The Samaritan Women

Intro

One of the funny parts about being a pastor is the reaction I get from some people when they hear what id o for a living. Mainly it is with people that are not followers of Jesus. For example, when people hear that you are a pastor suddenly it is as if you are the only one that remembers how to pray at events. I don't mind, honestly. It gives me an opportunity to pray the gospel in front of people that may not otherwise hear it. It just makes me chuckle sometimes. back when I used to work for Cargill i dealt a lot with Truckers, which made life a little interesting. I was not a pastor at the time, but this was when I started to notice a difference. I didn't swear among anyone, my co-workers know I was religious and so I started to notice people temper what they said while they where around me.

When I got into ministry as I would start to hang around people that did not know Jesus once they heard what I did for a living as I hung out with them more, they would swear and then apologize to me for their language. I had one neighbor that I visited with a lot that found out I was the pastor early on and he made it his mission to make me drink with Him. I never did and his wife was really nice and got me non alcoholic stuff to drink when I visited but he thought it was hilarious to bug me. We are still friends.

One gentlemen I had the pleasure to meet as soon as he heard I was a pastor, he went off on me saying how horrible I was, swearing at me. Apparently he didn't like pastors or really the church in general. I certainly heard about it that day anyways.

There are people that we are told to love but maybe we grew up not liking them, or due to whatever reasons we have a distaste for hanging out with them. Yet we are still told to love them. Like some people when they hear what I do for a living and get angry, or something along those lines, there are people that when we hear their name they become like Fullerton residents top the residents of Dogwood in Corner gas. and yet the bible still; teaches us that we are to love them and teach the gospel to them even if we may not like it.

Jesus lived this out and changed the norms at the time when we read about his visit with a women that He was not supposed to like or be around for that matter. Jesus met with a Samaritan women. This was a no no at the time. But what we are going t learn today comes also from the message that Jesus taught.

Though the message is what we are going to focus on we cant overlook what Jesus did here with this women. Both are important, and both play a part but the message He spoke to this women is what we are looking at. He challenged her way of life and pointed her to eternal life in Him the messiah. What Jesus taught This women is a lesson for us today as well.

As we meet people where they are at, we need to point them to our source of eternal life and peace. Our own lives are cracked and broken but Jesus offers perfect peace and eternal life.

The Samaritan.

First we look to the women and how Jesus meeting with her impacts what we can learn from this. Although this is something that most of us do not have a problem with. Let us look into the first 9 verses to see what I mean here.

John 4:1–2 CSB

1 When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were),

John 4:3–4 CSB

3 he left Judea and went again to Galilee. 4 He had to travel through Samaria;

John 4:5–6 CSB

5 so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon.

John 4:7–8 CSB

7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, 8 because his disciples had gone into town to buy food.

John 4:9 CSB

9 “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

It is this last verse that gives us a clue that this was not a normal meeting. But history tells us a little more of the story.

The split between the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah after King Solomon's reign (around 930 BCE) laid the foundation for the divide. Samaria became the capital of the northern kingdom, while Jerusalem remained the center for the southern kingdom.In 722 BCE, the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom and deported many Israelites. The Assyrians resettled the area with foreigners who intermarried with the remaining Israelites, leading to the emergence of the Samaritans as a distinct group. Religious DifferencesThe Samaritans developed a version of the Jewish faith that diverged from mainstream Judaism: Scriptures: The Samaritans accepted only the Pentateuch (the first five books of Moses) as their scripture, rejecting the rest of the Hebrew Bible.Place of Worship: The Samaritans believed that Mount Gerizim (near Shechem) was the true, God-ordained place of worship, while the Jews insisted that worship should occur at the Temple in Jerusalem.These theological disagreements deepened the division between the two groups. The Jews viewed the Samaritans as religious half-breeds due to their intermarriage with foreign peoples and their syncretistic religious practices, which incorporated pagan elements alongside worship of Yahweh.

This story of how the relationships between the Jews and the Samaritans is not the point of the story today but it is important to understand. As followers of Jesus we do not really have a problem with meeting with the least of these. sometimes we have people we would rather not be around, people we look down upon, but for the most part we are okay with this side of the message.

This is something I have seen in the 4 years that i Have been here, the willingness to go out to the least of these and spread the message of the gospel. This has been good to see, but it is the next part that the people of God sometimes struggle with.

Living Water

The next part is the message, the part we sometime struggle with The message of the birth of a messiah that we celebrate is a message of love, love that was shown from the Lord God to us in freedom from our sin, Love that did not leave us where we are at, and that is where we get the message that Jesus shared with the women that He was supposed to despise.

John 4:10 CSB

10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”

We will go on a bit to see the point of what Living water is.

John 4:11–12 CSB

11 “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”

You see she missed the point of what Jesus said here. You see Living water is free flowing water, like a river, a atrtesian well, that kind of thing. That was not around where she was, in fact she was at a very important well. so she was wondering where on earth she was going to find living water. Now the main point.

John 4:13–14 CSB

13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”

Are you confused about what this means yet? she was at first. The first point we saw is that Jesus didn't just meet with the down and out, the people forgotten by society, the people no one else really liked. But again we go to the message He shared to see How he loved them.

He told her that she is finding love, finding peace, finding contentment in all the wrong places. He said You are looking in the wrong spots, if you want eternal life then You need to look to me. He used the metaphor of Living water, or free flowing water as the example, since they where at a well. What is living water anyways?

What is Living Water?

This is part of the message that we need to share with others that we need to share with others if we really say that we love them. The message of living water is written throughout the scriptures. Here we read that the use of the metaphor living water means eternal life

Jesus told her that if she looks to Him, that He is the messiah. We will see this a bit later on. But whoever lives for Jesus, learns from Jesus, is a disciple of Jesus, gives their lives completley to Jesus will receive the inheritance of eternal life.

Living water looks to the end times

In the book of Revelation we see this the clearest. The vision of Jesus on the throne saying that all who looked to Him, Who have gotten their living water from Him will have eternal life with Him. We can see the promises for those that will be in eternity with Jesus, how great it will be. to be without pain, without sorrow living with Jesus for eternity.

Living water is free!

This is also written throughout scriptures.. We are told that the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Eternal life in Jesus is free. But the result of it we need to give our all to Jesus. But this is not a matter of begrudginly doing it, like we are being forced to. A true child of God will want to give their all to Jesus because of what He has done for us.

On our own we are broken and empty

Jeremiah warned the Israelite's that they had abandoned god, the fountain of living waters and hewn for themselves cisterns. But the where broken and empty. On our own we fail, we will not be filled, we will not find eternal life.

Jesus even warned the women of this, He confronted her with her sin. He told her to go get her husband in verse 16. He was showing her that she was looking in all the wrong places. Even in their places of worship they where missing the point. Going back to a previous point Jesus reminded her that in the future, there is coming a day when people will worship God in spirit and truth not Just in buildings made by Human hands.

On our own we are broken and empty but through Jesus we can be filled. Just like this women was, who Jesus had no business talking to and she left having Jesus changed her life. I have always loved her response to Jesus.

John 4:27 CSB

27 Just then his disciples arrived, and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

I like how though the disciples where a little confused as to what exactly Jesus was doing talking to this women they didn't question it. They probably knew enough to know that Jesus had a reason for doing what He did. John 4:28-29

John 4:28–29 CSB

28 Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”

she went and started to tell people about this possible messiah that chaNGED HER LIFE.

Jesus offers us something the world never could “living water” which as we know stands for eternal life with Him. It is something that wells up inside of us and others start to see as well. The first thing that we see is that Jesus met with the people that other people never really looked twice at. Our mission is to love others as Jesus loved others, to meet the people where they are at and point them to Jesus. But the message of the messiah this Christmas shows that we cant be content to just be nice to other people, there needs to be more then that.

As I mentioned before what we need to call people to is to give up their lives of sin and turn to Jesus.

We are told of living water that comes form the messiah, this living water saves us, it purifies us, it gives us eternal life with Jesus, it protects us from the consequences of our sinBut it needs belief in Jesus.

Do you have a relationship with the Lord God? if not then we are told that our own efforts to try and fix our lives, our own efforts to try and live life on our own end us up with broken and craked cisterns. Lives that wont find fulfillment in Jesus. We are called to more, we are called to changed lives, we are called to give up our sinful lives and give them up to Jesus.

Lastley we are reminded that our lives as followers of Jesus should reflect Jesus to others.

We are told that as a follower of Jesus that His love within us will not stay hidden, it should not stay hidden but that it is like a well flowing from deep within. It changes our life and it should show others that our lives have changed. If we really say we love God then it should flow from within us so that if anyone sees us for any length of time they should notice a difference. We are called to discipleship, we are called to make a difference, not just to be nice but to go out and make disciples. And if we really want to do this then people need to see the change in us, people need to be pointed to Jesus.