The Message of Evangelism- John 4:10-26
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Introduction
Introduction
Prayer
Alright, 2nd—5th graders you guys are free to dismiss. And as a reminder, parents you can pick those children up at the Wetlands Building, and if you need any help finding where that is, don’t hesitate to ask someone with a lanyard.
If you’re new with us, my name is Andrew McClure and I’m one of the Pastor’s here, and if you would please turn in your Bible’s to John chapter 4.
This is week 2 of 3, unpacking the story of the woman at the well.
It’s the longest recorded conversation Jesus had in the Gospels, and as I stated last week, in it he gives us a masterclass on evangelism.
And by evangelism I mean the sharing of the gospel message with the desire to persuade others to faith in Christ.
And last week I made the point that the need for Evangelism is Universal.
That all of us, were born with a disease. A disease that spreads, and corrodes, and corrupts our internal world, our thoughts, desires, ambitions, and dreams,
and our external world in our relationships with ourselves, others, and of course with God.
And that disease is killing you. And it’s the disease of sin.
But the disease of sin manifests itself differently among different individuals.
For example, in John 3 we had Nicodemus, who was dying of the sin of self-rightousness and pride.
Whereas, in John 4 we have this Samaritan Woman, who is dying of the sin of sexual immorality.
Two very different people.
One a Jewish man of high repute.
The other a Samaritan woman of illrepute.
The only thing that they had in common was the disease of sin, and because of that their universal need of the Good News of Jesus Christ that saves us from sin.
So the need is universal.
But the way Jesus remedies their disease was deeply personal to them, and their story, and their sickness.
Nicodemus was challenged to be born again.
Confronting his self-righteousness, for just as he did nothing to be born into this physical world, there is nothing he can do to be born into the spiritual world.
No one is too good for the grace of God.
But for this woman, as we’ll unpack more fully today, is challenged to be satisfied in Christ and not this world.
For no one is too bad for the Grace of God.
A universal need, met in personal ways.
That’s how Jesus did it.
So just as Jesus evangelized, we must too.
We must share the Gospel Message to meet a universal need, in personal ways.
So today, I want to hone in on the Message of Evangelism.
If we are expected to share it universally and personally, what is it.
What is the message of Evangelism?
Well let’s read our text, then we’ll unpack it together.
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “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 now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
The Message of Evangelism.
I’ll break this into 3 points for you.
The Message is that God Seeks, Jesus Satisfies, and We Respond.
First, the Message of Evangelism is that God Seeks.
God Seeks
God Seeks
The Gospel begins with a seeking God.
So often when you hear someone share their testimony of faith, or perhaps you even share your own, it’s common to hear phrases such as,
“Well I found Jesus when...”
Or, “My life was such a mess, then I started searching for God...”
But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
You see the Bible teaches no one seeks God.
In fact, since sin entered the world in the Garden of Eden, our natural disposition has been to run from God. To hide from God. To avoid God.
And this is really bad news.
Because if our sin leads us to hide from God, how on earth will we ever be reconciled to God?
Well the answer is because God is a Seeking God.
In the Garden, God sought out Adam and Eve.
In Ur, God sought out Abraham.
In Egypt, God sought out Israel.
In the field, God sought out David
In exile, God sought out his people.
And in Christ, God is seeking you.
Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.””
This is what Scripture teaches, that God is always Previous.
Tozer once wrote, “Before a sinful man can think a right thought of God, there must have been a work of enlightenmetn done within him… We pursue God, because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit.”
This is true.
Jesus himself says it in John 6:44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”
He is always previous, He always initiates, He is a God who seeks.
And that is really good news for this woman.
Because not only is she a Samaritan, or even a Samaritan Woman, she is an adultress reject.
There’s nothing about this woman that warrants God’s mercy.
There’s nothing about this woman that warrants His attention.
Not her ethnicity, gender, or shameful past or present…
And yet, he seeks her out anyway.
I mentioned this last week, but John 4:4 “And he had to pass through Samaria.”
Jews didn’t do this. They avoided Samaria.
They didn’t want anything to do with these half-breeds, so they would travel out of the way to avoid Samaria. But not Jesus… He had to pass through Samaria, because God was seeking one particular woman.
And he reached the well, at high noon, the exact hour that this Woman would make her trip to draw water.
And I said this last week, but she comes at noon to avoid the others from her village.
You see normally, women would come in groups. And always at either dawn or dusk to avoid the heat of the day.
But this woman comes alone, and at high noon revealing to us that she is the Reject of the Reject Samaritans.
She’s lonely. She’s ostracized. She knows what people know about her. She knows what people say about her.
And every day she comes to this well, by the mere journey in the heat of the day she is reminded of her loneliness, and sin, and shame.
And yet… at that exact moment, at that exact place--- she “finds” Jesus Christ, God in flesh.
Coincidence??… I think not.
She didn’t find Him… He had found her.
The Message of Evangelism begins with God who Seeks.
For some in this room, it’s time you come to see this reality in your own life.
Many of you, like this Samaritan Woman are here this morning aware of your sin and shame. Resonating with her loneliness and rejection. You smile, and put up a front when you walk into church, but deep down you know how dark and depressing and detrimental your life of sin really is.
But this morning, you need to know that there is a God who is seeking you out. And this sermon, this moment, may be your divine appointment from a God who seeks.
For others in this room, as you strive to serve God in Evangelism… the sharing of the gospel message with the desire to persuade others… you can go and serve in the comforting knowledge that God is always seeking.
He is going before you. He is seeking and saving the Lost.
But secondly, and this is where we’ll spend the bulk of our time.
The Message of Evangelism is that Jesus Satisfies.
Jesus Satisfies
Jesus Satisfies
Having found what he was searching for, Jesus breaks the ice in vs. 7, John 4:7 “Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.””
This is remarkeable… because the Son of Man, who is the Son of God through whom all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made. (John 1)… which includes water. He created water.
And in Him is life (John 1:4)… totally self sustaining in and of himself.
That Jesus begins this dialogue, by expressing his own needs.
God had truly emptied himself, and become man in the person of the son.
He was thirsty, and verse 6 says he was weary.
He had been walking for 6 hours straight.
Hot, arid. Dusty. And Jesus was thirsty.
And she’s flabbergasted, not because of the theology just described, but that a Jewish man is actually speaking to a Samaritan woman but look at verse 10.
John 4:10 “Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.””
Living Water
Alright let’s camp out here for a moment.
Jesus, being the good Rabbi or teacher that he is, employs one of his greatest teaching tools.
He takes something from our phyical lives and then applies it to our spiritual lives.
He’s already done this with Nicodemus. In Chapter 3, he tells Nicodemus he must be born again.
Being Born is a physical reality, but he applies it to a spiritual reality.
That just as Nicodemus did nothing to contribute to his own physical birth, here too he can do nothing to contribute to his spiritual birth. It’s a work of God.
Here in Chapter 4, he takes the physical reality of thirst and then applies it to a spiritual reality.
This woman had come to the well to quench their physical thirst.
But on a much deeper plain, Jesus had come to quench her spiritual thirst.
Church, her soul was thirsty.
And she had spent years, if not decades trying to quench it with so many empty wells.
She had been down so many dead end streets.
She had sought to satisfy her longings by giving herself away to any and every man that made her feel good for the moment.
But every time she committed to a man, she was subsequently betrayed, realizing that she was actually still thirsty.
Every attempt she made at satisfying, only made her more thirsty.
She was spiritually and internally dry. Withering. Dying of thirst. For something more. For something greater. Anything that could take away the shame and darkness of her private thoughts and life.
Church, we live in a thirsty age.
An unsatisfied age.
We have more shelter, more food, more money, and more stuff than ever before.
We have more access to knowledge, connections online, and products that beautify than ever before.
And yet we are the most anxious generation the world has ever known.
And it leads to extreme thirst. And the more you try and quench your thirst with the things of this world, the more famished and thirsty you’ll become.
Because the natural wells of this world will never satisfy.
Drinking from the world will always lead to more and more thirst.
Rather its companionship, intimacy, pleasure, money, success, achievement, beauty, appearence, athletics, recognition, or prestige.
The more you drink the thirstier and emptier you become.
Why? Well to answer that question, we need to look at Jeremiah 2, because Jesus is actually referencing Jeremiah to this woman.
Jeremiah 2:11–13 “Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
God is confronting Israel, and says they have exchanged their glory… what they were actually created for, and exchanged it for that which does not profit.
and says the heavens are schocked by their decision.
Well what was their decision specifically… it was 2 evils.
The first--- they have forsaken God.
Secondly, they hewed out for themselves broken cisterns that leak, and in effect can’t hold water.
A cistern would have been hewn, or dug into the ground. A big round hole, and most likely clay pots would have been placed in those holes, and you’d go to the well and draw a days worth of water, and dump it into those cisterns
so that you wouldn’t have to go back to the well.
But because your cisterns are broken, youre forced to go back. Over and over and over again.
But Jesus is saying, it doesn’t have to be that way!
Because you are created for living water. A life that is fully and forever satisfied, because it is a life with God.
Church, Scripture tells us that God is the Father and Fountain of all Human Satisfaction.
Ps. 34. We are commanded to taste and see that God is good.
Psalm 16 says that at his right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Psalm 36 says he is the fount of every blessing.
Psalm 42 says our souls are made to thirst for God.
Psalm 63 says that God is life, and fullfills us.
God is the only well that never runs dry, but the first evil is that instead of living with God and deriving our satisfaction from God… we forsake him.
Instead of obeying him, following him, and drinking from him… we forsake him. we reject him.
Which leads to an unsatisfied life, because youre thirst… which you were created for is still there.
but now that we have forsaken Him the fountain of living water, we run to broken, dirty cisterns of the world thinking they can satisfy us.
But they never will.
Alcohol and partying, gambling and addiction, sex and pornography, the next promotion of the corporate ladder, or the next achievement of your child… it’ll feel good for a moment but as soon as you drink it in, you’ll find that your are actually thirsty again.
The wells of this world have holes… You will thirst again.
And this Samaritan Woman, along with everyone of us is guilty of these two evils.
We have forsaken God
& we have run to the wells of this world.
But this was actually the reason in which Jesus had come, the purpose in which he had sought her out was to satisfy her thirst.
But she’s confused.
Because Jesus is speaking in double meanings, she’s hung up on the physical reality.
John 4:11–12 “The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.””
She knew that for Jacob to have water, he had to dig. He had to work. He had to grind to provide water.
and what’s remarkeable is that this dialogue. This conversation is occurring 2000 years after Jacob dug that well.
Jacob’s well had been providing water for 2000 years. Incredible.
This man had provided a well for that community for a long time.
So she scoffs and says, “You’re greater than Jacob?!”
And look at Jesus’ response. John 4:13–14 “Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.””
He says… Jacob might have provided a long-term well, but you still got to keep coming back.
It is only Jesus that satisfies. And if you are spiritaully thirsty this morning, it is becasue you have committed 2 evils. You have forsaken God, and sought the water of the world to fulfill you.
But now look with me at vs. 16. Because here’s where the rubber meets the road.
You see, God seeks, Jesus Satisfies… but we have to respond
And that’s point #3— We Respond.
We Respond
We Respond
John 4:16 “Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.””
Alright listen to me for a minute…
What made you so thirsty is what?
You’ve forsaken God
You’ve drunk from the World.
Well to drink of God, what must we forsake…? The world.
We’ve got to reverse it. And that’s exactly what Jesus is leading this woman to do.
But The first step in reversing these evils is to come to terms with the well we’ve been drinking from.
That’s Response #1— Come to terms with our sin.
It’s what Jesus is helping her do…
In His Divine Omniscience, he’s drawing her out of the dark and into the light.
Because he knows her. He knows everything.
Church, everything in your life is bear before God.
Hebrews 4:13 “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
But he doesn’t expose what he knows about you in order to shame you, or condemn you, or to cancel you.
Instead, his exposure is His kindness. It’s His mercy. It’s his love.
So God, in His mercy exposes it the broken wells of her life, in order to help her come to terms with her own sin.
One commentator rightly wrote, “Nobody sings amazing grace unless they can sing the following line… “who saves a wretch like me.”
We have to come to terms with the wretchedness of our own sin, before we can truly know the satisfaction of God’s grace in Christ.
He knows, so he says, “Call your husband...”
And the woman answers but only sort of…
John 4:17 “The woman answered him, “I have no husband.”
She discloses a little truth, but isn’t fully ready to come into the ever exposing gaze of Christ.
How many of us are guilty of this!?
Church, don’t fall for this. Don’t let this be your story.
Sin is shameful. I get it. It’s embarrassing. It’s humiliating. And we’re so afraid of how others will perceive us, that we shed a little bit of light on it making us look clean and humble and repentant, all the while the major mass of our sin lies hidden like an iceberg.
But… you have to come to terms FULLY with the wretchedness of our own sin, before we can truly know the satisfaction of God’s grace in Christ.
Come all the way into the light, not just a little bit.
But she’s resistent. She’s full of shame. What will this man think of me if he knew the whole truth.
But the Gospel begins with what!? A God who seeks… and although she’s hiding, Jesus leans in and keeps seeking.
John 4:17 “Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;”
John 4:18 “for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.””
He knows. He has always known.
And yet, he still chose to go through Samaria. He still met her at the well. He still engaged in her conversation. He still offered her himself.
There is no sin greater than His Grace.
There is no sin greater than His Grace.
Well, there’s a few more steps to our response, but I’m afraid I’m out of time.
So you’ll just have to come back next week as we close out this story.
But as we close today, I can’t think of a better way to end than to have a moment of reflection and then take communion together.
Conclusion
Conclusion
God Seeks, and in his seeking He sent His Son who seeks and saves the Lost.
Are you Lost this morning?
Like this Sammaritan Woman, are you tired of returning to the same wells of this world only to leave thirsty again?
Are you ready to forsake the wells of this world, and finally turn to the Well that never runs dry, Jesus Christ?
Because if you will forsake your sin, and drink from Christ you will know the joy of living water within you.
So here’s how you do that.
Right where you are, come to terms with your sin.
Between you and God, be as specific as possible about the wells of this world that you continually run to?
Don’t hide. Allow his love to fully expose you.
Accept that you are a wretch, and a thirsty sinner just like this lady.
And once you do… ask Jesus for some Living Water.
To fill your life with His love and His grace, so that you may never thirst in the same way again.
It’s why He came. It’s why He died. It’s why he rose again.
So before you take communion, maybe for the first time… repent and believe in the Gospel. That God Seeks, and Jesus Satisfies.
And if you’re already a Christian, let me ask you… are their areas of your life that need to be exposed by God’s mercy this morning?
As the team plays, let the Holy Spirit search and show you, and then simply confess that unto God.
All of it. Not just some. But all.
So everyone, take some time and then I’ll come back up and lead us in taking of this meal together.