Who knows you?
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One of the hardest parts in sharing a sermon is thinking about how to begin. How do I hold your interest in something so vitally important that if you really consider it, really deeply think about it, let it seek down in to your soul it will change your life.
A new friend of mine, Austin, from Gravity Lodi, who came and helped put up the lights yesterday, said he wanted to share stories of people in the Bible that people who were hurting today could relate to, not the high and might Moses, David, or Abraham but people who really struggled. I immediately thought of the person whose story I am going to share with you today.
This is about a woman so relatable that we had to put her in our Christmas light display. We have to share this story of Jesus and we need to know it as much or more than we need to know about the shepherds and the wise men.
Because when real life hits, when people remind you of how bad you have acted in your life, when you feel the guilt that overwhelms, or the anxiety telling you that you don’t matter. This encounter with Jesus can let you know how great Jesus really is as God and how important He is in your life.
But before we get to the person we could all relate to we first need to encounter what Jesus was going through when the story begins
At one point early in Jesus ministry, many, many were coming to him. If you judge success by how many people are coming and listening to you,and Jesus’ enemies certainly did judge success as fame, people were making Jesus successful. If you don’t know Jesus wasn’t about fame. Jesus wasn’t seeking the most possible followers. Jesus was both human and God and one of his priorities was to show us how we are to live as followers of God.
It’s a trip to think but in teaching sometimes the best way to show student’s how to do something is to do it yourself and let them watch. Jesus did that for us. He even said so. In this verse he refers to himself as the Son.
19 So Jesus explained himself at length. “I’m telling you this straight. The Son can’t independently do a thing, only what he sees the Father doing. What the Father does, the Son does.
Yes Jesus, God the son, followed what God the Father was doing. We too are to follow what God is doing.
At this point in the ministry of Jesus, God was still telling us who He was and did not wish to do battle with those in political authority. That would come later. So we come into the true story of Jesus in a very surprising time. He is gaining in popularity but decides to leave where he is at because the political leaders, the Pharisees, are getting to notice in a bad way, his rising fame.
1 Jesus realized that the Pharisees were keeping count of the baptisms that he and John performed 2 (although his disciples, not Jesus, did the actual baptizing). They had posted the score that Jesus was ahead, turning him and John into rivals in the eyes of the people. 3 So Jesus left the Judean countryside and went back to Galilee.
4 To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. 5 He came into Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon.
Here are the facts. Jesus and the disciples are getting out of town, not quite on the run but they know people are getting angry about them. Jesus knows this is not the time for that fight, and he is leaving to go home.
But interestingly he does something weird.
He goes to a place where people like him tried to avoid.
Here is the map and the area in purple is called Samaria. There where people different than the Jewish people. They were disliked, disrespected by both sides. Prejudice and bigotry based on how you look, where you live, and what your culture is really old.
Jesus doesn’t skip this area, he doesn’t walk around like most people of his race would do. He goes right into it.
Ever heard someone in Lodi tell you they hate coming to Stockton?
Yes, the people like Jesus hated going to Samaria.
So Jesus left the green part of the map where Jerusalem is because people were starting to get mad at him and then headed to the orange area, his and many of his disciples hometown And they chose to go through the purple area, Samaria.
They walked somewhere between 40 and 65 miles. That’s like walking from the church to Sacramento or Roseville.
So Jesus came to a well and sat down. The well was a spring, where fresh cold water comes up from the ground. They were vital to people as they would come to get water for everything as there was no indoor plumbing. Usually water would be received for the family in the coolness of morning and days end. Yet travelers might certainly stop to get water.
6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon.
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
“Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, 8 because his disciples had gone into town to buy food.
This was weird. Women usually traveled in groups. For some reason no other women were with her. It was dangerous for her. In this day, sexual purity mattered a lot to everyone, not just people who wanted to please God. So women traveling together could protect themselves from men.
Jesus desiring a drink wasn’t necessarily different but thousands of years ago, the same man later bought this well in a land far off met his future wife by helping her get water for her sheep at a well.
Now this woman is asked for water by Jesus.
9 “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
Yes, everybody knew the rule. Yet Jesus doesn’t care what people say about who you can hang out with. It wasn’t because Samaritans loved Jesus either. At a later time a who village of Samaritans wouldn’t let Jesus stay with them.
Jesus loves you. Jesus loves the poor black, mexican, asian, hispanic, white, italian, irish, rich, middle class, living in a mansion to living in the projects to living in a box, to living in someone else’s tent! Jesus loves you! Jesus will talk with you! Jesus will even share with you.
Jesus loves you. That’s how we know love so we ought to do love that way too! Right followers of Jesus?
Are we to love people we find weird, different, people who don’t even like us? Yes, Jesus did.
But Jesus kept the work of God as most important even in how he responded to a reminder of racism.
10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”
Jesus sitting right there, God himself, if God was sitting outside a gas station and said buy me a soda. But you didn’t recognize him, then he said, “If you knew who I was, you would ask me to give you the winning power ball numbers.”
What would have changed in your life if you got close to a billion dollars?
A lot of you work or live in places with people who frustrate you, maybe even hate you. With a billion dollars you don’t have to work with them anymore.
Jesus was offering a source of incredible change to this woman.
11 “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’?
Great question right?
12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”
She went back to the questions behind the racism. Samaritans were partly Jewish. Hundreds of years earlier they had been invaded and other races were forced to live there so the Jews in Galilee and Judea regarded them as not completely Jewish, impure. Racism is always hard to understand but it has roots in history. All of us have been afffected by racism, in how we think, what we have, how we react, even having to be conscious of it so that we don’t act as a racist.
Yet, here Jesus is getting accused of once again trying to be a person putting Samaritans down.
13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
This is a metaphor but its a powerful metaphor. God will supply us with eternal life. If you commit your life to Jesus the promise that Jesus gave this woman is the same promise He gives you. Your life could be dramatically different.
You know though, most of us can’t relate to what it means to be promised living water. We take indoor plumbing for granted. I don’t even know how to use a well, and have never got water by pumping it out of the ground unlike Dave. Instead if Jesus offered me water I might be like, I have water Jesus, see sink, turn on, I’m good. I live a priviledged life and with privilidge I can forget about the amazing truths of God. We who follow Jesus can forget how real they are and what a difference they make to our lives.
I saw this video recently thanks to Helen Gamez, who didn’t even realize I think but facebook put it up on my feed because she liked it and I enjoyed it too. It shows us what it means to be living with living water, eternal life.
Video
14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
If you are a follower of Jesus the same offer that Jesus gives this woman is the same truth in your life. Don’t forget and start living in the hope and faith in its promise.
The woman didn’t have this hope and see what she says in reponse
15 “Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”
She wants it bad.
16 “Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.”
This acutally would be pretty natural for the customs of the day as a contract wouldn’t be made with a woman, it would be made through her husband. But Jesus used this question as a way to give the big reveal.
17 “I don’t have a husband,” she answered.
“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’ ” Jesus said. 18 “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
She is living a sexually immoral lifestyle. Jesus shows that while he has never met her in his life, he knows her. He is someone different than she has ever known.
He doesn’t desire to harm her, punish her, instead he has already offered her eternal life. He is asking to deal with her honestly, openly. We don’t have to hide what we have done from Jesus. Jesus doesn’t come to say well that’s who you are and you are not one of mine. He doesn’t say to her your an immoral adulterous samaritan woman instead He just tells her that what she says is true but the offer of living water, of eternal life still is there.
19 “Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
The woman, not Jesus, tries to hide behind a reilgious debate. She is arguing wiht him over the holiness of worshipping in Jerusalem or on the mountain in Samaria, yet she herself already admitted she doesn’t worship with her lifestyle. It doesn’t matter if she worships on a mountain, in the temple or only under a full moon, she doesn’t have a lifestyle that truly cares about what God wants.
Jesus confronts exactly that not just with her but with all of us who would rather talk about religion than learn to love God and live in His ways of loving Him and loving others.
21 Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”
Truth, there was a time when location mattered but then and now what matters is the acceptance of putting our full hope, our full faith in Jesus. My friends what is an example of faith?
Your rear end in the chair.
Mark Lowry knowing that he has eternal life.
25 The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”
27 Just then his disciples arrived, and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”
Jesus revealed that he is God with us, the Messiah, the deliverer, right when the disciples got back from town.
30 They left the town and made their way to him.
31 In the meantime the disciples kept urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
32 But he said, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”
33 The disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?”
34 “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work,” Jesus told them.
You who are already followers of Jesus know this, we are about to experience thanksgiving, we are going to gather here next Sunday and we are going to eat, a lot.
If you want that kind of feeling but not with food but instead with blessings of God, with the understanding that God is real and working in your life, than do what God has called you to do.
I don’t mean behave. It seems like when I ask people about how they are with God they will talk about behaving, that they aren’t doing the addictions they used to or are doing less, Or they are praying or reading the Bible. Those are good and really basics. I mean I don’t ask any of you if you used the big potty, because I expect that of you. It’s the basics. If your only sign of spiritual maturity is that you aren’t killing people or any other obvious sins than it’s like your bragging about being potty trained.
God has called each of us to a purpose to jobs that involve loving God and loving others. Places of ministry and this is the right time to discover what they are for you follower of Jesus.
35 “Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, and then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, because they are ready for harvest. 36 The reaper is already receiving pay and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. 37 For in this case the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap what you didn’t labor for; others have labored, and you have benefited from their labor.”
39 Now many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of what the woman said when she testified, “He told me everything I ever did.”
40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 Many more believed because of what he said. 42 And they told the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said, since we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.”
43 After two days he left there for Galilee.