July 21, 2019 at First Presbyterian Church of Unionville
Sermon Text:
[Jhn 4:1-26 ESV] 1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will 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 will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
I’ve put together a simple outline of this passage. And this outline has four “S’s”.
I. The Situation
II. The Samaritans
III. The Spirit
IV. The Savior
I. THE SITUATION (vs. 1-4)
We now come to the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel and to a quite familiar passage to many; that of the woman of Samaria at the well.
The text explains the circumstances—the situation—which leads to Jesus talking to this Samaritan woman.
1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria.
You should recall from earlier in this Gospel that John the Baptist’s said “He (Jesus) must increase, and I must decrease.” And so we now find that the number of disciples following Jesus is increasing, while the number of disciples following John the Baptist is decreasing.
And this alerts the Pharisees. Calvin explains “While the Pharisees were formerly dissatisfied at finding that John collected disciples, their minds were still more exasperated, when they saw that a still greater number of disciples came to Christ.”
So, as the text tell us, Jesus then leaves Judea and departs for Galilee.
Why? Why the move?
Again, Calvin explains it well: “Knowing that the Pharisees were ill-disposed towards him, Jesus did not wish to expose himself to their anger before the proper time. This was his motive for setting out from Judea.”
Jesus was not running away afraid. He knew that in time his life would end at the hands of the Jews (as well as the Romans). It just was not yet the right time. His hour had not yet come.
So he heads back to Galilee. And going there he passes through Samaria.
The text doesn’t note that there were alternate paths from Judea to Galilee. The Jews commonly avoided Samaria by going around it. But Jesus and his disciples here travel directly through Samaria. The text says “he had to pass through Samaria.” The necessity was not a geographical necessity, but a plan of God necessity. It was God’s plan from all eternity that Jesus would here travel through Samaria and so meet and talk to the Samaritan woman at the well.
So this is The Situation. Next we move on to the The Samaritans.
II. THE SAMARITANS (vs. 5-12)
So we have to take a step back and ask, “why did the Jews walk around Samaria?”
This reminds me a bit of my own cross-country driving strategy. I always drive around major cities if possible. I despise big cities. I get anxiety and I get stuck in traffic! So I either drive around the cities, or, if I must go through them, I certainly won’t stop for gasoline until I’ve come out the other side and can find a nice quiet country gas station.
But the Jews didn’t avoid Samaria because of high traffic. They just plain didn’t like the Samaritans.
Why didn’t they like the Samaritans?
There are ethnic and religion reasons, and these two are closely associated.
We must go back into the history to understand.
The area of Samaria—between Judea and Galilee—was at one point the Northern Kingdom of Israel. There was, following the Monarchy’s of Saul, David, and Solomon, a great division among God’s people. Splitting in two, the Southern Kingdom was called Judah and the Northern Kingdom called Israel. But in the 8thcentury, this Northern Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) was conquered by the Assyrians. And they carried away many of the people as captives. And they brought in their own citizens to Israel. The plan of the Assyrians was to encourage intermarriage and therefore encourage a long-run strategy of nationalization, so that the area would become more Assyrians or at least under Assyrian rule, and therefore pacified; unlike to ever revolt.
The Samaritans then were half-breeds. They were Jewish partially, but also they were partially Assyrian. So the Jews from the Southern Kingdom of Judah looked upon them as less than Jewish.
But it is not only this ethnic difference that causes the Jews to despise the Samaritans. There is also religious differences. While the Jews accepted all of the Old Testament, the Samaritans only accepted the first five books of the Bible – the Books of Moses, called the Torah.
And so the Samaritans developed their own religious path. For one, they did not believe that the temple should be in Jerusalem (as the later Old Testament books command) but they believed that the proper place of worship is Mt. Gerizim in Samaria.
We are familiar with the story of the good Samaritan. The reason that that story is so shocking to the first hearers of the Gospel is that because of the animosity between Jews and Samaritans one would usually assume that the Samaritans would not help out a Jew at all; and vice versa—a Jew wouldn’t help out a Samaritan. They were, from the Jewish perspective, unclean foreigners.
But we have Jesus, traveling through Samaria because “he had to.” He must travel through Samaria, because this is the will of God that it should happen.
Jesus, as we learned in chapter 3 loved the world; not just the Jews, but people of all nations. We now have a passage in which Jesus goes beyond the Jews and comes to Samaria.
5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.
This reminds us that Jesus is human being; he suffers from thirst just as we do. And he tires from walking just as we do.
We then read:
It was about the sixth hour. 7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
So we know that Jesus is breaching this societal norm of a Jew talking with a Samaritan. But, he breaks a second norm at the same time; he is talking with a woman. While the Jews are said to have no dealings with the Samaritans, Jesus disciples apparently are not above conducting business—trade—with the Samaritans, for they have gone into the city to buy food.
But while they might conduct business, certainly no Jew would eat with a Samaritan. And certainly no Jew would drive from the same vessel as a Samaritan. Yet, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, “Give me a drink.” Shocking!
So we’ve had “The Situation” and “The Samaritans.” Now we get to the real purpose of the story—“The Spirit.”
III. THE SPIRIT (vs. 10-24)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will 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 will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Now, I want to jump right to an explanation here of what “living water” is. Living water is a metaphor used to speak of the Holy Spirit in His living and active work in the heart’s of God’s people. [REPEAT]
We find in Jeremiah 17:13 that God is called a “fountain of living water.” And in John 7:37-39 we find Jesus explaining that this living water is the Holy Spirit. Jesus says: “If anyone thirsts, let him com to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” And then Apostle John explains “Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive.”
The Living water is the Holy Spirit living and active in the heart’s of God’s people
We live because we have the living water. This is what the Samaritan women so desperately needed. It is what we so desperately need. We need the Holy Spirit living and active in our hearts. And this is what the Samaritan woman asks for when she says “Sir, give me this water.”
Jesus then uses the opportunity lead this woman to an understanding of two things. First, he teaches her what the nature of proper worship is, and second, he concludes in teaching her who He himself is.
First, of that worship, we learn that it must be in spirit and truth.
The old struggled between the Jews and the Samaritans over the place of worship emerges in their discussion.
We continue:
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
We must worship in Spirit and in Truth.
I want to take these two in reverse order. Truth and then Spirit.
A. Truth
First, when we look at worshipping in truth, we are to understand that this means we are to worship as God has revealed in the Scriptures. The Samaritans did not accept the whole Old Testament and thus Jesus could say to the woman “You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know.” Without the whole Old Testament the Samaritans didn’t know that God had instituted Jerusalem as location of the temple and the place of worship.
Limiting worship to that location is a commandment soon abrogated—done away with—, for Jesus says “Women, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” That temple requirement is past.
But we are still to worship in truth. We are to worship God as the Scriptures reveal. We are not to invent our own ways of worshipping God. Let me mention some practical applications of that teaching. The proper Biblical elements of worship are prayer, Scripture reading, preaching, singing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, the taking of an offering, and the observance of the sacraments. All of these things are found in the Scriptures.
But, what do we not find the Scriptures? There is no interpretive dance in worship. No clapping in applause of a minister’s sermon. No fog machines. No multimedia presentations. Nothing like this is supported by the Scriptures.God is not pleased with unauthorized worship. There are to be no innovations in worship.
A key text in this regard is the story of Nadab and Abihu, two of the sons of Aaron who, in Leviticus chapter 10, “each too his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which He had not command them.” And god showed his displeasure. “Fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord.”
That is a very strong statement to show us that God is not pleased with unauthorized worship. There are to be no innovations in worship.
So this is what it is to worship in truth. We include in worship only that which God, in his true Word, has told us to include.
But, Jesus says, we are also to worship in Spirit.
B. Spirit
It is no good to merely go through the motions, doing the right things in worship, if we have not a heart of faith. That is what is meant by worshipping in the Spirit. We are to worship with the faith given to us by the Holy Spirit.
If we fail to worship in truth we are like the Samaritans. But, if we having the truth, and not the Spirit of faith, then we are like the Pharisees.
We are to worship in truth and in spirit.
Now then, we come to our final section. There was the situation, then the Samaritans, then the Spirit. Now there is The Savior.
IV. THE SAVIOR (vs. 25-26)
The text here uses the word “messiah.” But since this doesn’t start with an “S” I had to choose another term.
Jesus has taught the Samaritan woman how to Worship. But now he teaches here who he is.
25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
Jesus, the one who stands before you is the Messiah. Not just a prophet. He is the Savior.
And the savior explains it is not WHERE you worship that is importance, but WHO you worship. You can worship God in any place, so long as you worship in Spirit and in Truth.
CONCLUSION
Now, in concluding our message, I want to look at these two terms—Spirit and Truth—and two people we’ve recently seen in this Gospel account—Nicodemus and the Samaritan women.
Nicodemus, the Pharisee, has the truth. That is, he has the Scriptures. What he lacked at first was the spirit. Jesus says to him “You must be born again.” And, it is sufficiently clear in the Scriptures that Nicodemus does come to the faith. Or rather, we should say, the Holy Spirit comes to Nicodemus and makes him a believer.
Then, we have the Samaritan women. She does not have the truth, but Jesus provides it to her. He is the savior. And with the power of the Holy Spirit, the Living Water which Jesus gives to her, she, like Nicodemus becomes a believer. We know this because the people of Samaria later agree with her and say “We know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
What are we to conclude? [REPEAT]
God is willing and able to save all kinds of sinners. [REPEAT]
Not just the outwardly holy Nicodemus, but the outwardly sinful Samaritan women. What a contrast! If he can save these two, he can save you and me.
Some of us may be like the Pharisee Nicodemus. We know the Scriptures. We were brought up in the church. But failing to believe and failing to worship in the Spirit we anger the holy God.
Others of us may be more like the Samaritan women. Our lives are outwardly sinful and we need lessons in the truths of the Scriptures.
But as in each of these cases, hope is not lost. God, through His Holy Spirit, makes believers out of all sorts of people so that it is no longer “Nicodemus the Pharisee” but “Nicodemus the Christian.” And it is no longer the “Samaritan Woman” but the “Christian Woman.” God raises up these believers for a purpose – that they will worship God in spirit and in truth.
Let us pray that God raises us up to worship Him in Spirit and in truth.