Sermon: John 4:1-26 – Re-Up, or The God Who Comes to the Unworthy
I preached again! This time, I was covering for a dear brother who could not be at his little rural church to be at his son’s wedding.
So, I picked up where he left off going through John, wrote a sermon, and took my wife to little Paulden, AZ.
(Just like the last sermon, technical issues slowed sharing this for over a week.)
As usual, my notes below were rough notes and not necessarily everything I said.
The video was on Facebook Live, so it is not the greatest quality.
https://DanielMKlem.sermon.net/21799323
John 4:1-26 – Re-Up, or The God Who Comes to the Unworthy
[INTRO]
Paul talked about Jesus being in Jerusalem for Passover – the great passage about God sending His son into the world.
He then shared about Jesus and His disciples going into the countryside where John the Baptist was baptizing, and John explained that Christ must increase while he decreased. And we see that Christ is truly God who is above all things and has received all things from the Father.
In other words, God is truth.
[READ JOHN 4:1-26, ESV]
1 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
Part 1: The set-up
vv. 1-8 give us the set-up.
- Jesus had been probably a few miles NE of Jerusalem with JtB – heard Pharisees were coming
- Knowing it was not time to be confronted he needed to leave immediately.
- Safest route for a Jew: cross the Jordan, travel through Gentile lands, and probably bump into Pharisees on the road.
- Cut travel time in half by heading north through Samaria – He took the expedient route.
- The Father obviously has a plan, too!
- Sychar (near Shechem), it says, is where Jacob’s Well is, in the area Jacob gave to Joseph (which went to Ephraim)
- Now, take a step back to look at the Samaritans:
- These are largely the people that are from the 10 tribes that abandoned the Davidic line and fell into idolatry. The rest could be descendants of the families that had intermarried with pagans and were sent away from Jerusalem (Ezra 10, Nehemiah 13).
- Separated when Rehoboam (anointed king in Shechem) was a horrible slave driver, and Jeroboam offered an alternative. [“So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day …” 1 Kings 12:19] Jeroboam built altars to golden calves. Later, after Assyria and Babylon took the Northern Tribes, the remnant intermarried with Gentiles or were the sent-away pagan families of Jews after the Exile.
- Jews saw Samaritans of unworthy of their time and attention, and vice versa.
- Jesus has probably walked for a day and a half at this point.
In all honesty, He probably sent the disciples away based on what we know about them wanting to keep people away from Him! He wanted a chance to talk with this woman without their meddling.
Part 2: The lead-up
vv. 8-15 is the lead-up to truth revealed.
Jesus uses the need for water to bridge the gap between a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman. It is like us finding a common ground with others who are not Christians.
Like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1, the gospel “is folly those who are perishing” (v.18), “a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles” (v. 22). And here is a Samaritan, a person who is a mix of both.
So, she appeals to Jacob, one of the Forefathers/Patriarchs, “Are you greater than him?!” She does not realize that this is the One who wrestled with Jacob in Genesis 32!
But He starts pushing her toward the truth in His lead-up to the big reveal. This water is temporary, but Jesus offers the water of the Holy Spirit who leads to eternal life.
Now, she is interested.
Part 3: The lift up
vv. 16-26 is the lift up – what looks like a teardown of a person is lifting her eyes to truth.
“Go, call your husband.” “You are right … you have had five, and you are not married to the man you currently live with.”
See, this sounds a bit harsh. Hear modern people saying, “See, Jesus didn’t tell her to stop living with the man!” But Jesus is pointing out her sin and using it to reveal her need for a Savior.
She misunderstood Jesus’ reference to living water, so He draws her in deeper with a hard truth. “You claim to obey the Torah, but even you have not lived up to it.” It was a less-than-gentle rebuke.
“Look, you have been unfaithful.”
But they continue, “I see you are a prophet, but our fathers worshiped on this mountain while you say Jerusalem is the place to worship.”
She is probably thinking of the Patriarchs worshiping in this area, or even that after the Exile Samaritan priests said true worship was on Mt. Gerazim.
[READ DEUTERONOMY 27:11-13, ending with “And the Levites shall declare blessings and curses”]
They fail to realize how they claim to worship on the mountain of blessing, but they honor the mountain of the curse.
And Jesus does it again: “You do not even understand what you are worshiping! Salvation comes from the Jews!”
[READ VV. 23-24]
She speaks from misunderstanding, and He sets her straight: You’re wrong, but we will all worship by the Holy Spirit in the Name of Truth.
And she replies, “Yes, the Messiah is coming, and he will tell us all things.”
Jesus says, “I who speak to you am he.” In other words, “I am that Truth. I am revealing all things to you.”
Jesus is the Son of God – fully man, fully God – who lifted a sinful woman’s eyes up to worship God rightly.
But what does this teach us?
I have recently had people claim I am not Christian for working during a church service. I found out they do not even believe Jesus is God and/or question the validity of the cross.
I had to tell them that they are not a Christian. “How dare you? Who do you think you are?” they challenged.
Here it is, in black and white (or red, black, and white!) This book reveals that Jesus is God.
I have heard some teach that this passage shows us that God will make us go to places we do not expect or even want to go, and this can be true.
But the real message is this:
Jesus calls all people to Himself. The Great Commission says to make disciples of all nations, and in Acts 1 He says the gospel would go in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Here He is, before this command, demonstrating it. He avoided the hypocritical religious leaders to reach out to someone His own people said was not worthy.
Some of us have committed adultery. Some have stolen. Some have lied, cheated, blasphemed, and sought refuge in things not God. We have denied the deity of Christ, the goodness of God. We have done drugs, been drunk, and slept around. We have been the outcast and worthless sinner.
Yet the Father reaches out to us through the Holy Spirit to turn to the Son, and says, “Yes. You have done horrible things, and you deserve death. But see my forgiveness. See my grace. See my love, poured out on the cross.
None are unworthy at the foot of the cross. Yet, we are only made worthy when we kneel at the foot of the cross, accepting our sinful nature, and turning to our only salvation: the Son of God killed on a cross for the forgiveness of our sins, making us washed and made new, quenched by His goodness and grace, clothed in His worthiness and righteousness.
How can we not want to tell others of how much He has done? How He has saved wretches like us.
We may not share the Gospel perfectly, and we may even want our friends around to help sometimes, but we worship the God who saves, even when we misunderstand and twist scriptures for our own needs and try and show our own goodness apart from Him.
