Charles Swindoll, in his book Growing Deep in the Christian Life, tells the true story of a man who bought fried chicken dinners for himself and his girlfriend to enjoy on a picnic one afternoon. He was in for a surprise because the person behind the counter mistakenly gave him the wrong paper bag. Earlier, the manager had taken the money from the cash registers and placed it in an ordinary bag, hoping to disguise it on his way to the bank. But when the person working the cash register went to give the man his order, he grabbed the bag full of money instead of the bag full of chicken. Swindoll says, “After driving to their picnic site, the two of them sat down to enjoy some chicken. They discovered a whole lot more than chicken — over $800! But he was unusual. He quickly put the money back in the bag. They got back into the car and drove all the way back. Mr. Clean got out, walked in, and became an instant hero. By then, the manager was frantic. The guy with the bag of money looked the manager in the eye and said, ‘I want you to know I came by to get a couple of chicken dinners and wound up with all this money here.’ Well, the manager was thrilled to death. He said, ‘Let me call the newspaper. I’m gonna have your picture put in the local paper. You’re one of the most honest men I’ve ever heard of.’ To which the man quickly responded, ‘Oh, no. No, no, don’t do that!’ Then he leaned closer and whispered, ‘You see, the woman I’m with is not my wife. She’s, uh, somebody else’s wife.’” Swindoll closes the story by saying, “Harder to find than lost cash is a perfect heart.”
Unfortunately, these stories are all too common in a culture which has lost its moral foundation. Even the Christian world has been rocked by recent moral failure. John Paulk, an ex-gay who was running a Christian outreach ministry to homosexuals, recently resigned because he was discovered in a gay bar. Mike Trout the host of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family resigned this month because of an extramarital affair. Jay Leno quipped that perhaps he had “focused” on the wrong family. Scandals have become so commonplace that we are cynical. We wonder if anyone lives up to what they believe or believes what they say. In fact, the Barna Research Group says that their study shows that one third of American teenagers believe that “most adult Christians are hypocrites.” The decay of the culture is having an impact on the Christian community. Two things are wrong: 1. We have failed to teach the basic tenets of the Christian faith in our homes. 2. We have failed to model the Christian faith in the world. And the church itself has failed to clearly teach the fundamentals of the Christian faith and give clear definition to right and wrong. Instead, we have opted for vague notions about what it means to be nice, and made tolerance our defining doctrine.
How did we get to this place when Jesus Christ, the center of our faith, was ruthlessly clear and truthful? Whenever people confronted him, they were often stripped of their pretenses and made vulnerable by the truth with which he confronted them. Some of those individuals ran from the truth, others were staggered by it, and still others embraced it, difficult as it was. But people were always confronted by the truth. They had to face the truth about themselves and the reality of whom Christ was.
That was the case with the woman Jesus encountered by the well in Samaria, whom we read about in the Scripture today. Let’s look at what this story teaches us. I believe it teaches that when Jesus encounters us, the first thing that happens is: We are confronted with the truth about who we are. The truth this woman was forced to see was not very pleasant. She was the biblical equivalent of Paula Jones. She liked men, and if there had been a men’s magazine she would have posed for it. Her moral life was the joke of the community. She seemed to lack any moral sense, let alone an understanding of what was appropriate. She defended herself and discredited herself at the same time. And there was always someone to take advantage of her weakness. When Jesus offered her water from the well of living water, she didn’t understand what he was saying. She misinterpreted what Jesus meant when he said, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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” (John 4:13-14). She foolishly replied, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” She thought that since Jesus was a stranger she could pretend to be someone she was not, but Jesus quickly unmasked her pretense by saying, “Go, call your husband and come back.” Now her disguise began to unravel, and her true self was laid bare. She said to Jesus, “I have no husband.” He said, “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” (John 4:18). Jesus knew the truth about her, and forced her to see and admit the truth about herself. But that is the way it is when we come into contact with God. Suddenly his light shines on us and reveals the truth about us, and we understand that he sees us as we really are. And when the real us is exposed by God, we have to admit the truth.
Our natural tendency is to cover up and conceal the truth. We hide the truth from ourselves and others. We put on our mask and go about our make-believe world. We play the pretender, just as the woman at the well did with Jesus. She presented another self to Jesus, the one she wanted him to see, and hid her true self. That is, until he removed her mask by confronting her with the truth, and made it impossible to be an imposter any longer. But what was just as unnerving was that when she realized Jesus saw the real her, she did not feel in any way condemned. Jesus saw through her facade. He knew all about her sin — and he loved her. She felt his pure love for her because she was drawn to him. If she had felt condemned by his words she would have left him. But after she encountered Jesus, she went to the others in her town and said, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (John 4:28-29).
Jesus revealed the complete truth about her and completely accepted her at the same time. The saving factor in this woman’s life was that she did not deny the truth. If that had happened, it would have been the beginning of the end of her relationship with Jesus. Jesus will forgive our sin, but only if we face it and admit it. He will not tolerate our deceitfulness. He will not allow us to play the imposter. The truth must be understood and owned. But it is through truth that we experience the love of God. We do not find God by pointing out our strengths, but by admitting our weaknesses. Brennan Manning quotes Sister Barbara Fiand as saying, “Wholeness is brokenness owned and thereby healed.” Wholeness is not the absence of brokenness. Wholeness is facing the truth of our brokenness and finding healing in that act of honesty. It’s denial and dishonesty that give sin its power. It is in trying to hide our sin and push it down that it has the most power to exert itself in our lives. Admitting who we are and what we have done seems frightening, but in reality it is freeing. There is no other way to find God.
But the second thing we learn when Jesus encounters us is: We are confronted with the truth about who he is. When Jesus revealed the truth about her, this woman realized that he must have had some kind of supernatural ability. They had only spoken a few words and he saw right through her. She assumed that he was a prophet or something, so she asked him a religious question. This is always a good technique for getting the spotlight off of yourself and onto something more comfortable, even if it is controversial. There was a running argument between the Jews and Samaritans about where the real place of worship should be — on Mt. Zion, the mountain in Jerusalem where the temple had been built, or Mt. Gerizim, the sacred mountain in Samaria. She was trying to turn the spotlight off herself, but when she did, she encountered another truth that was just as difficult for her as the truth about herself — she came face to face with who Jesus really was. She wanted to argue religion, but Jesus wanted her to face reality. She learned that the great question of faith is not about mountains or doctrines, it is the truth about who Jesus Christ really is.
Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:21-24). What was this truth which Jesus spoke about? She was about to find out, and the truth would be shocking. She said to Jesus, “I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he” (John 4:25-26).
This is so amazing because Jesus’ method of confronting this woman would be scorned in this day when no one is really right and no one is really wrong. We say, “Everyone has their own truth, and we should respect that by not trying to change the way they think or believe.” Our culture asserts that truth is whatever you sincerely believe in. But Jesus did not affirm the woman’s error, he pointed her to the truth. He bluntly told her that the Samaritans were worshiping what they did not know. He told her that everything she had believed all her life had been wrong. He said, “Salvation is from the Jews.” She was uncomfortable and thought she would change the subject again. She came over to his side a bit, being familiar with Jewish beliefs, and said, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes he will explain everything to us.” Again, Jesus confronted her with a searing truth that began to burn its way into her brain. He said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” He proclaimed that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, the one promised in the Scriptures. She assumed that he was merely a prophet, but he proclaimed that he was the living God who had come to earth in human form to confront the world with the truth.
There are some people today, even in religious circles, who believe that we should not interfere with the belief systems of people in other cultures. We should not try to convert them; we should respect their beliefs. But let me ask a question. If you went into a country where people were dying because they were relying on witch doctors and magical spells, would you be reluctant to bring them a real physician, if you could, who would actually cure them? Would you respect their belief system, or would you try to save them by bringing them into contact with the truth? Certainly, it is no less important when we are talking about people’s eternal welfare. If we really believe that people are lost without Christ, then we ought to witness to the truth out of concern for their future in eternity. If the truth is at all important, then we should be concerned about error.
Jesus was concerned about the false way this woman was living and the false way she was believing. He lovingly confronted her with the truth, and then let her decide what to do with it. And herein lies the final point. When Jesus encounters us, We are confronted with the responsibility to act on the truth. We are almost surprised by this woman’s reaction. She had seemed silly and shallow. But she responded to the truth that Jesus confronted her with, while many of the religious leaders rejected it. She had no education or religious training, yet she opened her heart to Jesus. Yet the religious leaders in Jerusalem who were scholars in the Scriptures which spoke of Jesus remained closed to him. It is interesting that the Bible 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?” (John 4:28-29). She left her water jar — either because she was so overtaken by what she had experienced that she forgot it, or she knew she was coming back. Either way, she left Jesus unceremoniously and without explanation. But she is a woman on a mission. She is going to find other people and tell them about the truth she has discovered. She is honest now about all the things she has done, and tells the people in town that Jesus told her everything she ever did. She wants to tell others about the great Truth she has discovered. She wants to tell them about Jesus.
Then the Bible says, “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, ‘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 Savior of the world.’” (John 4:39-42). When these people were confronted with the truth, they responded to the truth.
This was not always the case in the New Testament. When Pilate came face to face with Jesus he asked him many questions. Pilate’s wife warned him that Jesus was innocent and not to harm him. He had heard of Jesus’ miracles and teachings. But none of that was enough to convince him to respond to the truth with which he was confronted. Instead of making up his own mind, he asked the opinion of the people. He said, “What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?” The people answered, “Crucify him!” (Matthew 27:22). And he responded to the people rather than respond to the truth. We are faced with the same life-changing question: “What will you do with Jesus who is called the Christ?”
In Youth Worker Journal, Will Eisenhower tells of a typical experience he had as a counselor at a youth Bible camp: “It had been an exhausting day; the guys in my cabin were asleep, and I was dead to the world. Then there came a dim awareness: Ants were crawling all over my body. I was so tired, and sleep felt so good, that I actually resisted rousing myself. I knew that if I were roused even a little bit, I would have to acknowledge that my sleeping bag had become an ant freeway. I didn’t want to know the awful truth, so for at least several seconds I tried to fight it. At some deep level, I told myself that sleep was the reality and the ants were a dream.”
Truth can be like ants in our sleeping bag. Truth attempts to rouse us out of our sleep and confront us with reality. But we keep trying to ignore it and go back to sleep. Waking up means that I have to face reality and see the truth about myself, and also do something about the truth claims of Jesus Christ. More than that, it means I may have to change.
It is small wonder that many prefer to stay asleep. Winston Churchill once said, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” But how we respond to truth determines the direction of our lives. It will determine the quality of our lives and the destiny of our eternal soul. In the end, truth will triumph, for as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn remarked, “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”
Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).
Rodney J. Buchanan
October 29, 2000
CONFRONTED BY TRUTH
John 4:1-26
“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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’” (John 4:13-14).
When Jesus encounters us:
1. We are confronted with the truth about ____________ ____________________________________________________ .
“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (John 4:28-29).
“Wholeness is brokenness owned and thereby healed.” – Sister Barbara Fiand
2. We are confronted with the truth about ____________ ____________________________________________________ .
”Then Jesus declared, ‘I who speak to you am he’” (John 4:26).
3. We are confronted with the ______________________ to __________________________________________________ .
“What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?” (Matthew 27:22).
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (Oct. 29, 2000)
1. *How do you react when a well-known Christian fails morally? What goes wrong when this happens?
2. *How do you react when you fail to live up to your own standards?
3. *When this happens we are tempted to hide from God, but what does Christ want us to do?
4. *In the story of Jesus and the woman he met by the well, what was he trying to say to her about living water (4:13-14)? Why didn’t she understand?
5. In John 4:16, why did Jesus ask her to call her husband?
6. How do you react to Jesus’ blunt style with this person? What was important to Jesus in this interchange?
7. *In John 4:19-24 Jesus and the woman talk about on which mountain they should worship. What truth was he trying to get her to see?
8. *In John 4:25-26, Jesus and the woman talk about the coming Messiah. What important truth was he trying to impart to her? Did she believe it and receive it?
9. **Who is Jesus Christ?
10. What was the woman’s ultimate response? Are there any surprises in this?
11. Why did the woman’s acquaintances come to believe in Jesus?
