Monthly Archives: July 2024

Belief through the Word; John 4:27-54 

There are many degrees of faith.  Often, Jesus rebuked people for not having enough faith, or because they only had a little faith.  So as believers, it is important for us to consider our faith and examine it in light of what the word of God says. 

There are a lot of ecclesiastical statements out there which attempt to clarify what constitutes faith, but the best definition of faith is found in the scriptures themselves.  Several places in the scriptures speak of faith, but Hebrews 11:1 defines it very succinctly; “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  Faith then is believing in what is unseen, but hoped for.

Many professing Christians however, if questioned, base their faith not necessarily on the unseen, but on a tangible or physical experience that they had sometime in the past.  Perhaps they were going through some sort of crisis and they prayed to God for help, and He seemed to bring about deliverance in some miraculous way.  And so they believed in God and now consider themselves to be people of faith.  They believe in the existence of God because of something tangible that happened which established their belief.

That may be well and good up to a point, but I would suggest that the sort of faith which is founded on experience is what Jesus would speak of as “Oh, you of little faith.”  I believe God does sometimes work in visible ways in order to bring about the beginnings of faith.  So that may serve as a starting point in our faith, but I think that is not the kind of faith that satisfies God.  I think that God desires us to grow in faith so that we believe what God says without having to rely on substantiating evidence. 

A good verse which speaks of that kind of faith is found in Romans 10:17, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”  This is the standard for faith in the scriptures.   The word of God speaks, and we believe it, and trust it, and then act in obedience to it.  So then our actions reveal our faith, and not waiting for God to prove it  before we act in faith.  That is the example we see throughout the scriptures, from Abraham through Moses, and on into the New Testament. God spoke, they believed and then acted in faith.  So faith that pleases God is that which trusts in God’s word and acts upon it.

Today in our exposition of this text we are going to see four examples of faith.  Two that were pleasing to the Lord and two that were not.  The Samaritan woman exemplifies the sort of faith that was pleasing to God.  You will remember she had a conversation with Jesus by the well, and though they started off by talking about Jesus being thirsty and wanting a drink of water, He skillfully turned the conversation around to spiritual things.  And in the process, He brought her under conviction of her sin.  She responded by trying to talk about religion and the difference between the way the Samaritans and the Jews worship God.  But Jesus continued to press her towards the goal of believing in Him.  And then Jesus made one of the most forthright claims to His divinity to ever come from HIs own mouth, He said in response to her statement about the Messiah, “I who speak to you am He.”

Now at that point is where she believed in the word of Christ and she was saved. She doesn’t have some out of body experience, she doesn’t walk down the aisle or repeat the sinner’s prayer, she isn’t baptized.  But the fact that she is saved by faith in Christ is evidenced by the fact that she leaves her water pot and goes back into town, telling everyone to come see the Christ.

There are a number of things that can be learned from this text.  But the main point which is brought out in this passage is that saving faith is believing in the word of God and then acting upon it. The Samaritan woman believes in the word of Christ, His declaration that He was the Messiah promised in scripture.  And she obviously believes Him and so begins to share her new found faith. 

Now much has been made by commentators about the way she phrases the question found in vs.29 as if she expected a negative response.  But I don’t think that’s really borne out by her actions.  I’ve looked at all the major translations of this phrase, and I think it is best understood as follows, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; is this not the Christ?” Now that question still lends itself to some ambiguity.  But I don’t think she is really being ambivalent at all.  I think it’s evident she believes that Jesus is the Christ.  And obviously that is not all that she said, as evidenced by the men of the cities answer to her in vs.42: “and they were saying to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.’” Obviously she told them much more about Christ than that simple statement because what she had said was enough to make them believe in Him.  At least enough to be a starting point in their faith.

And there is another important aspect to her testimony.  She says “Come and see…”  Not go, but come.  She is inviting them to come with her to see Jesus.  I think she left her water pot by the well with Jesus because she was coming back. She was in a hurry to tell them, and didn’t want to be burdened by the water pot. She was bringing back something better – living water.  So she was coming back with her townspeople.  She was rejoicing in the news about the Messiah.  And she knew that her people would rejoice as well.  In spite of any flaws in the Samaritan’s theology they knew that the Messiah was the promised seed of Abraham, in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed.  He was the Savior of the world, and so it was only reasonable that she would share it and rejoice in it.

What a contrast to most Christians view of sharing their faith.  I don’t know if it is a product of the PC culture, or just a reticence on our part to give testimony to our faith, but how many of us fall far short of the example given by this Samaritan woman.  She boldly goes back into town and begins to broadcast the fact that Jesus was just outside of town at the well.  And she invites them to come with her and listen to Him. 

Our lack of willingness to be a witness makes me wonder if we really believe what we claim to believe.  Do we really believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life?  Do we really believe that our friends and loved ones who are without the Lord will end up being cast into outer darkness for eternity?  Do we really believe that there is coming a day when everyone will be judged by what they did concerning Jesus?  I’m afraid we must not really believe what the Bible teaches. 

You know, back to the Samaritan woman’s statement, I don’t think there’s a hint of unbelief in it at all, but she is issuing a challenge.   She is suggesting that they need to believe for themselves if Jesus is the Christ.  I know that some of you may feel intimidated about sharing your faith.  The culture is not very tolerant towards true Christianity it seems.  And maybe you feel intimidated because you don’t think you know enough to be able to answer people’s objections or questions.  But I would encourage you to consider this woman’s example as evidence that you don’t have to have all the answers to point people to Jesus Christ.  If you don’t feel adequate to explain everything, then simply invite them to “come and see.”  To come to church and hear the word of God for themselves. 

I will also suggest to you what else made her testimony effective.  And that is the transformation that she obviously exhibited.  There is no more effective testimony to the saving grace of God than a transformed life.  We don’t have a description here in the passage that describes her transformation.  But we do see the evidence of it.  When she began spreading the word about Christ through the town, all the townspeople started coming out to see Jesus.  Something about this woman was different than before she went to the well.  The transformation in her must have been very obvious.  And so people wanted to see this Jesus, since He had made such a change in this woman.  It’s evident from the text that she was a woman with a sordid past.  She would have been well known to everyone in a small town. But after being with Jesus, there must have been a noticeable change in this woman’s demeanor.  I believe she was rejoicing, for one thing.  And people took notice of that and wanted to examine it further. 

I remember when I got right with the Lord when I was living in California after years of being in sin and rebellion against God.  And the next night I stopped by the restaurant where I worked after the shift was over and all my coworkers were sitting in the lounge.  And when they saw me they thought I was drunk.  I wasn’t staggering around or acting boisterous or anything.  But I must have had a different demeanor than what I normally had. I guess I seemed happy.  And so they noticed it, and it gave me a chance to share with them about my faith.  It wasn’t too long after that my best friend who worked with me gave his life to the Lord as well, and he credited the change that he saw in me as a reason for him coming to the Lord.

So the first example of someone believing the word of God then is that of the Samaritan woman.  She believed, and was saved and she was converted/changed.  Consequently, she immediately began to confess Jesus as Lord in her community.  And people believed in Christ due to her testimony.  Vs. 39 says,  “From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all the things that I have done.’”  God wants to use your testimony to bring people to Christ.  That is our mission; to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel, starting in our homes, then our neighborhoods, then our communities, and then to the ends of the world.  This woman may not have been the best role model before she was saved, but she is a great example of the transforming power of faith after she is saved.

There is a second example of faith that is given in this text as well.  It’s sort of understated, and so we need to read between the lines so to speak.  But this one is not an exemplary example of faith.  It’s what we might call a lower tier faith.  And that is the faith of the disciples of all people. They have faith, but at this point it’s a superficial faith that can’t see the spiritual and instead focuses on the physical.  Even to the point of neglecting their commission.

The Samaritans were considered outcasts, half breeds who the Jews would not even speak to.  And yet their response to the news of the Christ from the Samaritan woman is to come out from the city in droves to hear Him.  In fact, some commentators have suggested that when Jesus told the disciples that the fields were white unto harvest, He was referencing the white robed Samaritan’s coming out of the village and walking across the fields the half mile or so to the well. 

Jesus uses that illustration as an encouragement to the disciples to be about the business of the kingdom.  It’s ironic that all of the disciples had just been in the very same village of the Samaritans buying food. And yet in spite of the fact that a dozen disciples of Christ descended on this little village in Samaria, when normally Jews would go miles out of their way to avoid Samaria, yet not one Samaritan was presented with the news that the Messiah was sitting just outside the town by the well.  The disciples were just too focused on buying food. They were hungry.  They were in a hurry.  They didn’t like those people anyway.  So they missed an opportunity.  And in reality, they missed the purpose of their discipleship. They missed the purpose of their faith.

The disciples came back from their mission with the food and saw Him talking to the woman.  They were surprised by that, but were afraid to ask Him why He was talking to a woman, much less a Samaritan.  So they just kind of ignored it, and when she left they offered Him the food that they brought.  But Jesus isn’t thinking about food at that point.  He says, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”  And their answer is to ask did someone bring Him food while we were gone? 

You know, the disciple’s cluelessness would almost be funny if it were not so indicative of the way we are oblivious to the opportunities that God puts in our path to be about the kingdom of God. I’m afraid too many times that we can only see the physical, rather than the spiritual.  Our focus is on our appetites, our work, our little routines or duties that we do each day.  Instead of seeing opportunities to speak to someone about Christ. 

Jesus said to the disciples in vs.35 “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’  I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.”

Now there is a whole sermon in that which I don’t have time to delve into today, but suffice it to say that Jesus is saying that half of the work has already been done, all you have to do is reap the benefits of what other’s have done. Now that’s pretty amazing isn’t it?  That should encourage you to witness to people that God puts in your path.  He is saying, I have already begun a work in those people’s hearts, they have already had the sowing of the word into their hearts.  Now if you will just be willing to act in faith and speak to them, you will reap what other’s have sown. 

But as I said, many Samaritans believed in Him simply by the word which He was preaching.  He did not do any signs or wonders or miracles in Samaria.  But then it says that He went into Galilee, which was His own country.  And the people were coming out to Him, but not because they had believed in Him before when He was among them, but because they heard of the miraculous works that He did when He was in Jerusalem.  So Jesus quotes to them what was probably a well known proverb; “that a prophet has no honor in his own country.” 

I can attest to the truth of that.  I’ve lived in this area 24 years, but not all of that time I was a pastor.  And the result of that proves another true proverb which is; “familiarity breeds contempt”.  In other words, it is much easier to go someplace where you are not known and be received with a certain respect than it is to live around people who think they know you.  I think that’s part of the reason why our summer services on the beach are well received by out of town people, but the locals rarely come. 

So Jesus had grown up in Galilee,  and now the Galileans are coming out to see Jesus, but they are not  believing in Him the way the Samaritans did.  They don’t believe Him for His word, but want to see His miracles.  So Jesus rebukes them when He responds to the nobleman’s request by saying, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.” I don’t think Jesus was necessarily rebuking the nobleman, but He was rebuking the Galileans who obviously were gathering together hoping to see a miracle.  Perhaps they would believe in Him if they saw some astonishing miracle, but not because of His word.

So the third group, the Galileans, receive a rebuke because they did not have the faith in HIs word, even though the Samaritans who were considered outcasts by the Jews believed in Him simply from His word. So the Samaritans were more noble than the Galileans.  And I’m afraid that most Christians today fall into that category of the Galileans.  We go from church to church, from concert to movies, to revivals, to conferences, all in the hopes of finding some new experience which is going to galvanize our infantile faith into something substantial.  But in fact faith comes by hearing the word of God, not by signs and wonders or music or concerts or movies or conferences.

And that leads us to the fourth group which is illustrated by the nobleman. He is from Capernaum, which is about 25 miles from Cana, where Jesus was at that point.  Cana, you will remember, was the site of the first miracle Jesus did in His ministry, in which He had turned the water into wine at the marriage feast.  Now Jesus has returned to Cana, and this nobleman, probably a member of Herod’s court, has heard that Jesus has returned from Judea.  So he made a 25 mile trip from Capernaum in order to come to Jesus and beg Him to come home with Him and heal His son who was at the point of death.

You know, when calamity strikes your child, there is nothing you wouldn’t consider doing to save them.  I would suggest that this example is given to us here for a number of reasons, but not the least of which is to provide a contrast between the apathy of the disciples who felt no pity on the Samaritans, and the anguish of this father for his dying son.  Would to God we felt the anguish over our brothers and sisters and loved ones impending death the way that this man felt over his son.  Perhaps it’s because we cannot see the cancer of sin which has condemned our loved ones to a certain spiritual death. 

So this man travels 25 miles in hopes of seeing Christ and convincing Jesus to come home with Him to heal his son.  And certainly, the Galileans who have gathered there are watching to see what Jesus will do.  Perhaps many of them would have followed Him to Capernaum if it meant they could see a miracle.  I’m not surprised that so many Christians will pay all sorts of money and travel great distances to see some supposed faith healer perform a miracle.  It was common then, it’s common today.  I had a business partner once who stole money from our business to fly to Charlotte NC to have a private meeting with Benny Hinn. It only cost him $10,000 to get a private audience and his blessing.  Didn’t do us any favors though.  Our business went bust 3 months later because of that kind of foolishness.

But Jesus is not going to go to Capernaum.  Not because He doesn’t commiserate with the nobleman, or because He isn’t compassionate. It’s noteworthy that no one ever comes to Jesus for help and leaves without Jesus helping them.   Jesus said in John 6:37  “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.”

But Jesus doesn’t go to Capernaum with the nobleman because He wants to teach an important lesson.  And that is the lesson that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  He wants this nobleman to believe in His word.  Jesus is going to heal his son.  But for 24 hours this man is not going to know that for sure.  He is going to have to take Jesus at His word. So Jesus said, “Go; your son lives.”

Now the rest of that verse is amazingly understated. It says, “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off.”  Let me tell you why it is understated. It’s understated not just because it took a lot of faith to believe Jesus could heal just by speaking a word from 25 miles away. But it is also understated because it doesn’t just mean that the boy was healed, but it also means that the nobleman was saved.  Jesus didn’t go with him because He wasn’t compassionate, but He didn’t go because He was compassionate.  Jesus wanted to give more than just the physical healing, He wanted to give spiritual healing as well. 

I have told you many times before that every miracle in the gospel is a spiritual parable which illustrates a spiritual principle.  And this one even more so.  Because as a result of this man’s faith, he was saved, his son was saved and healed, and his entire household was saved.

Vs.51-53 “As he was now going down, his slaves met him, saying that his son was living.  So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. Then they said to him, ‘Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.’ So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, ‘Your son lives’; and he himself believed and his whole household.”

There are so many applications that we could take from this illustration.  But let me just try to leave you with a couple.  One, our faith is not founded on experience, but on the promises of God.  That is what we are talking about when we talk about the word of God.  We are talking about God’s revelation of Himself, what He has to say about Himself, and His plan and purpose for the world.  And He gives that to us in the form of promises.  He gives us His word, His promises, by which we may believe.  And when we believe in Him as He has revealed Himself through His word, He credits that to us as righteousness. 

Three times in the New Testament, in Romans 4:3, Galatians 3:6, and James 2:23, it says “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.”  This is how we are saved, by grace through faith in the word of God, which is written down for us.  Notice it doesn’t say Abraham believed in God.  But Abraham believed God.  The Bible says the devils believe and tremble. So believing in God doesn’t save you.  But believing God, believing His word saves you.

Another application we can take from these verses is that when we are saved by faith, God can use our faith to save our families.  We saw that with the Samaritan woman.  I believe she started witnessing to all her former husbands.  That was probably half the town.  But the whole village responded as a result of this woman’s faith.  And of course this nobleman’s faith resulted in his whole household coming to the Lord.  And we see other examples of that in scripture.  I think of the centurion who called Peter to come and preach the gospel, and the whole house was saved.  I think of the jailer who was saved when Paul and Silas presented themselves after the earthquake, and his whole house was saved.  

The point being that you can have a confidence that when you believe in the word of God resulting in your salvation and you share that with your family, then they can be saved through your testimony.  I’m not going to say it is guaranteed.  That is not taught in this text.  But I do think it’s a principle that we can use to reach our families and that God will bless when we act upon it.

Well, let me close by encouraging you today to make sure that your faith is grounded in the word of God.  If God said it, then trust Him and obey.  God may give you an experience, He may give you a miracle, but more importantly He has given you His word.  And that is the greater miracle, which produces a greater faith, and a greater work in you.  Because God’s word is sufficient for every circumstance, for every day.  We don’t need to wait for a sign, when we have the word made more sure, the written word of God, tested and proven for thousands of years.  And that is what John calls this miracle – a sign.  It points to something greater, and that is Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. That was the purpose of the miracles Jesus did. They point to Him.

And then finally, don’t keep your faith to yourself.  God didn’t give your salvation to you so that you can say, “us four, no more, shut the door.”  God gave you your salvation so that you might be an ambassador of the gospel.  He has given you the good news to share with those with whom He has already started a work in their hearts.  There is no greater miracle on earth than leading someone to Christ.  As Jesus said in vs.36, there is reward in heaven for those that reap souls; “Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal, that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.”  We were saved that we might bear fruit for eternal life.  I hope that you will focus on the kingdom of God and accomplish His work in the time we have left here on earth. 

Worship in spirit and truth, John 4:19-26 

Today in 21st century Christianity, one of the most misunderstood words or principles in the church is the word worship.  If I were to ask you this morning to write down a succinct sentence describing worship, I would not be surprised if there were as many definitions as there are attendees.  Today when we think of worship, we think of a church service, or what’s called worship music, or perhaps even a performance by a worship pastor or band.  Usually the connotation is  a church’s music service.  

But as I indicated, I believe that’s a misunderstanding of what worship is supposed to be.  In the passage we are looking at this morning, Jesus talks about worship with a Samaritan woman by the well.  And in the process of having this conversation, He teaches us the Biblical meaning of worship and how we are to engage in it.  In fact, in just 5 verses, the word worship or a derivative of it is used 10 times. I believe this scripture teaches that God wants us to worship Him, and that He has a plan for worship.  So I want to look at this passage this morning and break down the principle of worship so that we might be sure we are accurate and authentic in our worship.  Because as Jesus said in vs.24, God is Spirit, and those that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.  That’s an imperative statement.  That we are to worship God, and we must worship Him as He wants us to. 

So in order to understand this, I am going to apply all the standard questions to this principle of worship, like what, where, why, how and when.  Rather than asking you to define worship according to your perception or experience, or rather than consulting any self appointed experts out there for their two cents worth, I want to go to the source, which is the word of God. Because I believe that what Jesus is saying is that we must get it right.  God is not obligated to accept false worship, or improper worship, which does not meet His requirements.

So let’s start with what is worship?  We could look it up in the dictionary and get a human definition.  But let’s look it up in scripture. Worship simply means honor paid to a superior being.  The common word in the New Testament Greek used for worship is prosekuneo, which means to kiss toward, and it came from that ancient custom of kissing the hand or foot of a superior.  A person bowed down on the ground, bowed his head and kissed the hand in a sign of submission and honor.

But I think we can go a little deeper into all that scripture teaches us concerning worship by employing a principle of hermeneutics called the principle of first mention.  The principle of first mention says that the first time a word or principle is mentioned in scripture provides a basis for how we are to perceive it or understand it going forward.  

Now if you go to your concordance and look up worship, the first use of the word “worship” will be in Genesis 22, when Abraham takes Isaac to the mountain that God showed him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice.  And I am not going to take the time to review all of that story this morning as I’m sure most of you are very familiar with it and as a church we recently studied Genesis.  But perhaps you never noticed the word worship there.  Abraham says in vs.5, ““Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.”  

Now think about that for a moment.  God asked Abraham to take his son and offer him as a sacrifice on an altar on Mt. Moriah.  By the way, this is an interesting side note.  When the Samaritan woman tries to wiggle out of the convicting questions of Jesus, she says something interesting.  She says, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”  Now the mountain she and Jesus was on was called Gerizim, which was the place the Samaritans built their temple in opposition to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.  But the thing was, both the Jews and the Samaritans believed that their temple was seated on Mt. Moriah, the spot where Abraham offered Isaac.  

Now knowing that helps us to understand why she brings up worship, and then Jesus says to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.”  Jesus is saying the time is at hand when neither mountain is going to be the place of worship.  There is going to be a new place, a new way to worship, which will not be defined geographically nor by the temple.  So that’s the historical significance of Abraham taking Isaac to the mountain to offer him as a sacrifice.  Both Samaritans and Jews claimed to have their temple on the correct mountain.  And what Jesus indicates, by saying salvation is of the Jews, is that the Jews were on the correct mountain.  But soon the temple location is not going to matter anymore. What had served as the source of an argument between them would be completely done away with when Jesus was sacrificed on Mt. Zion.  The temple veil was rent from top to bottom, signifying that the way into the presence of God was open to all, through the blood of Jesus Christ.

But let’s think back to Abraham and Isaac for a moment.  Abraham has been commanded to kill his son, and he speaks of this offering of his son on the altar as worship.  Now that’s a heavy thought. Can you imagine comparing sacrificing your child as worship to God?  Well, what can we learn from that first incident concerning worship? Number one, it shows us that worship involves an offering.  Secondly, worship involves sacrifice.  Thirdly, worship involves obedience.  Fourthly, worship involves submission, humbling yourself. Abraham’s pride and joy was his son.  And yet he was willing to humble himself in order to worship God.

Now that is the first mention of worship.  But there are a couple of other early examples that come to mind which are not described as worship, but which obviously incorporate worship.  The first one is that of Cain and Abel, in Genesis 4, when they come to bring an offering before God. “So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard.”  

What does this example tell us about worship?  Once again, that there was an offering, a sacrifice.  We saw that already in the example of Abraham and Isaac.  But what new thing do we learn about worship? That God accepts some worship but not others.  God isn’t obligated to accept just any form of worship. To worship God in an unacceptable manner is to reduce God to an image, to reduce God to a material representation, to reduce God to an idol, or to reduce God to anything that is the result and product of your own thinking.  I often hear people say, “Well, everyone is free to worship God as they believe Him to be.”  But just because you sincerely believe something doesn’t make it true. If your definition of God doesn’t square with the Word of God, then your worship is unacceptable even though you may identify it with the true God.

And that correlates with what Jesus said in vs 24, that they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth.  It has to be a worship based on the truth that God has given us, if it is going to be acceptable to Him.  So then we might define worship as a sacrificial offering, as obedience, as humbling yourself before God, and according to His truth. That answers the question of what is worship.  

We could say from those examples what worship is not but we won’t take the time to produce a definitive list since that could go on forever.  But let me give you just three: worship is not music, worship is not ceremony, worship is not a building.  And you can do the rest of the list on your own.  

So the scriptures have defined what worship is.  Next, Where.  Where should we worship.  Well, we have already answered that to some degree.  Worship is not restricted to a building, or an auditorium, or a mountain or even a temple.  Jesus said in vs. 21, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” And then vs.24, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.”  The first reference to Spirit is capitalized because that refers to the nature of God; He is Spirit.  That means He isn’t corporeal.  But the second use of the word spirit in vs.24 is not capitalized, because it is speaking of our spirit.  He is saying, we must worship God in our spirit.  It’s not physical, it’s spiritual.  It’s not a location but a state of the heart.   

True worship must come from the heart. Worship is not dependent upon where you are, but who you are.1 Cor. 6:19 says we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  If you have been born again, then you are the temple of God because the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you. You don’t just come to church, you are the church.  

Unfortunately, though a lot of people may have heard that truth, they don’t live in light of that truth.  We get all cleaned up for Sunday morning, we dress a certain way, talk a certain way, act a certain way because we know we are in church.  And yet on Monday we act completely different.  We talk differently.  We behave differently, seemingly unaware that the Lord of our temple is still in the building.  

Worship then should be a way of life.  Not just on Sunday. But in all our ways, in everything we do, we do it for the glory of God.  We are obedient to what He asks us to do because our body is HIs temple.  Our time is His time.  Our possessions are His possessions.  You can’t expect to have an intimate relationship with the God who dwells in us when we act like He isn’t there 6 days out of the week and then suddenly act all friendly to Him on Sunday.  God isn’t blind.  He was there all week.  We just ignored His presence.

When we have a full time, 24/7 intimate relationship with God, then we are worshipping all the time in private.  And what’s on the inside will reveal itself on the outside.  In other words, what was private produces corporate. What is spiritual will produce physical.  We are the church so we come together with the rest of the body as the church to serve the body. Not for ceremony and ritual, but to serve Him. 

And that brings up another definition of worship.  To serve God.  Romans 12:1 gives us a great illustration of that.  Paul says,  “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”  Present your bodies as a sacrifice to serve God which he says is your spiritual service of worship. So serving God is worship. Once we are born again spiritually, we become holy, which results in being obedient, which in turn produces righteous living, in the fear or honor or reverence of God knowing that God is in you, and then God can use the body that you submit to Him in humility to serve Him.  And that comprises worship. The where of worship then is wherever we are, we are the temple of God, and therefore all that we do is for the glory of God.

The next question is Who.  Who do we worship?  Well the answer of course is God.  But Jesus narrows that title down further in vs. 21 and 23.  Three times Jesus calls God the Father.  That is specific.  God is the Father of who?  Well, first He is the Father of Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the Son of God.  The only begotten of the Father.  And we know who God is by who Jesus is.  Jesus told Philip, “If you have seen Me you have seen the Father.”  He told the Jews in John 10:30, “I and the Father are One.”  

Now that narrows God down.  God is three persons in One; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Those that worship Allah cannot be worshipping God because Allah is not the father of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, because He is the only Son of God.  And if you do not believe that Jesus is God’s Son, then you cannot worship the Father.  

Secondly, God is the Father of the saints.  The believers.  Those that have been made holy by the blood of Jesus, that have been born again by the Holy Spirit.  So that we are children of God. John 1:12 “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”  So God then as our Father speaks of our relationship with Him. We are born again not of the flesh, but of the Spirit into the family of God. 

And thirdly, God is Spirit. Vs.24, Jesus said, “God is Spirit.”  That means that God is not corporeal.  He is an invisible being.  He does not have a body like we have, but He is eternal, divine, unknowable, unsearchable, holy and righteous.  He is a being, but not a body. His essential nature is that He is Spirit.  And so we must be made spiritual to have communion with God who is Spirit.  

1Tim. 1:17 says, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.”  Those qualities, eternal, immortal, invisible, are spiritual qualities. God is Spirit speaks to His immortal, eternal and invisible nature.

The next question is who can worship?  Who can worship God? In vs. 23 Jesus said,  “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.”  First, note that God seeks worshippers.  God wants to have a relationship with men, and so He has made it possible through Jesus Christ.  But in order to have this relationship, Jesus said in John 3:16 that we must be born again. We must be born of the Spirit, and this is accomplished by faith in Christ.  

So in order to worship Him, God must become our Father.  We must be born again.  The Holy Spirit must dwell in our hearts by faith.  Just as the Old Testament saints had to bring a sacrifice to offer to God in order to worship, so Hebrews 10:14 tells us that “by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” The sacrifice of Jesus Christ has purchased for all who believe in Him the sanctification by which we may be reconciled to God.

The Old Testament priests had to always offer a sacrifice first for their sins and then the sins of the people before approaching the Holy of Holies into the presence of God.  Heb 9:11-14, “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation;  and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.  For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh,  how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Notice the phrase, “serve the living God.”  So then, those that can worship God are those who have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

The next question, is how do we worship? And Jesus makes that clear in vs.24, we worship God in spirit and in truth.  First we are made spiritual by new birth through faith in Jesus Christ.  I think we have made that point.  But also we must worship God in truth.  According to His truth.  Not according to our understanding of God, according to our concept of fairness or righteousness, or any standard other than God’s standard.

There are lots of people in our society who think they worship God, and they have self-invented some way to do that.  I read about a lady in New Mexico who baked tortillas, named Mrs. Rubio.  The Chicago Tribune recorded the story some years back, and one day she was frying a tortilla, and as she took the tortilla out of the pan and she said with a great amount of shock, “It is the face of Jesus.”  Burned on that tortilla were marks from the skillet that she said looked like Jesus.  And so, she was so thrilled she showed it to her husband who agreed that it must be Jesus.  And she showed it to her family and they agreed, and to a neighbor and she agreed.  And so she went to her priest to have the tortilla blessed.  And the priest, who had not really been accustomed to blessing tortillas, was somewhat reluctant to do so, but nevertheless he did it.  And she took the tortilla home and she built an altar in her house.  She put the tortilla in glass and put piles of cotton around it so it looked like Jesus floating on a cloud.  And within a matter of months, Mrs.  Rubio had over 8,000 people come to the shrine of the Jesus of the Tortilla.  And almost everyone unanimously agreed that it looked like Jesus except one reporter who said it looked to him like Leon Spinks.  And so, people came and worshipped the tortilla and Mrs. Rubio gave her testimony which was recorded in the Chicago Tribune, and she said the tortilla had changed her life.  And her husband agreed she’d been a more peaceful, happy, submissive wife ever since the tortilla had arrived.

Listen, we must worship God as He is, and for who He is, and not as we imagine Him to be.  Anything less is idolatry.  And the only way we can worship God as He is with any certainty is if we rely upon the truth of God’s word. In John 1 Jesus is presented as being with God in the beginning, and that He was God, and the Living Word was became flesh. In Hebrews 1:1 Jesus is the exact representation of the nature and character of God. And then in John 17 Jesus says that the word of God is truth. God has presented Himself in His word. When we combine the Living Word with the written word, then we are worshipping God in truth.

To worship God in spirit and in truth then signifies that of the heart and the head. Worship must be authentic and accurate. Worship in spirit speaks of our position.  Our heart must be aligned with God by faith. When that happens the Holy Spirit dwells in us, linking the inner man with God. And truth speaks of information. God has revealed Himself most completely and accurately in the scriptures. 

You know, just like in a physical relationship, knowledge produces intimacy.  The more you know and learn about your spouse, the more you love them.  We tend to worship God but a little, because we only know a little about God. But the more you know about God the more it produces true worship. 

Spirit and the truth signifies worship from the heart and the head.  But unfortunately, a lot of us worship God the way men observe Valentine’s Day. We know that it is Valentine’s Day because the calendar tells us.  So we know that we have to respond by buying a card, maybe some chocolates or flowers. The expectations of what we know about Valentine’s Day produces a response on our part which is predetermined by our culture.  But if that is all that it is, then it’s a form of legalism, a ceremony or ritual that your wife is going to know is not from the heart.  But she wants much more than just fulfilling an obligation or a ritual.  She wants romance, passion, love, intimacy, fellowship.  She wants you, she wants your heart.

And so does God.  He wants all of us. Yes, He wants us to follow His word.  He has written down His expectations and requirements for worship.  But when we just show up for church and drop a little offering in the box and sing a few songs and go through the rituals  then we are missing the heart of worship.  God wants your heart.  He wants a heart that is surrendered to Him, a heart that wants to know Him, a heart that desires fellowship with Him.  That comes from a right relationship with Him. 

Finally, one last point.  The result of worship. In vs 25 the Samaritan woman said to Jesus, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”  This is the most clear statement that Jesus ever makes concerning the fact that He is the Messiah with the possible exception of His response to Pilate before His crucifixion.  But what did the Messiah accomplish?  Jesus declared His purpose in John 14:6.  Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”  

Through Jesus, and only through Jesus, has the way to God been made available.  He is the peace between God and man.  He has made it possible for us to be reconciled to God.  So when we come to Him and worship Him, we have fellowship with God, we have the benefits of being the children of God, and we have the inheritance of ruling and reigning with Christ for eternity.  Worshipping God in spirit and in truth is  begun in justification, and it continues as our sanctification, and will be consummated in our glorification.  We who worship God now as He has revealed Himself and according to His requirements, will worship Him forever and ever in glory.  I don’t think that’s going to look like what popular imagery indicates though.  I don’t think we will be sitting around on clouds playing harps, or even just having a praise service for eternity.  But I think that we will be serving God for eternity, and all that we do will result in praise to His glory.  Worship here on earth is just practice for what will go on for ever in  eternity.  

Therefore, in light of this revelation concerning worship which the Lord Jesus has given us, “I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, [which is] your spiritual service of worship.  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The living water; John 4:1-19

I cannot read the story of the Samaritan woman at the well without thinking of something I used to hear people say when I was growing up.  They would sometimes say that a certain person would rather cross the street than have to speak to them.  Obviously, they believed that a certain person disliked them so much that they would go out of their way to avoid them.

There is a phrase in the Greek text in vs.9 that basically is saying the same thing.  It’s a word that conveys the idea that the Jews so despised the Samaritans that they would go out of their way to avoid dealings with the Samaritans, even to the extent of walking miles out of their way to keep from having to cross into the land of the Samaritans.  The Jews hated the  Samaritans and avoided anything that they had even touched.  But as we look at this story today, we see Jesus deliberately, purposefully, traveling not only to meet and speak with a Samaritan woman in the land of Samaria, but also to drink water from her cup. 

In Jesus’ day, of course, there was no running water.  Things we might consider a hardship today were typical things you had to routinely deal with in the course of the day at that time.  Generally, the women of the village or town were the ones who were responsible for drawing water.  You remember Rebecca drawing water for the camels when Abraham’s servant went to a well.  But they would usually do so in the evening when it was cooler, or perhaps first thing in the morning. 

But this woman in Samaria is going to the well in the middle of the day.  Around the sixth hour would be the Jewish way of saying around noon. So this wasn’t a typical time for her to be drawing water.  And Jesus has arrived at this well, which is identified as Jacob’s well, and is sitting there by the well.  There were probably steps that led down to the well. 

The text says Jesus was sitting there because He was weary from his journey.  Jesus and His disciples had been walking all morning having left Judea probably very early while it was cooler.  Most commentators believe that He had walked at least 20 miles that morning.  That’s quite a walk.  And it’s not a flat plain he walked either, but hilly terrain and rocky paths.  That’s the equivalent of walking from my house in Millville to the Cape May/Lewes Ferry.  I don’t think I could even ride a bike that far, much less hike that distance in five or six hours.

So Jesus was tired from His journey.  So much so that he sent the disciples ahead of Him into the village to buy food while He waited at the well.  Now I want to suggest that this is not happenstance.  I think that this is a case of divine appointment.  The normal way to go from Jerusalem to Galilee for most Jews would have been to go along the coast route or across the Jordan and then go around Samaria.  Orthodox Jews would have avoided going through Samaria.  They hated the Samaritans so much that they would go miles out of their way to avoid even walking through Samaria.

And part of the reason they hated them seems almost justified from a certain perspective. The Samaritans were considered half breeds – half Jew, half pagans – that had come about when the 10 northern tribes were taken into captivity by the Assyrians about 700 years before.  The educated, wealthy people were taken into captivity, but the Assyrians left some of the poorest Jews in the land to care for the land so that it did not revert to wilderness and to care for the cattle and so forth. But over time, these poor Jews left there intermarried with the pagan people that moved in to that area, and they adopted many pagan customs along with worshipping pagan gods while maintaining a degree of worship of the God of the Jews.

When the Jews came back into the land during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, these people tried to hinder the returning Jews from rebuilding the temple.  The Jews ended up shunning them, and so the Samaritans went off in a huff and built their own temple in opposition.  So though the Samaritans claimed to be Jews, they had desecrated their heritage by intermarrying with pagans.  They claimed to worship the true God of Israel, but yet they also worshipped foreign gods.  They claimed to believe the Jewish scriptures, but they only recognized the first five books of the Old Testament, called the Pentateuch.  So it would seem that the Jews were almost justified in their hatred of the Samaritans. 

Yet Jesus has traveled by foot 20 miles across hot dry wilderness to get to this village in Samaria in time to meet this woman, who is coming out to draw water from a well outside of town, at a time when it was unlikely that she would meet anyone, which was obviously her intention.  The obvious question, is why?  Why would Jesus leave an area where everyone was coming out to see Him, where He was drawing bigger crowds than John the Baptist, why leave that success and head off to a place where no one even knew who He was? 

Well, I think the answer is hinted at in the previous chapter when Jesus tells Nicodemus that God so loved the world, that He sent His Son into the world, so that the world might be saved through Him.  Jesus Himself would say later, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”(Luke 19:10)  This woman was from the lost tribes of Israel.  She was truly lost.  Her people were worshipping God in ignorance.  And they needed to know the truth so that they might escape the judgment which was upon the whole world.

Furthermore, I think Jesus comes to visit this woman as a counterpoint to the coming of Nicodemus to Jesus at night which we studied in chapter 3.  Nicodemus was a religious leader, he was the religious teacher of the Jews.  He was a moral, upright citizen.  He represented everything the Samaritan woman was not.  As I said before, if Nicodemus was the representative man, the best that man had to offer, then this woman was the representative sinner, even the worst of sinners.  A woman who was considered extremely immoral.  She had been married 5 times, and was now living with a man who wasn’t her husband.  She was lost.  But the good thing was, she knew she was lost.  Nicodemus thought he was a good man, and consequently Jesus had to show him that he wasn’t ever going to be good enough on his own merits to be able to enter into the kingdom of heaven.  But this woman knew she was a sinner, and though she tried to hide it, what she needed was for Christ to tell her about the grace of God.  Jesus came to save sinners.  He traveled 6 hours through the wilderness by foot to take the gospel to one woman who knew she was a sinner and was looking for redemption.

See, what we think of as good moral people, pillars in the community will usually come to church, they will seek for religion.  But unfortunately, they seek religion in order to bolster their sense of self righteousness and entitlement, as we saw with Nicodemus.  But people who are trapped in sin and are suffering the consequences of their sin rarely think of the church as a refuge.  Maybe they feel too guilty to come to church.  And yet these are the very people that we are called to seek out and tell the good news.  People that are spiritually sick, the outcasts, the downtrodden, the world weary.  They are the ideal candidates for the gospel.  As Jesus said in Mark 2:17,  “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

So Jesus travels 20 miles by foot to meet this woman.  And He is tired.  That shows us His humanity.  He was fully man.  But it also shows His omniscience.  He knows the woman is going to be there at noon.  He sends the disciples away so that He can talk to her privately so as not to unnecessarily embarrass her.  He knows her past, which she tries to hide.  His omniscience reveals His divinity.  He is fully God, and yet fully man.  This is the mystery of Christ, born of a woman, and yet fathered by the Holy Spirit.  Fully God and fully man. He is the Messiah, or the Christ.

And let me stress something on this point; He was fully human and fully God, that He might be our substitute, that He might be our Savior, but also, so that He might be our example.  That we might do as He did.  This text is one of the best passages in the Bible that illustrates how we are to go about being evangelists of the gospel.  How we are to witness to the lost.  There are many important principles to be learned from this passage, but not the least of them is how we are to evangelize the lost.

Notice then that Christ’s mission was calculated.  He was purposeful, He was strategic. He planned it, executed it, timed it perfectly so that He might set up this divine appointment with this woman. And note secondly that He was confrontational without being condemning.  When I say confrontational, that sounds menacing, doesn’t it?  But it doesn’t have to be.  It can simply be engaging.  In Jesus’ case, it was confrontational because it was unexpected.  It wasn’t considered appropriate for a Jew to speak to a Samaritan.  It was even more inappropriate for a man, a rabbi, to speak to a woman.  Yet Jesus says to her, “Give me a drink.”

If Jesus is omniscient, which I believe this text and many other scriptures clearly demonstrates that He is, then He certainly knew that she was an immoral woman.  She came to the well in this location, at this time, probably to escape scrutiny and scorn from the other women of the village who would usually all come at the same time to draw water and perhaps exchange gossip.  But Christ comes to a sinner, and yet as chapter 3 vs. 17 says, He did not come to condemn her, but to offer her salvation.  He shows her compassion.

But please notice though that Christ does not condone her sin.  The gospel message  has two pillars on which it depends; repentance and faith.  Jesus confronts her about her sin, and then tells her that He is the Messiah.  To receive the gift of salvation requires that both principles are enacted on our part.  We have to acknowledge our sin, confess our sin, and that He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  At the same time, we have to believe that Jesus is the Savior from sin which He accomplished by being the righteous substitute who paid the penalty for our sins.

There is a church not far from here that has a sign out front which I saw the other day which says, “God loves you just the way you are.”  I have to tell you something.  God doesn’t love your sin. God hates sin. But there is embedded in that church’s statement the implication  that you can live in your sin and God will accept you just the way you are. No need to change.  But that’s not the truth, and it’s not the gospel.  You must be converted, you must be changed.  Recognize you’re a sinner, seek forgiveness through Jesus Christ atonement on your behalf, and you will be converted, changed into a new creation. 

Peter, preaching in Jerusalem said in Acts 3:19  “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” To tell someone that they are fine just the way they are and that God will accept them when they are unrepentant and living in sin, is to tell them a lie and condemn them to eternal judgement.

Now notice how Jesus skillfully weaves the conversation around, starting  from a normal everyday occurrence such as a drink of water, and using it to teach a spiritual principle.  He asks for a drink, and she responds with a sarcastic response; “why are you asking me for a drink, knowing I am a Samaritan?”

But Jesus isn’t going to let Himself get sucked into a debate with this woman over race, over the cultural divide between Jews and Samaritans. Instead, He turns the tables on her.  And says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who says to you, “Give Me a drink” you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

Rather than focusing on the insufficiencies of heritage or race or culture or even morality, Jesus changes the conversation from one where she is automatically defensive, and instead He is the benefactor, rather than the beneficiary.  He doesn’t need her water, but He has the living water that she needs. 

Notice the difference between His approach with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman.  With Nicodemus who thought he was righteous, who was rich, who seemed to have everything going for him, including morality, Jesus told him what he was lacking.  He said he actually had nothing.  He had to be born all over again.  Nothing about him was good enough.  But with this woman, who had no standing in the community, who was culturally an outsider, and was a known immoral person, Jesus offers her the gift of God.  Grace that covers all her sin.  Eternal life which will spring up in her like living water. 

Though some principles in the gospel can not be deviated from, such as faith and repentance, we need to seek the discernment from God to know how to approach different people in different circumstances and from different environments.  God will give you the wisdom if you ask for it.  But notice that there isn’t a one size fits all approach to Christ’s evangelism.  Granted, He has divine discernment which we don’t have.  But we do have the wisdom that God gives to those that ask for it, so that we might do His will.   Recognizing the difference between those that are ready to receive the truth and those that are arrogant and think they know all the answers is possible through the discernment of the Holy Spirit as we witness in obedience to Him.

So first Jesus sidesteps her natural tendency for defensiveness, her attempt at being argumentative by turning the tables from her giving Him something, to Him giving her something.  But she still wants to argue.  Some people are like that.  No matter what you say, they want to argue.  The Bible says we are to be wise as a serpent, and harmless as a dove.  The devil is a serpent, isn’t he?  So we are to be wise to his schemes, and yet harmless as a dove.  As much as it depends on you, Paul said, be at peace with all men.  You aren’t going to win disciples to Christ by being argumentative, or by debating someone.  And neither are we going to win souls by insisting that they need to become moral to be saved.  But we become moral by being saved.  First there must be a change of heart, a conversion, and then out of the new heart comes a new morality. 

I’ve found when I deal with people who are hostile to me, who are defensive about their actions, that instead of focusing on the negatives or the repercussions of their decisions, if I focus on how much God has done for them and what God wants to do for them, how much God loves them, then many times that will have a softening effect on their heart and we can break through their defenses.  For instance, if you are dealing with a person who is caught up in alcohol abuse, rather than focusing on the physical ramifications of their drinking, focus on their spiritual vacuum that is making them enslaved to it. Focus on what Christ has done to give us a new life, a more fulfilling life.

That’s what Jesus is doing with this woman.  He knows her life is unfulfilling.  Imagine how many times must she have had her heart broken.  How hopeless she must have felt to have seen five marriages crumble and now even seeming to give up on marriage and resign herself to live in the shame of open adultery.  So Christ offers her new life;  the gift of living water if she will just ask for it.  But instead she is still defensive. She is not ready to trust Him yet.  She hasn’t gotten over this whole race thing, this whole us versus them mentality between the Jews and Samaritans.  So she says, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?”

Basically, she appeals to a sense of national self righteousness.  The Samaritans claimed Abraham as their father just as the Jews.  So she says Jacob, who was also called Israel, is her father as well and he gave them this well.  Again there is little jab on her part as she says “You aren’t greater than Jacob, are you?”  Well, of course Jesus was greater than Jacob.  He was the promised seed of Abraham from whom the whole world would be blessed.  He was the promised seed of Adam who would crush the serpent’s head.  He was no less than the promised Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God. 

And yet Jesus doesn’t argue with her.  He doesn’t defend His honor.  He simply goes back to the metaphor of the water and the gift that God has of eternal life.  And in a very understated way He says that the water that Jacob gave has only the power to slake thirst temporarily, but the water that He gives will be a well springing up to eternal life. Vs.13, “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.”

He is saying I am greater than Jacob, and yet He doesn’t say it outright. He doesn’t say I am greater as an arrogant, boastful claim, but He says as His water is greater water, and so by extension He is greater than Jacob.  He is making the point that the tangible blessings of being a child of Abraham might be evidenced by their land, by this well of Jacob, but the blessings of being a child of God far exceed temporal blessings.  They are spiritual blessings that spring up from Him supplying an endless supply of blessings throughout eternity.

Well, finally she starts to show a crack in her armor at this point.  She is obviously tired and weary and ready to have this blessing that Jesus is talking about.  But like a lot of people, they are primarily interested in the physical blessing and not the spiritual.  She says, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” 

Now what do you do with that?  On the one hand, she is saying I want this water that you are offering.  You offered it, then give it to me.  But on the other hand, she reveals her motivation; she wants physical relief.  She wants the spiritual water but only to make her life easier. 

Well, it’s interesting to see Jesus’ response.  At first glance, it would almost seem like there must be something missing between vs.15 and 16.  Jesus says in response, “Go, call your husband and come here.”  What’s that about?  Does she need her husband to get the water?  What relation has the husband to do with her desire for the gift of water? 

What I believe Jesus is doing is He is accepting her request for water, even though it is founded on physical desires, but He is going to treat it spiritually.  So even though she asks with imperfect intentions, Jesus is going to treat it spiritually and apply spiritual principles in order to bring her to salvation.  And to do that, He says, “ok, if you want the  living water, go bring here your husband.”  Jesus already knows that she doesn’t have a husband.  So He is saying this in order to get her to confront her sin.

Her response is still defensive. Jesus is touching a nerve but she doesn’t want to address it yet.  So she says, “I have no husband.”  And then Jesus reveals His divinity.  Vs. 17, Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” Now that’s pretty specific revelation.  That’s not general information and He had no way of knowing that kind of personal information.  And so it must have floored her which is evident from her response. She said “Sir, I perceive you are a prophet.”  Now she realizes that someone greater than Jacob is here.

But before I get into her response, notice that Jesus says to her “you are speaking the truth.”  He actually says that twice.  You have said correctly, and you have said truly.  Twice Jesus emphasizes that she has spoken the truth, even though she doesn’t speak the whole truth.  The whole point of what Jesus is doing here is to get her to recognize and accept the truth.  And before she can do that, she must first start telling the truth to God.  That’s what repentance is.  That’s where it starts; with telling God the truth.  You can lie to men, you can lie to yourself, and you can lie to God.  Even though God knows the truth, yet men still lie to Him.  But repentance starts with telling the truth about yourself.  And then accepting the truth about God. 

It’s amazing how people can lie to God, and yet we do it all the time.  We somehow don’t think that God sees.  David said in Psalm 66:18, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”  He says again in Psalm 51:6 “Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.”  The gospel is the truth, and we need to tell people the truth, and help them to tell God the truth, so that the truth would set them free. When someone finally comes to the point of recognizing the truth and confessing to God the truth that they are a sinner in need of salvation, then as Jesus said in John 8:32, “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Well, we are not going to finish this study today.  We are going to have to continue it next week.  But what I want to impress on you today is that Jesus is our model for personal evangelism, that we might walk in His footsteps.  By His example we should be better equipped to fulfill the great commission in our neighborhoods, with our relatives, even with strangers who may be defensive or argumentative, as was this Samaritan woman.

But I hope to leave you with a commitment to be like Christ in your personal evangelism.  We obviously are not going to possess divine discernment as Christ had, we are not omniscient like Christ is.  We are not great teachers as Christ was.  But we do have the Spirit of Christ living in us.  And we do have the power of the Spirit to help us and give us wisdom if we will ask for it. 

However, I don’t think you nor I need to be omniscient to think of someone today that we know needs to hear the gospel.  Someone who is not saved.  I bet you could probably write down on a note card at least 5 people in your personal circle that you are certain do not know the Lord as their Savior.  I pray that you will write down those names, and then make a strategic plan to go see those people, to talk to them specifically about their need for salvation, about the gift of God which He has for those that will ask for it.  I challenge you to start to do this with at least one person on that list this week.  Come up with a plan, be purposeful about it, strategic.  Get rid of all possible distractions.  Then confront them with the gospel.  Expect them to get defensive.  Expect them to be argumentative.  But be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove; in other words, don’t argue with them.  Stay focused on the gift of living water which satisfies every thirsty soul,  which God has prepared for those that will receive Jesus as their Savior. 

Or perhaps you are here today and you recognize that you have never been converted. You may be religious, but lacking new birth.  You may recognize that you’re a sinner, in need of being changed, given new life by the Spirit of God. I pray that today you will accept the invitation to drink of the water of life offered by Jesus Christ.  As Jesus said in John 7:37-38 “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”  “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” 

The Light of Truth, John 3:17-36 

The other night as I was walking my dog after dinner, I was able to witness a particularly beautiful sunset.  There were these clouds that had reflections of all these colors in them and the sun’s rays shining through.  It was really amazing.  It’s almost sad though because it changes right before your eyes and soon it’s gone.  I can’t help but think that sunsets are kind of like life.  They are so beautiful, and yet so fleeting.  By the time you think it’s really going great it’s basically starting to dim.

But as tragic as that thought is, imagine what life would be like if you were only able to see in black and white. I couldn’t help but notice that my dog seemed oblivious to that spectacular sunset. From what I understand dogs are mostly color blind. But even so, they just don’t seem to appreciate things like the beauty of a sunset.  I would like to suggest that life without Christ is kind of like looking at the world in black and white and not realizing that there is so much more to it.  To live life without Christ is tragic because you are blind to the full life that God has designed for us. 2Cor. 4:4 says, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”Jesus said in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” 

Last week my wife and I were in Pacific Beach in San Diego, visiting our daughter. We didn’t realize when we made our reservations that it is a big party town.  Being there on July 4th was kind of crazy. There were thousands of young people there for the holiday, most of whom seemed to be high or under the influence.  But seeing these masses of young people we couldn’t help but feel a sadness that most of them were unable to even comprehend the things of God. They were completely absorbed in trying to fulfill the desires of the flesh, and just as completely unaware of real life in the Spirit.  It’s like the Bible says in Galatians 6:8 “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”

The fact is, Christianity is not just a religion.  It’s life as God meant it to be lived. Prior to coming to Christ we are dead to all that God has designed us to be.  We think we are really living, but we don’t recognize that we are living in black and white, instead of living color.

Last time we looked almost exclusively at the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, showing the universal predicament that all men are without hope, the universal love of God in reaching down to save sinners, the universal invitation that whosoever will may come, and the individual application of whosoever believes may have everlasting life.  But it’s a little bit limiting to focus on just one verse of scripture though and not consider the context in which it is found.  Today I would like us to consider the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to like to say.  But in doing so, I suggest that we will not find new truth, but we will find expanded truth.  In other words, verses 17-21 are just expansions on the principles found in the verses prior, especially vs.16.

But before I get started, let me say why this doctrine is so important.  On the one hand we need to know the doctrine of salvation so that we might have assurance of our salvation. Secondly, we need to know more completely the doctrine of salvation so that we might know God more intimately.  And third, we need to know the doctrine of salvation so that we might be able to share the good news with others. 

I am afraid that though most of us know the doctrines of salvation well enough, we do not put it to practice nearly enough in personal evangelism.  For instance, I think there is a tendency to kind of push away the idea that our unsaved loved ones might die without Christ and suffer the consequences of eternal judgment. I think that we have a tendency to push such thoughts to the back recesses of our minds.  We just try not to think of it.  We are glad we are saved, but somehow perhaps we either don’t really believe that God will judge the unrighteous, or we just don’t let ourselves think about it.  Otherwise, I don’t think that compassionate, loving people like most of you are could really sleep at night knowing that your loved ones stand on the precipice of eternity without Christ.  That at any moment they might pass away by some tragic circumstance and consequently spend eternity in torment, separated from you and from God forever.  I can’t help but wonder if we really don’t believe that.  Somehow we have deluded ourselves into thinking that one way or another, our unsaved loved ones and friends will escape the judgment. 

I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there are no exceptions offered in scripture. Hebrews 9:27 says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”  There is no consolation offered in scripture for those that reject the offer of salvation.  Today this passage of scripture is going to underline that truth.  And I would hope that it would compel you to witness more to those that are lost.  That it would move this reality of judgment from the back burner  to the forefront of your focus.

Let’s go back to the illustration that Jesus gave in vs. 14 for a minute.  Everyone in the camp of Israel had been bitten by the poisonous vipers.  They were dying. Unless they looked upon the serpent on the standard they would die.   There was no other remedy for their predicament.  There was no other prescription for their sickness. And that is the illustration Jesus uses to set the stage for Him being offered up on the cross.  All men have been bitten by the serpent’s sting of sin, and as such all are doomed to die. The wages of sin is death.  And all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  There is none righteous, no not one.  There is no other consolation, no other salvation, than to know Jesus as your personal Savior.  Otherwise you remain in your sins, and as such will stand before God a sinner, condemned to judgment.

So for those of us that know the Lord as our Savior, I hope that you will not push the thought of unsaved loved ones to the back of your mind.  But I hope this message inspires you to speak again to your loved ones about the urgency of their salvation.  Satan always tells us that there will be plenty of time.  But the devil is a liar and the father of lies.  Time is not your friend, but your enemy.

Now let’s look at the remainder of the passage, starting in vs.17.  Verse 17 is basically an explanation of the love of God.  It is expanding on the concept of God’s love.  And to do that, he says God did not send the Son, or give the Son to the world to judge the world but to save it.  Here is the situation;  the world was already judged.  God made His judgment concerning sin way back in the beginning of Genesis when He said whoever eats of the tree will surely die.  The sentence of death was already given before Adam and Eve ate of the tree.  But they rejected the truth and chose to believe the devil’s lie and as such they entered into judgment.  And that same judgment passed on to all men, all descendants of Adam are under the penalty of death, because all have inherited the same sin nature resulting in their sinful acts.  

And I’ll say more on the judgment in a moment. But John is saying that God loved the world so much that He sent Jesus to save us from our sins.  Jesus didn’t come to bring us what we deserved, which was death.  He came to bring us what we didn’t deserve, which is grace, because of His love for us.  He came to provide salvation from death.

We were all spiritually dead.  We had the penalty of death upon ourselves.  It’s like the man on death row.  Though he may be alive today, yet he is under the sentence of death.  But God sent His Son not to be our executioner, but to save us from death by taking our place as our substitute.  So verse 17 basically extrapolates on the love of God.  The motive of God sending Jesus to the world is love, not judgment. Jesus said, “greater love has no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends.”

Then verse 18 expands on the second half of verse 16, where it says, “that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”  So verse 18 expanding on that says, ““He who believes in Him is not judged.”  Believing in Him delivers us from the judgment of death which we had already received.  Therefore, if you don’t believe in Him, you remain in the same condition which you were in previously.  You remain under judgment of death.  18b, “he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

Going back to Jesus’ illustration, whoever looked upon the serpent on the standard would live, be delivered from death, but whoever did not look remained in the throes of death.  They did not believe or want to accept the fact that looking at the standard would save them.  It’s hard to believe that people would choose to remain under the curse of sin, but they obviously do.  And they do so because they don’t want to accept who Jesus is and what He came to do.  They would rather die than have to submit to Christ as Lord.

Why would anyone in their right mind reject salvation?  Well, to explain that, John changes his analogy.  He moves from the analogy of the serpent on a standard to another analogy –  a light in the darkness.  Remember back in chapter 1, Jesus was called the Light. Vs. 4-5  “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”

So in vs.19 of chapter 3 John goes back to that analogy of Christ is the Light in order to explain more completely the judgment due to those who reject salvation, and says,  “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.”  Jesus is the Light, the Father sent Him into the world to save sinners, and yet when men saw the Light, they rejected it because they loved evil. 

I’ve said it before, people don’t really reject God because there isn’t enough evidence of God, or even because they can’t understand Him.  People reject God because they want to do what they want to do.  They don’t want God to rule over them.  Given the choice between good and evil we choose evil.  That is the nature of man.  That’s why Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” 

This is the judgment; that all men like sheep have gone astray.  They have turned away from God’s rule and turned to self rule.  Every man is like those in the days of the judges when there was no king in Israel, when everyone did what was right in their own eyes.  Men are like those who lived in the days of Noah, when every intent of the thought of their heart was only evil continually.  This is our nature.  This is the nature of man to love the darkness, because their deeds are evil.

You could make the argument that man is duped into thinking that such deeds do not really produce death.  You could argue that men think that what they are doing is enhancing life, embracing life, but that is even more reason for the compassion of God to shine the light of truth that leads to real life.

The key to life is seeing the truth, accepting the truth, and then practicing the truth. The truth is the light that shows us how to live, that distinguishes good from evil.  That is why it’s so important that the church proclaims the truth.  And truth is only found in one place – that is God’s word.  Only God’s word is the standard for truth.  And only the truth can set you free from death.  Jesus said in John 8:32, “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Jesus goes on to say in chapter 8 that the devil is the father of lies and there is no truth in him.  Remember back in the beginning when Eve was tempted by the devil, he said to her, “you shall not surely die?”  He appealed to her fleshly desires, her appetite and her pride, and offered an alternative suggestion which changed the truth of God into a lie.  In spite of what God had told them, Eve chose to believe a lie, and then acted on her desires.  And what resulted was the penalty of death.  Adam then chose to follow Eve instead of God, acting on his desires.  And what happened after that?  They tried to hide from the presence of God. Why?  Because their deeds were evil, and their conscience was awakened. They hid from the Light.

Coming back to our text we see that same scenario expressed in vs.20,21. “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

Here is what he means.  Those that reject Christ love their evil deeds and so they rightly bring judgment upon themselves.  They hate Christ because He is the Light that enlightens every man.  In other words, His Light exposes the truth about themselves.  For the unsaved, their evil deeds are exposed when the light of God’s truth is shone upon them.  And so to protect their evil deeds and to keep on doing them, they reject Christ.  They hate the Light.  They love the darkness.

But those that practice the truth love the Light, come into the Light, which proves that their good deeds are the works of God wrought through them.  See, the Spirit of God in them has changed their hearts to desire the things of God, to desire good, to desire the truth.  I like how it says, he who practices the truth.  It’s not our nature to do good.  By nature we aren’t righteous.  As we already declared, our nature is to go our own way, do our own thing, and love the works of darkness.  But knowing the truth, we now practice the truth, following in the example of Jesus Christ we walk in His footsteps.  And as we do this, it illustrates to the watching world that we know the Lord, that He has indeed made us into His children, as we do the works of our Father in heaven.

Now the rest of the passage is really just using the discourse of John the Baptist to his disciples to illustrate the principle we just looked at.  That God sent Jesus to be the light of truth, which is given to every man that they may know the truth of God and be saved.  There are a number of sub points in there which could be stand alone truths in and of themselves, but the main thrust of the text is to show that Jesus is the source of truth, and therefore is the source of life.

Verse 25 provides a key to understanding how this text relates.  Notice they have a question about purification.  Now many commentators go off on tangents at this point trying to show that baptism is somehow the point of all of this.  But purification taken at it’s simplest meaning speaks of how a man might be made righteous before God.  How can man overturn the natural fallen state of sinfulness and become pure in God’s sight. 

Baptism never was given as a means to achieve righteousness.  But baptism is a public portrayal of an inward, spiritual transformation. Baptism symbolizes death to the old man and new birth of the new man.  That’s what baptism symbolizes, admitting you are dead in your sins, and that they only way to be made right with God is by being born again in the spirit.  Now that is exactly what Jesus was teaching Nicodemus.

So John the author picks up on that idea by going back to John the Baptist who introduced the baptism of repentance as a precursor to the gospel.  John the Baptist preached a gospel of repentance which was symbolized by being baptized.  But now his disciples hear that Jesus and his disciples are baptizing, and they are unsure what this signifies.

John the Baptist’s answer is to give preeminence to Christ.  There is no spirit of jealousy there.  He knows first of all that Christ’s ministry is from heaven.  That is what is under discussion here.  John’s disciples were comparing their ministry with Christ’s ministry.  So first of all John the Baptist says that Christ’s ministry is from heaven.  You know, only God can ordain a minister or a ministry.  There are a lot of so called ministers running around, and a lot of ministries on every other street corner, but not all are of God, and we know that because they do not practice the truth.  The truth is the plumb line; to teach and practice the truth of God’s word is the measure of a ministry as whether or not it’s of God.  Jesus manifested the truth of God. Jesus said in John 14:10  “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.”  So He speaks the words of the Father and does the works of the Father.  And so John says he knows that Jesus is from heaven.

Then John says, you are my witnesses that I told you I am not the Christ but merely His forerunner. (vs.28) He says,  I’m just the friend of the bridegroom.  I’m not the bridegroom, Christ is the bridegroom.  And so because I am His friend, I rejoice to see Him come for His bride. The church is the bride of Christ – those that have been saved are the church.  So according to what has been ordained from heaven, Christ’s ministry must increase, but my ministry must decrease.  My ministry was to announce His coming.  Once the bridegroom comes, there is no longer a need for an announcer.

Now that’s my paraphrase of what John said.  And what he alludes to is the very well known analogy of a middle eastern wedding in which the bridegroom makes every thing ready, and when he comes to take his bride, his best man runs into the village before him announcing to everyone that the bridegroom is coming.  That was their custom and everyone would have recognized that.  So John is saying now that the bridegroom has come, his bride is coming out to Him, everyone has been told the news, and so his job is coming to an end.

But in vs.31 John the Baptist changes gears a bit, and returns to our primary subject, and that is the origin of the truth which Christ manifested.  He says He, that is Christ, is above all.  That is Christ is one with God and from God and is God.  That’s what was declared in the opening words of chapter one.  Now John the Baptist is validating it again.  His testimony and other men’s former testimony is earthly because they come from the earth,  but Christ is heavenly, because He came from heaven.

Vs. 32, Since Christ is from heaven, He speaks the truth of God.  He testifies the things of God, and yet no one receives His testimony.  Generally speaking, though the Jews came to Jesus to see the signs that He was doing, they did not accept Him as the Son of God.  Jesus’s testimony was that He was the Son of God.  He called God His Father. John 8:18-19, 28 “I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.”  So they were saying to Him, “Where is Your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also.” … 28 So Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.”

Now notice vs.33 in our text: John the Baptist says, “He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true.”  So he says that whoever receives Christ’s testimony is agreeing that God is truth, therefore Jesus is the manifestation of the truth. In John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” 

This is the distinguishing principle of Christianity.  You can make all kinds of arguments concerning the similarity of religions.  You can make the claim that all roads lead to God.  Calling God “Allah” or Krishna or the Great Spirit, or any other name used for God may seem from a human standpoint to be so similar as to become indistinguishable.  But the truth of Christianity that sets it apart is that we confess and believe that Jesus is God in the flesh, and that no one can come to know God except through Him.  That is the claim of Christ Himself.  So Christianity is incompatible with any other religion in the world.  God manifested Himself in One person, that is Jesus Christ, and only by faith in Him and His redeeming work on the cross are we able to be saved and receive eternal life.

Vs.34, “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure.”  What John is saying is that Christ is from God, He speaks the words of God, and God has given Him the full measure of His Spirit.  In times past, prophets were given a measure of the Holy Spirit.  Elisha, if you will remember, asked for a double portion of the Spirit that was given to his mentor Elijah.  But in Christ’s case, He is filled with the Spirit of God to the fullest, so that as Hebrews 1:3 says, “He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.”

Vs. 35, “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.”  That the Father God loves the Son of God being both God and yet separate and equal is a mystery that we must believe even if we cannot understand it.  But what we can know is that all rule and authority on earth and in heaven have been given to Christ.  He is the author and finisher of our faith.  He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.  He is the Sovereign King of Glory, He is the Bridegroom coming for His bride.  He is the Creator of all life, and the source of eternal life.  All things are from Him and to Him and by Him all things exist and have their being.

So then, knowing these things, knowing who Christ is and His authority, John says in the closing verse of this chapter; “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” How can you resist Him?  To resist the source of life is to stay in the darkness and under the penalty of death.  To accept Him and receive Him is to be united with the source of life, even to receive eternal life. 

Now that’s the summation of a lot of theology and doctrine.  And hopefully, the truth of the gospel has produced salvation resulting in abundant life in all of you here today.  But now what?  What is the purpose of knowing all of this if we don’t share it with whoever we meet?  You know, I have an old high school friend who went on to be a state senator for Georgia.  And though he recently retired he is still actively involved in politics.  He recently posted on social media that he is committing to personally knocking on 15000 doors in his area to get the word out about his favorite presidential candidate.  He adamantly believes that the next presidential election is critical for the future of this country. 

And when I read that, I could not help but think of this passage.  If we truly believe that the truth of Christ is essential to being saved from the wrath of God and receiving everlasting life, wouldn’t we be as adamant in proclaiming it as my friend is in campaigning for his candidate?  I can assure you that the question of what will you do with Christ is of much greater importance than which candidate you are going to vote for.  Christ is the only hope for blind and lost people living in a colorless, dying world.  Our hope is not in a political system, but only in the One who is over all things, above all powers, above all dominions, in Him who is the glory of God and the Light of the world.  I pray that as His church we might start campaigning in earnest for the kingdom of God.