Gtcotr/050723
Have you received a letter, perhaps an email, or maybe a text, and read it in the voice inflection and with what you imagined was the attitude of the writer. For example: Bob sends a text to his wife about quitting time on Friday and asked if she minds him going out with some of his buddies for a few hours instead of coming home. She replies, “Do whatever you think is best honey.”
Does Bob go or not go? What do these words mean? Will she be mad if Bob goes, or does she trust his judgment and will be perfectly happy for him to get to go if he thinks it’s best? Wow … you really don’t know what she means if you don’t hear her say it.
So you try to imagine you hear her and you try to say it in her voice. At least you need to know her and how she usually feels about things; or maybe know what her day has been like, or if this event is colored by past experiences.
Has she been at the spa all day, or with their 3 preschoolers, or does she know one of the guys going needs to be saved and Bob and his buddies have been praying for the chance to get Tim to go to their Bible Buddies man cave for some darts and pool after work to see if they can get him to invite Jesus into his heart?
Imagining voice inflections and attitudes and meanings are helpful at times and at other times they can be quite misleading. The passage we are going to read today holds quite a bit of margin for error when it comes to attitude and inflection. Let’s take a somewhat fresh look at the account of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well from the Gospel of John.
John 4 NKJV
(The brief backstory from John 3; Jesus is about 31 and in Jerusalem.)
1
¶ Therefore, when the Lord knew that the
Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John
2 (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but
His disciples),
3 He left Judea and departed
again to Galilee.
4 ¶ But He needed to go
through Samaria.
· Now the Samaritans and the Jews did not get along.
5 So He came to a city of Samaria
which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son
Joseph.
·
Sychar
is also known in the Bible as Shechem and where Abraham built his first altar
to God in the land of Canaan.
· The city is called Nablus today. It is between Judea and Galilee.
6 Now Jacob’s well was there.
Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well.
It was about the sixth hour.
·
Jesus
had been walking the trail of the Patriarchs, walked by Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob centuries before.
·
The
distance between Jerusalem to Sychar is about 30 miles.
·
It
is about a 2 day walk of 7+ hours each.
·
Jesus
was tired and it was lunchtime.
· Jesus sat by Jacob’s well and rested while His disciples walked into the city to buy food.
7 A woman of Samaria came to
draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.”
8 For His disciples had gone
away into the city to buy food.
9 Then the woman of Samaria
said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan
woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
·
Conversations
between Samaritans and Jews were uncommon. Their differences were always the subject,
and neither was open to change.
·
Note
the answer of the Samaritan woman to the request of Jesus.
o Why are you talking to
me and asking me to help you?
o You are bigot, just another prejudiced religious fanatic foreigner. I know what you think about me.
10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew
the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would
have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to Him,
“Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You
get that living water?
·
And
on top of that you don’t even have a rope of a bucket …
· Where in the world are you going to get any living water?
12 “Are You greater than our
father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his
sons and his livestock?”
·
Do
you think you’re somebody special?
·
You
believe you’re better than my family?
· Who do you think you are?
13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever
drinks of this water will thirst again,
14 “but whoever drinks of the water that I shall
give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him
a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this
water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
·
Give
me this water!
·
What
inflection do you hear?
o If you’re so big, give
me this water …
o Or – If that’s true, sir, can you give me some of this water?
16 Jesus said to her, “Go,
call your husband, and come here.”
·
Call
your authority! Don’t want to step in if you are under authority.
· Can’t give a woman something unless her father or older brother or husband says you can.
17 The woman answered and
said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no
husband,’
·
I
don’t have anyone over me.
·
I
don’t have a supervisor … “I am the supervisor”
· You want to talk to someone? Talk to me directly!
18 “for you have had five husbands, and the one
whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”
·
Now
you’re being honest.
·
Jesus can work with honesty.
This is the place where I wonder about this woman. Was she an exceptionally pretty and pleasing woman, easy to love and a great cook? Or was she the Tasmanian devil?
Well
perhaps she was a little of both. Or maybe whichever one she wanted to be when
she needed.
·
She
was evidently exceptional at getting men.
·
But
she was definitely below par at keeping them.
·
Men
controlled divorce for the most part, so we can assume they all kicked her out
for some reason. Maybe she was a bad cook!
·
We
can’t assume adultery since she was not stoned in the previous 5 relationships.
·
We
do know she was at least slipping since she is now engaged in adultery and
living with a man who is not legally her husband.
·
How
did Jesus know all of this?
· She doesn’t care … let’s just get the heat off of me for the moment and raise up a straw concern. Since Jesus is religious, let me ask Him a religious hot potato topic!
19 The woman said to Him,
“Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.
·
I
see you know things I didn’t expect you to know … let me flatter you up a
little and divert this conversation to something more controversial and get the
heat off of me for a moment.
·
“Oh
look, a dust cloud!”
· Anything to get the heat off her moment. Jesus has just knocked on the door of her heart and He has the key. She’s feeling it …
20 “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and
you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”
·
Jesus
isn’t going to get distracted this easy.
· He can answer a question and never get off point.
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the
hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem,
worship the Father.
22 “You worship what you do not know; we know
what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.
·
You
don’t even know what you are worshipping …
23 “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the
true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is
seeking such to worship Him.
24 “God is Spirit, and those who worship
Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah
is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”
·
The
woman takes a new approach to ending the conversation with admitting defeat …
let’s just change the subject and cover it all with a big umbrella statement no
one can challenge. This will sound wise and pious:
· The Messiah will settle all these things and tell us who is right when He comes.
26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
At this critical point the disciples came, and the woman left. She went to the city to be the first to tell the men that there was a stranger in town that knew everything she had done and who she was doing it with.
27
¶ And at this point His disciples
came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do
You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?”
28 The woman then left her
waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men,
29 “Come, see a Man who told
me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”
30 Then they went out of the
city and came to Him.
31 In the meantime His disciples urged Him,
saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat of
which you do not know.”
33 Therefore the disciples said to one another,
“Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”
34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the
will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.
35 “Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!
The whole world is filled with people just like this woman. People who are sitting in darkness, living their lives, empty and afraid, doing what have been doing over and over hoping that somehow it will work someday.
Jesus told His disciples:
Luke 10:2 Then He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.
Three Points to this Message:
1.
Have
an honest conversation with Jesus.
a. An honest conversation
with Jesus will be like giving Him a key to your heart.
b. He will listen. He will
be gentle. He will be kind. He will save.
2.
We
need to work on keeping those things we have worked on getting.
a. It’s not who gets
there first, it’s who is there when it’s over.
b. It’s not about having babies;
it’s about raising them.
c. It’s not about getting
a job; it’s about doing a job.
d. It’s not about getting
a spouse; it’s about keeping a spouse.
3.
The
world is ripe with souls and ready to be harvested.
a. All we need is
laborers.
b. Pray for Laborers.
c. You may be the one someone else is praying for today.
Begin by having an honest conversation with Jesus today!
