unconsciously can form a certain prejudice to develop inside us.
This is not just about cultural differences, It can also be seen when someone you know really messes up in life- we think, “Well, I have never even thought of doing that stupid thing.
What is wrong with them?
Thank God I’m not like that person”
The enemy of our souls allows that pride to slip in about not being like that person.
But what does Jesus say about this?
Jesus told a story, called a parable, concerning this mindset of thinking maybe we are better than that person over there-
In Luke 18 Jesus describes a religious guy called a Pharisee and a tax collector standing in the front of church praying.
The Pharisee, looking up toward heaven, is praying about how awesome he was- he obeyed the law, he gave a tenth of all of his income, and he was much better than that other guy over there being a tax collector.
In other words, “God You are blessed to have me on your team”
The tax collector had a different kind of prayer.
Now, let me just say something about the tax collector before we look at his prayer. When Jesus taught this parable, The entire area of Israel has been conquered by the Roman Empire. They are under the boot of the Roman governors who taxed the people to the point of starvation. To collect these taxes, they employed local people, who knew everyone in the area, to get this money for Rome.
In other words, these tax collectors were traitors to their own people, and enriched themselves by working with and for the enemy, and even took more than what was required to keep it for themselves.
So when you see tax collector in the bible- that is the lowest, of the lowest person on earth. They were hated so much that they needed Roman guards to make sure their neighbors didn’t kill them.
This is the other man in the story. What is his prayer?
His prayer- God have mercy on me a sinner. He said this prayer not even being able to raise his eyes toward heaven because he felt so horrible standing before God.
So Jesus is comparing the super religious guy to this scumbag tax collector and says, ““I tell you that this man (the tax collector), rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Jesus tells us it’s about our heart condition- is it prideful- filled with our own accomplishments and boasting before God and our neighbors, or is a humble heart, knowing that if we are saved from our sins, it’s only going to be by the grace and love of God.
But Jesus didn’t just teach this principle, he lived this principle during his life and ministry on earth.
Now we get to our central scripture for the day- John 4:4-28. The story of the woman at the well.
We are going to go through parts of this the story step by step and see what Jesus’ example means for us today
John 4:4-6
Now he (Jesus and his disciples) had to go through Samaria. 5 So he 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 the sixth hour.
You might ask what is significant about this. Historical/culture context- in the Old Testament, when King Solomon died his kingdom was split in half. The northern areas kept the name Israel, and the southern Kingdom was called Judah. The northern Kingdom of Israel immediately fell into idol worship and committed all kinds of horrific sins against God and after about 100 years, God allowed the Assyrian empire to conquer them. This area called Samaria was filled with the ancestors of the surviving Jewish people that had intermarried with their conquerors.
So in essence, to use an unsavory term, they were half breeds and the full blooded Jewish people hated them, and the feeling was mutual.
So when Jewish people had to travel from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem in the south, they went all the way east to the Jordan river, crossed it, and went on the eastern shore until they got to Jericho and crossed again.
Perspective- It would be like traveling from here to Trempealeau to get to Galesville.
In the Jewish mind- To travel through Samaria was, in their eyes, to commit a sin- it made you ceremonially unclean and unable to even attend temple worship, and to put your life in danger because killing a Jewish person was considered to be a justifiable to the Samaritans.
So Jesus choses to commit what the Jewish authorities (not the bible) considered to be a sin, put his life in danger, and risk being a social outcast, just to travel to a forbidden city to speak to a forbidden woman.
Let’s read about her-
John 4:7-18
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 flocks and herds?"
13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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."
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."
So, let’s break this down.
You have a Jewish man who is single, talking to a Samaritan woman, all alone at a well in the middle of the day.
If they had paparazzi in Jesus’ day, this would have been a million-dollar picture to get and sell to the tabloids. You have a rabbi talking to a woman known to be lose with her morals in a place no one else could see them.
That the first thing here- Jesus risks his entire ministry to reach out to one hurting woman.
The second thing- She’s a woman. In that culture, she has little value, and even her testimony about anything would be worthless.
I know that will immediately raise some hackles here and honestly it should- sexism is evil and ungodly.
Before you shut down your brain and start looking at your watches, you have to remember though that everything the bible records it doesn’t automatically endorse, just like a school book recording the atrocities of Nazi Germany doesn’t say all of those horrific things were good.
It was what it was. Strike 2 against Jesus in that culture.
Here comes strike 3- Jesus asked for a drink from her cup.
Pretty forward right? Ladies- If you are at a friends party and some guy from a culture you don’t like, whom you don’t know comes up and asked for a drink from the glass you are holding, what is your reaction?
Most woman women throw the drink in his face. This woman is immediately on the defensive now.
But then Jesus uses this to begin to tell her what her deepest need is, whether she knows it or not. Living water.
In other words- Her deepest need is HIM.
But she needs to be convinced of this.
Jesus asks to talk to her husband.
Again, this is within that culture- This was the one thing Jesus did that was appropriate. If you wanted to talk to a woman that is obviously at the age of being married, you asked permission from her husband, and he was there the entire time.
Jesus masterfully uses this cultural norm to expose this woman’s deepest need- to be honestly loved for who she was, and not just what she could do for a man.
This woman has been beaten down her entire life. Men have used her and tossed her aside. She is looked down upon by the other woman of her city, to the point of risking her life to come out to the well at the hottest part of the day because no one else will be seen with her.
Even though “she has a man”, She is still alone,
The man she is with now won’t even put a ring on her finger but expects her to fulfill the duties of a 1st century wife. She has no friends and is shunned by everyone else in town.
This is why Jesus risks everything to meet her. He came to Samaria to see this one woman that the rest of society had rejected as useless, broken, and to be avoided.
What does all this mean for us today?
There are people and houses right here in our community that we might not want to walk past. In smaller communities, your sins are remembered forever, and there may be people that are the objects of gossip but not seen as Jesus sees them-
People that are desperately needing HIM.
You may think they are beneath you.
You may think they are undeserving of your help
You may think they have blown it too many times, and your compassion for them has worn thin.
I ask you today- What if Jesus thought that about you?
Pause
If you are HIS disciple this morning, he saved you knowing how badly you’d mess up.
Jesus saved you and wrote your name in the book of life knowing how many times you do something that caused him grief.
Jesus even saved you knowing there may be times in your life where you would harden your heart and refuse to extend the same grace given to you to someone who might desperately need it.
I know everyone here has slightly different views of exactly how Jesus is coming again. I don’t want to debate those views this morning, but the fact is we all believe He is returning someday.
I believe that time is coming very very soon.
I’m going to close this morning with one final parable that Jesus taught us- Luke 14:21-27.
It speaks about the return of Jesus, and Father God throwing a huge party for those who have followed him. God first calls the religious folks, but they make excuses why they don’t want to come to the party.
God get angry at their hard hearts, and instead tells the angels to do the following-
Landing strip
Luke 14:21-27
21 " Then the owner of the house (God) became angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.'
In other words, the last days harvest that happens right before Jesus returns, will be the people you may be looking down on right now.
In these last days, I think many of the people we think are shoe in’s for heaven will miss it. We judged them based on performance and not the condition of their heart.
That’s not how God judges- man looks to the outside, but God judges the heart.
How do you view other people?
I would ask you this morning to close you eyes and pray a simple prayer-
God, examine my heart. Show me those things that do not please you, and then point me to Jesus as the only hope I have to ever see your eternal kingdom.
Jesus, change my heart so that it reflects yours. Grant me repentance of my sins and take control so I can be your representative here on earth.
Then change my heart so that I might see others as you see them- people so valuable that they are worth my time, my compassion, and even my friendship.
In Jesus name
I leave you this morning with two final brief thoughts to start you on a journey to seeing others the way God sees them.
#1- don’t judge people because they sin differently than you do. (repeat)
#2- God bankrupted heaven to save them too. They just need to hear that God gave the most valuable thing in the universe- His one and Only Son to save them.
Go and do likewise.
