A Woman With A Past
Fifth in a series: “Conversations With Christ”
John 4:4-19
The text this morning is lengthy, but it important that week look at it in it’s entirety to get the full impact of this conversation a women had with Jesus.
So, get close to a Bible and let’s look at it together.
4 Now he 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.
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."
I have been to this exact spot on the map…the Well of Jacob. Located in the modern city of Nablus in the West Bank of Israel…Palestinian territory. It is the site of much bloodshed over the years and in the news just in the past few weeks.
I was there in 1975. That year things were quiet and Western tourists were allowed in the area. Every trip since, we have been prohibited to enter the city for fear
of our bus being attacked by rock throwers.
The problems that exist between Jews and Arabs there today are very similar to the problems that existed in this same place 2000 years ago between the Jews and the Samaritans.
In Jesus’ days. Travel in Samaria was not recommended. Not for political reasons or even for fear of bodily harm.
The reasons were strictly religious and ethnic. Prejudicial hatred of the vilest kind.
Racial or ethnic discrimination is bad enough…but when you wrap it in religion it becomes even more hideous.
To put in plainly Jews hated Samaritans and Samaritans hated Jews. They would walk miles and miles out of their way not to encounter each other. (MAP)
Yet, here we find Jesus in Samaria, drinking Samaritan water and talking to a Samaritan woman, a Samaritan woman who is living with a man she is not married to.
Talk about politically correct!
These are the kinds of things I absolutely love bout Jesus!
In verse 10, Jesus ignores her reference to the division that exists between their people.
Jesus throws her a bit of a curve as He looks into her heart.
Remember, we have learned in this series that Jesus seldom answers our questions as we would like him to…He goes straight to what is in our heart
· In this segment of the conversation Jesus begins to bridge the chasm that exists between
o The temporal and the eternal
o The immediate and the big picture
o The material and the spiritual
It is this perspective that He desires for each one of us as well.
We are often to short-sighted.
As they sit by a hole in the earth where life has been centered for her people for over 3,000 years…the issue here is water…survival…
· He offers her something called “living water”
· He offers her a “spring of water welling up inside her offering eternal life.”
She must have thought, “What’s with this dude?”
But what is Jesus up to here?
He begins to take this lady from her every-day problems – physical thirst
And her every-day perspectives – The issues between the Jews and Samaritans
To…
Her craving for the satisfaction of her inner, spiritual thirsts…and the energy needed in trying to satisfy those longings.
Now, He has her attention…they are down to the lowest common-denominator of the human experience…survival!
Are you trying to survive right now?
Are you overwhelmed with the requirements to do so?
Are you thirsty?
Are you drained of the energy needed to draw out of this earth what you need for yourself and those you love?
Well, then, Jesus is having a conversation with you now…not just the lady at the well 2000 years ago.
Let me ask you:
What are the PROBLEMS and PERSPECTIVES of your world ?
What occupies your priorities and requires your energy?
Jesus effectively turns this conversation inside-out revealing her heart.
And now the mind blower…He tells her the truth about herself…she had a past.
Don’t we all.
READ TEXT:
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.
· In the next verse she quickly tries to change the subject.
· Confronted with her shame, her short-sighted solution in her desperate attempt to be a survivor
· She has compromised herself and (we are told) at the well alone) because she herself was a social outcast.
· Yet He comes to us, sits down with us, engages us in conversations of the heart and offers us more than guilt, more than survival…and says
“…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."
We will stop here.
The remaining verses that record this conversation are a sermon or two in themselves.
Perhaps verse 24 is the best known verse in this entire chapter.
The profound remarks Jesus made regarding the true nature of worship are found in the context of a conversation with a woman who had a past and was mired in her present set of circumstances.
A worshipping relationship with God is impossible without the troubling circumstances we first bring to Him being addressed by his grace and mercy.
That is what He wants to do for each one of us.
He wants to help us change our “paradigm” Look down? Look up? Hole in the earth…hole in the sky>
The school system in a large city had a program to help children keep up with their school work during stays in the city’s hospitals. One day a teacher who was assigned to the program received a routine call asking her to visit a particular child. She took the child’s name and room number and talked briefly with the child’s regular class teacher. "We’re studying nouns and adverbs in his class now," the regular teacher said, "and I’d be grateful if you could help him understand them so he doesn’t fall too far behind."
The hospital program teacher went to see the boy that afternoon. No one had mentioned to her that the boy had been badly burned and was in great pain. Upset at the sight of the boy, she stammered as she told him, "I’ve been sent by your school to help you with nouns and adverbs." When she left she felt she hadn’t accomplished much.
But the next day, a nurse asked her, "What did you do to that boy?" The teacher felt she must have done something wrong and began to apologize. "No, no," said the nurse. "You don’t know what I mean. We’ve been worried about that little boy, but ever since yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he’s decided to live."
Two weeks later the boy explained that he had completely given up hope until the teacher arrived. Everything changed when he came to a simple realization. He expressed it this way: "They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?"
· A Woman With A Past – yes
· A Woman with A Present – yes
· A Woman with a FUTURE – absolutely!
Ask for the Living water today.
