Woman at the Well Pt 1

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Woman at the Well Pt 2

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Please take out your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 4. Most people don't enjoy hearing their own voice on recording.
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Usually what we hear in the recording is not what we think we really sound like. And I hear myself all the time because I have to go back and edit podcasts and edit videos and edit sermon notes and things.
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And I don't like my voice either. But I'm thankful to God that today I'll sound like James Earl Jones.
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But I do appreciate your patience with me as I seek to preach God's Word. I'm not ill.
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We had a very wonderful last few days. Trinity and Nathaniel were successful in their black belt tests.
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And as you know, I teach those classes. I've spent literally the last three days talking and yelling.
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So it's just, I'm not sick, I'm just a little strained. So again,
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I appreciate your patience. Well today we're going to begin looking at the story of the woman at the well.
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And John's Gospel stands out as unique from the other Gospels. In that,
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John's Gospel is made up of many interactions between the
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Lord Jesus Christ and individuals or groups. And the discourses are long discourses.
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Theologically rich discourses. We don't see that as much in the other
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Gospels. And you know, when the rich young ruler runs up to Jesus, you only get four or five verses. When Jesus interacts with the
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Syrophoenician woman, you only get two or three verses. But when Jesus sits down with Nicodemus, you get a half a chapter.
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And when Jesus sits down with the woman at the well, you get almost a whole chapter here.
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So this is just another way that John's Gospel sits as unique among the four
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Gospels. John is allowing us to have insight into conversations that he wasn't even in.
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See the only two people that are in today's conversation is
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Jesus and this woman. The disciples have gone off to buy food.
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Now they'll come back and they'll interact at a certain point. For the most part, this is just Jesus and this woman.
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So John is sharing with us something that either Jesus told him about later, or he heard from the woman later, because you know, she's telling everybody.
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Or the Holy Spirit, of course, and we certainly believe all of this is inspired of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit revealed to him this conversation.
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You know, we don't know how private the conversation was with Nicodemus. We know it was Jesus and Nicodemus, but we don't know if there were any wallflowers.
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We don't know if there were anybody in the room listening in. But we know this one, it's just the two of them.
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And the majority of the conversation is just Jesus and this woman. Jesus is here interacting with this woman.
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And it's 40 verses of text. And you know me, we ain't getting through that in one shot.
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But I am going to try today, as the Lord will allow, for us to look at the first portion.
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I've broken this discourse up into two parts. I call it the living water discourse and the living worship discourse.
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The living water discourse is the first thing they talk about. That's Jesus said, if you'd have known the gift of God and the one who spoke to you, you'd have asked him and he'd give you living water.
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And that begins their conversation. But then, as we'll see, perhaps next week, depending on how long we go today, they begin to talk about worship.
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And this is where we get that wonderful word of the Lord Jesus Christ, where he says God is seeking those who worship in spirit and in truth.
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Living worship, living water, or how we're going to break this down. So I will ask for us to stand for the reading of God's word.
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Today we're going to read 19 verses. So still quite a bit.
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The words will be on the screen if you don't have a Bible. But if you have a Bible, this we're reading from the ESV. It says, now when
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Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although he himself did not baptize but only his disciples, he left
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Judea and departed again for Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called
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Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son
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Joseph. Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.
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It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Sychar came to draw water.
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Jesus said to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
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The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?
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For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God, and who it was who was saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
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The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and this well is deep.
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Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob?
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He gave us this well to drink from himself, or excuse me, he gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.
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Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but everyone who drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.
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The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.
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The woman said to him, sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.
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Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here. The woman answered him,
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I have no husband. Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.
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What you've said is true. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you're a prophet.
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Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. I come to you, Lord, first and foremost, to praise you for who you are and for giving us this time of worship together.
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Thank you for everyone who is here today to hear your word and I pray that they would hear it and Lord, that you would use it to minister.
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And Lord, where we need to be corrected, I pray that it would correct. Where we need to be encouraged,
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I pray that it would encourage. Where we need to be convicted, I pray that it would convict.
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Where we need to find love, I pray we would find love. Where we need to find instruction,
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I pray we would find instruction. But all of these things, we know, oh
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God, come from your Holy Spirit. So I pray, Lord, that your Spirit would use the words preached.
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I pray that I would decrease, that Christ would increase, that the Spirit would take the words and apply them to the heart, mind.
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The hearts and minds of the people who are listening. And Lord, for those who are already believers in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, that this would be to them the word of the living
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God, calling them to closer conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ. But for those who do not know
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Christ, may they be like this woman at the well. May they have an encounter with the
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Lord Jesus Christ today. May they recognize their sin. And Lord, may they trust in him, turn from their sin, and be saved.
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Father, keep me from error, keep me from weakness, give me boldness, and glorify yourself, in Christ's name, amen.
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John chapter 4, again, is focusing in these first 40 verses, 42 verses, actually, on the interaction between Jesus and the woman at the well.
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Actually it's between Jesus and the woman in the well, and then Jesus and the disciples, and then Jesus and the people of Sychar.
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It sort of expands out. In fact, we see two revivals in this narrative.
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We see an individual revival, the woman, who recognizes who
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Jesus is, and becomes an evangelist and runs to tell people. And then from that individual revival, we see a revival of a city that then comes out and recognizes who
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Christ is. So this is an important and wonderful testimony about the power of Christ to change not only individuals, but to change whole groups of people.
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And it's interesting when we consider the people in this dialogue, because the people in this dialogue, the person in this dialogue, the main character outside of the
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Lord Jesus Christ himself, is this woman of Samaria. Our last interaction that we saw
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Jesus in was with Nicodemus. And if you compare the two people, they could not be further apart as far as the type of person that they were.
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Nicodemus sought Jesus. The woman didn't even know who he was.
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Nicodemus was respected among his people. This woman, as we will see, was an outcast.
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Nicodemus was serious. This woman, I read it,
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I see at first she's somewhat flippant, somewhat sarcastic. He was a
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Jew. He was the Jew of Jews. He was a Pharisee.
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She is a despised Samaritan. He was presumably moral.
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She is, as we will see in the story, anything but. He was orthodox.
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She was heterodox. He was learned. She was ignorant. He was a churchman.
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She was a social pariah, outcast.
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And yet they both needed the same thing. They both had the same problem.
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And that is they needed to be born again. They needed to drink of the living water. They needed to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so one of the first lessons that we get before we even begin exegeting the text is this.
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No matter who you are, the answer is the same.
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You need the Lord Jesus Christ. No matter how respected you are.
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No matter how disrespected you are. No matter how rich you are. No matter how poor you are.
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Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. And he needs the Lord Jesus Christ. The person in prison who has nothing needs the same
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Lord Jesus Christ. The ground at the foot of the cross is level.
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Because we all need the same thing. We all need to be born again.
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To drink of the living water. To trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. So with that being said, we're going to walk through this morning.
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We're going to walk through the setting which is verses 1 to 6. We're going to look at the discourse between the two of them.
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Which is verses 7 to 15. And then we're going to look at how
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Jesus pricks the conscience of this woman. Verses 16 to 19. I'm not sure how far.
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My plan was to get to verse 19. We're going to see how this goes. Because sometimes
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I don't make it. But let's begin with the setting of this entire text.
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Verse 1. It says, now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was making and baptizing more disciples than John.
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Although Jesus himself did not baptize but only his disciples. He left Judea and departed again for Galilee.
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Now the reason why I read verses 1, 2, and 3 back to back. That's all one sentence in the original language.
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It's all one sentence. Because this is all creating the need for Christ to move on.
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Creating the situation that would change his location. Jesus had been in Judea.
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And he had been ministering close to where John the Baptist was. He was in a rural area of Judea.
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And if you're unfamiliar with Israel and the geography during the time of Christ.
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Just keep this in mind. Because it is helpful. And I know our TVs aren't huge. So hopefully you'll be able to see.
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But if you notice the orange portion at the bottom. That would be what's known as Judea. That's where Jerusalem was.
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And then you have of course the Dead Sea. And then you have the Jordan River. And way up at the top there is the
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Sea of Galilee. We know that of course often referenced in Jesus' ministry.
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Up above in the yellow you'll see Galilee. Now Jesus was from Nazareth.
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He's called Jesus of Nazareth. Nazareth of course is in southern Galilee. That area right there.
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You'll see it right there at the top. In between Judea and Galilee was the area known as Samaria.
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So at the beginning of this narrative Jesus is in the south. Jesus is in Judea. And He learned that the
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Pharisees had learned. It's interesting how the ESV frames this. It says
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Jesus learned that the Pharisees had learned. That Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John.
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Why does this matter? Jesus' ministry is growing. Jesus is getting attention.
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Jesus is beginning to have more people coming to Him. Listening to Him. Learning from Him.
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And Jesus is like John calling out the religious leaders who had preached falsely and taught falsely.
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And so Jesus leaves
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Judea and departs for Galilee. Now a lot of discussion is made as to why
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Jesus departs. And the reason for His departure is not given explicitly. But it is implied here at least that the reason for it was because of the
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Pharisees and their interactions. And it is very possible that as Jesus' ministry was growing.
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He did not want at this point to begin the time of great conflict with them.
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We know there's going to come a time of great conflict with them. And if you compare this to Mark's gospel and Matthew's gospel.
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What you see is that it says Jesus withdrew to Galilee when
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John was arrested. Now John doesn't mention that in his gospel. But we can harmonize the situation.
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Jesus is preaching, teaching around John the Baptist. John the Baptist is arrested and Jesus goes to Galilee.
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Now I want to be clear. Jesus is not in any way afraid of conflict.
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And Jesus is not a coward in any way. But at this point
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His time had not yet come. And the Bible says that we're to be wise as serpents, right? And He knows so He goes.
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John has been arrested because of his calling out of Herod. John has been arrested because of Herod taking his brother
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Philip's wife. And Jesus hearing of that goes, I have it brother. Thank you so much.
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I brought my own. I even brought this. If you don't mind. Came prepared.
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But thank you brother. Thank you. So, and notice something in the text.
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It says now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had learned that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John. It says
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He departed again for Galilee. That's verse 3. He departed again. Why does it say departed again? Well that's where He grew up.
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That's where He's from. Jesus is from Galilee. So going back to Galilee made sense.
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And we read about Jesus' Galilean ministry in the Synoptic Gospels. We read throughout the
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Synoptic Gospels of the great works that He did in Galilee. I don't want to skip over verse 2.
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So let me for a moment just mention this about verse 2. Verse 2 says although Jesus Himself did not baptize but only
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His disciples. Now that is a side note that John includes in the text that I could take and run with for an entire sermon.
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Because it does tell us something about the way in which
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Jesus did His ministry. He did His ministry through the hands of His disciples. Even when
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He fed the 5 ,000. Remember what it did? It said He multiplied the food and He distributed it to them through the hands of His disciples.
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So when He does His work, He's doing it through the hands of His disciples. But there's also something here about baptism that we should not miss.
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And I want to quote an Anglican on this. I want to quote J .C.
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Ryle. Because when I read this quote from him, I was surprised. Because I didn't think an
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Anglican would say this. Because they tend to, depending on the scholar and the teacher, there tends to be a very weight, a lot of weight put on the instrumentality of baptism.
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The efficacy, better word, efficacy of baptism. This is what J .C. Ryle says about verse 2 and I want to share it with you.
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He says, This does not necessarily convey the grace of the
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Holy Spirit. The benefit of it depends greatly on the manner in which it is used.
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The doctrine taught and the language employed about it in some quarters are utterly inconsistent with the fact announced in the text.
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If baptism was all that some say it is, we would never have been told that Jesus Himself baptized not.
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Let it be a settled principle in our minds that the first and chief business of the church of Christ is to preach the gospel.
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The words of Paul ought to be constantly remembered. Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the gospel.
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That is 1 Corinthians 1 .17. When the gospel of Christ is faithfully and fully preached, we need not fear that the sacraments will be undervalued.
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Baptism and the Lord's Supper will always be most truly reverenced in those churches where the truth as it is in Christ is most fully taught and known.
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You see, there are those who undervalue baptism and the Lord's Supper, but there are those who place upon it more value than it should have.
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They point to a greater value. They themselves are not the value. They are signs pointing to something greater.
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And I was thankful to read that from J .C. Ryle. So, Jesus has departed for Galilee.
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And verse 4 says, And he had to pass through Samaria. This is one of those times where I like the
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King James rendering. The King James says,
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And he must needs go through Samaria. He must needs go.
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It sounds very official. So, sounds very important. He must needs go through Samaria.
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And there is a lot of debate about verse 4 among commentators as to the weight and breadth of the meaning of that particular verse.
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You might say, it's just a verse. It's just one verse. How can it be debated?
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Well, there are those who have said that Jesus, being a
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Jew, would not have traveled through Samaria because the
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Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. We'll learn more about that later when we get to verse 9 where she actually says that. We're going to talk about that.
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And so, the argument is this. That if a
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Jew wanted to go to Galilee, he would not go through Samaria because Jews had no dealings with Samaritans and they didn't want to go into their land.
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So, they would cross over the Jordan River there. You'll see to the north and to the west.
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Sorry, east. And they would go up through the valley and then they would cross back over when they got over to Galilee.
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So, as to totally avoid Samaria. The only problem with that is that we have historical writings from Josephus and even others who said that it was not uncommon that Jews would travel through Samaria.
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Now, probably some very fastidious Jews, probably the
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Pharisees, would have, so as to not get Samaritan dirt on their sandals, would maybe have made that trip around.
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But it wasn't uncommon for Jews to pass through Samaria. So, when it says he must needs go through Samaria, if we take the first instance, no
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Jews go through Samaria, he must go. Some people take that very much to mean Jesus knew this lady was going to be there, so he was going for this divine appointment.
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Now, I don't mind saying Jesus knew the lady was going to be there and he knew he was going to have a divine appointment. Jesus knows things that, you know, he's
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God in the flesh. I don't have a problem with that. But is that what it means when it says he must needs go?
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It could be. But it could also mean that from there to there, you've got to go through there.
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I mean, that could be as simple as what it's saying. And sometimes I think, like if I said, I've got to go to South Carolina, therefore
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I must needs go through Georgia. Now, I could get on a boat and I could take a little
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Atlantic Ocean detour, but in general, if I've got to go to South Carolina, I must needs go through Georgia, because that's the way.
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So it could be that verse 4 is just simply saying he had to go, he was going to Galilee, so he had to go through Samaria, because that's the way that you go.
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But we shouldn't think for a moment that anything
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Jesus did, he did without purpose. Jesus knows what he's doing.
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And so, however you want to take verse 4, I'll leave that up to you.
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But he went through Samaria, that we know. He went through Samaria, and he came to a town of Samaria called
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Sychar. Now, let's talk about Sychar for a moment. Sychar is the name of what was previously called in the
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Old Testament, the area known as Shechem. And Shechem has a very important historical past for the people of God.
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Abram, when he first arrived in Canaan from Babylonia, according to Genesis chapter 12, verse 6, he arrived in Shechem.
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God first appeared to him there in Genesis 12, verse 7. And this is where Abram built an altar and called upon the name of the
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Lord, Genesis 12, 8. This is where Jacob came safely when he returned with his wives and children from their sojourn with Laban.
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That's Genesis 33, 18. This is where Jacob bought a piece of land from a
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Canaanite named Hamar for a hundred pieces of, well, the
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ESV says a hundred pieces of money. That's the weirdest way to say it, like a hundred pieces of money. But other translations say a hundred pieces of silver.
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He bought it. He bought this plot of land. Jacob built an altar there.
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He called it El Elohe Israel, which means God, the
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God of Israel. This established the connection between Jacob and what became known as Jacob's well there in Sychar.
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This all goes back to events in Genesis. Shechem was also the place where Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, was taken and raped.
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And if you remember her brothers, Levi and Simeon, went and entered into a bargain with those men.
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If you want to marry our daughter, you all have to circumcise yourself. So they all circumcised themselves. And when they were healing from their circumcision, they went in and slaughtered them all.
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This city has a very interesting history in the people of God. This is where Joseph was buried, according to Joshua 24, 32.
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And this is where Joshua made a covenant with Israel, renewing their commitment to God and proclaiming, ask for me in my house, we will serve the
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Lord. That was here. So this area has tremendous import in the history of God's people.
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Now one thing we don't find in the Old Testament, we don't find mention of this well. The well is only mentioned here in the
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New Testament. And so we can learn a few things just about the well.
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And I don't mean to seem like I'm going into this long history lesson. I just think it's important to kind of consider what this area means.
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That well that she's drinking from, the well that they're there to get water from, that well had been used by God's people for 2 ,000 years.
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Because you remember, Moses lived 1 ,450 years before Christ and the patriarchs lived 400 and some odd years before that.
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So this well had been pouring out water for the people of God for 2 ,000 years. And according to tradition, it's still there.
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You can go to this area. There's a church built around it. It's called the Church of St. Fotina, I think is the name.
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It's an Eastern Orthodox church. Still giving water, 4 ,000 years.
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So this is the area that Jesus has come to. And this is why that significance there, it says that this is the field that Jacob had given to his son
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Joseph, Jacob's well was there. So Jesus comes there and it says in verse 6, it says, wearied as he was from his journey, he was sitting beside the well and it was about the sixth hour.
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The word weary here, we know what it means. Sometimes I think it's ridiculous.
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We'll say the Greek word for weary is weary. So that's what, you know, like we have to make a big deal. It just, it means weary.
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It's the same word Jesus used when he says, come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I'll give you rest.
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Jesus is tired. He's been walking. Jesus walked everywhere he went as far as we know.
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Except for that time he took a ride on the back of a donkey. Everything else was, he was walking.
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And the sixth hour, if we're using the normal way of counting the hours as they did at that time, this would have been noon.
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So it's middle of the day. It's hot. Jesus is exhausted.
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And he sits down next to the well. And one of the things that we ought not miss is that this is a reminder to us of the humanity of our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. One of the great doctrines of the faith is known as the doctrine of the hypostatic union.
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The hypostatic union, the word hypostasis is just a fancy word for nature.
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And the word hypostatic union means the union of natures.
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Christ is truly divine. And therefore he has a divine nature.
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But he is also truly human. And he has a human nature.
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And those two natures are perfectly, indivisibly, but yet distinctly united in the one person of Jesus Christ.
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The Latin fathers, you've heard me say this before, but I love it. The Latin fathers said vera homo vera deus, truly man and truly
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God. And I stress this because one of the earliest heresies about Christ was not regarding his divinity, but it was regarding his humanity.
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The docetists believed that Jesus was not truly a man.
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They believed that his man expression was just like an image or what we might call in our modern vernacular, it was like a hologram.
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But he wasn't really a man. The word dose in Greek means to appear.
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So a docetist means he appeared like a man, but he wasn't really a man.
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The Gnostics believed that material and the material world were evil.
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So if God took on flesh, that would be an act of engaging with evil. And so they said he couldn't become a man.
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That would be wrong. But if you remember in John's first epistle, what does he say?
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He said we must confess that Jesus has what? Come in the flesh. And in the first chapter of John's Gospel, he says the word became flesh.
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He didn't say the word appeared like flesh. He didn't say the word had the characteristics of flesh.
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No, he said the word became flesh. And in his flesh, Jesus experienced life as a man.
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And honestly, that by itself should be enough to cause us to take a step back and say how amazing that the
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God of all the universe experienced life as a man. The Bible says tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin, that he came and lived among us and he lived a life of human frailty.
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He got tired and fell asleep in a boat. That's his humanity. Then he wakes up and says peace be still.
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That's his divinity. And so when we come to a section of the text and it says
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Jesus was wearied, he's not faking it because he's truly a man.
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And this reminds us of his humanity. And it tells us it was about the sixth hour again.
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This was noon, hot part of the day. And this is what leads us into the next part of the story.
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Because the next part of the story is Jesus interacts with a woman who is coming to draw water at a time when it was not ordinary for women to come and draw water.
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That's why it stresses the day or the time of day. Women would normally come to draw water and they would come to draw water in groups for social interaction and for personal protection.
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So a woman coming by herself to draw water would have been odd in that day.
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Women were also wise enough to come in the early hours or the later hours because those were the times when it was least difficult to make the trip.
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You guys live in Florida? Well, not everybody. But we have some guests today.
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But those of us who live in Florida, it's so hot. Going out in the middle of the day is miserable.
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But this woman is coming by herself in the middle of the day. And we see in verse 7, it says,
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A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give Me a drink.
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Now, that may seem like an innocent request. As she's going to mention in a moment,
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Jesus doesn't have a bucket or a cup to draw water with.
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So it may seem like a normal innocent request. Give Me a drink, if you would, please. Verse 8 says,
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His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Now, it doesn't say what city, but if we take that to mean they went away into Sychar, that actually by itself would be kind of interesting because again, the
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Jews didn't normally interact with Samaritans. So right away, this might be already breaching cultural etiquette if they've gone to Sychar to buy food.
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But it doesn't say which city, so we don't want to overly speculate about that. But that's where the disciples are.
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Jesus is by Himself. No bucket, no cup, no nothing. And the
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Samaritan woman said to Him, How is it that You, a Jew, ask for a drink from Me, a woman of Samaria?
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For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Sorry, I meant to bring it up on the screen.
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I've often thought, How did she know He was a Jew? Was there that much difference in how they looked that she could just tell physically?
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Was He wearing something that indicated His position as a rabbi that maybe she knew?
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I don't know. It was just a thought as I was kind of thinking. Like, she knew though. She knew.
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And I don't want to assume, but Mike talks about sanctified imagination in his class sometimes.
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I was listening to you this morning. We can do that. And I think sometimes about this woman, and I imagine her as sassy.
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And maybe that's just my sanctified imagination. But I imagine her attitude when
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Jesus said, Give me a drink. Why are you talking to me? Who do you think you are? Don't you know our people don't talk to each other?
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Don't you know we don't interact with each other? Don't you know better than that? Who do you think you are, man?
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You're asking me for something? Our people are not friends.
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Our people don't get along. So right here the text is reminding us about this important cultural, social, and even
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I would say even racial distinction that existed between the people of Samaria and the
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Jews. And this particular situation goes way back in the history of the people of God.
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In the time of Jesus, the Samaritans were a distinct group of people living in that region.
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But their origins trace back to the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel. Many Israelites were exiled and foreigners were resettled in the land intermarrying with the remaining
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Israelites. And this produced a mixed population both ethnically and religiously who became known as the
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Samaritans. They accepted the Pentateuch, meaning the first five books of the
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Bible. They accepted those as being from God. This is why later she'll talk about our father
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Jacob. She accepted herself as a descendant of the patriarchs.
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And they believed they were worshiping God, but they were worshiping God on Mount Gerizim rather than in Jerusalem.
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From the Jewish perspective, they were viewed as religiously compromised and ethnically impure.
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I'll say that again. From the Jewish perspective, they were considered religiously compromised because they didn't worship where they were supposed to worship and how they were supposed to worship.
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And they were ethnically impure because they had mixed blood in their veins.
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The hostility deepened over the centuries through mutual acts of rejection and desecration including the destruction of the
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Samaritan temple in 128 B .C. The Samaritan temple, remember
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I said it was on Mount Gerizim. They had their own temple just like the Jews had their temple in Jerusalem. They had their own temple there on Mount Gerizim.
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That temple was destroyed by the Jews in 128 B .C. and in later retaliations by the
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Samaritans. So by Jesus' day, Jews and Samaritans had no dealings because of this long -standing ethnic prejudice, theological disagreement, and historical animosity.
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That's what she meant when she says Samaritans have no dealings with the Jews. There's a long -standing feud.
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Ever wonder why Jesus in the parable of the good Samaritan made the hero of the story a
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Samaritan and why that would have been such an affront to Jewish ears? Because Jesus in that story said a priest walked by, a
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Levite walked by, the guys you respect left that man beaten, bloodied on the side of the road but the one you disrespect, the one you hate, the
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Samaritan, he's the one who lifted him up, took him, paid for his lodging, paid for his care.
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You know one of the things that they would call Jesus, one of the things that the enemies of Jesus would say? You have a demon and you're a
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Samaritan. They would say you're demon -possessed and you're also a Samaritan. So this was an absolute hateful thing.
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And yet Jesus is going to interact with this woman. And honestly,
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I'm going to begin to draw to a close here because there's so much to be said about the living water I don't want to try to rush this.
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But I do want to, I want to end at verse 10 and then pick up next week right at the middle of verse 10. Listen to what he says in verse 10.
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Jesus answered, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that's saying to you give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.
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This woman is in this moment facing the
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God who made her in human flesh. And she was oblivious.
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She did not know she was in the presence of God. She did not know who it was she was facing.
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And Jesus said to her, If you knew the gift of God and who it was who asked you to give me a drink, if you only knew whose presence you were in, you'd have a different attitude.
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You would have a different disposition. And I wonder sometimes if we could say to ourselves how many times in our lives has
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God in one way or another revealed himself to us and we have been oblivious in the moment.
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Every time we come to worship do you realize what we're doing when we open this book?
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We are hearing the words of God. Right now there's a lot of there's a lot of conversation online about the importance of creeds and confessions and counsels.
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And we believe that those things are important. But creeds and confessions and counsels are the words of men about God.
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This is the word of God. If you knew the gift of God and he was who wrote this book, wouldn't you open it more?
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Wouldn't you spend more time in it? Wouldn't you think more about it and what it's saying? If you knew the gift of God who had given you life from the dead, wouldn't you desire to serve
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Him more and seek Him more and be with Him more in prayer? If you knew the gift of God that He has given us through the blood of His Son Jesus Christ, would it not change your heart?
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How often do we miss the gift of God which is right in front of us?
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Beloved, this woman, she was standing in the presence of God and she didn't know it.
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How often are we, how often are we oblivious to what
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God is doing in our life? So my encouragement to you today is to consider this.
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John Piper said, God is doing 10 ,000 things in your life at any one time and you're probably aware of three of them.
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I want to encourage you today to think about the gift of God in your life. If God has saved you through His grace, then you have every reason today to praise
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Him. When Adam and the group comes back up and we sing that doxology, blow the roof off this place and remind us that praise
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God from whom all blessings flow. Don't neglect remembering the gift of God.
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And if you are not a believer right now, may
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I say to you that the gift of God is available to all who believe.
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The Bible says, whoever believes in Him will have eternal life.
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If you are here today, think about what Jesus said to that woman. If you knew the gift of God and the one who was standing here, you would have asked
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Him and He would have given you living water. Reach out for the living water today and take it. If you never have, take it.
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It will give you life. Trust on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank You. I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for Your truth. I thank You for the living water that comes in the Savior. Lord, may we not overlook the gift.
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May we not look at the gift as it's something common or ordinary. But may we be overwhelmed today by the gift of God and the
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Lord Jesus Christ. For the believer, Lord, let us rejoice in the gift as we share in communion and be reminded of that gift.
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And Lord, for the believer, for the unbeliever today, may they, through the empty hand of faith, receive the gift today.
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But we know, Lord, that's something only You can do. As we read earlier, Lord, it is only through Your work done in eternity past that is going to cause their hearts to change and believe, so we trust
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You. And we say, O Lord, change hearts as You will and use the preaching of Your Word in Christ's name.