John 4:1-27 | Why Are You Here? [The Witness of Worship]
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· 116 viewsSunday, July 4, 2021. John 4:1-42 | Why Are You Here? John 4 is a pivotal text on worship in the New Testament as evidenced by this conversation Jesus has with a woman from Samaria. If we as Christ’s Church ever question what true worship is, we can find Jesus explaining the answer here. What begins as a simple request by Jesus for a drink of water, turns into a witnessing conversation that ends with this woman becoming a witness for Jesus and bringing many people to Him. This sermon highlights the witness of worship.
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Opening Question
Opening Question
I ask us all for a moment, to bow our heads and close our eyes in a posture of prayer together.
Every head bowed, every eye closed, even those watching online on the live-stream.
You say, “this sounds like an altar call or an invitation,” and you are absolutely right! The invitation is beginning right now! Indeed, it has already begun.
As we prepare to open God’s Word, I want us all to reflect, prayerfully, upon one simple, and significant question.
Why are WE here?
What I mean is this —
We were not forced to come here this morning. Better yet, we were not prohibited from coming here this morning, thank God!
Each one of us came freely, exercising a freedom that we have been blessed with, to spend this hour in this place for a purpose.
I’m asking us this question, what is that purpose? Why are we here?
As we continue in a posture of prayer, let me ask this in a more personal way now.
“Why are YOU here?”
For what reason have YOU, dear brother, dear sister, dear friend — for what reason have YOU gathered in this Sanctuary of the Lord, on this Lord’s Day, this Sunday?
This is a question only YOU can answer, and in truth, one that only God can reveal.
You have permission to be honest before the Lord. He knows the truth anyway!
You may say to Him, “I honestly don’t know why I’m here! I’ve never thought about it! For five decades I’ve never thought about it.”
Well then ASK Him now! And think about it right now.
Allow the Holy Spirit to examine and search and expose whatever purpose, whatever cause, whatever ambition, whatever impulse, whatever passion, whatever motivation lies in the depth of your heart.
Is He revealing an answer to you?
Let us pray.
Pray
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
Would you reveal to me, and to us, the true purpose in our hearts for our gathering together this morning?
Would you grant that we may have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to believe Your Holy Word.
We ask this together in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Church, thank you for that prayer and important reflection.
I wonder, did the Lord reveal an answer to you?
“Why are you here?”
That is an important question to answer this day and every Sunday, and it is a significant question in our text this morning.
Now that we have prayerfully prepared, will you exercise your freedom to hold a copy of God’s Holy Word, and open it with me to the Gospel according to John. John, Chapter 4.
If you have a pen, notepad, some way of taking notes, that will be helpful to you as well this morning. If nothing else, have your Bible open and follow along and see for yourself what God’s Word says.
Have you found John 4?
I will read in our hearing verses 7 through 10.
This is God’s Word:
I. Reading of Scripture
I. Reading of Scripture
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.)
9 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.)
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.”
If you receive this as God’s Word, would you say “Amen”? Amen!
[Title Slide]
Why Are You Here? | John 4:1-42
Why Are You Here? | John 4:1-42
II. Introduction
II. Introduction
A. Introduction to Theme
A. Introduction to Theme
One important subject in John 4 is the subject of worship: the worship of God. The true worship of God.
In fact, this a pivotal text on worship in the New Testament.
You don’t have to take my word for this, because you will see it for yourself.
The subject of worship will become the central focus of conversation between Jesus and this woman of Samaria.
If worship is the subject of this passage, then the witness of worship might be the theme. The context - the location, the subjects involved, the conversations, the questions, the backgrounds all reveal for us that witness and worship go together.
I want us to think together about “the witness of worship.”
That word “witness,” if that is an unfamiliar word for you, simply means “to testify.” “To provide information to someone else, about what you know and have experienced. (see BDAG, LN).
This is who, Jesus said, His followers would be. Before ascending into Heaven, Jesus said:
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
If you are a follower of Jesus, if the Holy Spirit has come upon you, then you are a witness for Jesus. You have experienced Jesus. You know Jesus and your life becomes a witness for Jesus in all that you say and do.
People are watching you!
B. Introduction to Text
B. Introduction to Text
John chapter 4 begins with a clear set-up for witness, for Jesus is positioned in a place to meet a person that is very different from Him.
1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John
2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples),
3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.
4 And he had to pass through Samaria.
5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
6 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.
This is how Jesus arrived at the place where this important conversation was going to take place with the Samaritan woman. He abandons Judea for Galilee.
Geographically, Judaea was in the south, Galilee was in the north, and Samaria was in between (see GCM). Verse 4 tells us that Jesus “had to pass through Samaria.”
That was the more direct route to Galilee, but it was not the only route.
It is important to know, that the Jews detested the Samaritans.
The Samaritans were brought in by the Assyrians and were a mixed people, intermingled. They are not pure Jews, they are half this or that. They were culturally different. They were theologically different. They were looked down upon by the pure Jew - and they were lost without Christ!
Samaritans formed their own worship, with their own priests, centered upon their own mountain, Mt. Gerazim, the place where Joshua had cut the covenant when Israel entered the land. (for the above two, see A.Ross lecture notes and RHG).
A Jew would rarely go to Galilee through Samaria and if he did, he would cross the Jordan, travel up through Peraea, and enter Galilee a more difficult and different way (GCM).
But not through Samaria. Jesus was going through Samaria.
Our Lord shows us that being a witness challenges popular passions and prejudices. Being a witness will take us to frowned upon places, upon unfavorable routes, and lead to uncomfortable conversations.
Put simply - being a witness requires doing unpopular things.
Why?
Because being a witness is telling people that don’t know, what they don’t know! We have to go to them! They are not coming to us.
And this leads to the first intimation of our question, “Why are you here?”
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.)
Jesus is weary from his journey and thirsty. His disciples are not there to draw water, but this woman from Samaria, she comes to draw water. So Jesus begins a conversation with a question. Asking for a favor. “Give me a drink.”
Now, notice the cultural language in her response:
9 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.)
This woman makes an issue of her culture and by implication, she doesn’t understand why Jesus is here!
She reveals how her cultural differences had become a barrier to conversation or interaction of any kind with Jesus.
She raises her banner: “I am a Samaritan. You are a Jew. How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”
People who don’t know Jesus are passionate about other things that are not Jesus. That is a fact!
They want to make issue and talk about other things, that are not Jesus and God’s gift.
They want to talk about boundaries and banners that we humans have erected that Jesus has passed through and broken down and not made an issue of.
Jesus transcends this woman’s cultural prejudice by answering her without any mention of what separates them culturally. Instead, he answers with an appeal to know God!
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.”
Jesus makes the conversation all about God!
That’s what being a witness is.
Being a witness for Jesus is making our conversations not about whatever others want them to be about, but about Jesus!
Jesus reveals two things that this woman was ignorant of when it comes to God.
First - “the gift of God.”
Second - “who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’
First, she did not know what it is God has to offer her — a gift. That which is transferred freely by one person to another (BDAG). God has a gift for her that she knows nothing about!
But that is not all.
Second, she did not know who she was talking to. She did not know who was speaking to her! The Son of God, "the Word become flesh,” now weary and thirsty but able to save her soul!
Church — Jesus shows us that to witness to anything else other than Jesus Christ and the gift of God is to render our witness ineffective, confusing, false, and powerless.
People don’t need other things. People need Jesus and God’s gift of eternal life!
The lost are asking many questions, have you noticed? Do we, as Christ’s Church, bear any responsibility for that because we have given them other things to talk about?
Why aren’t people talking more about Jesus? Is it because we are not making much of Him as we should?
We do not have to answer all of these questions to be witnesses for Jesus. For in truth, the lost simply do not know two things:
They do not know the gift of God which is eternal life, and they do not know Jesus.
It is our identity as Christ’s Church to witness to these two preeminent truths - and these two things alone! These are the only subjects Jesus raises to this woman’s first question.
She was ignorant. She did not know. But Jesus said — “IF YOU KNEW!”
This is the need for witness.
“If you knew.” She did not know.
11 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?
12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”
This woman is still thinking naturally. “Where do you get that living water?”
And she asks about location. Where can this living water be found?
Living water is moving water.
A well is a reservoir that holds stagnant water, but a spring is moving water, living, that proceeds from a source! Jesus is speaking about something that proceeds from a source - an eternal source.
13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
14 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.”
Underline that beautiful phrase “the water I will give him, will become IN HIM a spring of water...” Jesus points to a new location in answer to her question of “Where?” The answer is — “what I will give, in you.”
What Jesus offers is not superficial! Jesus offers the source in you. A spring of water welling up to eternal life!
So many people are not satisfied because they are drinking from the wrong source.
So many people are not satisfied because they are being given water from the wrong source.
Look at anyone who is not satisfied. Anyone who is discontented. Anyone who is easily offended. They are drawing from a well of stagnant water, again and again because their soul is thirsty.
They need to be filled again and again.
That is what entertainment does. It temporarily fills. Think about your favorite TV show. You watch one show of a TV season and it satisfies for a minute, and you are back next week eager to watch the next episode.
You need to be filled, again and again. And then, the season runs out. Or takes a Summer break. Or worse - it is not renewed and your favorite show is cancelled! Then what!? Where do you turn? And you have to find another show. It is the same story on repeat. Again and again.
Why are you always thirsty? Because you are drinking from the wrong source.
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again” (v.13)
“The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (v.14)
Jesus changes the location from where she could draw water from a well by speaking of a new source that is a spring. A source He can give to her.
15 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.”
This woman has a willingness to receive what Jesus is offering.
But does Jesus give it to her yet?
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
Jesus changes the subject.
The woman is willing to receive, but Jesus does not give her this living water yet. Why?
Because she is not READY to receive it yet.
Perhaps it could be said this way - her mind wants what Jesus is offering, but her heart is controlled by other things.
17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;
18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
Jesus reveals the many pieces of this woman’s heart, and what they have all been given over to. Five husbands. And now, one that she has but is not her husband.
Jesus reveals the things that are pulling at your heart.
Pastorally, I am deeply concerned about the things that pull at your heart. The things that move you - what are they? What impassions you? What enrages you? What offends you? What embarrasses you. The answers reveal what things have hold of your heart! And Jesus wants all of it, not a part.
Jesus will not share your heart. Your love. Your devotion. He wants it all.
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Only when our love for the Lord is right and total, with all our being, can we then love other things in the right way. We must prioritize our love. Our witness must prioritize that love.
God does not want us to love Him more.
What do you mean, Pastor?
We sing — “More love, more power, more of you in my life.....”
God does not want us to love Him more. That’s the problem the Scripture is revealing.
Loving Jesus more means your love for Jesus is shared with your love for other people and things.
God does not want us to love Him more. God wants us to love Him most! With a love that supersedes all loves.
With the love of our whole heart, soul, mind and strength, and only then will we be able to love other things with a love that comes from God.
Only God can give that kind of love.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
The conversation continues:
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
Now the conversation is upon spiritual things. Jesus took something in the natural realm — water, and deliberately used it to intentionally talk about something spiritual.
And the root issue emerges. The real problem that separates the Jews from the Samaritans, and it centers upon worship.
20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
Jesus looks to the future. He speaks not of a coming day, but a coming hour, when the location of worship will change.
Worship looks ahead. Worship looks to the future at what is eternal, and not what is passing away.
22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
In other words, this woman has worship wrong. She is ignorant concerning worship.
Have we not seen in our recent preaching through 1 Corinthians that this ignorance easily creeps into the Church as well?
16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
Jesus begins to to end her ignorance. “Salvation is from the Jews.”
God’s salvation plan, His covenants, His worship, was given to the Jews and through the Jewish people the world would witness the true and living God.
She has it wrong! The worship at Mt. Gerazim is wrong. The Samaritan scriptures are wrong (A. Ross). What her people have made of worship is not true worship. It is wrong.
Years ago, Matt Redman wrote a song of repentance for the Church called “The Heart of Worship.”
That song says this:
“I'm coming back to the heart of worship
And it's all about you
It's all about you, Jesus
I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I've made it
When it's all about you
It's all about you, Jesus”
Jesus is showing this woman that worship is not about a mountain. It’s about Him.
Jesus goes on to say that this hour nearer to this woman than she realizes -
23 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.
Jesus brings future worship into the present. Only Jesus can do that!
“The hour is coming and is now here.”
How we worship now, reflects how we will worship in glory. We never do now in our worship what we will not do in glory in our worship, if our worship is all about Jesus.
“true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”
Notice the phrase: “True worshipers will worship.”
A true worshiper is just that - a worshiper. Of who?
Of the Father.
How?
In spirit.
This is the power of our worship. It is not a physical or worldly power. True worship is spiritual (Dr. Ross, lecture notes).
How else?
In truth.
What does Jesus make abundantly clear in the Gospel of John?
That HE IS THE TRUTH!
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
True worship is spiritual, not wordly, and true worship is IN HIM - In Jesus.
That word for “truth” also has the meaning of “faithful” (Dr. Ross).
True worship is faithful. True worship never gives to another what belongs only to God. Not even for one hour.
And did you know, Jesus tells us that the Father is seeking true worshipers.
Even now. The Father is trying to locate true worshipers!
Where are they? Who worship in spirit and in truth?
Where are they? Whose worship is spiritual and not representative in any way of earthly things.
Where are they? Whose worship is about MY SON! JESUS?
Where are they? Whose worship is based on MY WORD WHICH IS TRUTH?
WHERE ARE THEY LOCATED? WHERE ARE THEY FOUND WHO WORSHIP ME?
*For the Father is seeking such to worship HIM.
It’s as if, when we gather for worship, the Father is asking us - WHY ARE WE HERE?
And if our answer is anything other than Jesus, and Jesus alone, then the Father says “you may be here, but I’m am not.”
“I am enthroned in the praises of my people!”
“Who do not give to another what belongs only to me!”
17 Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at him.
24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Worship must reflect the character and nature of God.
And Church - God is not a Samaritan. God is not a Jew. God is not an American.
Did you know Passports are useless in Heaven?
God is holy! God is spirit! And those who worship him MUST worship as He is - reflecting who God is, and God’s character and God’s Word! That is the witness of worship!
Worship is a Witness!
And I want to show you this in the most supreme way. True worship, reveals Jesus.
25 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.”
26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
If you don’t see Jesus at the end of a worship service, you haven’t worshiped God!
Worship is a Witness for Jesus, because Worship Reveals Jesus!
Jesus is God’s Word! Jesus reveals to us the Father! The Spirit points to Jesus and is Christ in you, the spring welling up to eternal life!
It is all about Jesus!
We make no apology for that. We will not confuse that. Worship is about Jesus and God’s gift of eternal life.
IV. Conclusion
IV. Conclusion
I want to show you one more thing.
Look how the disciples react when they return.
27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”
They didn’t say it, but it is implied they were certainly thinking it. Lord, WHY ARE YOU HERE?
But he was here because she was here.
He was here to witness to her about what she didn’t know.
A. Gospel Proclamation
A. Gospel Proclamation
Did you know, that this woman asked the question of Jesus: “Why are you here?”
The disciples asked the question of Jesus: “Why are you here?”
But hear this, all who have ears to hear!
JESUS NEVER ASKS THE QUESTION OF HIMSELF - “Why am I here?”
Do you ever see Jesus confused? Questioning his purpose? Wondering about his mission on earth? — Never!
Jesus knew why he was here. He came freely. He came willingly. Evening knowing what it was he had to do.
Jesus knew there was a problem every person on earth had to overcome. The problem of sin.
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
And sin was an eternal problem.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
“The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord!”
And Jesus paid for that gift by dying in our place, for our sin.
He buried our sin, as he was buried.
And on the third day, he was raised - so that we might be transformed by His grace and walk in the newness of life by His indwelling Spirit within us!
Jesus knew why he was here. He came so that we might know the Father, and have a relationship with Him. A relationship called “worship.”
A relationship not based on anyone or anything but Jesus and Jesus alone!
An hour is coming when you and I will stand before the the Lord upon His throne in glory. I imagine hearing the question — “Why are you here?”
In that moment, not one thing you’ve done in your life will count for anything good. No act of service. No act of honor. No association, no other relationship. Nothing but one answer.
Jesus.
Why are you here? Jesus. And Jesus alone. I enter by His blood, so that I may continue to do here, what I did there by His grace, and worship!!
The Gospel reveals why we are on earth, by telling us what the Father seeks and making a way to be found by Him.
We are here to worship, and in Jesus, by His Holy Spirit, we can worship the Father in spirit and in truth as true worshipers.
Why are you here?
My answer - Because He is Here! He loved me, and gave Himself for me!
Why are you here?
Let me ask it a different way — Why is someone else NOT?
Is our worship a witness to the worthiness of God? Is God worthy of everything we have?
May God make us true worshipers, and may God make our worship a witness to Jesus, and God’s gift of eternal life.