John 4:1-45 – The Gospel of John

My name's Mark.

I'm one of the pastors here at the church.

We're going to have a look at John chapter four.

Thank you, Lisa, for reading that epic passage.

Buckle in everybody.

We're going to go verse by verse.

So we'll be here until lunchtime.

No, don't worry.

Last Sunday night, you may or may not be aware, but we were together again in a different part of the city.

We were at South Hill Evangelical Church because there we were baptizing four new believers in the Lord Jesus.

We had to go somewhere else to have the baptisms because I think the cinema would probably have an issue if we started wheeling in a huge bath in here, but we uh baptized four new believers, which was such a joy.

And yeah, it is so good.

And one of the things that we uh we heard from each of those people uh was how Jesus had changed their life.

They gave what we call their testimony, their story of how they were before Jesus changed them, how they met Jesus, and then what it means for them to be a follower of Jesus now, how it has changed their mind, their heart, their values, their relationships.

You see, people mistakenly think that Christianity is some sort of insurance policy, that it's something that you just kind of keep in your spiritual back pocket until you die, and then in the moment in that moment you whip it out and you get in through the pearly gates, Peter lets you in.

If that's the the image that you have in your mind, that people mistakenly think that that's what Christianity is.

The baptism testimonies were evidence that that's not true.

You see, Christianity isn't the minimum required belief in order to get into heaven.

Something that you just kind of uh hold on to until you need to use it.

Now, our conviction as a church, and I think this is a conviction arising from the Bible, is that Christianity is something that changes you, changes you now.

It's not your ticket to ride when you die.

It's something that changes you in the moment, in space and time.

Not only that, but it changes every part of you.

That's what the gospel does.

The gospel changes people.

We believe that.

Some of you have experienced that gospel change.

You were one way, and now you are another.

And the thing that happened in between was him.

The gospel changes you now.

We're going to look at this passage through that lens of what it teaches us about gospel change.

And so the first thing that we're going to see is that gospel change is for everyone.

We read at the start of the passage that uh, so in terms of geography, Jesus is down in the south of the country, uh, that's where Jerusalem is, and he's gonna head back north to where he's from.

He's from the kind of Galilee region, that's the Sea of Galilee, that's the lake that's up at the top of Israel.

And so he's gonna head from the south to the north.

And what we read in verse 4 is that he had to pass through Samaria.

And so there's Jerusalem in the south, and there's where he's going in Galilee in the north, and then in the middle there's this other region, this region known as Samaria.

Now, what's interesting in John saying that Jesus had to pass through Samaria is because that's not what normally happened.

We read later on, uh, just a few verses later, that there was tension uh between uh Jews and Samaritans, that's putting it mildly.

Uh the Jews thought that the Samaritans were uh were compromising racial half-breeds, they were mongrels who had compromised their faith hundreds of years ago, they compromised their bloodline, they were racially impure, and so there's a whole race divide going on there.

And so what normally happened is that if you were a Jew and you had to get north, you actually didn't go through Samaria because you didn't want to be near those people.

And so what they did is they went the long way around.

They crossed over the river Jordan and they went up the other side and then crossed back at Galilee.

But John tells us that Jesus had to go through Samaria.

What John is hinting at is that Jesus had an appointment to keep, a divine appointment.

He had to go through Samaria because he had an appointment with this woman who didn't realize it.

And so he crosses this racial boundary, and he's about to cross the gender boundary because this woman arrives at Jacob's well, that's Jacob of uh Genesis fame, uh, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And so he arrives at Jacob's well outside the town of Sikar, and this woman, verse 7, a woman of Samaria, came to draw, and Jesus speaks to her.

Again, something that would not have been not have been done and says, Give me a drink.

The Samaritan woman, verse 9, is quite surprised and said, How is it that you, a Jew, that's the racial barrier, and speak uh and ask me for a drink, a woman, that's the gender barrier, of Samaria.

So he's crossing this racial boundary, he's crossing a gender boundary in speaking with this woman in public, but he's also crossing an ethical, social boundary.

You see, we read at the end of verse uh six that he sits down at the well, and it was about the sixth hour.

Now, in terms of how the Jews did time or marked time, that means that it's midday.

So they go from 6 a.m.

Uh, and so he's there at midday in the heat of the day, and this woman shows up.

Why does she come at the hottest part of the day?

Because that's culturally not what would have happened.

Culturally what would have happened, because they're they're carrying these large earthenware jars, and it's not safe, wouldn't be safe usually for women to travel alone.

What they would do is that all the women would go together.

They'd go together early in the morning, 6 a.m., 7 a.m., and they would head out together while it was still cool and they would draw their water.

But this woman comes alone.

Why is that?

She comes alone when she knows that nobody else is going to be there because it's so darn hot.

Why?

Well, it's because she is a social outcast.

She's a moral outcast.

She's the woman that all of the other women talk about.

She's the woman that all of the other women watch their husbands around.

And Jesus has to meet her.

And so Jesus, in sitting down with this woman and asking her for a drink, is reaching through racial barriers, gender barriers, social and moral barriers in order to connect with her.

Do you see?

Jesus in doing this is embodying the gospel, the message of Christianity.

Because it crosses boundaries.

It must cross boundaries.

And how do we know that?

Cast your eye down at verse 10.

Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him.

He says that it's a gift.

It's the gift of God.

The gospel is a free gift to you.

If you earned it, if you earned the gospel, if you earned eternal life, either by being of the correct race, or the correct sex, or the correct moral uprightness and goodness, then the gospel would only be for certain people, right?

If it was only about the Jews, if it was only about white people, then everybody else would be excluded.

If you earned it, it would privilege some, it would disadvantage others, but Jesus says it's a gift.

And what that means is the gospel is completely egalitarian.

It's for everyone.

Everyone is on a level playing field.

And so it can cross those boundaries because it's not about the boundaries.

It's not about your race.

It's not about your ethnicity.

It's not about your gender.

It's not about your sexuality.

It's not about your moral purity.

The gospel crosses boundaries.

Do you see?

Why?

Because it's a gift.

And because it's a gift, it may in fact actually privilege the weak.

It may actually privilege the social outcast because they're the ones that realize that they need it.

Jesus sitting, eating with prostitutes and tax collectors and drunkards and the Pharisees coming there completely incredulous at Jesus.

And what does he say to him?

He says, it's the sick who need a doctor.

Why do the prostitutes and the tax collectors and the social outcasts realize or welcome Jesus and eat with him?

Because they're like, yeah, we know that we're jacked up.

Like we like we need help.

It's the people with the air of moral superiority who are like, no, don't give me any of that.

But you see, the gospel crosses boundaries.

Those boundaries that we set up.

In our increasingly tribal time, everybody's splitting off into their little subcultures and tribes, and they're warring against one another.

And we have such a great message to offer people, something that crosses over those boundaries and to those people who need it.

So as we seek to embody the gospel, it's worth thinking what boundaries is the gospel asking me, is Jesus asking me to cross over, to step over, to step into in order to meet with those people that the world would otherwise look down upon.

The gospel, gospel change is for everyone.

Secondly, gospel change comes gradually over this whole conversation.

You see how patient Jesus is with her, and it's full of humor.

Like it's supposed to be kind of tongue-in-cheek, uh, funny.

She doesn't get it when uh when he says, you know, if you had known the gift of God, you would have asked me, and I would have given you living water.

What's her response?

Hey man, you don't got a bucket.

She's not getting it.

She's not working on the same sort of level that he's communicating to her on.

But he doesn't, he doesn't rebuke her.

He doesn't go, you an idiot.

Of course I don't have a bucket.

I'm not talking about real water.

No, he's gentle with her, he's gradual with her.

Jesus in verse 16, uh, it says, Go call your husband, which seems to be a bit of a left turn, and believe me, we're going to come back to that.

But what's clear from verse 16 is that Jesus is starting to get personal.

He's starting to really kind of press in.

And what's her response?

Her response is to deflect.

Again, I suppose we can, ah, sir, I see that you're a prophet because you've been able to tell me that I had five husbands.

Uh, let me ask you this theological question uh about where we ought to worship.

Again, we'll come back to that.

She deflects.

But isn't that our experience?

Isn't that the experience of the people that we share the gospel with?

That uh when you get close to the heart of an issue, that's when somebody deflects or asks, oh well, what about creation and evolution?

You know, they move on, they move the conversation.

Maybe you've been deflecting for such a long time because it's starting to get personal, and you're like, oh well, I haven't had my question answered about this thing.

What about predestination?

You're deflecting.

But Jesus is very gracious, and he brings her back even around this discussion of temples.

You want to talk about temples?

I'm gonna make them all obsolete.

I'm the one you need.

You see her progression through the passage, how she develops in her understanding.

She begins by simply recognizing him as a man.

Samaritan woman said to him, How is it uh that you, a Jew, ask me, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

Why are you a man talking to me?

And then she gets a little bit further along and it says, I see that you're a you're a prophet.

I know that there's something more going on with you.

And then finally, he reveals himself to be the Messiah, and her eyes open and and off she goes to the rest of the time, as we'll see in a moment.

But the point right now is the gospel change is gradual.

We're all on a journey of faith.

We're all at various points in that journey.

The Lord Jesus is patient, gracious.

Why?

Because he recognizes that gospel growth is organic, it's not mechanical.

How quickly could I grow a pile of bricks?

Well, pretty quickly.

I imagine I'd bring some Freemason, not Freemason, Masonary comes.

I'd ring a Freemason and he'd bring me some bricks.

I'd bring a Mason and tell him to bring me a load of bricks and would dump them there and would grow the pile really quick.

How quickly could I grow a tree?

Very, very slowly.

Why?

Because it's growing in complexity and depth, and so it takes time.

The gospel's growing trees, not piles of bricks.

And Jesus is patient.

Gospel change comes gradually.

Third, gospel change is powerful.

Look again at verse 10.

Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

Our bodies obviously crave water, somewhere between kind of 55 and 70 percent, depending on who you read.

Say that our bodies are made up of water, and so we long for it.

I'm sure you uh you have that you've had that experience of feeling absolutely parched, uh, of being on a hot day, and you didn't bring your water bottle with you, and your mouth is dry and sticky, and you are so thirsty, and then you finally get some water, and that first sip, it's amazing, isn't it?

It tastes so sweet, so refreshing, so enlivening.

So, when Jesus talks about living water, what are we to understand about that?

Because it's obviously not something physical.

No, Jesus is saying in verse 10 to this woman, I've come to give you something that your soul needs just as much as your body needs water.

I've come to give you something that your heart longs for, yearns for, thirsts for, just as much as your parched mouth longs for physical water.

Something that will satisfy your soul as water to a dry mouth.

What is it?

Well Jesus goes on.

Verse 14.

Whoever drinks the water that I will give him will be thirsty again.

Sorry.

Whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.

Don't think of eternal life simply as living for a long time.

Also, don't think about it in terms of something that you will enter into when you die.

If you're a believer in Jesus, now your eternal life has begun now.

Do you know that?

Have you realized that?

Because it's not just living for a really long time.

No, when Jesus talks about eternal life, he's talking about life as it was meant to be.

We were never meant to die.

Our first parents, Adam and Eve, weren't meant to die.

They were supposed to eat of the fruit of the tree of life and live forever.

So he's talking about life as it was meant to be.

You were meant to be, made to be, in relationship with God.

And so what Jesus is talking about when he talks about the living water that wells up into eternal life, he's saying, I'm going to give you this, this thing that you crave that will bring you back to being fully human, to being who you were made to be in relationship with the God that you were made to be in relationship with.

Eternal life means to be so assured of God's presence, of God's love, of his pardon, of his grace, of his care of you.

That's what I've come to give you.

That's what changes you powerfully.

One of the ways that the world tells us uh to change is uh to exercise our willpower, to muster up our willpower to subdue our desires.

You know, I'll often have a desire to sit on my backside and to eat chips.

That's uh often an overriding desire in my heart.

And if I want to get healthy, what I need to do is gotta muster up the willpower to subdue that desire and go to the gym or buy a lettuce or something.

But the way the gospel changes you is not by overriding your desires.

The way the gospel changes you is not by getting you to subdue your heart's longings.

The way the gospel changes you is by satisfying them.

Jesus, I know you're thirsty.

I know you have this longing.

I can meet it.

I'll satisfy that desire.

I'll satisfy that desire so that you're never thirsty again.

I'll satisfy that desire in a way that you have never felt before.

Gospel change is not about you repressing your desires, it's about you having them satisfied by Jesus.

Do you see?

Jesus changes you by satisfying the deepest longings of.

Your heart.

That's why he asks her about her husband.

Which brings us to the fourth aspect of gospel change.

Gospel change changes everything.

We've just noted that one way to change is mind over matter, brute willpower, subduing your desires.

The other way people seek to change these days is by allowing all of their inner emotions to be fully expressed on the outside, to be an expressive individual.

You'd say that the society has caused me to uh to make me feel trapped in terms of my authentic self.

And so the way that I need to change is I need to let all of that out.

One way goes to your will, subduing your passions, and the other way goes to your emotions.

But neither changes your heart.

Jesus says to her, go call your husband.

Is this a non-secular?

Is this a is this a some sort of left field?

No.

Jesus says to her essentially, I know your heart's thirsty.

I know the deepest longings of your soul, and I know that they're not being met.

You've been trying to dig out wells with men for years.

You're still thirsty.

You're longing for intimacy, longing to be truly known and truly loved.

And you've been looking for it in all the wrong places.

I've come to give you the thing that will satisfy the deepest longings of your hearts.

I've come to give you that living water.

Go call your husband.

The prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 13, God speaking through the prophet, says that his people have committed two sins.

Jeremiah 2:13

They have turned from me the fount of living water, and they have turned to cisterns, pots that are cracked and dry and that can hold no water.

All of us, every one of us here, is looking for a drink.

Something that will satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts.

Maybe it's acceptance, maybe it's intimacy, maybe it's comfort, maybe it's success, maybe it's a sense of feeling in control.

And we're looking for that longing to be satisfied.

But what we do is we go to these cracked pots, these things that promise much and deliver little, these things that we think will satisfy us.

Money, sex, power, relationships, the approval of people.

And it's like we're we're picking up the shards of this clay pot that's covered in mildew, and we're licking it, looking for a drink.

And all the while over here is this great and glorious crystal fountain.

God's saying, Come and drink.

Jesus says, verse 13, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.

But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

If you try to satisfy your soul with anything but Jesus, you'll be thirsty again.

You try to satisfy your soul with money, it will never be enough.

You try to try to satisfy your soul with sex, it will never be enough.

You try to satisfy your soul with the approval of others, it will never be enough.

And what's more, all of those things, the approval of people, the acquiring of wealth, the pursuing of sexual intimacy, all of those things, all of those crackpots will make you earn it.

You'll have to satisfy, you'll have to sacrifice time and relationships in order to achieve that.

You'll always be looking over your shoulder to be, oh, do they still love me?

Is there someone better than me?

They will make you earn it.

Jesus says, if you knew the gift of God and who it was who was asking you for a drink, you would ask him for a drink and he would give you living water.

Some of you work too much, some of you drink too much, some of you have bad relationship after bad relationship.

Some of you are crippled by what people think and say about you.

You can either try and muster up the will to subdue those desires, to do better, to stop drinking, to have better relationship choices, to stop caring what other people think.

Or you can indulge your inner emotions and say, I don't care about them, I'm just gonna do me.

Or you can drink of the free living water that Jesus offers you, and that will go all the way to heart change.

How does it change our hearts?

We come back to this political controversy, this deflection that Jesus then uses.

So he says, Go call your husband.

The woman says, I don't have a husband.

She's like, Yeah, you're absolutely right.

You've had five husbands, and the guy you're now with isn't your husband.

Verse 19, the woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you're a prophet.

And then she brings up this issue of worship.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where we ought to worship.

There was this political controversy because of the division between the Samaritans and Jews about where you went to meet God, where you went to have your sin dealt with, where you went to experience the pardon and grace and forgiveness of God.

And the Jews said, No, you go to the temple in Jerusalem, but because of the long history of uh of the nation of Israel and the division of the country, the Samaritans said, no, you don't go down to Jerusalem anymore.

You come here to this mountain, which is Mount Gerardzim.

Interestingly, Jesus answers the controversy, but then goes deeper.

He says in verse 22, You worship, uh we worship what we know, you worship what you do not know, for salvation comes from the Jews.

If you want an answer to the political controversy, you're wrong.

You're wrong.

The Samaritans are wrong.

You want to know where the right place is to worship, you go to Jerusalem.

But let me tell you this.

The hour is coming when I'm going to make all temples obsolete.

The hour is coming when no more temples will be necessary.

Have a look at verse 23.

The hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

For the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

Jesus twice here in these verses references the hour.

Your translation might say the time is coming, but it is the hour.

The hour in John's Gospel has a very particular meaning.

The hour in John's Gospel is always in John's Gospel about the cross.

It's always about the cross.

He's saying, My death is going to change the way you worship.

Right now in Jerusalem, there's sacrifices going on to atone for sin.

The priests are there mediating between the people and God, but I'm about to die.

I'm about to die, and all of it points to me.

I'm the sacrifice that will end all sacrifices.

I'm the one who will truly take away your sin.

I am the great high priest who will stand mediating between you and God.

I am the one who will permanently bring you into the presence of the God who made you, in whom or with whom relationship you were made to be in.

And you can worship him anywhere.

No more mechanisms, no more rituals.

God is spirit, and you'll worship him in spirit and in truth.

No more temples, no more holy places, but the all-pervasive spirit of God enlivening and recreating the people of God with the truth of who God is revealed supremely by the God man Jesus.

Spirit and truth.

How can these things be?

How can Jesus bring us into relationship with God?

How can Jesus be that atoning sacrifice, that atoning sacrifice that satisfies the deepest longings of our hearts?

How can he be all of those things that he promises for us?

How can he give us that eternal life?

Because on the cross, he cried out, I thirst.

Because on the cross, he cried out, I thirst.

He didn't just mean that he wanted a drink, that he was thirsty from the physical trial and anguish.

No, on the cross, he experienced the full measure of that soul parching separation from God.

The same separation that we experience that is parching our souls, that's making us run after those clay pots.

He took it.

Why?

In order to give us the free gift of living water that would satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts.

And this changes everything.

This changes all of the things you run after.

It makes them gifts and not gods.

Men become just men, women become just women, money's just money, stuff is just stuff.

It sets you free, do you see?

We need to be done.

I'm going to give you two very quick final things.

That was by far the longest point.

Two very quick final things.

First, gospel change is irrepressible.

In this electrifying moment, the woman says, When Messiah comes, he'll teach us all these things.

He'll reveal all these things to us.

And in this wonderful moment, Jesus says to her, I who am speaking to you am He.

And it's like the penny drops.

The penny drops and she leaves her water jar and she rushes back into the town of Sikar and she tells everyone.

In contrast to the disciples, the disciples come back and they're stunned, they're dumbfounded.

They don't say anything.

But she can't help but speak.

She heads back because gospel change is irrepressible.

If you've been changed by the gospel, you're like, I want to tell people what Jesus has done for me.

I want to tell them, like those four people last week, that I was one way and now I am another.

And the thing that happened in between was him.

And she's no longer ashamed.

She begins with her story.

She says, Come and see the one who told me everything I ever did.

Every man, every husband.

Come and see him.

That's gospel change.

She comes into the light because she's no longer ashamed.

She knows that she's had her shame dealt with by the one who will cry out, I thirst.

And so the whole town comes to him.

And so finally, gospel change transforms whole societies.

We've got to believe that.

We've got to believe that.

As we look at our world, as we look at our university campuses, and we look at the news, and we look on social media, and you look in your jobs, and you look in your family, how everybody is breaking down and fracturing into their tribes and saying, no, this is who I am, and I stand in opposition to you.

We have to believe that the gospel changes societies, that the gospel changes communities.

And that's exactly what we see in Sikhar.

They all come out to Jesus and they believe in him, they trust in him, not just because of the testimony of the woman.

They move on beyond that and they say, We started, we came out because of what you said to her, but now we see for ourselves that you are the savior of the world.

The gospel transforms not just individuals but whole communities.

It's transforming us, it's building us into those trees.

We're not just a pile of bricks.

And it will, by God's grace, transform our communities and our society.

And how will they be transformed?

By using you.

Do you know that you're probably the only Christian that your friends know?

If indeed you have non-Christian friends or colleagues?

You're probably the only Christian that they know.

So bad is the situation here in Ireland.

What divine appointments do you have to attend this week?

Where you might say, I was one way, and now I am another, and the thing that happened in between was him.

Come and see.

Come and see what he was done.

Come and receive the soul satisfying, life-giving water that only Jesus can give.