Love IS Action - [John 4:1-26]

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Let me ask you a question. Have you ever thought of evangelism as loving?
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You know, we tend to think of people who do evangelism as just bold, and they are.
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I mean, I think of my friend Tony a few years ago at the Super Bowl when he got hit with a burrito as he was proclaiming the truth in the street.
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You know, somebody threw a burrito and hit him in the face, and I go, how was the burrito? You know, that's just how
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I think. But have you ever thought of it as loving? You know, what does
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Scripture say about the feet of those who bring good news? Beautiful.
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You ever look at a foot and think it's beautiful? And in that culture, feet were really not beautiful.
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They were seen as foul. Evangelism is very loving.
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We're going to see that this morning. I would invite you to open your Bibles to John chapter 4 again if you're not already there.
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But you know, love in our culture, and may I say in the church today, has really, we've seen a reductionism occurring to that term.
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In fact, our culture says that love is basically just an emotional feeling. The lack of love is enough in the minds of many to justify getting a divorce.
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Emotional love is, we hear these days, enough to justify changing the definition of marriage so that any two adults who quote, unquote, love each other can get married.
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To quote a pop song that I happen to like from the 1970s, in my opinion, love is in need of love today.
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We need to restore love to what it ought to mean. The word has been emptied of any real value because it gets thrown around so tritely, so vacuously, that it's become really a hollow shell of what it ought to be.
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Even for Christians, even for the church, when speaking of God's love, many
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Christians talk about God's love as if they are reading it out of a homework card.
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God is said to be crazy about us. He loves us just the way we are.
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He's just tickled pink. Any number of contemporary
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Christian songs sound remarkably like sappy love songs, with lyrics that paint
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God as far closer to a lovestruck teenager than the sovereign creator of the universe.
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Why? Well, you could certainly say that the church is being conformed to the image of the culture, but I think, to put it positively, many of the church want to protect
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God's reputation. They don't want him to be seen as sovereign and judgmental, but as loving.
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He's nice. But let me be clear. A God who simply emotes, who hopes and dreams, one who roots for us to come to our senses, one who pines away for those who are not saved is, first of all, not the
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God of the Bible. And secondly, no comfort to us in times of difficulty.
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A God who is like us, who thinks like us, who loves like us, is not the
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God of the Bible and certainly not the Lord Jesus Christ, who we will see today exhibit steadfast, immovable love.
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And he does so while he is evangelizing. Just to catch us up to where we are in the
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Gospel of John, because it's been just a couple weeks since I've been on the pulpit. The Apostle John wrote this
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Gospel, the fourth Gospel in the New Testament, so that the readers of his
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Gospel might believe that Jesus is the Christ, that is to say, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the
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Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. And that's
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John 20, 31, really summarizing the purpose for which he wrote. We could put it this way.
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Four Gospels. Matthew, written to emphasize Jesus as king. That's why it starts with his genealogy.
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Mark, Jesus as servant. Not that Jesus is also king in the
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Gospel of Mark, but the emphasis is on the way he serves others. And then in Luke, the emphasis is on Jesus as man.
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Again, not that he doesn't present him as God also, but the emphasis is on Jesus as man.
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And here in John, the emphasis is Jesus as God. John wrote his
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Gospel decades after the other ones, and he provides us details that were not included in the other
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Gospels. And he makes a point of saying, look, I didn't even write everything that I could have written about Jesus.
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In John 20, verse 30, we read this. Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book.
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In other words, I don't have enough time and enough paper to write down everything that he did.
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In chapter 1 of the Gospel of John, the Apostle John, the author, establishes
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Jesus as eternal, always existing, fully God and yet fully man, the creator condescending to live in his creation subject to the limitations of a human body.
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Chapter 1 also introduces us to John the Baptist who is the divinely appointed forebearer, the prophet who would prepare the way for the
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Lord Jesus. In chapter 2, Jesus performs his first sign or demonstration of his mastery over nature by turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana.
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And he also drove the money changers out of the temple and he prophesied of his own resurrection even early on in his ministry.
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In chapter 3, we see the conversation with Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel.
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And Jesus in chapter 3 concludes with a rather odd picture. Jesus and his disciples in one area of Judea and they were baptizing people.
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And John the Baptist and his disciples in a little different camp across the way there, they were also baptizing people.
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And it's important to note, this isn't like McDonald's and Burger King. They weren't in a contest to see who could baptize the most.
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That wasn't their purpose. This was really kind of a genuine religious revival.
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They weren't in competition. They were both proclaiming a need, a lack in the
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Judaism of that day to bring people to salvation. And so they were both baptizing there.
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Now this morning, as we move to John chapter 4, I want to draw your attention to four displays of the love of God really to the world.
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And what do we mean by to the world? Well, if we keep in mind that we just read
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John 3 or we've just walked through John chapter 3, John 3 .16 says what?
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God so loved the world. Now that was in the interaction with Nicodemus.
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What did he mean by that? That the love was not constrained to the Jews. And we're going to see that today.
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Now I want you to be thinking as evangelists. During this message last week, Pastor Mike explained that Jesus has all authority, that he is with us and will be with us to the end of the age.
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And this morning, we're going to see the Lord himself exemplify the mindset of an evangelist.
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At every step of this interaction, his goal is to bring this woman to a clear understanding of who he is and her need to believe in him.
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So her first divine demonstration of love is love extended to a sinful land, specifically to Samaria.
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As I said at the end of chapter 3, John is baptizing with his disciples and Jesus is baptizing via his disciples.
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He's not actually doing it. And we'll see that in verse 2 of chapter 4, but I digress. Again, this is not a contest, but look,
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John the Baptist's disciples don't understand that. Look back just a few verses. John 3, verse 26.
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John the Baptist's disciples are almost in a panic. Look, 26, And they came to John and said to him,
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Rabbi, that is teacher, he who was with you across the Jordan, that is referring to Jesus, to whom you bore witness,
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Look, he is baptizing and all are going to him.
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John, you're blowing it, man. I don't know what's going on, but you need to wake up and smell the coffee. Jesus is coming along and stealing your thunder.
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John the Baptist points them right to the sovereignty of God. He says, A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.
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That is a euphemism for God. He acknowledges God's sovereignty right off the bat. What Jesus is doing is ordained by God.
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What I'm doing is ordained by God. This isn't a contest. You guys just need to settle down. He then tries to explain to them that his mission is not to be the
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Messiah, the Christ. He's already denied that to the Pharisees. He says, My job is to prepare the way for the
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Messiah. And so as we pick it up in John chapter 4, the Pharisees are getting suspicious.
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They've already sent out a little party to check on John the Baptist earlier in the
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Gospel of John. They wanted to know if he was the Messiah. They wanted to know what he was all about. But Jesus is a bigger threat.
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He's got bigger crowds, more people being baptized. Look at verse 1.
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Now, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples.
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I'm going to stop right there for a minute. Now, again, just so that we understand, this baptism that John the
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Baptist and Jesus were doing, this is not Christian baptism. This is not Matthew 28 baptism.
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It's not in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is not a public identification with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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That's not what's happening here. Let's just kind of take it a step further back.
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When somebody converted, when a Gentile converted to Judaism, they would baptize themselves.
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They would plunge themselves into water. Why? Because no Jew would want to be associated with that because it would make them unclean.
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The uncleanness of the Gentile would wash off on them, basically, is the thought process. So someone would do that to themselves.
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Well, this baptism was different than that because John the
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Baptist was doing it, the disciples of Jesus were doing it, and it wasn't upon converts to Judaism.
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It was on Jews. So this is really catching the
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Pharisees' attention, and they want to know what's going on. They're trying to figure it out. What was the meaning of that baptism?
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Well, basically, it was a repudiation of Judaism and also an acknowledgment that the person being baptized recognized that they could not save themselves.
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They were a sinner. Now, we're not told how Jesus finds out that the
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Pharisees are taking a renewed interest in him. It just says that when Jesus found out.
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So we don't know if somebody told him or if the
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Holy Spirit informed him, but it doesn't really matter. Whatever the source, he understood what was happening.
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He understood that now that the Pharisees had spotted him that they were going to come and they were going to investigate him. And he didn't want that.
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It wasn't time for that. So he took action. Look at verse 3. He left
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Judea and departed again for Galilee. He got out of town. He got out of Dodge.
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And in leaving to go back to Galilee, the typical route for Jews would be to go out and way out of their way and avoid this area called
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Samaria. And really, Samaria, if we understand it rightly, if you remember your geography,
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Israel was once united, but then it was divided into two kingdoms. Well, what we're calling
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Judea here or Samaria, Samaria, sorry, what we're calling
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Samaria here really is the northern kingdom, what would have been called Israel in the
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Old Testament or in the divided kingdom as we had. What are the two?
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We have Israel and Judah. So Israel in the northern part. So why would people go out of their way to avoid
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Samaria? What was the big deal with Samaria? Well, there were two reasons. One was there's a severe, let's just say ethnic antipathy, hatred between the two.
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Why? You know, you would think northern kingdom, southern kingdom, what's the big deal? Well, here's where it becomes a big deal.
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The Assyrians sacked, conquered the northern kingdom in 722
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BC and they took most of the Jews there into captivity. But they left some behind.
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They also sent people from all around the Assyrian empire into the northern kingdom and they settled there and eventually they mingled with the
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Jews that remained there and so they became kind of a mixed race. So there was some kind of feeling of inferiority and superiority, you know, we're pure Jews, you're not, therefore we're better than you.
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But it even went deeper than that because when the Assyrians sent the people into Samaria, the
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Assyrians who arrived there had their own religions, their own gods, and the Jews that were there still held on to Judaism.
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So what happened over time was they kind of got rid of the Assyrian gods but they did change the
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Jewish religion a bit. They no longer worshipped, they no longer believed the temple should be in Jerusalem but they believed it should be on Mount Gerizim.
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They no longer took all the Old Testament as scripture, they only believed in the first five books, the ones written by Moses.
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So there are hundreds of years of antipathy, of anger between these two groups.
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Oh, and it gets worse too. I'll just kind of skip ahead a little bit. On Mount Gerizim, the
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Samaritans built a temple and they built it on the model to be similar to the
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Jerusalem temple. It was constructed in the same basic fashion.
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The Jews didn't like that too much. In fact, during the intertestamental period between the
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Old Testament and the New Testament, the Jews went up to Mount Gerizim and destroyed that temple.
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So the Samaritans didn't like the Jews, the Jews didn't like the Samaritans. In fact, I think if we were going to make a modern comparison, it wouldn't be out of the realm of, well, it would be a good comparison to say it's pretty similar to the
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Israelis and Palestinians today. They don't like each other much, even though their similar heritages and similarities in their religions but there are a lot of differences and they don't really like it.
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Now, why does verse 4 say that he had to pass through Samaria?
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Why was it a necessity? It was actually faster to go through Samaria and we know from the historian
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Josephus that Jews would do this, they would go through Samaria if they had to get somewhere in a hurry.
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So it could be that or it could be that Jesus is informed of the necessity of going through Samaria by the
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Holy Spirit but whichever it is, we don't know. All we know is he had to go. It was imperative.
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He had to go through Samaria. I tend to think it's probably more the sovereign appointment side but it's a little bit of speculation.
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But in either case, we have God incarnate traveling through an area that the religious elite would not choose to traverse.
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In other words, a Pharisee is not going through Samaria. So we have love extended to a sinful land.
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Secondly, we have love extended to a sinful woman. Look at verse 7 and we'll see that the stage is set for a meeting that really contrasts starkly with the meeting with Nicodemus.
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Everything you could say about Nicodemus, one of the religious elites, he was the teacher of all Israel. He thought he was righteous.
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He thought he was good. And yet he saw the wonders of Jesus and he went to Jesus to ask about it.
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Well, this woman we're going to see is nothing like that. If he represented the upper echelon of the religious world, she's pretty much at the bottom of it.
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Now again, notice in the text there it says that it is the sixth hour. That would be about noon.
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And Jesus is tired from the journey and he is alone.
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If we look at verse 8, we'd see that. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. So there's nobody with him sitting by the well.
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The Samaritan woman comes up to the well. And this is kind of early in the day to be doing this.
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Typically, the women would come and they would do this because this really is something that the women would do.
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Men did not do this. They would come in the evening, which makes a lot of sense.
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But she's there at noon. We don't know why. Jesus says to her, give me a drink.
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Sounds a little blunt. You know, you just think the days before feminism where a man could just...
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Oh, no. She's not offended by that.
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Why? Well, because this is custom. This is how it was done. He would be perfectly within his rights to basically ask slash demand for a drink of water.
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And also when we think about it, Jesus had no implement as we'll see in this text. He had no way of getting the water.
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So it's not like he could have done it for himself. And so he asked her to do it.
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Now, again, I think we have a good indication that she wasn't offended that it was a man. She might have taken...
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She was taken aback by something else. Look at verse 9. The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a
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Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? She's shocked.
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How is it that you, with all that exists between our two peoples, would ask that of me?
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And note in the parentheses here, and I think the ESV does this right, it should be that this is probably something written by John as an explanation.
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For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Now, the language there is interesting because it really doesn't indicate no dealings whatsoever.
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And how do we know that? Well, we know that because Jesus' disciples were off buying food from Samaritans.
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Really, a better understanding of this, and if we walk through the Greek, we'd see this, that really what she's, or what
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John's saying here is, they didn't use the utensils of the
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Samaritans. So here's the issue. Jesus is there. He has no way of getting the water out of the well.
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She does, but she's like, Okay, if I use this bucket, or whatever it was she had with her, and get water, you shouldn't drink from this.
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Why? Because by virtue of this being something that we Samaritans use, you're going to be unclean.
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And that's what it means to have no dealings with it. You're going to drink out of this thing that's used by an unclean people.
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Now again, look at how the Lord turns this mundane conversation. I mean, we're talking about water in the desert.
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I mean, what could be more natural than, you know what, I'm thirsty, I need some water. And it could end right there, but Jesus turns it into an evangelism encounter.
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Look at verse 10. Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you,
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Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. He tells her two things.
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Number one, you don't know the grace of God. You don't know the gift of God. God always pertains to a spiritual gift that is especially to do with salvation.
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And secondly, you don't know who you're talking to. In other words, you don't know your need, and you have no idea who
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I am. So she has problems, and he outlines them right there.
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His point is that if she knew the things of God, she would be asking him for spiritual help instead of him asking her for physical assistance.
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So he turns the whole situation around on her. From him asking for a drink of water to her spiritual need, and she does not understand.
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Much like Nicodemus did not understand, right? Jesus says, you must be born again. And he says, well, what am I supposed to do?
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Go back to my mom? And, you know, can a grown man get back in his mother's womb? No. She doesn't get it either.
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Verse 11. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with. And the well is deep.
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Where do you get that living water? It's very likely that his disciples had taken whatever implements they had with them when they went to go purchase their food.
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So she's kind of mocking Jesus. She's like, look, you can't get water without a bucket. What are you going to do?
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Give me living water. You can't even get a drink out of this well. The second part of her statement is a genuine question.
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Living water would have brought the image to her when he said that she would have been thinking about a rushing stream or a spring or something where the water was actually moving.
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Not a well. That's not living water. So what's he even talking about?
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The woman takes her questioning a step further. Verse 12. Are you greater than our father Jacob? She's really giving him a hard time.
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He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.
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Basically, she says, who do you think you are? Are you greater than our common father,
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Jacob? You being a Jew, me being a Samaritan, we both think that we're descended from Jacob.
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And in some sense, we both are. Jacob built this well.
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It's still here. You, you don't even have the sense to carry a canteen in the desert. What are you going to do?
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Now, in retrospect, as we think about how she's saying things to him, her use of sir at the beginning of verse 11, well, it just reminds me of how, you know, people will say a lot of times with all due respect.
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And what does that mean? They're about to get very disrespectful. So she says, she says,
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I mean, I remember guys in the army used to say, you know, you can say whatever you want as long as you preface it with, with all due respect.
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Well, the answer is no, you couldn't. You know, a lot of guys in the brig would be saying, but I said all doers with all due respect, you know, and they're behind bars.
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It doesn't work. But anyway, people use that phrase with all due respect before they hurl insults.
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And that's exactly what she did. She sounded polite, but then she just kind of unloaded. Now, for many evangelists, her kind of pushback, her chiding manner would have been the end of it.
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But the Lord was not done. Look at verse 13. Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.
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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, willing up to eternal life.
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He's really talking about the Holy Spirit. But she's not going to understand that yet. Jesus draws a contrast between the temporary nature of Jacob's will.
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You know what? It's great. You're out here in the desert. You can get a drink from there, and you're not going to be thirsty anymore. Awesome.
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And it would be good. But there's something better. Eternal life.
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He's speaking in a metaphor that's just beyond her understanding. He is not speaking of just satisfying physical thirst, but of slaking spiritual thirst, both in this life via the
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Holy Spirit and in the end result, which is eternal life. Perhaps it's just her deadness, the deadness of her soul, and maybe it's the lack of scriptural background she has.
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She only has the Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. That's all she has in her religion.
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Maybe that's the reason she doesn't get it. But throughout the Old Testament prophets, we would see allusions to living water, living springs, this kind of language.
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And it always comes from God. John Calvin said this,
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Christ's words do not contradict the fact that believers are to the very end of their lives, ardently desiring more abundant grace.
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In other words, once we taste of grace, we're not done with it. We're not satisfied. For he does not mean that we drink so that we are fully satisfied from the very first day, but only that the
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Holy Spirit is a constant flowing well. So there is no danger of those who are renewed by spiritual grace becoming dry.
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Why? Because we have all that we need. As we grow, as we desire more, we get more. But she didn't understand any of that.
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And in a manner, again, very reminiscent of Nicodemus, the woman responded in crass literalism.
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Verse 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.
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All she wanted was to just have her thirst satisfied. And by the way, it'd be really great if you could just arrange it so I don't have to schlep all this water back and forth.
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If I could just avoid trudging through the desert every day and lugging back all this water, that would be awesome.
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So can you do that for me? I'd like to be released from physical labor. Reminds me of when
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Jesus fed the multitudes. What did they want? They just wanted to be fed again. This is the same thing.
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All she's thinking is, well, this is going to reduce my workload. This is going to make life easier for me. So we've seen love extended to a sinful land.
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Secondly, love extended to a sinful woman. And thirdly, love extended via confrontation.
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Again, we don't think of confrontation as being loving. But I think as we look at this, we'll see that the most loving thing he could do was confront her.
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I think most evangelists would have just walked away. But Jesus doesn't do that. In fact, he really goes for the jugular. And a lot of people, you know, if we could take it out of the context, if we could somehow dress it up and make it modern and take away the name
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Jesus and just put in a generic, you know, Steve, people would say, how unloving.
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Look at how Steve just won't let her be. He should have let her go on her merry way. After all, she's very sincere in her beliefs.
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Who are you to say that your beliefs are better? Jesus is going to bring some clarity to the situation.
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Verse 16, Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband and come here.
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You go fetch your husband and come on back and we'll sit down and we'll hash this out. It's kind of a little odd.
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But what he's really saying, I mean, we can look at it this way. It would be perfectly legitimate for him to say, you know, we don't seem to be communicating very well.
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Maybe in light of that, you should go get your husband so that things will be more, am
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I going to say kosher? They'll be more calm and we can reason this out and sort it out.
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What do unbelievers do when they're confronted with their sin? They want to change the topic.
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They want to change things. They want to throw up a diversion. You know, when you preach the gospel to somebody, they're often going to say, well, what about, what about, you know, it's what about -ery.
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What about the crusades? What about the horrible things that have been done? What about, what about, what kind of God would permit suffering and disease?
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Or, you know, there's always the I'm a very good person thing. I do a lot. You know, if there is a
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God, he'd be lucky to have me in heaven, that kind of thinking. This woman had challenged
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Jesus already. She asked if he was better than Jacob. She's mocked Jesus.
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She's failed to understand him. And again, he's just going to show her her need for a savior.
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So, as I said, you know, it seems on the surface maybe innocent enough. We're at an impasse. Maybe your husband can help us sort it out.
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But she answers that she doesn't have a husband. And here comes the tool that no ordinary human evangelist has, which is supernatural knowledge supplied by the
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Holy Spirit. Look at verse 17, the second half of it there. Jesus said to her,
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You are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.
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What you have said is true. He just kind of cut open her heart.
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Did a little heart surgery there. It's this way. This is how I want to just say it.
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You know, you give somebody a little wound, and then you just push on it. You press on it. He opened up that wound, and he pushed hard.
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He said, you're a sinner. Now you may be thinking, well, that doesn't help me. I can't supernaturally obtain information like that.
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Well, that's true. But again, what you can do is press the issue of sin into everyone's life.
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It's not just some trite saying that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It's the truth. The Bible proclaims it.
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So what we need to do is find that area of life where they're finally willing to acknowledge that they're a sinner.
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And then we push until it hurts. Now what about her five previous husbands?
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Maybe they died. Maybe she'd been divorced. It could be a combination of them. It doesn't really matter.
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She is currently living with a man. She's a fornicator. She is someone that a
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Pharisee, a religious person, would have avoided like the plague. She would have been seen as the lowest form of human being around.
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Why? Let's see. Samaritan woman. And believe me, sorry, in those days that was not the best.
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Not only that, but she was a fornicator. She was somebody who had been married five times.
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Socially, she was an outcast. What would have happened or what would happen today if you said, you know what, you're living with somebody.
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You're in sin. Often you'll hear what? Who are you to judge? She was with the judge.
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And her response, I think, is the greatest understatement of all time. Look at verse 19.
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The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
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Gone is the kind of smart -alecky attitude, the challenges. Her sin has found her out.
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She doesn't dispute what Jesus has said. She acknowledges the truth of it. She finally recognizes that she's with someone who's not just an ordinary guy.
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He's not some fool in the middle of the desert without the means to get a drink of water.
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Our fourth exhibition of divine love is love extended via correction.
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Verses 20 -26. Having recognized that Jesus is someone of significance, she says,
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I perceive that you are a prophet. She now poses a question. Now on the surface, when we look at verse 20, we might think it's some kind of another challenge.
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I don't think so. I think she's been somewhat chastened by the fact that he knows a lot about her, a lot that he shouldn't know.
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She says, our fathers worshipped on this mountain. She's talking about Mount Gerizim. But you say in Jerusalem is the place.
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And when she says you, she means you collectively Jewish. The Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.
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Some think that she's throwing out a diversion here. But I really think she seriously wants to know. She knows that he, she's already said that she thinks he is a prophet.
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And in the Samaritan religion, they were awaiting a prophet. They called him the Teheb, who would bring clarity to things like this, difficult questions like this.
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He would explain all things. So were her
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Samaritan forebears right in what they said? Or were the Jews right in what they said? Which is the right place to worship?
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Mount Gerizim or Jerusalem, the Temple Mount? And Jesus answers this in three parts.
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First, he says true worship is not dependent upon any particular place. Look at verse 21. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the
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Father. Look, the Temple on Mount Gerizim had already been destroyed. The Temple in Jerusalem was going to be destroyed in about 40 years.
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And that's what he says.
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He says the hour is coming. And in fact, when John wrote this, it had already happened. The Samaritan Temple, as I said, had been destroyed by some zealous Jews.
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But it was built because when the Jews returned from captivity, they wanted to rebuild the temple.
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Well, the Samaritans offered to help rebuild it. But the
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Jews turned them down. So they said, well, okay, we've got the Pentateuch. We're going to build our own temple.
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We're going to have, you know, and they interpreted the Old Testament in such a way where Mount Gerizim became the holy mountain.
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So they built it up there. Now, there are people who will take that verse and say, look, that just means
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I can worship God wherever I am. I don't need to be in church. I could be at the beach. I could be in the mountains. Wherever I am,
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I can worship God. Well, there's truth to that. But the ultimate truth is we need to have the fellowship of the saints.
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We don't need to have the fellowship of the sand or the fellowship of the trees. We're called to gather together as called out ones to worship the
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God who has saved us. Secondly, Jesus says or points out that true worship demands doctrinal accuracy.
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Look at verse 22. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the
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Jews. What an odd statement, right? You worship what you do not know. But it's really what
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Paul said in Acts 17 on Mars Hill. He said, what you worship in ignorance, I proclaim to you, the
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God you worship in ignorance. People worship what they don't know.
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And you say, well, how so? I would argue that there are many churches today that have so emptied themselves of doctrine that it's hard to tell they're
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Christian. If you can actually go into a church and never hear about sin, about repentance, about all manner of theology, then you're worshiping something you don't know.
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We need to study Scripture. Theological ignorance is not a virtue.
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And the truth was contained in the fullness of the Jewish Old Testament, not merely in the
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Pentateuch. And that's why the Samaritans had so many things wrong. And this gets back to one thing, one very basic fact that is decried today.
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Not everyone who demands the label Christian is a Christian. Just because someone says that they're a
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Christian and they demand to be identified as a Christian doesn't matter. If you say,
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I'm a Christian, and then you deny the deity of Christ, you deny his words, you deny the veracity and inspiration of the
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New Testament. I was talking with a man not long ago who said, I accept the words of Jesus.
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He used the Hebrew form of Jesus. He says, I accept the words of Jesus, but Paul went too far.
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You can't do that. As one of the things I learned from Pastor Mike a long time ago.
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You know, the red letter additions, which are more inspired? Here's a trick question. Which are more inspired, the red letters or the black letters?
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They're all the words of Jesus. He said himself, the Old Testament teaches what? About him. Just because someone says they're a
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Christian, just because they want the label Christian, you have to inspect the ingredients, not you personally.
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But I mean, I'm not going to accept that anybody says that unless, you know, after I maybe share the gospel with them, they say, oh, that's right.
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That's exactly right. I want to know what they believe. The third thing he tells her is that true worship demands true faith.
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Look at verse 23, but the hour is coming and is now here. When the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth, with heart and soul and mind, their minds will be fully set.
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For the father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
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You can't do that empty of theology. You can't do that empty of doctrinal truth.
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At the very moment when
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Jesus was raised from the dead, everything changed. As Christians, we're not trying to build the temple.
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We're not under Mosaic law. But notice what Jesus says. He says there, the father is seeking.
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It's so important. Why? Because there is one seeker in the Bible. It's God, the triune
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God. The father is seeking believers. Jesus came to seek and save those who are lost.
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The Holy Spirit causes to be born again. We are all for seeker sensitivity here at Bethlehem Bible Church, as long as we understand rightly who the seeker is.
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Because what we know is, if we're talking about mankind, there are none who seeks after God.
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We know that from Romans 3. God is a seeker. We want to be sensitive to him.
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By the way, if your Bible says God is a spirit, it really isn't the best translation.
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The Greek is simply spirit, the God. Is is implied, and there is no a there.
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It doesn't mean that God is a spirit, like out of many spirits. It just simply means that he is spirit.
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He has no physical body. God the Father has no physical body. Only God the
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Son took on a physical body. Now again, think of all that Jesus has done with the
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Samaritan woman. How he has ignored all the social protocols to speak with her. How he's withstood the
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Samaritan woman's insults and distractions. How he pointed out her sin. How he corrected her error in theology.
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And finally, the Lord clarifies for her who he is. Look, isn't this the essence of evangelism?
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We want people to understand their need for a Savior, and then we need to explain who the Savior is.
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Look at verse 25. The woman said to him, I know the Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things.
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Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. Now she knew a prophet was coming.
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The Samaritan religion referred to one. They called him the Teheb. And his job was, or what they projected him doing, he was going to be the prophet who was greater than Moses.
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He was going to be the one that explained the mysteries of God, but he was not a redeemer. He was not one who would die for the sins of his people.
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He would be able to answer questions like, should we have our temple on Mount Gerizim, or the mountain in Jerusalem?
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Now in the English, it might just appear that Jesus is agreeing with her, or simply agreeing with her, and just saying, yep,
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I'm that guy. But it's really not quite that easy. In fact, it's a little bit more interesting than that.
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He was not claiming to be the Teheb, what she wanted. He says in the Greek, ego me, emphatically,
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I emphatically am. There is no he in the Greek, although it's implied in other words.
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She says, you know, basically, are you the prophet kind of thing? And he says,
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I am. Just echoes of Exodus 3 .14, even though this isn't one of the
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I am statements. But he's saying to her, as one writer says,
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Jesus is more than either Jew or Samaritan had comprehended in the word, Christ, Messiah.
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He is the answer of God to the sin of the world. Such a bold statement by Jesus demands a response, and that's one that we'll see next week.
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But we've seen love extended to a sinful land, love extended to a sinful woman, love extended via confrontation, love extended via correction.
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Now, as I want to say, the answer to this question, what would
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Jesus do is what? Everything perfectly all the time. And that's what he did in this case.
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Talking about evangelism, he did everything perfectly all the time. When it comes to acting in love, exhibiting love, loving his neighbor.
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Why would we expect less? And what is more loving than doggedly presenting the truth about Jesus himself?
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The Lord overcame obstacle after obstacle to proclaim the truth to this
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Samaritan woman. He came to seek and save what is lost. Now, whether you know it or not, if you're here this morning, first, thank you for being here.
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Secondly, you're a sinner. You're no better than this Samaritan woman. One sin, one moment in which you fall short of the perfection that God demands.
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One thought is enough to condemn you to the just punishment of God forever.
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But God in love sent his Son, fully God and fully man, the Lord Jesus Christ, to live the perfect life we could not live.
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Jesus died a horrible death on a cross in place of sinners, was raised on the third day, and will one day return to judge this wicked world and all who have not believed in him.
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Only those who have entrusted themselves completely in the finished work of Christ will spend eternity with him.
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If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ in that way, I urge you to do so today, to repent, to change your mind about who he is and respond to the gracious offer of the gospel.
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Let's pray. Father, you are indeed a great God, holy and just in all that you do.
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Lord, even as we think of Jesus going and meeting this woman by divine appointment, taking her insults, as it were, and then turning it all around on her, revealing her need for salvation, and then showing himself to be that very
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Savior. Father, would you give us a desire, an increased desire, to be the feet, as it were, of the
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Lord Jesus, to go in the highways and byways to proclaim the good news that you forgive sinners, even as you have forgiven us, that no one is too good, like Nicodemus, to not need to repent, and no one is too bad, no one is beyond your reach.
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Your arm is not too short to save. Father, for any who are here today and don't know you,
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I pray that your spirit would convict them, that by his work they would know you, that they would be born again.
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Father, that for those of us who do know you, that we would reflect again on the urgency of the matter.
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Every single day people die and go to an eternal punishment apart from your goodness and your love and your mercy.
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Let us, as it were, be the people who are standing at the very doorway of hell trying to stop people by presenting the good news of Jesus Christ and him crucified.