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Is evangelism loving? How does God show His love to sinful man? Pastor Steve preaches a recent sermon from John 4 that answers these questions.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.
But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
Let me ask you a question, have you ever thought of evangelism as loving? You know, we tend to think of people who do evangelism as just bold. And they are. 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.
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 I think. But have you ever thought of it as loving? You know, what does scripture say about the feet of those who bring good news?
Beautiful. You ever look at a foot and think it's beautiful? And in that culture, feet were really not beautiful. They were seen as foul. Evangelism is very loving. 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. 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.
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. 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.
To quote a pop song that I happen to like from the 1970s, in my opinion, love is in need of love today. 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.
Even for Christians, even for the church, when speaking of God's love, many Christians talk about God's love as if they are reading it out of a homework card. God is said to be crazy about us. He loves us just the way we are.
He's just tickled pink. Any number of contemporary Christian songs sound remarkably like sappy love songs with lyrics that paint God as far closer to a lovestruck teenager than the sovereign creator of the universe.
Why? Well, you could certainly say that the church is being conformed in the image of the culture, but I think to put it positively, many of the church want to protect God's reputation. They don't want him to be seen as sovereign and judgmental, but as loving.
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 God of the Bible, and secondly, no comfort to us in times of difficulty.
A God who is like us, who thinks like us, who loves like us, is not the God of the Bible and certainly not the Lord Jesus Christ, who we will see today exhibit steadfast, immovable love. And he does so while he is evangelizing.
Just to catch us up to where we are in the Gospel of John, because it's been just a couple weeks since I've been on the pulpit, the Apostle John wrote this Gospel, the fourth Gospel in the New Testament, so that the readers of his Gospel might believe that Jesus is the Christ, that is to say, the Messiah, the anointed one, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
That's John 20, 31, really summarizing the purpose for which he wrote. We could put it this way, four Gospels, Matthew, written to emphasize Jesus as king, that's why it starts with his genealogy. Mark, Jesus as servant, not that Jesus isn't also king in the Gospel of Mark, but the emphasis is on the way he serves others.
And then in Luke, the emphasis is on Jesus as man, again, not that he doesn't present him as God also, but the emphasis is on Jesus as man. And here in John, the emphasis is Jesus as God. John wrote his Gospel decades after the other ones, and he provides us details that were not included in the other Gospels.
And he makes a point of saying, look, I didn't even write everything that I could have written about Jesus. 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.
In other words, I don't have enough time and enough paper to write down everything that he did. In chapter one of the Gospel of John, the Apostle John, the author, establishes 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. Chapter one also introduces us to John the Baptist, who is the divinely appointed forebearer, the prophet who would prepare the way for the Lord Jesus.
In chapter two, Jesus performs his first sign or demonstration of his mastery over nature by turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana. And he also drove the money changers out of the temple, and he prophesied of his own resurrection even early on in his ministry.
In chapter three, we see the conversation with Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel. And Jesus, in chapter three, concludes with a rather odd picture. Jesus and his disciples in one area of Judea, and they were baptizing people.
And John the Baptist and his disciples in a little different camp across the way there, they were also baptizing people. 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.
That wasn't their purpose. This was really kind of a genuine religious revival. They weren't in competition. They were both proclaiming a need, a lack in the Judaism of that day to bring people to salvation.
And so they were both baptizing there. Now, this morning, as we move to John chapter four, I want to draw your attention to four displays of the love of God really to the world. And what do we mean by to the world?
Well, if we keep in mind that we've just read John 3, or we've just walked through John chapter 3, John 3 .16 says what? God so loved the world. Now, that was in the interaction with Nicodemus. What did he mean by that?
That the love was not constrained to the Jews. And we're going to see that today. 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.
And this morning, we're going to see the Lord himself exemplify the mindset of an evangelist. 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.
So, our first divine demonstration of love is love extended to a sinful land. Specifically, to Samaria. As I said at the end of chapter 3, John is baptizing with his disciples, and Jesus is baptizing via his disciples.
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, John, the Baptist disciples don't understand that. Look back just a few verses.
John 3, verse 26. John, the Baptist disciples are almost in a panic. Look, 26, And they came to John and said to him, Rabbi, that is teacher, he who was with you across the Jordan, that is referring to Jesus, to whom you bore witness, look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.
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. 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. That is a euphemism for God. He acknowledges God's sovereignty right off the bat. What Jesus is doing is ordained by God.
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 Messiah, the Christ. He's already denied that to the Pharisees.
He says, My job is to prepare the way for the Messiah. And so as we pick it up in John chapter 4, the Pharisees are getting suspicious. They've already sent out a little party to check on John the Baptist earlier in the 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. He's got bigger crowds, more people being baptized. Look at verse 1. 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.
I'm going to stop right there for a minute. Now, again, just so that we understand, this baptism that John the Baptist and Jesus were doing, this is not Christian baptism. This is not Matthew 28 baptism.
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. That's not what's happening here. Let's just kind of take it a step further back.
When somebody converted, when a Gentile converted to Judaism, they would baptize themselves. They would plunge themselves into water. Why? Because no Jew would want to be associated with that because it would make them unclean.
The uncleanness of the Gentile would wash off on them, basically, is the thought process. So someone would do that to themselves. Well, this baptism was different than that because John the Baptist was doing it, the disciples of Jesus were doing it, and it wasn't upon converts to Judaism.
It was on Jews. So this is really catching the 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? Well, basically, it was a repudiation of Judaism and also an acknowledgment that the person being baptized recognized that they could not save themselves.
They were a sinner. Now, we're not told how Jesus finds out that the Pharisees are taking a renewed interest in him. It just says that when Jesus found out, so we don't know if somebody told him or if the Holy Spirit informed him, but it doesn't really matter.
Whatever the source, he understood what was happening. 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.
It wasn't time for that. So he took action. Look at verse 3. He left Judea and departed again for Galilee. He got out of town. He got out of Dodge. 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 Samaria.
And really, Samaria, if we understand it rightly, if you remember your geography, Israel was once united, but then it was divided into two kingdoms. Well, what we're calling Judea here or Samaria, Samaria, sorry, what we're calling Samaria here really is the northern kingdom, what would have been called Israel in the Old Testament or in the divided kingdoms, we had, what are the two?
We had Israel and Judah. So Israel in the northern part. So why would people go out of their way to avoid 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.
Why? You know, you would think northern kingdom, southern kingdom, what's the big deal? Well, here's where it becomes a big deal. The Assyrians sacked, conquered the northern kingdom in 722 BC, and they took most of the Jews there into captivity, but they left some behind.
They also sent people from all around the Assyrian Empire into the northern kingdom, and they settled there, and eventually they mingled with the 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. But it even went deeper than that because when the Assyrians sent the people into Samaria, the Assyrians who arrived there had their own religions, their own gods, and the Jews that were there still held on to Judaism.
So what happened over time was they kind of got rid of the Assyrian gods, but they did change the 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.
They no longer took all the Old Testament as scripture. They only believed in the first five books, the ones written by Moses. So there are hundreds of years of antipathy, of anger between these two groups.
Oh, and it gets worse, too. I'll just kind of skip ahead a little bit. On Mount Gerizim, the Samaritans built a temple, and they built it on the model to be similar to the Jerusalem temple. It was constructed in the same basic fashion.
The Jews didn't like that too much. In fact, during the intertestamental period between the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Jews went up to Mount Gerizim and destroyed that temple. 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 Israelis and Palestinians today.
They don't like each other much, even though there are similar heritages and similarities in their religions, but there are a lot of differences, and they don't really like it. Now, why does verse 4 say that he had to pass through Samaria?
Why was it a necessity? It was actually faster to go through Samaria, and we know from the historian Josephus that Jews would do this, they would go through Samaria, if they had to get somewhere in a hurry.
So it could be that, or it could be that Jesus is informed of the necessity of going through Samaria by the Holy Spirit, but whichever it is, we don't know. All we know is he had to go. It was imperative.
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. But in either case, we have God incarnate traveling through an area that the religious elite would not choose to traverse.
In other words, a Pharisee is not going through Samaria. So we have love extended to a sinful land. 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.
Everything you could say about Nicodemus, one of the religious elites, he was the teacher of all Israel. He was, you know, he thought he was righteous. He thought he was good, and yet he saw the wonders of Jesus, and he went to Jesus to ask about it.
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. Now, again, notice in the text there it says that it is the sixth hour.
That would be about noon. And Jesus is tired from the journey, and he is alone. If we look at verse 8, we'd see that. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. So he's, there's nobody with him sitting by the well.
The Samaritan woman comes up to the well, and this is kind of early in the day to be doing this. Typically, the women would come, and they would do this, because this really is something that the women would do.
Men did not do this. They would come in the evening, which makes a lot of sense. But she's there at noon. We don't know why. Jesus says to her, Give me a drink. Sounds a little blunt. You know, you just think, the days before feminism where a man could just, oh no.
But she's not offended by that. 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. 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. So it's not like he could have done it for himself, and so he asked her to do it. Now again, I think we have a good indication that she wasn't offended that it was a man.
She was taken aback by something else. Look at verse 9. The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? She's shocked. How is it that you, with all that exists between our two peoples, would ask that of me?
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. For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Now the language there is interesting because it really doesn't indicate no dealings whatsoever.
And how do we know that? Well, we know that because Jesus' disciples were off buying food from Samaritans. Really, a better understanding of this, and if we walk through the Greek, we'd see this, that really what John's saying here is they didn't use the utensils of the Samaritans.
So here's the issue. Jesus is there. He has no way of getting the water out of the well. 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.
Why? Because by virtue of this being something that we Samaritans use, you're going to be unclean. 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.
Now again, look at how the Lord turns this mundane conversation. I mean, we're talking about water in the desert. 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. Look at verse 10. Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.
He tells her two things. Number one, you don't know the grace of God. You don't know the gift of God. It always pertains to a spiritual gift that is especially to do with salvation. 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 I am. So she has problems and he outlines them right there. 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. 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. Much like Nicodemus did not understand, right?
Jesus says, you must be born again. He says, well, what am I supposed to do? 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. Verse 11. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with.
And the well is deep. 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. 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? 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.
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. Not a well. That's not living water.
So what's he even talking about? 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. He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.
Basically, she says, who do you think you are? Are you greater than our common father, Jacob?
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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