Well, turn again in your Bible to the fourth
chapter of John. As we return, I want to say thanks to Austin
Duncan and Phil Johnson, Nathan Busenitz for stepping into the pulpit and doing such a
wonderful job here. Always a joy for us to hear the Word from
them. But it's good to be back and to go back to
the gospel of John. Much, of course, in the story of the woman
at the well is familiar to you. If you grew up in the church, you heard the
story probably at many, many different intervals through your life and Sunday school. You have no doubt read it many times and thought
what a wonderful story it is. I'm not here to tell you things that you don't
know, or to bring out some kind of hidden realities in the story. The story is well-known. It is a simple story, it is a straight-forward
story, it is the story of Jesus evangelizing an outcast woman, of her coming to salvation
and then being used by God to bring many in her village to salvation. In fact, we read that sort of the culminating
comment on the whole story comes in verse 39, "From that city, many of the Samaritans
believed in Him because of the word of the woman." Here you have as clear a model of our Lord
evangelizing a sinner as anywhere on the pages of the gospels. And then that makes it a very instructive
portion of Scripture, one that we should be very familiar with for the lessons that it
teaches us. We're going to go over those lessons, lessons
about how we approach the unbelieving world around us and how we bring them to hear the
gospel and understand what it offers and what it demands. But having said that--and we will look at
the story and we will emphasize its wonderful, helpful modeling for us of evangelizing--having
said that, I want to remind you that the purpose of John is not set aside here, and the purpose
of John is stated again in chapter 20, verse 31 of his gospel: "These things are written
that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might
have life in His name." So while it is about the woman and her conversion,
that is the secondary purpose of this section as we would know, being consistent with John's
mission. The primary purpose is to unveil Christ. The primary purpose is to declare Jesus as
the Messiah, the Son of God. The primary purpose is to put Him on display. And in this account, His humanity is on display
as He is weary and thirsty sitting by a well. That's His humanity, and we'll look a little
bit more closely at that. But His deity is also on display because He
meets a woman whom He has never met in His life and He knows her entire history. So we see His humanity and His weariness. We see His deity and His omniscience. It is then, more than it is anything else,
a presentation of Christ. And what makes it unique is that up to now
in the gospel of John, John the writer, John the apostle has presented Christ as the Son
of God. John the Baptist has presented Christ as the
Messiah. The disciples of Jesus have given testimony
to the fact that He is the Messiah. So we have the witness of John the apostle. We have the witness of John the Baptist. We have the witness of the disciples. But this is the first time that the proclamation
of the messiahship of Jesus comes from His own lips and that we find in verses 25 and
26 where the woman speaks of the Christ, the Messiah who will come, and Jesus said to her
in verse 26, "I who speak to you am He." So as I say, up to now it's John the apostle,
John the Baptist, and the followers of Jesus. But here is the identity of the Messiah from
His own lips. Now what makes this so very unique is that
this declaration from the lips of Jesus as to His identity is not given to any significant
religious leaders in Israel. It is not given in Jerusalem. It is not given to the religious establishment
there. It is given to a woman who is, in every sense,
an outcast. This is a woman who is a Samaritan. Samaritans were essentially a corrupted form
of the Jewish race. The Jews who remained in the northern kingdom
of Israel when the Assyrians came and took them captive in 722--the Jews that remained
after the population was removed the land--intermarried with all kinds of pagan, idolatrous nations
and so they were a hybrid people who had forsaken their Judaism and committed the most heinous
crime that a Jew could commit, and that was to mingle with idolatrous Gentiles. They had done that. They were outcasts. So this is an outcast woman. More than that, this is an immoral woman. This is a woman who has been married multiple
times and is living in an adulterous relationship at this very time. This is an ignorant woman. She doesn't know anything about the true religion. Jesus even says to her, "You don't know what
you worship. At least the Jews have the full Old Testament." She is an ignorant woman. She is uneducated. She is also an indifferent woman. She is not like Nicodemus, she is not seeking
Jesus. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night because he
knew He was a man who was sent from God, He was a prophet from God because nobody could
do what He did. And Nicodemus had seen His miracles. This woman had seen nothing, knew nothing
about Jesus, heard nothing from Him or about Him. She is religiously indifferent. She is neutral. She has no idea of who Jesus is. She has no idea of who this Jewish stranger
sitting on the well is. She is from the dregs of corrupted culture
and society. She is a pariah in her own realm. She is an unclean woman. She's the very opposite of Nicodemus. Nicodemus is moral, he's religious, he's an
upstanding Jew, he is learned, he is a theologian, he is from the socially elite, he is a prominent
leader, he is devout, he is respected by everyone, and it was he who sought out Jesus that he
might know the way of salvation, the way into the kingdom. This woman is the opposite and yet it is to
this woman that Jesus first in the gospel of John declares His own identity. It's an amazing thing. And it is a testimony, on the one hand, to
the apostasy of Israel. It is a stinging rebuke to Israel that this
revelation is not made to some prominent religious leader there, but rather to this woman. But it is more than just a stinging rebuke
of Israel, it is a declaration on the part of Jesus that He has come to save people from
every tongue and tribe and nation. It is a testimony that salvation is for all
who believe. And that has already been declared in John
3:16 that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes
in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. This is the testimony of Scripture. Romans 10, "Whoever calls on the name of the
Lord will be saved," whether Jew or Gentile. Galatians 3 says the same thing. Colossians 3 says the same thing. From the very outset, from the very beginning,
the gospel was intended not just for the Jews, but the world. Acts 10:34, "Opening his mouth, Peter said,
'I most certainly understand that God is not one to show partiality but in every nation
the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him,' from every nation." That's why the Great Commission says, "Take
the gospel to every nation. Go to the ends of the earth to every creature." So here is a demonstration that God has forsaken
Israel in a great measure, and that plays out, doesn't it, as destruction comes in 70
A.D. But it's also a demonstration that the gospel
is intended for anyone and everyone who believes, no matter what their ethnic identity, no matter
what their place in life. And this is for us to understand as we proclaim
the gospel in fulfillment of the Great Commission. Now when you go into a story like this, there
are so many deviations that you could take, so many side trips that you could take, so
many tangents you can go off on, both in terms of historical background which always makes
things rich and as well in terms of sort of expanding spiritual truth. Well, I want to resist doing too much of that. I want to do only as much of that as I feel
is necessary for you to relive the story. And as I often say, it isn't about bringing
the story into modern times, it's about taking all of you back into this event itself, and
letting you live the event. And I need to tell you enough about what's
going on so you feel like you are really there. And as we go, we're going to see the glory
of Christ on display but we're going to learn from Him how we are to approach people in
the world who are indifferent to the gospel. Once in a while in my life, somebody will
come up to me and say, "Do you know how I can be saved?" Or, "I'm trying to figure out how to get into
the kingdom." Or, "Do you know how I can receive eternal
life?" That happens, and I'm always glad when that
happens; it's a lot easier if you can start with that question. But for the most part, through life, you're
going to be in the position of the initiation of a conversation with an indifferent person
about a gospel they need to hear. And that's what we're going to learn from
Jesus. We learn some things from Nicodemus, how to
respond to someone who comes and says, "I want to enter the kingdom," and Jesus says,
"Well wait a minute, that's not in your power, you need to be born from above." And we understand that. And so you need to pray and ask God for that
new birth if you want to be in His kingdom. That's a very rare experience for most of
us. It may be most common in our families as our
children come to us and ask us those questions and we start with the point that they want
to know how to be born again. But for the most part, if we're going to take
the gospel to the world, we're going to have to initiate the conversation with ignorant,
indifferent people who are in some way or another victims of the concoction that they
call their own faith or their own religion--and we have to take the initiative. Unlike Nicodemus, who sought out Jesus, here's
a woman who wasn't looking for Him at all, didn't know He existed, had no idea who He
was. He is an unknown, unsought stranger that she
meets sitting on a well who is as far as she is concerned really bizarre, strange. He is saying very strange things, things she
can't sort out--at least that's how it starts. Jesus dismisses her indifference. It's not a barrier. He dismisses her ignorance. It's not a barrier. And He dismisses, this is important, her immorality. I know we tend to get very, very self-righteous
when we look at our immoral world. And it's very easy for us to have resentment
toward people, very easy for us to resent homosexuals, advocating for gay marriage,
corrupting our culture, corrupting our young people. Very easy for us to resent those who are sexually
immoral, very easy for us to resent Islamic terrorists because of the damage they do,
the destruction they do. But that's the mission field. That's not the enemy, that's the mission field. And all sinners are in the same situation
headed for the same hell, even if they're not homosexuals or they're not Islamic terrorists. They're alienated from God and it's our responsibility
in this world to go to them. They are the sick who need the physician. They are the unrighteous, the sinners. So having said that, as we go through this
story, keeping in mind that Christ is magnificently on display, we're going to learn some principles
for approaching people with the gospel that we see our Lord using here and they're very,
very helpful. But before we do that, let's begin with the
setting in verse 1. "Therefore," and that's an important connection
with the previous passage as you'll see in a minute. "Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees
had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus Himself
was not baptizing but His disciples were, "He left Judea and went away again into Galilee." Simply stated, Jesus leaves Judea. What's He been doing in Judea? He's been preaching. Preaching what? Preaching repentance, preaching the kingdom. He has been doing what John the Baptist did. You remember their ministries had an overlapping
period of time. Jesus launches Himself by showing up at the
Jordan where John is baptizing. John baptizes Him and says, "Behold the Lamb
of God who takes away the sin of the world"; points to Christ. John tells His disciples, "Follow Christ,
He's the Messiah, Go after Him, I must decrease, He must increase." And the transition is taking place. But John then moves north, as we learned at
the end of chapter 3, he goes up north and he begins to preach there in a new area and
baptize people, declaring Jesus to be the Messiah, and also preparing people for His
arrival, for confronting Him. So he's doing the same thing in the north. Why did he go north? Because he wanted to give room for Jesus to
come in where he had been in the most populous area. So Jesus is now in Judea and He's getting
big crowds, bigger crowds, we might assume, than even John. It seems to be what it's saying. Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples
than John. They're coming, being baptized. Jesus has an added feature that John didn't
have. Jesus does miracles. John did no miracles. Jesus has already begun to do His miracles
and the attraction is profound and He is baptizing. What baptizing is it? It's that proselyte baptism in which Jews
came and said, "I'm no better than a Gentile, and I want my heart cleansed," and they symbolize
the desire for heart cleansing to prepare for the arrival of Messiah by going through
an external immersion into water. That's what Jesus is doing. It says there in verse 1 that Jesus was making
and baptizing more disciples. And then verse 2 appears to be a sort of an
edit by John the apostle, the writer, by saying, "Jesus Himself was not actually baptizing,
but His disciples were." And that would be for obvious reasons. If Jesus baptized you, that might go to your
head. If others were baptized by the apostles and
you happened to be baptized by Jesus, so Jesus defers and delegates that responsibility. But it comes out in the same way, in the general
sense, as being a baptism by Jesus because it was done by His delegated representatives. Also important to remind you that baptism
does not depend on the baptizer. The baptizer adds nothing to the baptism. Paul said, "I'm glad that I baptized none
of you but Crispus and Gaius." It is the baptism itself. It is the heart of the one being baptized
that is the issue, not the baptizer. Judas even baptized people, we must assume,
when he became a part of the discipled group. So Jesus' ministry is flourishing but this
creates problems. The Pharisees already hate John the Baptist. Why do they hate John the Baptist? Because when the religious leaders came down
to the Jordan where John was baptizing, and he saw them--you can read about it in Matthew
chapter 3--John welcomed this with this: "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from
the wrath to come?" And then He pronounced damnation on their
heads. John was not popular with them. Jesus was even less popular because Jesus
had the same message about their apostate religion, but Jesus had come into the Temple
and wreaked havoc. And these men, these Pharisees, were essentially
the watchdogs for all things religious. And they were watching over their religious
turf and hatred was mounting and building against Jesus. And so Jesus wanted to avoid a premature confrontation. There wasn't time for that. There was much ministry yet to do before this
thing escalated. And so He left Judea, verse 3, and went away
again--again because He had come from Galilee and from Nazareth. He went back home and back to Galilee where
He would minister for well over a year, far from Jerusalem, far from Jerusalem. It was never necessary for Jesus to sort of
test His enemies. In chapter 7, verse 30, they were seeking
to seize Him and no man laid his hand on Him because His hour had not yet come. In chapter 8, verse 20, He spoke these words
in the treasury as He taught in the Temple, and no one seized Him because His hour had
not yet come. He was on a divine schedule and He took steps
to avoid that both naturally and apparently occasionally even supernaturally. They tried to kill Him in Nazareth, and He
just disappeared, we don't know how, right out of their midst. So He goes to Galilee, and He's going there
for the great Galilean ministry, which you know about if you've been with us in our gospel
studies. Now in order to get there, He had to pass
through Samaria. Well, technically speaking, you don't have
to pass through Samaria, you can take the coastal route. You're going to Galilee in the north, you're
in Jerusalem Judea in the south. You could go to the west and go up the coastal
plain and go that way and avoid Samaria. Samaria is a strip of land in the middle. Or you could go the eastern route by crossing
the Jordan River going up through an area called Perea, and then cross back over the
Jordan River and you will have gone literally around Samaria, or you can go through Samaria. If you are a severely fastidious and sort
of orthodox Jew, worried about defilement, you either take the coastal route, or you
take the eastern route across the Jordan River because you don't want to go through Samaria. But here He had to pass through Samaria. Literally in the Greek, it was necessary,
it was required for Him to go through Samaria. We could argue that it was the shortest route
and so that laid the necessity on Him. He wanted to get out of there. And He didn't want to prolong His trip. He wanted to get to Galilee as quickly as
possible so He took the shortest route. But I think we would have to go beyond that
and say He had to go through Samaria because there was a sovereign appointment, that it
was established for Him with a woman by a well and that had been ordained before the
foundation of the world. And it was going to lead to her salvation
and the salvation of an entire group of people from a local Samaritan village. He had to go that way. It was the shortest route, but there was more
than a geographic compulsion--there was a divine appointment, a spiritual necessity
foreordained. The machinery, you might say, of divine sovereignty,
of supernatural purpose, was in motion and headed toward one surprised, sinful woman. So He came by going through Samaria to a city
of Samaria. Now Samaria originally was the name of the
capital city of the northern kingdom. When the kingdoms split after Solomon--Solomon
was the last king of the unified kingdom (Saul, David, Solomon, and from Solomon's sons)--the
kingdom split, ten tribes went north, two stayed south. The south became known as Judah. The north as Israel. That's historic. When the kingdom was established independently
in the north, Omri, who was one of the kings of the north...and by the way, all of them
were evil, all of them were wicked, all of them were unrighteous, there was never a good
king in the north. But Omri, according to 1 Kings 16, identified
Samaria as the capital city. Well, it didn't take long for the word Samaria
to extend from the capital city to the whole region, so it all became known as Samaria. In Samaria, somewhere along the way, is a
village called Sychar. So we read there that He came to this place,
a city in Samaria called Sychar. Probably modern Askar, still around, and located
on the slope of Mount Ebal, opposite Mount Gerizim. Do you remember Ebal and Gerizim from Deuteronomy
28? The mountains of cursing and blessing where
God warned the people, "If they obeyed they'd be blessed, if they didn't, they'd be cursed?" That area. Now not just near this village, and by the
way, the best estimate would be that if you started in Bethany, maybe He was staying with
the family of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, we don't know. But let's assume Bethany, which is right by
Jerusalem, somewhere in that area. It's about a twenty-mile hike and when I say
hike, I don't mean it's a flat walk, I mean it's an exerting kind of hike, up and down
and up and down and a rigorous walk, 20 miles would take it to where the modern town of
Askar is, if that's close to where Sychar is--a twenty-mile walk that day. He came to this place, which is also further
identified by letting us know that this is a place where Jacob purchased land and dug
a well and then bequeathed that land and well to his son Joseph. And Joseph, of course, was even later buried
there after the land was conquered by Joshua post-captivity. So this is just identifying our historical,
geographic location, which the Bible loves to do because it is a real book about real
people doing real things in real places. So Jesus goes the twenty miles and He arrives
near Sychar, and some suggest that Jacob's well--they know where that is today. It was probably between a half a mile and
a mile away from the village of Sychar. Askar is about a half a mile or so away. He arrives at that place and we read this:
"Jesus being wearied from His journey was sitting thus." What does "thus" mean? Wearied, in a wearied condition; He sat in
a slumped, wearied condition by the well. It was about the sixth hour. The day began at dawn, which means it began
say around 6 A.M. and sixth hour puts it at noon. It is high noon; it is the middle of the day. The sun is at its peak and He has walked 20
miles, a rigorous, rigorous walk that morning. And He's exhausted. The word "wearied," kopiao , means to be to
the point of sweat and exhaustion. It's an extreme condition. He is worn out. He is spent. And at noon, under the blazing sun, He sits
down on the edge of the well. The stage is set for this amazing encounter
that is about to happen. And again there you see the humanity of Jesus,
don't you? You see His humanity. He understands all that we suffer as men and
women because He was one of us. He knew what it was to be weary, to be thirsty,
to be worn out, to be exhausted, which contributes to Him being a sympathetic high priest who
learned from His own experiences how to sympathize with us. That kind of thing brings shame on those who
say that only the Virgin Mary or the saints can sympathize with us. Jesus walked in our flesh. He understands even our physical weariness. And there He is by the well. Now we come to the encounter and I want to
give you some points as we go through. We'll take maybe the first half of this little
list today, and then next week the latter half. The first thing that I want you to focus on
as we look for a model for personal evangelism--the first thing is unexpected condescension, unexpected
condescension. And what I mean by that is Jesus takes the
initiative and comes into her world. Verse 7, "There came a woman of Samaria to
draw water." Now I have to stop there for a minute. Drawing water was women's work. Men worked in the field and did the hard work;
women drew the water. That's supported by all kinds of historical
data. They did it every day. They did it every day because they needed
water every day. Water was scarce in that part of the world,
as you know. Wells were visited every day. That was a common meeting place; it was a
common meeting place for the women who came to draw water. What is fascinating is that they came at dusk,
typically. They came when the day had cooled down in
the evening. Why is she coming at noon? Why is she there at twelve? Well, we can't be certain about it, but it
would be a reasonable thing to assume that this woman was a woman in town who had a very
bad reputation--five husbands and living in adultery. And oh, by the way, the Samaritan religion
was based upon an understanding of the Pentateuch which contains the Ten Commandments and a
whole lot of other things that have to do with marriage and divorce and adultery, the
five books of Moses. This is a scarlet woman, to borrow a little
from Nathaniel Hawthorne. She would normally come at dusk if she was
like other women, but if she was a woman of shame, maybe she came at noon because she
knows nobody else is going to be there. And maybe she's avoiding the confrontation
and the stigma that she bears. And why this well? Because there's some information historically
that there were wells closer to Sychar. Why go this far? Why pass other wells? And the answer might be the same, that she
avoided the very convenient places in the normal time of day to avoid the scorn of other
women that she would have to face. She is not a respectable person. Consequently by all expectations, she is not
a woman worthy of attention from the Son of God. She is not a woman who is elevated. This is condescension. And how does He begin? He takes the initiative. He says to her, "Give Me a drink. Give Me a drink." J.C. Ryle says, "This is a gracious act of spiritual
aggression on the sinner, a gracious act of spiritual aggression on the sinner." We don't think about aggression in terms of
evangelism, but we should, we should. It's a shocking thing, really, very shocking. Not so much in our culture, obviously, but
in that culture it's a shocking thing for Him to do because men don't speak with women
in public. That's a breach of religious etiquette. And especially rabbis don't speak to women
in public. In fact, I remember reading years ago, a group
of Pharisees and rabbis who were called the bruised and bleeding Pharisees and the reason
they were bruised and bleeding was because every time they saw a woman they closed their
eyes and they kept running into buildings. Jewish men didn't talk to women. Do you know that Jewish rabbis were not supposed
to talk to the women of their own family in public. So here Jesus, a rabbi, a Jewish man, not
only talks to a woman, but He talks to a woman who is an outcast, despised woman, who is
a half-breed pagan and worse than that, she is by every measure a well-known adulteress
who probably has been an adulteress for a long, long time, hence so many divorces. 'Cause if you look into the Law of Moses in
the Old Testament, you will find that Moses did grant a divorce, but a divorce, as we
know--because Jesus reiterated it--for immorality. This is an immoral woman. It's a shocking breach of everything Jewish
for Him to say to this woman, "Give Me a drink." And somebody might say, "Well, why doesn't
He have the disciples get Him a drink?" Well, can't because verse 8 says they had
gone away into the city to buy food; so He's there alone. Why is He there alone? Well, because they needed food. How many disciples does it take to get food? All of them? No, but dismissing them was beneficial to
the conversation, let's put it that way. He wanted to be alone with the woman. Without them there to get Him a drink, and
without any instrument to get a drink, He says to the woman, "Give Me a drink." It's just absolutely shocking. And by the way, just a footnote, Jesus never
did a miracle to quench His own thirst, satisfy His own hunger, or provide anything for Himself,
never. There's no record in all four gospels that
Jesus ever did any miracle to feed Himself, provide for Himself, and thus He honored work,
and He honored effort, and He honored care, and He honored sacrifice, and He honored giving
and all the things that we do in life to sustain ourselves. This was also part of His commitment to humanity. We get what we need through either our own
work, and our own effort, or somebody else's work and somebody else's effort. He didn't do those kinds of miracles that
would supply His own wants. The woman then responds in verse 9. "Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him,
'How is it that You being a Jew ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?'" And then John adds, parenthetically, "For
Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." And by the way, just to take that out of English
and put it in Greek, "For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." Literally the verb there is, "They don't use
the same utensils." Literally, "Use not anything together with
Samaritans." They don't use the same things. They don't drink out of the same cup. Very specific. She's saying, "I know Your culture, I know
what You think about us." And by the way, Jesus has shattered that because
that was non-biblical tradition. That kind of hatred toward the Samaritans
that came from the Jews was wrong, it was illegitimate. Again, that should have been the mission field,
but now we've got a nation of Jonahs, don't we? We've got a nation of Jonahs who don't want
to take the message to anybody else any more than Jonah did. There are the Samaritans and instead of telling
them the truth, instead of trying to draw them to the true knowledge of the true God
through the true Scriptures, they treat them with scorn and disdain. And so, the woman knows that and she knows
that they don't share anything. And she says, "How is it that You being a
Jew?" How did she know He was a Jew? Probably from His clothing; probably from
His clothing. Jews had distinctive clothing and they had
tassels, you know, on the edges of their garments, according to Numbers 15. And certainly a rabbi most likely would have
those. There was nothing in His appearance that made
Him look like some, you know, medieval painting of Jesus with a halo over His head. He was just a man like any other man who was
a Jew. Again His humanity is on display. He has violated all expectations by talking
to her. And listen to this, listen to how indifferent
Jesus was toward all the non-biblical traditions. He sent the disciples into a Samaritan town
to buy...What?...food. They were going to eat Samaritan food bought
out of the hands of Samaritans. Jesus didn't care at all for tradition, only
revealed truth. And when they created these kinds of traditions,
and therefore shut the Samaritans off, they were in violation of God's will and God's
heart. God had to send His Messiah to do what the
people would never do, what the religious leaders would never do. The religious leaders of Israel weren't even
interested in converting their own people, let alone Samaritans. John adds, "The Jews have no dealings with
the Samaritans." They don't use the same utensils. In fact, the Jews in John 8:48 said, "Do we
not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?" That's what they said to Jesus. You're nothing; that was one of their epithets. "You're a demon-possessed Samaritan." Terrible scorn for the Samaritans. Now again, you go back to 720, 722 B.C., Assyria
captures the northern kingdom. Transports everybody out. You can read the story yourself in 2 Kings
17. Takes everybody into captivity, leaves a few
people there, a few of the Jews from the ten tribes, and into the district come Babylonians,
people from Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, Sepharvaim. They're even listed in that chapter of 2 Kings. They come in, they intermingle, they bring
their gods, they get married, they lose their racial purity. This is a gross time in the eyes of the Jews. They concoct some bizarre form of their own
religion, they build a temple on Mount Gerizim and they carry on their own kind of worship. We'll see more about that later. The bitterness is profound after the Jews
in the southern kingdom, Judah came back from captivity. Remember they came back from their captivity. After they came back and rebuilt, you remember,
it was Samaritans who tried to help them. Do you remember at the story of Nehemiah? The Samaritans wanted to help them and they
refused to let them help. And so the Samaritans then tried to stop what
they were doing and the bitterness got deeper and deeper and it lasted, and it lasted, and
it lasted. A renegade Jew, actually, it was a renegade
Jew named Manasseh, who married a daughter of the Samaritan Sanballat. You remember he was the enemy of Nehemiah. This renegade Jew named Manasseh, who married
the daughter of Sanballat, he's the one that went up into Samaria and built the temple
to sort of be their temple because they couldn't be a part of the new temple being built in
Jerusalem. So this rivalry had gone on. Here we are four or five hundred years later
and the attitudes are bitter and deep. And so, Jesus starts the conversation with
an utterly indifferent, immoral woman. That's the first point again, unexpected condescension. That's where this begins. Second point: unsolicited mercy, unsolicited
mercy is offered. Verse 10, "Jesus answered and said to her,"
and He doesn't say anything about this conflict between Jews and Samaritans. He ignores that. "But He answered and said to her, 'If you
knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, "Give Me a drink," you would have
asked Him and He would have given you living water.'" This is unsolicited mercy, using physical
thirst and water as the contact point, He reverses the situation. He starts out thirsty, asks her to give Him
a drink. Turns the table. Identifies her as the thirsty one and He the
source of water. She doesn't know where He's going with this. But here is mercy. It is pure mercy because He says, "If you
knew the gift of God," the dorean , the free gift of God. And this is where evangelism starts. You inaugurate the conversation, you find
your way in at a common point of interest, and then comes the reality that you are offering
the sinner without regard to morality, okay? It is mercy with no regard for morality. It is mercy with no regard for religion. It is just mercy. It is just grace. It is the gift of God. This is the unique glory of the gospel. In opposition to all religion, all religion
says, "Do this, do this, do this, do this, and God will give you this." The gospel says, "In whatever state you're
in religiously, and whatever state you're in morally, here's a gift." It is the gift of God. It is a gift of grace. It is a gift of mercy. Dorean , the word here, is "free gift." Paul loves that word. Paul uses that word in Romans. He uses it in chapter 5, the free gift, the
free gift. And that's where our Lord starts with this
unsolicited mercy being offered. "If you knew the free gift, and if you knew
who it is that said to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have"...What?..."you would have"...What?..."asked
Him." What did we say when we were going through
regeneration in John 3? Regeneration is a work of God. You can't participate in your own birth. All you can do is ask. All you can do is ask. There's a gift from God. I'm here to give it if you only ask, and if
you would ask Him--speaking in the third person concerning Himself--He would have given you
living water. And with that statement about living water,
He takes the conversation in a strongly spiritual direction, a strongly spiritual direction. We're not exactly talking about the water
that we started talking about, living water? She might have assumed living water was what
was in the well. Why? Because that well was spring-fed, a hundred
feet deep, spring-fed, constant water from Jacob until then. But if you only knew what God is offering
you of living water, you would have asked. And if you knew that I was the only one who
could give it, and here I stood, you would have asked Me, and I would have given it to
you. What is the gift of God? What is the living water? Well, it's salvation, clearly. Everything that's in salvation--mercy, grace,
pardon, forgiveness, justification, flowing and flowing and flowing and flowing and flowing--and
endlessly flowing, flowing, flowing. Now I make an obvious point here and it's
this. When sinners come before the judgment of God,
the Great White Throne--and they're all brought to that judgment in the end--when they're
all brought before the tribunal of God, based on what our Lord says here and elsewhere,
they will be sent to hell not because of all the lists of sins. But they will be sent to hell because they
failed to ask for the gift. James says, "You have not because you ask
not." Jesus says, "You will not come to Me that
you might have life." Jesus says, "Because you don't believe in
Me, you'll die in your sins and where I go you'll never come." This is a gift. This is a gift. If you knew the gift, if you could grasp the
gift, and who it is who is standing before you, you would have asked and I would have
given it to you. This is mercy. This is the uniqueness of the Christian gospel. It is the free gift to the one who asks. "Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will
be saved." "Whoever" (Romans 10). Why is it described as living water? Because they're at a well. That's a great analogy, right? But it also has some Old Testament foundations. Jeremiah 2:13 talks about disobedient Israel
being guilty of foolishly forsaking God, the fountain of living waters, to hue for themselves
cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. I mean, they lived in a world where water
was life, crucial, essential. Jeremiah 17:13, Jeremiah warned that all who
forsake the Lord will be put to shame. Those who turn away on earth will be written
down because they have forsaken the foundation of living water, even the Lord. Psalm 36:9, "God is the fountain of life." Isaiah 12:3, "The redeemed in Him will joyously
draw water from the springs of salvation." Isaiah 55:1, "Ho! Every one that thirsts, come and drink water." Water is life. You draw your life from God. God wants to give you the gift of life. This is running water, flowing water. In John 6 and verse 35, Jesus said, "I am
the bread of life, he who comes to Me will not hunger. He who believes in Me will never thirst." And then in John 7:37, "On the last day, the
day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come
to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said'"...and
this is from Isaiah..."'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'" And that's what Jesus says here. You would have asked and He would have given
you living water. In fact, in verse 14 He says, "It will become
in you a well of water springing up to eternal life." It's a water that once you receive, you'll
never thirst. There's the perseverance of the saints. There's the security of the believer. Once you receive this water, once this water
is placed in you, it flows forever and flows forever, and flows forever. It is a well of water, springing up eternally. This is the gospel. Again, mercy without regard to morality, mercy
without regard to religion. You just ask. It's the gift; it's the gift. Well she's trying to figure out what He's
talking about. Verse 11, "She said to Him, 'Sir, You have
nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water?'" This is sarcasm. This is a kind of scorn, kind of mockery. This woman is very used to defending herself. "You're not greater than our father Jacob,
are you? Who gave us the well and drank of it himself
and his sons and his cattle?" Who do you think you are? You've got something better than this? How are you going to give me water when you
don't have a bucket? How you going to drop the rope a hundred yards,
or a hundred feet rather, pull up the water? Do you have some other well? Are you greater than Jacob? Genesis 33:18 and 19, "Dug the well." This is skepticism, mockery. Again, mercy responds kindly, patiently. Verse 13, "Jesus answered and said to her,
'Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will
give him shall never thirst, but the water that I will give him will become in him a
well of water springing up to eternal life." There's the eternality of salvation. Wow. That leads us to a very brief third principle
in evangelism. First you have an unexpected condescension,
and then you have an unsolicited mercy offered. And then you have unparalleled blessings promised,
unparalleled blessings promised. In verse 14, our Lord promises an endless
supply of satisfying water forever and really gets specific--we're talking about eternal
life. This is the fountain of youth. This is the fountain of eternal life. Now His point is unmistakable, unmistakable. This is permanent, consistent, full, satisfying,
everlasting mercy and blessing from God to the sinner who asks. The analogy has now moved to its point. The doctrine is the doctrine of eternal life. He's offering her eternal life which is a
spiritual reality--the gift of mercy, the gift of grace for all who ask. What is it? It's living water. It's satisfaction forever, soul satisfaction
forever. She responds in verse 15, "Sir, give me this
water so I will not be thirsty or come all the way here to draw." She still doesn't get it. Give me this water. And all I can see in her is incredulity, who
is this man and what is He talking about? What is she talking about? Does she get some of it? Maybe. Is she starting to think in terms of spiritual
things and eternal things? Maybe. Or is this just more mockery? Or is it mingled? I don't know at what point she is, as the
Spirit of God works on her heart through the words of the Savior. I don't know. But it all comes clear in the next section,
next week. All right? Let's pray. We've been greatly blessed, Lord, with the
experience of our Lord with this woman and so much more to come. We see His seeking heart. We see His condescending grace and mercy. We see His easy promise of blessing and salvation
to the unworthy sinner who simply asks, who simply asks. "We have not because we ask not. If we ask, You hear and You give life to the
one who asks." But it's not just that simple, for there is
the matter of sin and how we face that as we will see next time. Help us to learn from this and to be better
able and more faithful to proclaim this glorious message as You give us opportunity. Father, now we look to You to take what we've
learned today and give us opportunity to use it, to be seekers of the lost, as the Savior
is, and to bring to them that unexpected condescension, that unsolicited mercy, and those unparalled
blessings of the gospel. Thank You for giving us the time together
today to worship You and to fellowship with each other, and may we be enriched to Your
praise and glory, we pray in the Savior's name. Amen.
