Living Water
Lent • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 7 viewsThis weekis the Third Sunday in Lent, and we'll be looking at Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus strikes up a converstation, asking for water. As she meets his physical need of thirst, he begins talking about her spiritual thirst, and by the end of the chapter, her testimony has lead many in the town to faith in Jesus.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
I love the book of John. I don’t know why, but the way John tells the stories of the life of Christ just really intrigue me. He doesn’t just present history, he talks about relationships. And this is one of many of my favorite stories. Partly because of the success of his teaching here in Samaria, and the unconventional way he reached out. He starts with a woman who is reluctant to even give him a glass of water, and he winds up convincing many in this town that he is the Messiah.
But I like it for more than that, too. There is an irony here. Last week we saw Nicodemus, a very devout, very religious man, but he didn’t understand, he didn’t get it, and he left still in his sin, still thinking he was justified, but he was lost. Here we see a woman at the well, a woman of questionable moral character, a Samaritan no less, but she gets it! She understands. In fact in her joy, she opens the door for many others in her village to hear the good news.
Some Background
Let’s look at the story. He approaches this town by speaking to a woman at the well. Women and men just didn’t speak to each other. It was one of those cultural taboos. It just didn’t happen. And it takes her a little by surprise, too. Her response was that, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.” I get a kick out of the fact that she brings the Jew/Samaritan angle into it, but she adds, I’m a Samaritan woman. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a woman, why are you talking to me?
Today we don’t think anything about this, our culture is totally different, but in that place and in that time, this conversation should have never happened. In verse 27, it said, “Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, ‘What do you want’, or ‘Why are you talking with her?’” It sounds from the way that John wrote this that would have been the normal reaction. What does she want? Why are you talking with her?
And in reading the story, it not only happened with a woman, but she was a Samaritan woman! Jews and Samaritans didn’t have anything to do with each other. Mark Ellingsen wrote a book called Preparation and Manifestation, and he wrote, “The most direct route north to Galilee was through the region of Samaria. Yet a good Jew of Jesus' day would often be inclined to avoid this region. The problem with Samaria was the people who lived there. They were not good Jews. They were not pure Jews by heredity; they were Jews who had been ethnically mixed over generations of mixed marriages with the Arab race. The people of Samaria were not even faithfully practicing the Hebrew religion, but were mixing Judaism with vestiges of their earlier roots in pagan religions. Such religious practices made them (ritually) impure in the eyes of a Jew of Jesus' day. When it came to religious and social matters it was better for a Jew to avoid them.”
So this gives you a little bit of the context behind this passage, and I think that when we understand the context here, it really is a remarkable story. There are a few things that I want to look at in particular in this passage.
Will You Give Me A Drink?
We see the first in John 4: 7,
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”
It doesn’t say that he was thirsty. It says he sat down to rest, maybe he was thirsty, or maybe he was just making conversation. We can learn from this that tending to physical needs will often open the door to discuss spiritual needs. So He lets her tend to a physical need that he has, quenching his thirst, so that He can go on from there to talk about spiritual needs, quenching her spiritual thirst.
She questions this a little bit, and He directs the conversation to spiritual needs, “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.” This only confuses her because she’s still talking about the physical need of getting a drink of water, and He jumps way ahead and brings up living water, she has no idea what He’s talking about. But the point I want to bring out is that Jesus often met people’s physical needs by bringing some kind of healing to them, before He speaks about spiritual things. In this case, He lets her meet a physical need by getting Him a glass of water, before speaking of spiritual things.
Remember this. Matthew 25 talks about Jesus being hungry or thirsty, or naked or sick or in prison, and they met His needs. When they question this, He says, “whatever you did for the least of these my brothers of mine, you did for me.” So we know from this that it’s important that we meet these physical needs whenever we see them, anytime we come across somebody in need, we should be looking for a way to help, because serving others in need is a way of serving Jesus. And ultimately our motivation is to serve Jesus.
Why is this so important? Because after His resurrection and just before He is taken into heaven, He tells them, and this is Mark’s version of the Great Commission, 16:15,“Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” That simply means that we should be sharing our faith. And in this morning’s reading, we see that if we find a way to talk about physical needs, that may open the door for us to talk about spiritual needs, and we can share the good news we’ve found.
Years ago, Jamie Tyrell, a presbyterian pastor near where I was serving, spoke about a mission trip to Cambodia. He quoted 1 Peter 3:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” If we are daily living our lives filled with God’s joy and hope, we will be different, and people will want to know why. And they’ll ask you. The church is growing rapidly there, because Christians have joy and hope, and the world around them doesn’t. People see their faith, and the difference it makes. And they’re open to that faith when they see it. It’s no different here. Most people are open to faith if they see it lived out, if they see a difference in our lives. Do you know why you believe? Does your faith make a difference in your life? Can others see that difference? Are you ready with an answer when they ask?
2. Living Water Quenches a Thirsty Soul
The second point that I wanted to make can be found in verses 13 and 14. He is talking about this water that He can offer. He points to the well, and says, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” That’s the living water that quenches a thirsty soul.
I know I’ve told you this story before, but when I was just starting seminary, They had this all-seminary retreat. During the retreat we were sent out on a prayer walk, and I was walking along this dry creek bed and I saw the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. It was a waterfall – in a dry creek bed! Evidently the water was flowing just underground, just under the rocks that I was walking on, and I didn’t even know it.
There was this three foot high waterfall, and a pool of water about 12 feet round under the falls, then the water vanished again, evidently running back underground. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen. I just stood there staring at it for several minutes, then this verse came to mind. The idea that Jesus gives us living water, and that this was living water. And the verse we read this morning, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The message was clear to me. Trust in Jesus, and the living water that he gives. Three and a half years later, right on schedule, I graduated seminary, still working full time, still finding time for things with the family, I even started pastoring in Clifton Springs within a few months of starting school. Problems are out there. We can concentrate on them, letting our fears defeat us, or we can trust in the living water Jesus offers, and let him lead us through. Not around, we don’t bypass problems when we become Christians. But through Jesus, we can get through them.
3. Worship in Spirit & Truth
The next point is in verse 21, “Jesus declared, ‘Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” I want to make sure that we grasp that the time is here when the worshipers the Father seeks worship in spirit and truth. How do we do this? How do we worship in spirit and truth?
I think it refers us to the trinity. We worship God the Father through the Spirit and through the Son. We worship in the Spirit when our spirits connect with God’s Holy Spirit. When we truly open our hearts and allow God access to our spirit, our innermost being. When we connect. There is an emotional connection. I don’t know about you, but I feel that connection in some of our contemporary songs. There is a sense of truly being in God’s presence, of that spiritual connectedness. Sometimes we come to worship very guarded, and we don’t open our hearts – and when we don’t, we don’t worship in the Spirit. We have to open ourselves up completely, we have to become totally vulnerable, totally surrendered, to worship in the Spirit.
I think we worship in truth when we worship in the name of Jesus. When we enter into God’s presence in the name of Jesus. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The reason we can’t get to the Father except through Jesus is because Jesus is the one who went to the cross for our sins. Without Jesus, we’re still in our sins, and that sin separates us from God. We have no claim to a relationship with God except through Jesus, who is the truth. We can only come to God through Jesus. In the name of Jesus.
I dare say that if you come to church to do the right things, and to say the right things at the right time, to sing the right songs at the right times, to sit back and listen to a message, and then go home, then you’ve missed what it means to worship in spirit and in truth. But if you come here fully expecting to enter into the presence of the living God, to feel his presence and his reassurance, to open your hearts completely to him, not just being here for worship, but actively participating in worship, then you’ve understood this idea. We need to cling to Christ, cling to the truth. And to earnestly desire to enter into his presence. That’s how we worship in spirit and in truth.
4. Messiah is Here.
The last point I want to bring out is found in verse 25, “The woman said, ‘I know that Messiah’ (called Christ) ‘is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.’” The Samaritan’s didn’t believe in the prophets. They held to the Pentateuch, Genesis through Deuteronomy. The prophets and the Psalms talk a lot about a coming Messiah, but even in Deuteronomy in 18:18, we see the promise, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.” So even the Samaritan’s, though they didn’t believe the prophets, still believed the promise of the coming Messiah.
Jesus replies, “I who speak to you am he.” The more literal translation is, “I am – who speaks to you. The New NIV gets it a little better than the older one that I use. The HCSB says, “I am he, Jesus told him, the one speaking to you.” The NLT says, “Then Jesus told her, I am the Messiah.”
When Yahweh is translated from Hebrew into Greek, it literally becomes, “I am.” When Moses asked God His name, he was told, “I am.” When she talks about the coming Messiah, It’s like Jesus says, “Yes, I know who you’re talking about, his name is I am. You’re speaking to him.”
Jesus is the Messiah. This woman at the well spoke to the Messiah. And He explained everything to her. And He is available to us, too. We can unload our hearts on him, and he will explain everything to us. The woman at the well found her Messiah. And she was saved. And by her testimony the entire village was saved!