Anybody recognize the name Elizabeth Taylor? She was an English-born American actress who passed away at the age of 79. She was a movie star during what would be called the Golden Era of Hollywood when all the great movies were made. She won several Academy Awards including for Best Actress in the movie Butterfield 8. She probably was best known for her role as Cleopatra costarring with Richard Burton. This would have been 1963. Elizabeth Taylor was obviously known for the movies she made, but she was also known for her beauty. She was a beautiful woman with violet eyes and because of that she was also known for her love life. She had a number of husbands. Somebody said eight, but it is actually seven because she married one guy twice, Richard Burton.
We are going to meet a lady today who gives Liz Taylor a run for her money not in regards to movies made but in regards to husbands had. If you would open your Bibles to John 4:1. As a refresher, we have been going through the book of John. We have been following the miracles and the ministry of Jesus Christ. As Chris talked about last week, we begin to see that Jesus was getting pretty popular. He was getting more popular than John the Baptist. Consequently, the public began to take notice and follow him around which caused the Pharisees to begin to take notice also, and they didn’t like that. Jesus was feeling some tension there and he thought it was time to head north and take his ministry on the road and head north towards Galilee. This passage tells us that in order to do so he had to go through Samaria first. Samaria, you may recall, if you are familiar with the Old Testament, is the originally Jewish area. It is a province called Samaria but there is also a city known as Samaria. It was the place where the Jews resided for a long time. Part of what would be called the Northern Kingdom way back about 900 B.C. About 700 B.C. the Assyrians, which were their enemies farther north, came down and captured the city of Samaria. They destroyed the cities and deported a bunch of the Jewish people to Assyria. They didn’t take all the people but they focused on the wealthy and educated. They took the wealthy and educated Jews out of Samaria and brought them up to Assyria and they sent some of their population down, some of the poorer people and people caught up in pagan religion. What happened was, over several hundred years, you had this mixture of Jewish and Assyrian people that were worshippers of pagan gods and they came together and began to inter-marry. Pretty soon you had what would be called a half-breed mixture of people. Half Jewish, Half pagan. The religion took on that form. They would worship on this mountain called Mount Gerizim. You can imagine the Jewish people who lived in Jerusalem had a bad attitude about the Samaritans. They didn’t have any respect for them. They would consider them unclean. They would do everything they could to avoid contact with them. So much so that if they were going to head north to Galilee, they would do everything they could to go around them. They would avoid any sort of contact with the Samaritan people, except for Jesus. Jesus had to go through Samaria. He didn’t have to. He could have gone around but he chose to go through Samaria because he saw himself as having a divine appointment with this lady at the well. That is where we are going to pick up the story starting at chapter 4:1. I am reading from the New International Version. (Scripture read here.)
There is a lot of information there and a lot of passage. I am going to see if I can condense it in the next few minutes to give you an idea of what I think is happening and possibly some lessons that we can learn from this situation. We have Jesus going north into Samaria. It is clear he meets this Samaritan woman. This woman has several strikes against her. First of all, she is a Samaritan. She is considered unclean since birth in the eyes of the Jews. Untouchable. She is a woman, which back then women were not in high regard whether a Jew or not. They were actually on the level of livestock. I don’t know how to put it any nicer. They were considered lower than slaves. She was a Samaritan woman. She was probably poor because she had to go fetch the water herself. She didn’t have any slaves. We also can figure out by reading it that she was probably a little bit promiscuous. She was popular with the fellows. She was untouchable. In Jewish eyes you don’t want to go near this person. Yet Jesus, being the man he was, had a way of breaking down these cultural barriers. He decided he was going to go and sit down by this well and not only was he going to talk to this woman; he was going to ask her for something. He was going to ask her for a drink, which means that he is asking for a drink out of probably a utensil of hers. It is unthinkable in the eyes of the Jews. By sitting down at that well he is breaking all these cultural and religious barriers. Not only that, as we see in verse 7, he is putting himself in a bit of an awkward situation. In John 4:7 “When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give me a drink?’ (His disciples had gone into town to buy food.)” They went to get groceries, which means that Jesus was alone with this lady. Nowadays, I don’t know where people meet their fiancés. Some meet them on the internet. Some of you might have met in a bar or tavern. Back then, they met at the well. That is the place they would meet. They would have this common need to go out and meet at the well. If you don’t believe me, go back and read the first chapters of Genesis and you see all these matchups happening at some sort of a watering hole or well. That is what was going on back then. The Samaritan woman comes up and Jesus says will you give me a drink. Maybe she is thinking this guy kind of likes me. Let’s check him out a little bit. Maybe with a little sarcasm she says “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” John reminds us once again that Jews and Samaritans don’t hang out together. John is good about filling in the blanks for us 2,000 years later. He lets us know that they don’t hang out together. She is feeling him out saying how is that you, being the big shot Jew that you are would come and ask for a drink from little old me Samaritan girl. Why would you do such a thing? “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.’” What is that about? When he says the word living water what comes to mind for her is probably a fresh spring or a fountain or a stream. In other words, something that is continually flowing versus the stagnant water that you might find in a well. She is thinking about something that is just continually flowing. In the Bible, when you see words like living stream or water flowing, it is a symbol of abundance and prosperity. It is a symbol of God’s blessing. In fact, I think it is Isaiah 58:11 when God is putting his blessing on Israel and saying what the blessings will be like he says “You will be like a well-watered garden whose springs never fail.” That is the picture Jesus is trying to give but she is still on the earthly level. She is thinking in terms of pure regular water. Jesus is trying to move her into the spiritual realm. When he talks about living water, he is talking about the Holy Spirit. How do you know that? I was able to read ahead like I am sure some of you are reading. You would see in chapter 7 a scripture where Jesus is at the Passover feast and he stands up and says “‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the scripture says, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the spirit whom those who would believe would later receive.” We know when Jesus is talking about the living water he is not talking about the wet stuff. He is talking about the Holy Spirit that is being made available to this woman right now. She is still a little suspicious. She might even be getting a little annoyed. She says “You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.” How are you going to do it? “Are you greater than our father Jacob who built this well and gave water to his flocks and his herds and his sons.” Are you greater? What are you trying to say Jesus?
Jesus comes out with this really strange quest. It says “He told her, ‘Go, call your husband and come back.’” You woman may know better than me but how would you take that. Would that be a pickup line? What does it sound like he is asking? Are you available? I think it is a pretty good pickup line don’t you. We don’t want to think Jesus is giving a pickup line. He is not giving a pickup line. What he is trying to do is begin to get her from the strictly material level and bring her up to the spiritual level. He is trying to basically show her that maybe she is at the wrong well. Maybe she is looking for something she shouldn’t be looking for. She is trying to fill herself up at the wrong well; the well of companionship. She is trying to fill her jar up, her heart up with the wrong type of things. At the wrong source. She is trying to go there and fill herself up with the men and husbands in her life. She is a little bit taken aback. She probably thinks Jesus is flirting with her. So she says “I have no husband.” We can take that comment in several ways. That is what is hard about reading the scripture. You really don’t know the tone in her voice. She could have said it one of three ways. She could have said it with a sense of anger behind her. She could have said it in a sense of shame or sadness. But I think she said it with a little of that Liz Taylor look. You laugh but I have read this passage dozens of times. If you read it, you see with John’s comments and everything, you see what is going on here. She thinks Jesus is trying to pick her up. Jesus has her exactly where he wants her. Think again about the situation. You are out in the middle of nowhere. You have a male and a female at a well. A Samaritan woman who probably has low self-esteem. She is promiscuous. Jesus, a Jew, comes and asks her for something which never would be so it is like why are you asking me for something and raises suspicions. The disciples are off buying the lunch at the grocery store and Jesus and the Samaritan woman are at the bar and he is asking her for a drink. It is about equivalent to that in that culture. He has her exactly where he wants her. What does he do? She says “I have no husband.” He goes on and says you are right. You don’t have a husband. In fact, you have had five husbands. The guy that you are sleeping with now is not your husband. I guarantee they don’t teach that downstairs in Sunday school in the children’s area. I think that is the situation here. He is saying you have been married five times and the guy you are with is not your husband. When are you going to learn? Basically, he is pulling back the veil that she is hiding behind. He is pulling back this need for companionship that protects her. He is pulling it back so basically she can see her own heart. He is not doing it to beat her down and make her feel bad about herself. He is doing it to lift her up. People have to see their sin and once they see their sin and realize the place they are at then that is when God can take you and move you up to that higher ground. He can set your feet upon a rock. That is what he is trying to do. She knows it. She has laid her heart bare now. She is saying the guy is right spot on. She does what is natural like we all would do when we get in an uncomfortable situation with somebody about religion. She changes the subject and brings up some incidental religious information. She says “I can see you are a prophet.” We know that a prophet is someone that can speak directly truth in a situation. She sees that. She doesn’t deny it. She says you are a prophet. You can read me like a book. So if that is the case, answer this. You Jews like to worship in the temple in Jerusalem but we like to worship here at Mount Gerizim. Which one is right? She is trying to change the subject. Jesus being Jesus is not going to allow himself to get pulled into a discussion. Basically, he says there is a time coming when it is not going to matter where you worship. It doesn’t matter about the location. What really matters is that you worship in spirit and truth. That is basically what he says in John 4:23 “Yet a time is coming and has now come when true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the type of worshipers that the Father seeks. God is spirit and so the true worshipers are going to worship in spirit and truth.”
You say what does that mean? It is a very hard concept to explain. If you currently worship in spirit and truth you know it. Really what I think he is saying here is true worship involves a spirit-to-spirit connection. God is spirit so he relates to us on a spiritual level. It is a spiritual connection that can only happen with a living relationship with Jesus Christ. When you accept Christ as Lord, he gives you the gift of God, the spirit, the charisma, into your heart. He flows in there. He creates that spirit-to-spirit connection so you are able to worship in spirit. He also wants it to be in truth. A lot of people get the spirit but what happens is they get away from the truth because they get stagnant in their walk. You get people that have been in the church 10, 20, 30 years and they wonder why they aren’t getting anything out of church. I am not getting anything out of worship. It is because they have not moved beyond the elementary teachings of their faith. In other words, they don’t have a right concept of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and how they work together as one and how they work in your life. They have an incorrect concept of God. They have an incorrect concept of themselves. It also means they probably have an incorrect concept of Jesus Christ. To worship in spirit and truth means open your heart up. Receive the spirit. Receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. Make that spirit-to-spirit connection and continue to grow in truth in your understanding of God so you don’t fall into the ways of the world. That is why I read that.
Basically, about this time, like Nicodemus was walking out the door we learned a couple weeks ago, she is picking up her water jar and is confused and frustrated like some of you might be right now. She goes on to say “‘I know that Messiah’ (called Christ) ‘is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.’” That is when Jesus drops the bomb. He says “I, who speak to you, am he.” We have read this probably dozens of times, but you can never underestimate the importance of this. Up to this point, he didn’t reveal himself to anybody at the wedding party. Maybe his mother might have known something about it. He didn’t reveal anything at the temple to the Pharisees. He didn’t even reveal his true identity to Nicodemus. He chose to reveal his true identity to this poor, promiscuous Samaritan woman that would be classified as unclean since birth. She is basically the lowest form of humanity in the eyes of the Jew. Yet Jesus chose at that moment to reveal his true identity to her to open her eyes up and allow her to see him as he truly is. You say why did he pick her? Why did he choose to reveal himself to her? I think it is really quite simple. We have to read a little bit between the lines but when she laid herself bare, maybe not intentionally, but when she opened her heart up and saw her true self, she wanted to change. She wanted to be different. I think she was sad. If you go to Jesus and open up your heart, he doesn’t leave you bare. He says you are opening yourself to me. You are demonstrating your need. You are demonstrating your desire and I am going to give it to you. I am going to fill your cup up with the streams of living water and it is going to keep coming and coming until it wells up into eternal life. That is what is going on here. I am going to keep giving it to you over and over again. I don’t know how she is feeling right now, but probably still a little confused, but I think she is feeling different about herself.
At about that time, the disciples show up. They come back from the grocery store. They see Jesus talking to this woman. They don’t ask him why is she here or what are you doing here but they know something happened. All of a sudden, we find out next she leaves her water jar and heads back to her town. John 4:28 says “Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?’” She was basically the first evangelist. A Samaritan woman. She went and told all the Samaritan people. Next week we will go into it a little farther. We will continue on with the passage. We will see that the Samaritan people, because of her testimony, came out looking for Jesus. But before I close this story, I just wanted to point that little phrase that says “leaving her water jar”. We read the book of John and John likes to put little details in there that are easy to just read on by. John doesn’t just put casual words in there. Why would he mention the water jar left behind? It could be because she left in a hurry. She was all excited and left and didn’t think about. It could be that she left it there because she knew that when she brought somebody back, they would help her with the water. I think she left it for another reason. I think she left it because metaphorically she didn’t need it anymore. In other words, she didn’t need to keep coming to that well, the emotional well. She didn’t need to keep coming to the need for companionship. She didn’t need to keep coming to men to fill her jar up anymore. She didn’t have to keep going over and over and over and over and over six, seven, eight times to get her jar, her heart filled with something because she found the one man that could give her everything she needed for all eternity. That well started springing up in her up into eternal life. The leaving of the water jar was symbolic of her no longer having to go chasing men to feel good about herself.
You look at the story and say that is a nice story. Just like all the stories in the Bible. They are nice stories we tell our kids and we learn about them. But is there application? If you know me, there is always some sort of an application here. Hopefully, if you were paying attention, maybe you started feeling it hit a little too close to home. Maybe hitting some nerves. That is what you do when you get exposed to the word of God. That is not Chuck hitting the nerves. It is the word of God that is doing it. Just in case you might have missed it, I will give you a few applications that I got out of it. The first one being quite surface level. Jesus is a perfect example of how to reach non-Christians. Jesus went into Samaria. He didn’t think twice about it, breaking down the cultural and religious barriers. We get really nervous because we are going to go into a place where there might be non-Christians or people we don’t like or people that are different. Maybe they are Republicans and we are Democrats or we are Republicans and they are Democrats. We don’t want to go under the bridge because they are little different and might be unclean. We don’t to go into tall buildings downtown at our workplace and minister to the wealthy down there because they are kind of unclean. We are the clean Christians. Jesus is a model of how to reach the people. You have to be willing to go into Samaria. You can’t stay in Jerusalem. You can’t stay at the temple. You have to go into Samaria. He demonstrates how to do it. He finds a common need. Something as simple as a glass of water. Something as simple as meeting at the water fountain getting a drink that day. She had a need. He had a need. They found a common need. For us it could be anything. It could be work, children, school, all sorts of things. There is a common need with the nonbelievers out there. It is a point of connection that we need to go out there and be willing to find. At the same time, what we see in Jesus is that he humbled himself initially and acknowledged that this woman had something that he couldn’t get himself, just a simple glass of water. In other words, he was willing to humble himself and acknowledge that this pagan Samaritan woman had value, had worth, had something that she could give to him before he went and offered something to her. Don’t go into Samaria with an attitude of superiority. People pick that up really quickly. You go in there with an attitude of humility knowing that you can learn something from a Democrat. You can learn something from a Republican. You can learn something from the guy under the bridge. You can learn something from somebody in Bellevue that is walking down the street because they all have stories. They all have experiences. They all have skills and talents and gifts that God has given them. If you humble yourself for five minutes and be willing to acknowledge that, then you have made yourself available to them and given them a little bit of self-worth. As the time goes on whether weeks, minutes, months, or years at some point their needs will be exposed and you will be able to come in and give them the source of the living water. That is the first thing.
The second thing is that maybe you are like the Samaritan woman who has this distorted view of religion that is tied to some sense of locale. You Jews worship at the temple and we worship at Mount Gerizim. Some of you might have picked up that attitude. We worship here at Bellevue Christian. You worship down at United Methodist. You worship down at Assumption and we are a little bit better than you. This is the place we worship. We learn from the story that worship is not tied to a location. Yes we should be in community. I am not advocating walking around going to all different churches. I am saying don’t tie your worship to a building location. It is not about location. True worshipers worship in spirit and truth and that is the kind of worship that the father seeks. In other words, somebody who has that spirit-to-spirit connection with God who have made a confession of faith and have that personal relationship with God. They have the spirit of God and continue to grow in their understanding of God. I have a confession to make. I have lately been convicted of how little I get into the word. You guys think I really get into the word. I realize how much I don’t know. The more I dig the more I dig is when God just keeps giving you revelation after revelation. I have to apologize for that. Once I got out of the seminary, I kind of backed off on the studying. I realized I was still on the milk and it was time to go deeper. A lot of you people have been in church 10, 20, 30 years and you haven’t gotten past the basics. If I asked you to share the gospel, you would freeze. That is because you are still on the milk. You might be worshiping in spirit but you are probably not worshiping in truth and so consequently when you leave here on Sunday you say I didn’t get anything out of that. It is because you are not worshiping in spirit and truth. Your spirit has become deadened. You have become a carnal Christian who is someone who is not growing in their faith. There is an application here that we would learn to not tie it to where we worship but how we worship. We worship in spirit and in truth.
The last thing is a little bit harder because basically what we learn is some of us are going to the wrong places to fill our buckets. There are some women out there that might be trying to fill their jar with men. They keep going to the same well over and over to fill themselves up only to find themselves continually dry. Some of you may even be that woman. Some of you may be seeking a sense of worth and value from relationship. It sounds like I am picking on the women but men do the same thing. Men probably even do it worse because they go seeking a relationship to fill their bucket up and when they don’t get a relationship, they turn to pornography. If statistics are true, about 30% of men have dabbled in pornography, Christian men. They start thinking that the pornography is going to fill them up, not realizing it is going to mess them up. It is going to mess up their family. It is going to mess up their life because they are never going to get full. They are never going to find fulfillment in that. Not only relationships and pornography but sports, career, hobbies. All those types of things men go looking for to fill themselves up. They have this bucket inside of them with holes on it so the water keeps leaking out. They wonder why they have no fulfillment in life.
In closing, the only way we really can solve that is to quit looking at the wrong well. To begin to go out there and begin to quit seeking fulfilment from people, places, and things and seek the fulfilment from the one person who promises us that he will be a stream that will never run dry. Those things will cause you to thirst. If you drink of the water of people, places, and things, you are always going to be thirsty. But if you come to the Savior, you are never going to be thirsty again because what happens is you have your sense of self-worth not on a person, place, or thing but on the God of the universe, on the Messiah, on the Christ. You don’t need to get filled up by all those other things anymore. You become secure in yourself.
As a side note, I am sharing this. In my first marriage, Dana passed away in 2001, but I remember early on in our marriage, we had some marriage challenges. I remember going to a marriage counselor. It only took about three sessions and the light went on for Dana why we were having problems. The guy says you are trying to please Chuck. You need to please God. The light went on and she had it all figured out. What about her issues? What about all the other stuff? She decided what she needed to do was get her focused on God. It is hard for the guy because he gets jealous of God. No longer is the guy number one anymore but Jesus is number one. That is going to mess some guys up. That is why a lot of you woman are sitting here alone because your husband’s are home and they are jealous of God. I hate to say it. You have placed God ahead of them but that is the way it has to be. God will come in and convict the heart like he did to me. Chuck, you can either go forward or go back but you can’t stay where you are at. You are going to be miserable. At that point, I remember saying to Dana, how can I get closer to you? She said get closer to God. Two months later I am in seminary and thinking I was just doing it to please her. Then God got ahold of me and said I got you now. You were just doing it to please Dana but now I got you and you are not turning back. Six months later she died and I couldn’t turn back.
Don’t just think about this as another story. Really evaluate where are you going to get your fresh springs? All your fresh springs are in Christ and are in God. When you begin to realize that what happens is it is like the blessing in Isaiah. You would become a well-watered garden like a hose that never gets turned off. All of a sudden these flowers and things about your identity begin to come out that you never even knew existed because you are sure in yourself and you are not adjusting your life to please the man and whatever he wants to do. You are living for God and the fresh springs are flowering up in you and you are becoming a brand new person like a well-watered garden. Like a spring that never runs dry. Let us pray.
