Who Is This Man? Who Jesus Shaped The World's View Of Women And Marriage Series

Who is This Man? 3

If I was to ask you about the longest recorded conversation that Jesus had in the four gospels who would you say it involved? His best friend, Peter? John the Baptist? The High Priests when they were interrogating him or Pilate during this trial? Wrong on each account. The longest conversation that Jesus is recorded as having in any of the four Gospels is found in the passage that was read for us earlier and took place at a well on the side of the road. And while it might not seem all that important to us it was world changing in its context.

This is week three of our “Who is this Man?” series. And it seems a little familiar in spots it was actually birthed out of a message I did over the Christmas Season entitled “A Wonderful Life”.

I finished that message by referencing John’s words in John 21:25 Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written. And I promised that I would be coming back to re-visit and expand upon the thoughts of “How Jesus shaped our world.” If it doesn’t seem a little familiar to you I’m crushed that you didn’t remember, but I’ll get over it.

So on Good Friday and Easter Sunday we looked at what various people on those days would have said about who Jesus was. And then I left if for a few weeks and came back after Mother’s day to delve back into the theme again. And some of you are thinking, “Oh Yeah, that sounds familiar”. And others are thinking “He’s preached on this before?”

So two weeks ago we looked at Who is this Man from our perspective and read from Cornerstone’s statement of faith that you can find on our website. And part of that says: our beliefs are in line with historic Christianity. And then we looked at what that meant in our beliefs about Jesus. That he is the Son of God, that he was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, that his death on the cross was in atonement for our sins and that on the third day he rose from the dead. This we believe.

And so last week we looked at the greatest gift that Jesus left the world, and that wasn’t his teachings, or his example, it was his church. Jesus promised the world in Luke 6:47 I will show you what it’s like when someone comes to me, listens to my teaching, and then follows it.

And it was because of these people who came to Jesus, and listened to Jesus’ teachings and then followed those teachings that the world has been changed. Last week we looked at How:

Jesus Shaped How We Think of the Poor

Jesus Shaped How We Think of the Sick

Jesus Shaped How We Think of Slaves

Jesus Shaped How We Think of Children

So back to the question: If I was to ask you about the longest recorded conversation that Jesus had in the four gospels who would you say it involved? The answer of course is found in the scripture that was read for us earlier, the longest recorded conversation that Jesus had with anyone was with the Samaritan woman that he met at the well, as recorded in John 4. And you might be asking ‘Why is that so important?” The answer is found further along in the story. So to bring you up to speed.

If we bring up one of our friendly maps, we are told that Jesus was travelling from Judea, which is here in the south and was going to Galilee which is here. Now obvsioulsy the quickest route was a straight line but because of bad blood between the Jews and the Samaratians most people made a circulous route to get from point “a” to point “b”.

Instead we see Jesus and his apostle cut straight through the centre and as the arrive at “Jacob’s Well” which would have been a landmark that those reading the story would have recognized the apostles head into town to buy food and leave Jesus to his own devices. Just as a little aside, in the culture of that day it would be very difficult to believe that before they met Jesus that any of these guys would have been in Samaria, let alone would have thought of buying and eating food prepared by Samaritans, already the barriers are coming down.

So Jesus is sitting on the edge of the well, he’s been walking for probably five or six hours and teaching his apostles as they walked so he’s a little tuckered out, so let’s pick up the story at that point. John 4:7-8 Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. Sounds fairly innocent and you are probably wondering what this has to do with how Jesus shaped the world we live in today. First of all let’s go to the woman’s response. John 4:9 The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?” And now let’s skip ahead through all the conversation between Jesus and this woman, which is material for a dozen sermons, to the point the disciples return. John 4:27 Just then his disciples came back. They were shocked to find him talking to a woman, but none of them had the nerve to ask, “What do you want with her?” or “Why are you talking to her?”