Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Exegetical Point: Jesus reveals himself as the messiah to a semi-jewish/pagan woman.
Homiletic Point: Jesus teaches us about himself so we can put our faith and trust in him.
Intro
Run around in the Sun? Thirsty
What happens if we don’t drink water?
Jesus offers us something like water, but better!
He quenches the thirst of our heart!
Nothing else in the world can do that - Books, food, friends, toys, even religious practice like reading your Bible and coming to church!
What we need is Jesus himself to give our thirsty hearts Living Water so that we can be satisfied in Him.
So that we can have Eternal Life.
If you want it, ask Jesus to give you Living Water.
Recap
John’s Gospel - Revealing Jesus as the Messiah.
As we have moved through the chapters Jesus has been revealed to wider and wider circles of people.
Same story today.
The pattern continues.
We need to cover a fair bit of historical information, but it helps to bring the story alive a show us the gravity of this conversation that Jesus has with the Samaritan woman.
Jesus teaches us 5 things about himself that helps us to put our faith and trust in him.
Jesus is Human (v1-8)
To get to this point after we need to cover some ground.
We start with the information that sets the scene:
Timeline: Jesus was from north Israel, had gone down to Jerusalem for Passover, then was baptizing in Judean countryside.
Now he’s headed back to his home region of Galilee in the north.
Why is he heading home?
We’re told that it was because Jesus had heard, that the Pharisees had heard, that Jesus ministry was outgrowing John the Baptist.
John the Baptist was already a concern to the authorities, if Jesus was growing bigger, then that would probably bring on conflict and crisis.
So heads north, homeward.
Not because he is afraid, but because it was not the time for confrontation.
The Gospel of John regularly raises the idea of “the Hour”, or “the time”, which refers to Jesus future climactic hour when he accomplishes our redemption.
But in this part of the historical story, Jesus knows that time is down the road, and so he lowers the temperature of his ministry by moving homeward.
But as you can see here, unless you wanted to take quite a big detour, you had to pass through this region called Samaria.
And that’s what Jesus did...
Had to?
Either it was a function of travel necessity (other options were unfeasible), or, it was God’s plan for Jesus as the obedient Son.
It’s actually both!
As part of God's divine plan Jesus would meet a woman at this well, on this day, for God’s glorious salvation design.
Why the concern about going through Samaria?
It’s not just an inconvenience - to Get to QLD you have to go through NSW - No, this travel route has spiritual significance.
If you’ve spent any time reading or watching about the conflict in Ukraine right now, you will have come across people saying “In order to understand this conflict, we need to go back 10 years, or 50 years or 200 years.”
That’s the case here.
In order to understand the issue with Samaria, we need to go back several hundred years.
The region was part of the promised Land - given by God to Jacob’s (Israel’s) decedents.
Jacob got to buy a tract of land there, but it would be his kids kids kids who got to live there.
Nonetheless Jacob’s bones were buried on the tract of land.
When the descendants entered the land, the people stood on two mountains to pronounce the blessings and the curses of the Moses Covenant.
If you obey, there will be blessings.
Rebellion meant terrible consequences .
The mountain of blessing was Mount Gerizim, right around the corner from Jacob's block of land.
The people didn’t obey the Covenant.
They rebelled.
God was patient and kind with them, but they continued in evil.
He brought judgment and wrath against His people.
By this time the land of Israel had divided into two kingdoms - Judah with it’s capital city Jerusalem, and Israel with it’s capital city Samaria.
The northern kingdom of Israel was the first to fall.
All the most important people of society were sent into exile by the Assyrians.
Everyone who was noble birth, educated, tradespeople, etc. Effectively anyone who could foment a uprising was shipped of and settled in a foreign land.
Other settlers were brought in by the Assyrians to live in the area that used to be Israel.
They settled down among the remaining Israelite people there and eventually intermarried.
So you had this group of people who had lost their distinctive Israelite identity, not because of ethnic mixing, but because of their compromises around faith.
Yet even so, many of them wanted to remain Israelites, and try to live by the Covenant of Moses.
They held onto the first five books of the OT, the Torah.
And they tried to live by them.
These people became known as Samaritans, because of the area they were from in the Region of Samaria.
When many of the Israelites returned to their land after exile, they didn’t recognize the Samaritans as true Israelites.
They saw them as having given up their distinct identity by intermarrying with other nations.
So there arose a fair bit of animosity between the two groups.
Israelites, now referred to as Jews, considered Samaritans essentially as pagans or gentiles, that is people who are outside God’s spiritual family.
While the animosity was primarily related to religious matters, racial/ethnic issues would have been tied up in it all.
So it was a big deal to travel through Samaritan territory.
Even though it was historically part of Israel, it was now considered occupied territory, inhabited by unclean cultists.
Yet, Jesus had to go there.
It was the best route to Galilee.
And....
Jesus was a man.
He needed to rest his human body.
He needed a drink of water.
They had to walk everywhere.
Carts, chariots and horses were only for the wealthy.
Most people walked.
And Jesus got tired.
Jesus is the Son of God!
He has unlimited access to the Holy Spirit!
Yet he was a human just like us who grew tired, and needed to rest.
This gives us great comfort, to know that Jesus Christ is not some far off and unfeeling Savior, no, he is a man, who has walked a mile, or two, in our shoes.
He has known our frailty.
He has lived through our temptations.
Jesus need to stop and rest.
He is Human.
He had to walk and travel and drink water to quench his thirst.
Jesus Gives Living Water (v9-15)
So Jesus the man, needs to rest and have a drink.
They have stopped right near the block of land that Jacob had passed to his son.
There is a well there that most people believed Jacob had dug to supply his flocks.
A lady came over to use the well.
And he asks the lady: “could I have some water?”
That last line is probably better translated “Jews do not share dishes with Samaritans” - it may be in a little footnote in your Bible.
Either translation drives home a stark point here - Jesus is doing something that we might call “culturally insensitive”.
Jesus is crossing the bounds of social norms.
As we said, the Jews considered the Samaritans unclean.
So to mix with them, or to share a drinking cup, would make you ceremonially unclean in their eyes!
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