John 4:7-26 (Sin, Shame, and Spiritual Confusion)

The Deadly Effects of Sin Compared to a Snake Bite

When a human being is bitten by a black mamba, it begins with extreme tingling within seconds of the wound actually being inflicted. It works its way throughout the body, and this is accompanied by a metallic taste in your mouth, along with neurological issues, drooping eyelids, blurred vision, and eventually complete paralysis if it's not treated.

If it's not treated quickly with a tourniquet and antivenom, some of the most dangerous side effects happen within minutes, and then within hours, you're gone. It's considered to be one of the most poisonous snakes in the world, especially on the continent of Africa, and you may be wondering, why did I begin a sermon that way?

Well, in our sin, we've been wounded by that, but yet there's consequences that come from it. It's not just the wound of sin that happens. See, Adam and Eve originally ventured away from God, and they got too close to the snake, and he used their own desires against them to poison them, and he watched as they ate to their own demise, but it wasn't just that.

You see, their sin was the beginning of it, but then came along with that, there was shame, and there was confusion. Confusion. One decision to rebel against the command of God unleashed a toxic venom upon the soul, causing instant spiritual death, causing distant physical death, and it led to a diseased heart, a toxic mind, a corrupted will, and it caused permanent isolation from God, which was accompanied with deep, abiding shame and spiritual confusion.

That's what sin is. There's no anti-venom when it comes to human beings trying to fix themselves. Sin, shame, and spiritual confusion are not just a part of the person who sins, but they're transferred.

That's what makes it infinitely worse than a snake bite. You see, a snake bite affects just the host, the one who's bitten, the one who unwisely gets too close, or the one who accidentally reaches his hand into the brush.

Sin is infinitely worse, though, because it's transferred from one generation to the next. See, Adam and Eve's children were infected with the same sin that they unleashed upon the world, and their children after them, and you have the whole human race now being inflicted by this thing called sin, which is wreaking havoc in our world, heaping more and more guilt and shame and spiritual confusion upon the population of man.

That's the downside, which is a light way of putting it, the biblical narrative. It's a pervasive element that all of us cannot escape, and it's impacted every single human being that has ever lived except for one.

That's where we get to the good news. Sin has impacted everybody but Jesus Christ, who is eternally God, who entered into time and space through the womb of a virgin. He was set apart by God to bring the antidote of sin to the people of God.

John 1 Through 4: The Rejected Savior Comes to the Rejected

Now, that takes us to John 1. It's been a couple weeks since we were in John, so I'll give a very, very light introduction or recap of what we've been doing. John 1 introduces us to the eternal God who sets foot into the stage of man.

John 2 sees him preaching, teaching, and cleansing in the capital city of Jerusalem, because Jesus was sent to Israel, the people of God, and yet it says that they rejected him. We see in John 3 that he's talking to one of the key leaders in the city, and he's talking about theology with him, and he's teaching him what it means to actually be healed of your sin, but that religious leader also rejected Jesus.

His name was Nicodemus. And what we see is in John 1 through 3, we see the Savior of the world coming to the world, the world that is broken, and the world that is lost, and the one that is needing a healer, and yet they reject him.

John 1 through 3 is repeatedly about the rejection of the coming of the Son. He who made the world came to it, and they rejected him. That's what John 1 says. And then we see in John 4 that Jesus' ministry now shifts, because he went to Jerusalem, he went to Israel and was rejected, and John 4, his ministry now is shifting to Samaria.

It's shifting towards Galilee, which is an interesting theological point that I don't want us to miss, because instead of Jesus just being about the chosen people, the ones who thought that they were the chosen people of God, he came to save the rejected.

He didn't just come to save the powerful, he came to save the weak. He didn't just come to save the beloved Israel, he came to the hated Samaritans and the downtrodden Gentiles and everyone in between.

He doesn't just come to the noble men at the city gate, he comes to an ignoble woman at a well. If he can save a woman like her and the people that we're going to look at in the weeks ahead, he can save anyone.

If he can save a man like the apostle Paul, he can save anyone. Our God is a God who saves not just the high and the lofty, but those who are low, and that is good news for all of us, because the more you know of who you are, the more you know of your sin, the more you realize that only Jesus Christ can save you.

Only he can reach down and grab you and pull you out. This is good news. Now, it's in this encounter today that we're going to see the full power of Jesus's healing on display. We're going to see a woman who has three major problems in her life, sin, shame and spiritual confusion.

And her way of dealing with that is through running and hiding. And Jesus's way of dealing that is confronting it head on and showing her the gospel. So let's turn to John 4, 7 through 26. We're going to read those passages together and we're going to unpack what's happening in this narrative.

There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Therefore, the Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you being a Jew, you have asked me for a drink since I'm a Samaritan woman?

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it was who said to you to give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

She said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are you? Who gave us the well to drink of it himself and his sons and his cattle?

And Jesus answered and said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst. But the water I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.

And the woman said to him, sir, give me this water so I will not be thirsty. Nor come all the way here to draw. And he said to her, go call your husband and come here. And the woman answered and said, I have no husband.

Jesus said to her, you have correctly said, I have no husband for you have had five husbands and the one whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive you are a prophet.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain. You people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me. An hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the father.

You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews, but an hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth. For such people, the father seeks to be his worshipers.

God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The woman said to him, I know Messiah is coming. He who is called Christ. When that one comes, he will declare all things to us.

And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you, am he let's pray. Lord, I pray that you bless your word. I pray that you'd bless the delivery and the preaching of your word. And Lord, I pray that we would uncover and that we would seek out the things that you want us to seek today.

Lord, I pray for anyone who is here, who is like this woman who is dealing with the damaging and paralyzing effects of sin and shame and confusion that were just like you offered to this woman 2000 years ago, you would offer to us the same well of living water, the same trusted supply.

Or for all of us who are in Christ, that well is within us and springing up to eternal life. Lord, I pray that we would not neglect the well of living water that you have placed within us. Lord, I pray that we would not go thirsty when we've been planted by an infinite supply.

And Lord, for anyone who is not in Christ, either here or listening. To this later, Lord, I pray that you would convict their hearts of the sin that alienates them from you. The Lord, you would burden their hearts for the shame that keeps them from you.

And Lord, I pray that you would. Illuminate their mind so that they could see and not be left in confusion, but would run to you and would run to your cross. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. The purpose of today's message or the structure of today's message is three parts.

We're going to first look at the problem. This woman has three problems. It's sin, shame and spiritual confusion. So we're going to look at those problems that she has. The second part of the sermon is going to deal with her attempts to solve those problems through hiding and through running and through giving into her shame.

The third part of the sermon is going to be looking at Christ's perfect solution on how Christ perfectly deals with our sin. Christ perfectly heals our shame and Christ perfectly illuminates us to where we can see the truth of God.

So the first is the problem. Sin is the universal problem of all human beings. We know that we're sinners. Apostle Paul tells us in the most clear terms that have ever been given, all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God.

There is no one that is righteous, not even one. I believe it's the clearest passage whatsoever on the fallenness of the human condition and how we are all in this general category of people who are alienated from God.

But in this passage, we don't get to see it just from the general approach. We get to see it from the specific. Here we have a woman who is dealing with specific sins at a specific time, and she's interacting with a specific man, Christ.

The text says that she says she's had five husbands, which means that she's walked through five broken marriages. She's had five marriages that ended bitterly in divorce. She's had five ongoing acts of serial adultery because the Samaritans believed the first five books of the Old Testament, and they believe that if you were divorced, then you were in adultery with five different men.

The final one, the sixth man was not her husband at all. It was her boyfriend. She was living with now the not so subtle suggestion in the text. Is it that she was practicing and given over to sexual immorality?

It wasn't that she was just committing a few acts of sexual immorality in her time, in her society, because they believed what the Old Testament said about holiness and purity and about all of those things she would have been looked at as a sexually immoral person, not just that she did stuff, but that she was her sin as part of her identity.

And the problem was not just her sin. Kind of like the problem is not just the snake bite. If the snake bite gave you two new holes in your body, that's bad enough, but it's the venom that enters into your veins and causes paralyzing consequences.

Her sin caused paralyzing consequences in her life, namely shame and spiritual confusion. Shame is the first one that we deal with in this narrative. It says, so he came, that's Jesus to a city of Samaria called Sychar near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph and Jacob's well was there.

So Jesus being wearied from his journey was sitting thus by the well. And it was about the sixth hour, noontime, hottest part of the day. And there came a woman of Samaria to draw. Now this tells us right away that Jesus was interacting with a woman who was ridden with shame.

This is a shame ridden woman because women went in groups to the well, women went with other women in the morning when it wasn't so hot to the well because the stone that covered the well was heavy and they wanted help to be able to move it because it was dangerous for women at this time to travel alone, especially miles away from their town.

This well was not the closest well to their town, so she's going out of her way to remain hidden. And going with a group was just a part of the social fabric of what it meant to live in the first century, especially for a woman.

You got to participate in conversations, you got to participate in catching up on how so and so's children are doing and how their husband hasn't done this or done that or however many other things that they talk about on those trips.

I wasn't there, but this woman was alone, totally alone. She would have had to move the stone by herself. She would have been vulnerable to robbers and men who who lie in wait for women who are traveling alone on the road.

She would have been vulnerable to isolation to the elements. She was by herself. She had no one to hear her stories. She had no one to wipe away her tears. She had no one to listen to her struggles. I don't know if you've ever had a moment in your life where you've been totally alone with no one to turn to.

This was her life every day of her life. And you might ask yourself, why didn't she just decide to just go with the women? Why go out of her way? Well, if you've ever dealt with the paralyzing effects of shame and if you've ever had people who constantly pummel you with your shame, then you'll realize that all of the pain and all of the suffering that she's going through out of her way to be alone in her mind probably looked better than being with the people who reminded her of all of her misery.

The very fact that she's out here by herself means that she has chosen to remain unnoticed. Now, again, the culture that she lived in in Samaria followed strict sexuality codes and they followed the biblical code of holiness, rightly so, but in her society, because she didn't conform to those standards, she would have been utterly ashamed.

This is an honor-shame culture where everything that you do increases your honor or decreases into your shame. Now you think about it, after her first divorce, the word around town's already started.

People were whispering behind her back and now her social capital has decreased because now she's an adulterer. So the only type of husband that she can marry now as an adulteress and as someone who's been divorced is an immoral man.

And then she gets divorced again and you start to see her de-elevation in society. Every time she gets a divorce, a new low happens in the type of men who would marry her because a honorable and respectable man would not marry her in this society.

There would be no redemption for her. So she would go further and further and further down the social strata into where she's in a league of her own. You can imagine the whispers that were happening in the town.

You can imagine the wives giving her that look as she walks through town, don't look at my husband. You can imagine the Hebrew phrases, we have them in English too, that are said just loud enough to where someone can hear, but just quiet enough to where it seems like you're actually trying to be quiet about it.

Ringing in her perfect ears. You can imagine her feeling like a total and utter outcast. And after a while, after trying to connect with these women, after trying to have relationships with them, what do you do?

You check out, you give up, and you accept that your life is going to be alone. And that's what this lady has done. She stopped trying, she stopped showing up, and she went into hiding. She embraced her shame.

Now, we might look at this woman today and say that her shame was a product of her environment, that she was beaten up so badly that she was living in shame, but that's not true because we can, if we imagine that there was such a society where she would be the most popular person in her town, where people would be cheering for her as she had multiple and multiple more divorces, she would still have shame there too.

It would just look different. And we know that because of the celebrity culture in America. Men and women today living immoral lives out in the public eye with adoring, cheering fans are some of the most miserable people that you can ever meet.

They're miserable inside. They're broken and they're given over to shame. Your social strata doesn't affect shame because shame follows sin. And if all people have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, then shame is the necessary symptom of sin.

Her sin looked different because she was in a society that was pummeling her, but everyone who sins has shame. That's the clearest teaching of scripture. And in Adam and Eve, they sinned and immediately they realized they were naked and what they hid.

They didn't have anyone else throwing rocks at them and have anyone else hurling insults at them. The consequence happens. Sin leads to shame, which leads to spiritual confusion. Those are the three problems she's facing, and those are the three universal problems that all of us face today.

Jesus Exposes Sin, Shame, and Spiritual Confusion at the Well

Now, you can imagine when this shame ridden woman walks up and she sees a religious Jew and she's now got a shame inducing situation. That everything within her is going to want to avoid. Jesus says to her, give me a drink for his disciples had gone away.

So here you have this woman who's trying to avoid people, the hottest part of the day should have been no one there. And there's not just a woman in the town who's looked down on her. There's not just a Samaritan religious leader who has forbid her from going into their synagogue.

You have a religious Jew. At the top of the judgmental pyramid in that day, Jews and Samaritans hated each other. I mean, you try to strain yourself to get examples of this. You think about in our country's history, white supremacist and Black Panthers, like that's the kind of hatred that this these two people groups had for each other.

And the Jews believed that they were descendants of Abraham, the true descendants of Abraham. They believed that they were the ones who had the law of God. And they looked down their noses on everyone else, especially the Samaritans.

The very best Samaritans in the Samaritan culture were treated like they were an illegitimate race. They were treated like a plague that they were supposed to be avoided. So you can imagine when you have a woman at the lowest rung of the condemned society interacting with a man at the pinnacle of the powerful society and you get a picture of what this woman is thinking, what she's feeling.

I really believe that this woman would have avoided this encounter altogether if she had water to make it through the day. She wouldn't have went that far out of her way at that time of day in the heart of the day if she didn't need to be there.

So you can just imagine her mustering up the confidence to have this encounter, mustering up the courage. I'm getting ready to go through another moment of shame. I'm getting ready to have another man tell me that I'm damaged goods, that I'm broken.

You can almost hear her defensiveness when she says, how is it that you being a Jew ask me for a drink? Since I'm a Samaritan woman, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans, is what John tells us. You can hear the defensiveness in her tone.

You can almost hear her saying, are you kidding me? Is this a game? Are you mocking me right now, asking me for a drink? Can't you see that I'm a Samaritan? Don't your people hate us? Can't you see that I'm a woman?

You're a religious male. You'll never talk to me in public. Why are you talking to me now? What is going on? Why are you asking me for a drink? What do you want from me? You see, this woman's sin left her so deeply broken and so ashamed that the only recourse she had is she wanted to hide.

And you think who could blame her at this point? But what Jesus does is Jesus looks at her and he exposes her sin. First of all, he says, you know, in a little bit, he's going to say that you have a husband.

He knows her sin. He exposes her shame in this encounter, and he also exposes her spiritual confusion. Look at what he says. Jesus answered her and said, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that says to you, give me a drink, then you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

What Jesus is saying is if you knew the gift of God, then you would know me. And if you knew me, then you would find everything that you have ever been searching for, for all of your life in me. But because you don't know me, you're still lost in your sin.

You're still broken in your shame and you're still fumbling around in your spiritual confusion, having no idea where to find healing. Jesus is a little bit direct with her here, but Jesus is still not fully direct yet.

He's not fully told her exactly what it is that she needs to do. He's still peeling back the layers. You see, she thought she was coming there today to draw out water, but in the sovereignty of God, she was coming there to be drawn out by Christ little by little, layer by layer, and Jesus wisely is answering her in such a way to keep her in the conversation, to keep her focused on the topic and to bring her to the point where she's going to understand the truth deep inside the well of her soul exists.

These three problems, sin, shame, and spiritual confusion. And Jesus is methodically dealing with each and every one of one of them. But again, she doesn't understand. She says, sir, you have nothing to draw out the water with.

She still thinks that this is about physical water and who can blame her. She's human. Jesus just said, I'm going to give you living water. Now in that day, in that time, living water meant running water.

It wasn't a spiritual phrase back then. It wasn't like, ooh, living water. Let me have some of that. It just meant water that was flowing. It meant water that was not in a pond. We get the word dead sea because it was stagnant water that was sitting there that had an intake, but not an outtake.

Imagine if you as a human had an intake, but not an outtake, you would be toxic too. You'll get that in a second. The dead sea's dead because it doesn't have an outtake. It can't be clean. Ponds are dirty because it's stagnant water that is just sitting there.

When I grew up as a kid, people would make jokes and say, oh, that kid must have drank pond water as a kid. And you kind of knew what that meant. It's dead waters, diseased water. It will hurt you. It will harm you.

This is what living water actually means is that it's water that's flowing, flowing across the rocks and flowing into the sand and being filtered so that you can actually drink it and so that you can get life from it.

That's what living water meant. So when Jesus says he's going to give her living water, she's looking around and she's like, where's your bucket? I don't see it. Maybe she thinks that Jesus has drawn water before she got there, but he has nothing to produce.

Maybe she thought that he got better for a well from a water from a well that he thought was better than the one that she was at. He has no water to show for it. And she's probably thinking, okay, mister, I'm too smart for what you're doing here.

I'm not going to be conned by you. I'm not going to be played by you. You can expect me to believe all you want that you've got this living water, but I don't see any evidence of it. You're not going to play me for the fool.

I, the Bible doesn't say that's what she's saying, but that's kind of what I think she's saying. But the irony is, is that she totally missed what Jesus was saying. She thought he was talking about water that would quench her thirst.

Jesus was talking about eternal water that would touch her soul, that would save her, that would redeem her, that will wipe away all her sins, that would cleanse her from her shame, and that would illuminate her mind so that she would never be confused again.

She misunderstood the source. She had no idea she was standing right in front of the fount of living water. She had no idea she was standing in front of the living, breathing, walking, talking God, man.

And because of that, she, like Nicodemus, stumbled over the details. It's an interesting fact, too. I didn't share this earlier. John three is about a religious man who doesn't get it. John four is about an irreligious woman who doesn't get it.

We all need God's help in order to understand the truth. She also misunderstands the value of his person. She says, you're not greater than our father, Jacob, are you, who gave us this well to drink and his sons and his cattle?

At this time period, there was a hotly contested debate on who got to claim ownership to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Samaritans said, no, no, no, no. We're the real children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not you Jews.

And the Jews were like, what are you talking about? We're the pure race of Israel that came from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We're the ones that really love Moses. And they're like, no, no, no, we do. And it was just really hotly contested debate.

So when she says you are not greater than our father, Jacob, she's saying, hey, listen here, Jewish man, you're not greater than our father. It's this kind of a dig, I think she's she's kind of weighing in on the debate subtly.

Her mind is still confused on what's actually happening here. She was standing in front of the person who looked Jacob right in the eyes and wrestled him. And he said, I've wrestled with God. She's looking right at the one who bowed down and worshipped Isaac, who bowed down and worshipped God.

She's looking at the one who realized that he was in the presence of God, Moses, and he took off his sandal and said, this is holy ground. She's standing before the very God who the patriarchs worshipped, and she's worried about which clan of people got to claim the patriarchs.

She's confused. Her sin had left her in her shame and her sin had left her in her spiritual theological confusion. And that confusion demonstrated itself in these verses. Jesus is going to clarify for her to try to help her out in verses 13.

He said, it says, Jesus answered and said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again. But the water that I give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.

Now, I want you to listen to the context of this and understand what Jesus is saying. He's not just saying, I'm going to give you extra water, but he is being provocative here. He's talking to a woman who more than anything wants to never come outside her house again for fear that people are going to see her and notice her and look down their nose at her.

And he is playing off of her desire to want to be hidden. And she is going to take the bait and she's going to say, yes, give me that water. I don't want to come outside of my house. I don't want to have to walk out here to this well.

I don't want to have to come out here in the middle of the day because I'm I'm scared of being noticed by people. Jesus is taking her to the point where she realizes that her desire to be hidden and her desire to be to live in her shame is not going to save her.

And that's our second point. Her solution for saving herself will not work. Jesus has exposed her sin. He's exposed her shame and he's exposed her spiritual confusion. Now he's exposing the fact that she wants to be hidden.

She doesn't want to face her sin. She doesn't want to deal with her shame. It's too painful. She doesn't want to. Be taught anything any different, because sometimes pain is more comfortable. Than the truth.

Have you ever sat down in your misery? And knew that you needed to get up and knew that you needed to just take a shower even. And knew that you needed to do something, but you were so upset and so frustrated that you just sat there in your shame and sat there in your guilt.

This is where this lady's at. And Jesus is gently and lovingly exposing to her that that will not help you. That will keep you bound in your sin. That will keep you drinking from the fountains of shame.

And that will not free you when she said, sir, give me this water. So that I will not be thirsty nor have to come all the way out here to draw, I think she may have been being sarcastic. Something is saying something like, yeah, Jesus, give me the magic bucket so that I can go home and pour it out and it'll fill itself up every single time.

She may have been being sincere. We don't know. She may have been saying, yes, please. That's I want that more than anything in the world to never have to deal with my sin, to never have to deal with my shame.

Yes, give me that water. But you'll notice that Jesus is unwilling to leave the conversation here because Jesus is unwilling for any person that he is going to save to allow them to believe that they can be saved in anything other than Christ crucified.

They can't be saved in sitting in their sin. They can't be saved in running and hiding in their shame. But in order to get her to that point where she sees that Jesus is like a skilled surgeon, if you go see a surgeon, you talk to him first, they don't start cutting on you the moment you walk in their office.

We wouldn't trust them, we want to meet them, we want to get to know them. So we talk to them, then they put us under and then they then they start cutting and pulling back layer after layer until they get to the heart of the problem.

This is what Jesus has done. Jesus has gently moved from one stage to the next, pulling back layer, pulling back layer until the point now to where he's going to begin to reveal her, reveal to her the truth.

The woman says, sir, give me this water so I'll not have to be thirsty and come out here to draw, and he said to her, go call your husband. Now she's exposed. In a moment, Jesus used a supernatural understanding to keep her from maneuvering out and hiding and pretending any longer.

He's exposing her out of love so that she will see the inability of herself to save herself in that moment and that she will turn to and trust Jesus. The woman said to him, I have no husband, basically mind your business, buddy.

She's basically saying, I don't want to have a conversation with you, I don't know if you're safe, I don't know if I can trust you, it's none of your business anyway, and I think we can have empathy for her because there's a lot of people who aren't safe, there's a lot of people we shouldn't trust, there's a lot of people you should not tell your business to because they're going to use it to weaponize against you and hurt you.

So we can kind of empathize with her here, but she didn't realize she was speaking to the son of God and he was going to continually push this conversation forward and praise God for that. Praise God that if God is going to save you, he's not going to give up until you have come home.

If you're saved, it's not because you didn't stop looking for Jesus, it's because Jesus never stopped looking for you. In our sin, just like this woman, we have pushed him away a million times, we've rebuffed him, we've been sarcastic in our shame, we have avoided him in our confusion, we've misunderstood him.

But Christ is the one who saves and Christ is the one who's going to get the glory when he saves because he will not give up until he has found the lost sheep that he has went searching for. The woman said, I have no husband.

Jesus said, you've answered correctly and you have no husband. You've had five husbands and the one you have now is not truly your husband at all. Again, Jesus tells her you don't have to hide anymore.

I know what you're going through, I know where you've been, I know what you've done and I'm still here. Jesus does the most loving thing that he can do in exposing her sin so that she will stop trying to hide, exposing her shame so that she'll stop trying to run.

And exposing her confusion so that she will stop trying to explain everything away with theological arguments, she says, sir, I perceive that you're a prophet. Meaning, I think you're a religious guru, I have a theological question for you, our fathers worship on this mountain, you say that your people worship in that place.