Have you ever been in a situation where you were caught red-handed? Unfortunately, I have far too many of those stories in my background. The one that really sticks in my mind was the time that I was collecting soda bottles at a construction site right across the road from my house. We lived in a very wooded area, right across the street from a 600 acre county park. The park commission was building a huge greenhouse, or arboretum, and each evening I would walk my dog over there and pick up all the soda bottles the workers had left so that I could return them for a 2-cent deposit. I was getting rich. And one day I happened upon about 10 pallets of 3x3 sheets of glass that they were installing to make the greenhouse. Too much for a pre-teen to ignore. Heck, they should have known better than to leave those pieces of glass out, don’t you think? What I did next was hardly my fault!
As you can imagine, I had a wonderful time sailing those sheets of glass into trees, launching them for distance like Frisbees, and making little Tee Pees to bomb from a distance with rocks. That was, until I just sensed someone looking over my shoulder. I turned around to see a policeman sitting in his car, just 10 yards away. He said nothing about what I had done, and I can’t imagine that he hadn’t seen me. But all he did was take my name and phone number and ask where I lived. To this day I don’t know if he contacted my parents. My dad was an FBI agent, so if he did, maybe my dad talked my way out of it for me. But it was the last I heard about it. And let me tell you, I spent many a night lying awake, just wondering when the police would show up to haul me away to San Quentin.
This is one of the most powerful stories in the gospels. On the surface of it, we find a woman who encounters Jesus and must have been incredibly embarrassed when she found out that Jesus knew every detail of her life. But she has her life changed. And there is plenty we can learn from this story about Jesus and his love, about how people come to faith, about how we can reach others for Christ, and about the nature of the gospel itself. In fact, as I studied through this passage I decided that rather than keep you here for an hour, I’d just make it a two part series. I think this passage is too rich to do it justice in only one sermon!
So… let’s get just a little background on this story.
Jesus was on his way to Galilee, and the shortest route from Jerusalem to Gal was through Samaria. Many Jews would not travel that road at all but instead they would take a longer road that bypassed Samaria. After the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722BC, the Assyrians deported many of the Jews and resettled the area with captives of other countries. These foreigners brought with them all of their own gods and religions. When the Jews returned in 539BC, they found a complete rift between themselves and the Samaritans.
The Samaritans who did follow Yahweh refused to worship in Jerusalem, and built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim in 400 BC. The Jews then burned the Samaritan temple in 128 BC. leading to the hostility the two groups held for each other to the time of the New Testament.
By the time of Jesus, it was an area with a kind of hybrid religion, syncretistic, worshipping both Yahweh and Baal, along with other traditions and idols. And there was incredible hatred between the two groups. Jews were offended to even travel there, much less associate with Samaritans.
Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? What makes that story so poignant is the fact that it was a Samaritan who helped the man who had been beaten. Sort of like having an Iraqi insurgent help a military service man on the road. It would have been incredible to believe that this would happen, because of the hatred between Jews and Samaritans.
So John tells us that Jesus “had to pass through Samaria”. We know that he really didn’t have to in the sense that it was possible to get there another way. Most Jews did go another way. So one wonders what John means by this. I suspect, though the text does not say it specifically, that Jesus had to pass through Samaria because had an appointment to keep. He knew that there would be a woman at a well there who needed living water.
The first point I’d like us to consider is this:
God has a way of arranging Divine Appointments
After arriving in Sychar, Jesus was tired and he sat down to rest. It was the 6th hour, or noon. The heat of the day. And John tells us that the disciples had gone into town to buy food. Very interesting, don’t you think? Eleven guys go to town to buy food for twelve. Maybe they didn’t trust each other to put the right toppings on the pizza, or maybe Jesus sent them on into town because of the appointment he was about to keep.
A woman comes to draw water. At noon, the heat of the day. Now it is not at all customary for a woman to draw water at noon. Women usually gathered at the well in the morning, when it is cool. And that was a kind of social event – a chance to catch up with one another and share time together. The fact that this woman is there at noon and alone gives us an immediate clue about her. Chances are, she was alone because she either wanted to avoid the other women, or else the other women didn’t want her there. As the story plays out, we get a sense of why that was. She thought she’d be alone and safe. Nobody would see her and nobody would know her story. How wrong she was about that! God had other plans.
Jesus asks her for a drink. This does not seem like a big deal to us, but it was a big deal to her. Imagine, a Jewish Rabbi speaking to a Samaritan woman. The gravity of this was not lost on her. She immediately asks him why he would do such a thing.
And John underscores it by telling us that the Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans. Jews did not pass through their territory, much less talk with them. And on top of that, men did not talk with women in public. And certainly not a Rabbi, a religious person, who would fully appreciate the fact that the Samaritans had corrupted the Jewish Faith!
Something that I love about this narrative is the number of times that the woman asks Jesus a question, and he does not answer it. She asks, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a Samaritan woman for a drink?” And Jesus replies, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is talking with you, you’d have asked me for a drink!”
What? Who said anything about God? All we were talking about was cultural prejudice. The gift of God? And now Jesus is suggesting that even though he has asked for a drink, he already has some special kind of water.
Divine appointments are like that. Just when you least expect it, God surprises us. I would be that nearly everyone here today has had an experience like that, where God breaks into a moment that was unexpected. A stray word leads to a deep conversation. Or you run into someone who brings a word for you that’s just what you needed to hear. A sermon that really seems to speak to you just when you thought you’d stay in bed.
Last week I went to Sweden to do some training of YL staff and leaders. One of the things we did was teach a brief Evangelism Explosion outline. And it made me remember, and I shared the story with the folks in Sweden, the time when God seated me on an airplane next to a couple from Princeton who were about to divorce and were searching for God.
Peter’s brother was a Christian and had paid for him and his wife to attend a Christian retreat for couples with significant marital issues. And Peter and his wife had them in spades.
I had noticed them when I boarded the plane in CoSpgs, while we were the only 3 to be subjected to a full body search. We did not sit together on the flight to St. Paul, but I asked for a seat closer to the front when I made the connection to Newark, and who should sit down next to me but this couple. Long story short… despite the fact that I had absolutely no intention of talking with them about God, after a few words together I found myself sharing the gospel for the whole plane flight. It wasn’t until we landed that I found out that they lived right here in the area. Peter’s wife was a skeptic, and so I said, “I can’t prove to you that there is a God, but it sure is interesting to me that somehow you ended up sitting with a pastor from Princeton at a moment when you two are looking for answers.” I felt like it really was a divine appointment.
Elizabeth said, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Peter, tell him about what happened to us on the way out here.” It seems that they were sitting in two different parts of the plane, and Peter was reading a magazine, when a huge African man on his way to the bathroom stopped in the aisle, looked at Peter, and said, “Do you preach the Word?” Peter was shocked, and said, “No!” The African gentleman looked puzzled, and mumbled something about being mistaken about something. Then, in the terminal after the flight, this same man came up behind Peter and Elizabeth and said, “Jesus wants me to tell you something. He says he really loves you.” And with that, the man simply turned and walked away.
When I heard the story I had goose bumps. This man was sent by God to minister to this couple in a brief and kind of strange way. And now I’m sitting next to them on a plane. Think that the three of us were in the midst of a Divine Appointment?
God does that today. He does it for you and me – He meets us in strange and unexpected ways. But He does it because He loves us. He doesn’t wait for you to express your need. He makes appointments with us and then he keeps them. We just need to open our eyes and see where He is meeting us.
And God also uses us to keep Divine Appointments. For every moment that you were sure that God was using you to minister to someone, I would bet that God has put hundreds of opportunities in our path and prepared the way for us. But we don’t always listen and we don’t always keep the appointment. It really is up to us to be prayerful, to listen to God’s voice, and to be ready and willing to be used by Him. It’s not as though God needs us to keep his appointments, but He is really excited to allow us to get involved in what He is doing on this planet. He has plenty of other folks who’d be glad to represent him at the meeting he has arranged. When you don’t allow Him to use you, the only one who misses out is you.
Back to the story –
Whether or not the woman caught the reference to living water, she is still going on the basis of Jesus’ original question. Maybe it was the reference to God, but she gets ready to argue with this strange Rabbi who is talking with her. She references Jacob. The Samaritans did trace their ancestry back to Jacob, and the fact that she invokes his name here is certainly a way to make a point to this rabbi that she is no worshipper of Baal or some other idol. She says, “Our father, Jacob – the one who personally drank from this well right here in Samaria! Take that, Rabbi! You want to talk religion? I can talk religion with the best of them!”
And this leads us to our second point, the last one I want to make today.
Religion is not the answer.
It is amazing how easy it is to get into an argument over religion. It’s actually kind of fun, isn’t it? I don’t know if you noticed it, but there is a guy who regularly writes liberal secular editorials in the Trenton Times, and he and I have sparred back and forth a few times on the editorial page in the last two weeks. His last letter was yesterday, and I must admit, I got pretty fired up yesterday thinking about how I was going to answer back. But as much as I love a religious argument, I think God told me to chill out a bit and let him fight his own battles.
Have you ever tried to share your faith with someone and the conversation turned into an argument? All of sudden we find ourselves defending the faith – God doesn’t need for us to defend him. He wants us to tell them how much they are loved – to challenge them to come and see who Jesus is. It is God’s job to convict people of sin – not ours.
I don’t believe we are ever going to argue someone into the Kingdom. We are to pray for the opportunity to share our lives with others – warts and all. And pray that God will bring them to a place of awareness and repentance of their sins.
Jesus does bring her to a place of awareness of her sin, but we will save that discussion for next week. I’m going to skip over verses 16-18 other than to say that one of the things that fuels this woman’s desire to argue is the fact that Jesus knows her sin.
Funny how that happens. The folks who want most to talk about religion are the folks who least want to talk about how it speaks to their own need.
The woman allows that Jesus is at least a prophet. Heck, he did just look into her life and point out her darkest secret! And her response is typical for folks who are being hemmed in by the Holy Spirit. She begins to talk about religion, not God. There is quite a difference!
“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” It’s all about where you worship. It’s an old controversy. Do you worship on Mt. Gerizim, where they are now standing, or at Jerusalem in the temple?
Jesus is not interested in debating her. Does not even answer her question. He is interested in winning her, not winning an argument.
Can you imagine a less appropriate issue at this moment? But we do this when we want to deflect God’s gaze on us. Religion is the worst enemy of a relationship with Christ. When you are talking with someone about your faith, please don’t fall into the trap of debating religion!
Religion never changed anyone’s life. Religion never saved anyone. And people have cheated, hated, and murdered in the name of religion. Religion is what you do when you want to earn your own way to heaven. Religion is what you do when you want to feel good about yourself and compare yourself to all those other folks whose acts aren’t nearly as together as yours is. And religion is what you do when you want to change people’s minds, not their hearts.
The issue is clearly not where you worship. Baptist, PCA, Catholic, etc. Jesus told me that any of them might get in, and any of them might not! The issue is not where you worship but who you worship, and the condition of your heart. And the issue is Jesus.
I have this Bible that was given to me a few years ago by my boss. His father in law is Doug Coe, who leads this group in Washington called “The Fellowship”. They are the ones who put on the National Prayer Breakfast. And there is one thing they are religious about. They are religious about not putting Jesus in a box. They won’t talk about denominations, or even Bible translations. What’s interesting about this Bible is that it doesn’t even say “New Testament” or “Holy Bible”. Nowhere on it or nowhere in it will you find the name of the translation or who sponsored it or who published it. It only says, “Jesus of Nazareth.” It’s all about Jesus.
Jesus tells her that a time is coming, and is even here now, when people who are concerned with worship will NOT be concerned with religion. They will be concerned with God! God is spirit, and people who know God will worship in spirit and in truth. Spirit, because that’s where God’s heart is and where our hearts are.
What we do and what we say reveals our spirit. But our spirit is the issue – it’s what determines what we do and say.
And truth is important. This is a good, PCA church! I can’t get away with preaching a sermon without mentioning doctrine, can I? It is important that we know what we believe and that we pay attention to God’s Word, His truth. The trouble is that we get it all so out of balance. Some folks worship in the spirit alone. It’s all about how we feel; the experience of worship. Anything goes, and doctrine is the enemy of freedom and experience, so some say. But others of us worship the truth, and pay no attention to the Spirit. It is so incredibly easy to understand the verities of the Christian faith, to profess the right doctrines, say the right things, do the right things, and have no spiritual life whatsoever. Our seminaries and pulpits are filled with folks like that, and so are our pews!
Spirit and truth. Those are the worshippers that the Father seeks. Those who don’t stifle the spirit, and those who know what they believe. It’s a healthy tension. But the only place you and I will find life is in Jesus, not in religion. And the same is certainly true for those in our office, our school, our family and our neighborhood. Jesus never dignified the “where” question, but he certainly pointed this woman to life.
God has a way of setting up Divine Appointments.
And religion is not the answer.
I hope that these two truths are speaking to you this morning. One thing that these two truths have in common is this: They suggest that God is living and active. Perhaps you came here this morning not expecting to encounter God in a personal way. Perhaps you came here because you are comfortable with religion. In either case, I hope that you will be surprised by Jesus. He is waiting for you by a well and he wants to talk.
