Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – John 4:1-42
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text for today is John chapter 4 beginning in verse one and reading through verse 42. John 4:1-42. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. John chapter 4. Hear the word of the Lord.

When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus himself baptized not but his disciples. He left Judea and departed again into Galilee. And he must needs go through Samaria.

Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well, and it was about the sixth hour there cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus saith unto her, “Give me to drink.” For his disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat. Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him.

How is it that thou being a Jew asked, “Drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans?” Jesus answered and said unto her, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, give me to drink. Thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” The woman saith unto him, “Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.

From whence then hast thou this living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?” Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. In that saest thou truly. The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet, our fathers worship in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

Jesus saith unto her, “Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship, ye know not what we know what we worship. For salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

The woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ. When he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee, am he. And upon this came his disciples, and marveled that he talked with the woman. Yet no man said, What seekest thou? Or why talkest thou with her? The woman then left her water pot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, Come see a man, which told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ? And they went out of the city, and came unto him.

In the meanwhile, his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat. But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat? Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. Say I unto you, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest. Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes, look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor. Other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors.

And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him. For the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did. So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them. And he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his own word, and said unto the woman, “Now we believe not because of thy saying, for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for calling us forward today to worship Christ, the Savior of the world. Thank you, Lord God, for this text. Open our hearts to its meaning, that we might open our hands in joyful work this week in response to your great love that sought us as part of your bride. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, at the risk of going from the sublime to the ridiculous, I thought this morning about how you put toilet paper on the roll. Somebody in my household either doesn’t do it the same way as I do or has self-consciously thought it ought to be the other way around, or they just weren’t thinking when they put it on.

You know, I kind of think it ought to come out the front. Other people think it should come out of the back. I’m not sure what their thinking is. I’ve never understood it. And some people just don’t think about it at all. They just slap the roll on—next roll on—and that’s that.

Well, sometimes we come to a text like this and we just sort of think, okay, well, that’s interesting. Let’s move on from that.

I think what I want to do today is cause us to think about this text a little bit, that we might think about the kind of opportunities we have in life of talking to people such as the woman at this well in Samaria.

Jesus thought about water. It wasn’t just an empty topic to him. Earlier when he talks to Nicodemus, he’d thought about wind. He thought about wind in terms of some greater realities. And so what we have here in this story is a beautiful, beautiful love song.

For the last few years, every time I read John 4 and think much about it, I think of Paul McCartney who had that song about us. You know what’s wrong with filling the world with silly love songs? Well, this is a beautiful love song. This is a beautiful piece of literature, poetry where Jesus speaks love to his bride and it is in a sense a culmination of other love stories in the scriptures—beginning, of course, with Adam and Eve who are gathered together and Adam is given his bride.

Well, not exactly at a well, but there’s water that flows from Eden to water the whole world. So we have water, we’ve got animals, we’ve got the love story of all time—intended to be Adam and Eve—and yet that falls. Adam falls and there’s dissension and trouble in the marriage. And as God renews his covenant and as we see history unfold, we see various pictures very similar to this picture we read in John 4.

So that when we get to John 4 and we read that our Savior comes to Jacob’s well and that there’s a reference to Joseph—we’ll talk about that later—but he comes to Jacob’s well and he’s going to a far country, right? He’s away from Jerusalem. He’s journeying up north. He’s now in a place of Israel that was really a different country. In essence, Samaria was completely different, as we’ll talk about in a little bit.

He’s gone to a far country. He’s at a well. He meets a woman and there is water there. And she even brings in the subject of cattle being watered. This is a type scene—what commentators call this in our day and age, a type scene. And it’s meant to evoke images from the Old Testament, from other love stories. It’s meant to evoke the image of Abraham sending his servant to get a wife for Isaac, sending him to a far country.

And that servant answers Abraham’s prayer and the bride is found in the context of this servant at a well, where he meets and essentially fulfills his mission to find a wife for Isaac. Well, a woman is a representation of Isaac’s marriage.

Isaac’s son Jacob goes to a far country. He’s fleeing away. He comes to a well and there’s a beautiful girl there and he, in the context of that, meets the love of his life there. And he has to wrestle the stone lid off of the well to give her drink. And so we have a beautiful love story, you know, set in this far country romantic thing. A guy goes and meets his bride at a well and life is going to flow out of the well.

You know that movie—I think it was called “Life Is Beautiful.” The one scene I really liked was this guy and his love, she finally agrees to marry him. They walk into a garden and then time lapse—whoosh—and they walk out of the garden after their marriage. They walk out of the garden with a baby, with like actually a toddler I think at that point in their life. The garden is the imagery. It’s the center of the whole thing. That’s where the love in that story is all about.

And these pictures of water and well and wife and man—these are images of the garden again, coming from Adam and Eve, and God restoring his people to marital bliss. But greater than that, showing the restoration of God’s people to himself in the context of the garden.

We have Jacob and later we have Moses. Moses leads the people of God out of Egypt and he takes them. Before he gets to lead them out of Egypt we know what’s going to happen, sort of, because he has to leave Egypt himself. He goes into the wilderness and in the context of that wilderness he goes to this well and at this well there are these daughters—these shepherd daughters, rather—of Jethro the Midianite, a priest rather. But there are also shepherds there who are hassling these daughters, and so Moses has to deliver the daughters from those that are giving them trouble and keeping them from the well.

So he delivers the daughters and then he gives them water to drink in the wilderness. And of course, one of those daughters is going to become his wife. So it’s the same thing.

Now in each of these stories, in each of these scenes that are set, we see the basic character of some of these men—these men portrayed. Isaac is a picture of the passivity of the Savior suffering for us. Yes, I mean the whole Isaac story—what you remember most about Isaac is he quietly goes up with his dad to lay down and offer his life in obedience to God, right? Till the ram’s caught in the thickets. Isaac is passive. The whole picture of Isaac throughout his life is one of passivity. And it kind of becomes sinful passivity in terms of the whole Jacob-Esau thing. But there’s a positive sense to it too. He’s a picture of the quiet and meek submission of the Son to the Father. And that’s revealed at the well scene, is it not? He’s not even there. He’s so passive that, you know, the father is obtaining a wife for him.

Jacob isn’t passive. Jacob is a wrestling man, right? He’s got to wrestle with his dad who’s kind of goofed up in a lot of ways. He’s got to wrestle with Laban. And at the end of all that, before he goes into the promised land, he wrestles with God at Peniel. Jacob’s whole life is being a wrestler. And that’s given to us at the scene too. He’s not like Isaac. He’s at the well where he meets his bride. And he’s not passive. He actually has to wrestle that big stone lid off the well. He’s like a great strong guy wrestling. He’s a picture of Christ. Christ wrestles to effect deliverance for his bride. And Jacob is pictured by that at the well scene. It’s a picture of his whole life wrestling that big stone off, to the end that he might indeed be a blessing to the world and he might enter into the blessings of marriage.

Moses is a deliverer. He’s going to lead his people away from the shepherds, so to speak, the false oppressors in Egypt. He’s going to take them into the wilderness and in that wilderness, he’s going to give them water to drink. The whole character of Moses as a deliverer is really pictured for us in this kind of penultimate scene of him getting his bride—where he delivers and he provides water in the wilderness.

And so when we come to this story, all of that stuff comes to mind. And if you leave today with nothing other than that, this is a picture of the Savior’s great love. He’s the greater Adam. He’s the greater Isaac. He’s the greater Jacob. He’s the greater Moses.

So this is the best love scene. This is the best well scene where Jesus procures to himself a bride. And not just a single—he doesn’t marry the woman from Samaria, but she is a representation of the church. And by the end of the scene, and this is why I read the whole thing—even though it would take we’re going to take four weeks to deal with it—I read the whole thing to show you that it’s one beautiful piece of literature that has this great culmination where all the men of the city of Sychar come out and say that we know that you are the Savior of Samaria. No, we know you’re the Savior of this woman and we know you’re our Savior. No, we know you’re the Savior of the world.

Postmillennialism from one end, from the beginning to the end of the scriptures is portrayed, and it’s given to us here again in this beautiful love story.

Understand that this story is a representation of the Father’s love as it moves to secure a bride, and ultimately it’s a representation of the Father’s love for you. You come commanded by Jesus to serve him. And by the end of today, God serves you. He brings you here to flow love into your hearts. And to that end, he has commanded you to come to him. And Jesus does that very thing in this wonderful, beautiful love story found in John chapter 4.

We have various details here of this story and they’re all so very important. And they’ll all take some form of development. But understand that this town, Sychar—the name means either drunken town or lying town. Drunks and liars. That’s what Sychar basically means. Jesus moves Samaria as represented by drunk town, lying town. He moves them from delusions of drunkenness and from a denial of truth into an appropriation of the reality and sobriety of biblical truth and reality. And that’s what he’s going to do as he speaks to this Samaritan woman. He’s going to move her from delusion, self-deception, and deceit into sobriety, understanding the great truths of God’s world that he has built them for.

He’s going to move her away from idolatry into the worship of the living God. And we have this wonderful love song in which that is accomplished.

One other element here I want to mention is that Samaria was in the middle of trade routes. Samaria is originally a city and then a region, which it is by the time of our Savior—all of Samaria is a country so to speak. But the reason why the city was built where it was originally was because it was on a trade route or various trade routes. Great things are going through. Once more, what we see going through here is the exchange of commerce. And that’s another element of this story.

When we come forward to worship God, business is transacted. The great business of which all other business is a picture. And the business that’s being transacted here is that the Father’s love reaches to his bride to give her gifts in response to her saying, “I really have nothing to offer to you.” He brings us to a point of need that he might bring us to a point of being full and satisfied with him. Okay?

So it’s a beautiful love story, a type scene.

Secondly, I want to remind us where we’re at in the flow of the Gospel of John.

Now, kids, if you look in Revelation 6, our children, you don’t have an outline today because I figured these images are so easy to burn into your minds that you should be able to remember.

The first image we’ve had is a love story at a well and Jesus is the Savior, Bridegroom. The Bridegroom Savior of the world. The whole text ends with him being the Savior of the world. So Jesus is getting a bride to himself. And think of yourself as the Samaritan woman that Jesus has brought into relationship because of his great love for you.

The second image I want you to have in your mind, kids, are these four horsemen of the apocalypse. You remember the four horsemen? There’s that movie Tombstone or Wyatt—or one of those. They were made at the same time and I don’t know which, but in one of them this guy comes back from being—everybody, the bad guys are winning in the town and he goes away and he comes back and he quotes from the Bible about the four horsemen of the apocalypse to bring death and war and destruction and they kill all these bad guys.

Well, the four horsemen of the apocalypse is found in Revelation chapter 6 and it isn’t quite like that. There are four specific horsemen and there’s a movement of four specific things and I believe that what you have in these four horsemen is a typical picture of what happens not just between AD 30 and AD 70. That is true too. But it’s a picture of how the gospel progresses. Okay?

The gospel progresses with first the pure preaching of the gospel. And the white horse, the first horse in Revelation 6, is this horse that brings the purity of the preaching of the gospel. And the gospel, you know, is victorious. It goes to war, but it’s the pure preaching of the gospel that starts the whole thing. What is going on in life? What does Jesus accomplish ultimately?

And then there’s a second horse that comes along that’s red. And to the red horse, he takes away peace from the earth. Well, wait a minute. Isn’t the goal peace and order? Well, yeah, but it’s through a process where Jesus takes peace away from the earth. All these horses are representations of Christ. So as the gospel is preached into Oregon City, for instance, what you can expect after that pure preaching of the gospel is division and problems, warfare, because God doesn’t want peace with everybody. He’s going to bring—Jesus said, “I came to bring a sword.” So the gospel penetrates, division happens, and then the next horse comes out, the black horse, and there’s references there to wheat and barley in Revelation 6 and wine and oil—sacramental imagery.

If we just think about commerce, it’s not what it’s talking about. It’s not talking about buying and selling in this in the physical economic sense. It’s talking about sacramental exchange. And what happens is the sacraments have efficacy in the context of the culture. Those who eat at the table of the Lord in the midst of the evangelization of a community or the world—those that eat at the table of the Lord are strengthened and built up. Don’t damage the—this third horseman is told don’t damage the wine or the oil. You got to build people up. Those who reject the gospel and its preaching, they have their own version of the table. Of course, Proverbs makes that clear. The foolish woman has her table. It’s a table of death. They have their form of joy and celebration, but it’s not centered on Christ, and God feeds them death through their table.

So sacramental efficacy goes on in the context of the preaching of the gospel. And then finally, the last horse, the pale horse, comes out and he kills all the enemies of God. Victory is the goal.

What’s it got to do with this story? Well, this story is in the midst of a flow in the Gospel of John that says the same thing. The first four chapters here are a picture of the purity of the preaching of the gospel of Christ. And we’ve got the Jews questioning. They’re not real happy with John, but there’s no open warfare or division yet. But beginning in chapter 5, now there will be open warfare. 1-4 is that white horse. And we have in John chapter 4, the purity of the presentation of the gospel of Christ as God seeks a bride and obtains her. And then we have the next horse comes out in chapter 5 and on in—division starts to happen.

And then what do we have in chapter 13? We’ve got sacramental efficacy. The beginning of the Lord’s supper starts and what happens is you’ve got both groups now. But by the end of the book, the pale horse has done his job. And the only people that are left considering in the gospel of John are the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. Everyone else is irrelevant.

So when the gospel goes forth, it has this aspect to it: the pure preaching of the word, resulting division in the context of the community, sacramental benefits—reality is ministered through the sacraments positive and negatively—and the end result of that is the conversion of cities. And that’s where this particular story finds its context—in that flow.

In John 1, verses 11 and 12 you know, “He came to his own presentation of Christ his own received him not”—rejection starting in chapter 5, “declaration of who he is coming to his own 1-4, last half of chapter 11 beginning at 5 his own received him not.” And then the beauty and the purity of those who are victorious in Christ: “To as many as received him to them he gave the right to become children of God.” And that’s the way the gospel progresses. And that’s what this text is found in. That’s the context for this particular text as well.

Now the reason why I draw that imagery together here is because we want to talk about evangelism from this text. We want to see that this text has a great deal to do with evangelism—rather obviously—and specifically want over the next three or four weeks draw some very important examples—the way the Spirit of God moves when the Spirit moves to secure a bride for the Savior both individually and corporately as well.

Now, there’s one other little cycle I’m pointing out to you here on your outline still in the introductory section.

John the Baptist and the Jews 1B, 3B disciples made 1C, 4a Cana, 2A, 4B festival judgments 2B, 3A, 5A. What is that talking about?

Well, remember last time I preached, we looked at the last half of chapter 3. We saw some very important and obvious parallels between what happened in John’s confrontation with the Jews in chapter 1. Okay, we have in chapter 1 in the last half of it—there’s John, John the Baptist and the Jews. And that happened again at the end of chapter 3. After John has this confrontation with the Jews in chapter 1, then we see Jesus making disciples, don’t we? Remember we had those days of discipleship. “What do you seek? Who are you following?” You know, and the one very consistent element of those disciples that demonstrates that they are disciples is as soon as they find out who Jesus is, they run away and tell their brother or their neighbor, whatever it is, and they bring more people to him.

What’s going on at the woman of Samaria? What does she do after the dialogue with Jesus? Well, she runs away to the city, finds the men, and says, “Hey, come see this guy. Think he’s the Messiah.” He’s a disciple, you see. So this same thing is going on.

And we’ll see in probably a month and a half, two months, we’ll get to the end of chapter 4 where a nobleman’s son who is mostly dead, nearly dead, is raised by Jesus. And this, it says explicitly, is the second miracle of Jesus. And it happens at Cana in Galilee.

Over here, we’ve got John and the Jews, and then the disciples run away—or disciples are made and they gather more disciples. And then we have the wedding feast of Cana. And after the wedding feast of Cana we have the cleansing of the temple. Jesus goes to Passover and we have temple and temple festival celebrations of the time when the confrontation becomes really more fixed.

And here we’ve had John and the Baptist in the wilderness or the in the outside in Judea rather. Last at the end of chapter 2, now we’ve got disciples being made—not just the woman but all the people at Samaria. We’re going to move back to Cana of Galilee and then we’re going to go to a different festival in chapter 5. There are these movements and by the time we get to chapter 5, we’ll be back in Jerusalem at a festival time and we will have a lot to say about the Sabbath and what the Sabbath is all about. And the Sabbath is preeminently a day of judgment, a day of eschatology, a day when divisions are made and a day when proclamations are made and some people are judged and exalted and some people are judged and destroyed.

That’s why we’re here together today. It’s that kind of division.

But what I’m saying is if we don’t get through chapter 4 and if we’re not in a month, month and a half, changed people—if we’re not people who are self-consciously looking for opportunities to speak to our friends and relatives and associates, neighbors about the gospel of Christ—and I can expect by the time we get to chapter 5, God will begin to judge us either individually or as a church.

God does not put the text of scripture in front of us to satisfy our curiosity—as much as this text does a lot of that. He puts it in front of us to promote us, to goad us to action. Okay.

Now, let’s talk about the overview of John chapter 4 before we get to the specifics of the Jesus and his dialogue with the woman.

First of all, the setting is given to us in verses 4-6. And the setting is Samaria. The text reads that he must needs go through Samaria. What’s Samaria?

Well, Samaria is first mentioned in First Kings 13 as a center of idolatry during the time of Jeroboam. Our history—we probably don’t know our history that well—but after David, you had Solomon. After Solomon, you had Rehoboam, his son. God is angry with him. Splits the kingdom north and south. You got Jeroboam in the north, Rehoboam governing in the south. Jeroboam doesn’t want the people to go down to Jerusalem to worship. He establishes syncretistic. That means you mix two things together. He took the worship of Yahweh and mixed it with golden calf worship and other things and created worship centers up there. And one of them was in the area of Samaria. So from its very origin, Samaria is a bad place where the people of God are compromised.

Now, Omri comes along several generations later and he actually builds the city that we know of which was the capital of the area of Samaria. He builds this city which was a fortress or guarding house. It was more like a fort than it was a city. And this city becomes the center of idolatry—or at least one of them—under Omri’s son Ahab. You remember Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab, real bad guy. And a lot of his badness focused upon this pagan worship, this blend of Old Testament worship and the worship of the nations which became more and more self-consciously idolatry under Ahab.

So it becomes that in Ezekiel 23. Samaria is the name given—it’s the characterization of all the sins of the north of Israel as opposed to Judah in the south. It’s all pictured as Samaria and Jerusalem is the picture of the centrality of idolatry down in Judea in the time of Ezekiel. So Samaria, when we read it, Jesus is going to Samaria again—we’re supposed to bring all our knowledge of the scriptures to bear. And we know this is a bad place. We know these people are bad people. And in fact, they were so bad in the idolatry in the north that God had Assyria come in and wipe them out.

And what Assyria did was they took the Samaritans who were in that area—who were Israelites at the time—and they moved them into other parts of Assyria’s realm and they brought in people from five other nations, five other nations to inhabit Samaria. You know, this is a common tactic back then. You want to break down a people—you know, it’d be like, let’s use a church example. You know, the state hates RCC. Let’s say we’ve gotten so self-conscious and you know, we have this division going on and so they hate us. So you say, “Well, you can go to a church, but we’re going to take all you guys out of this church and send you to other churches that are not really worshiping Christ. Some of you got to go to, you know, a Jewish synagogue and some of you have to go off to the mosque to worship Allah. Some of you got to go down to, you know, to the Scientologist place and read some books.” And what we’re going to do at RCC is we’re going to bring some Scientologists in. We’re going to bring in some, you know, Jews who reject Christ. We’re going to bring in some Muslims—going to bring in some Zoroastrians.

Now that’s what they did. They broke down the whole culture really symbolically of northern Israel through bringing in these other people from other nations with other gods. That’s the origin of Samaria as we see it here. That’s why it’s such a weird blend of some elements of truth.

It’s kind of funny because what happened then was these lions started eating people in 2 Kings 17. After they do this—after Tiglath-Pileser’s successors—you world history kids remember him, great Assyrian ruler who begins the domination of Israel. Well, after his successors do this in the area of Samaria, God sends lions eating people up. And the rulers then say, “Well, we need some of those priests back. Send us back someone. Send us back somebody to at least do the rites properly here because the lions are eating us up.” So they send back some Jewish priests who do some rites and the lions stop eating the people up.

So that’s what happened and that’s the background for what Samaria is. By the time we get to Samaria in our text, the Samaritans that are left aren’t really that, you know—they become more Jewish, but they only believe in the first five books of the Old Testament. They don’t believe in the rest of it. They worship on Mount Gerizim, not at Jerusalem. And they actually changed the text of their Pentateuch, their five books of the Bible. Remember how when they go into the land, six tribes are supposed to stand on Gerizim and six on Ebal to pronounce the blessings and the cursings should God’s people stray from them. And Gerizim is this mount of blessing. Well, there was an altar set up on Ebal, but they actually changed their Old Testament. They wanted the altar on Gerizim. And Gerizim became where their altar was built. So they had like a false temple and a false mountain with sort of biblical allusions to it. They had a short Bible. They were a blend of weird stuff because they had grown, you know, for a thousand years had, you know, or well, let’s see—about 700 years by now. They were a blend of different idolatries. That’s who the Samaritans were.

You see, and if you don’t—this is the significance of Jesus going up to Samaria seeking a bride, and the Samaritans saying he is going to be the—he is the Savior of the world. That’s why in Acts, you know, you’re supposed to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world. Samaria just wasn’t like northern Israel. It wasn’t just like another part of the country, you know, like Judea was from Jerusalem. It was syncretistic, bad stuff. And these guys by the time of our Savior coming were highly superstitious as well. We know that from the account in Acts.

Philip goes to Samaria to preach the gospel and just like Jesus, the people convert—huge amounts convert in Samaria and Samaria is one for the Lord. It is evangelized by the preaching of the gospel there and they had kind of done a lot of magic and they believed whoever would show him more power and signs and—with the preaching of the word there. Well actually first what happens in Acts is some signs and miracles are done by Philip there and as he’s proclaiming the gospel, they believe in the signs first because they’re superstitious people as nearly all, you know, syncretists or pagans are. And then after that, he preaches the word and then they respond in full conversion and from then on we read citations in Acts that the churches in Samaria are strengthened.

This is part of where the gospel has gone. So what we have in John chapter 4 is the Savior walking on a route to bring the whole world in conversion that later his disciples would walk that same route. And again, the word of Christ is what’s preeminent in the conversion of the Samaritans in the book of Acts as a picture that the whole world will be evangelized.

Now, I think if we understand this background a little bit, this becomes very practical to us. We live in a culture that has a short Bible. Now, they had the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. And many churches today, much of America today—they’re Bible is longer. It’s 27 books. It’s known as the New Testament. But they deny the whole Old Testament relevancy. And as a result, just like the Samaritans could not figure out what the Pentateuch was about without the rest of the revelation of God’s word describing it. So the church today can’t figure out what the New Testament is about without the Old Testament undergirding.

Jesus describes the Father throughout the Gospel of John by pointing back to the Old Testament. Now a big picture is he’s better than Jacob and he’s better than the temple. He’s better than the purification water. He’s better than John’s baptizing with water. He baptizes with the Spirit. But you see, you don’t understand what he’s doing unless you can understand the allusions he’s making to the Old Testament.

So we live in a culture very much like Samaria today where we’ve got a church that has a short Bible who’s twisted that Bible to accommodate other worldviews and religions. Right? And we need to engage this world. Our culture is syncretistic. In other words, it’s mostly Christian, but it’s Christianity that now has been blended with all these other worldviews that have been allowed to come into it and promulgate themselves.

So we have a Judeo-Christian ethic. And now, for the first time, a couple weeks ago on a radio show, I heard a Judeo-Christian Muslim ethic. You see, and you’re going to have more dashes because that’s where we live. We live in Samaria today. This is a very relevant story for life in America today.

You know, there’s still some commonality with Christianity and the scriptures that we can use as Christ does here, but we have a culture around about us that has become increasingly superstitious, syncretistic. And more than anything else, let’s say it that way.

We look at the Samaritan woman, right? And we’re going to look at some details over the next few weeks, but as we look at her, we read that she had five husbands. The guy that she’s with now is not her husband. So she’s a loose woman. That’s what we think. We focus on her sin and now there is definitely that aspect to it. She’s living with a guy and she has gone through five other husbands, but we don’t know if those husbands died or divorced or what the deal was.

I think that the whole point of that—or one of the big points of that—is certainly to drive home her own sense of her sinfulness, but more than that, it’s to teach her overwhelming need for deliverance. You know, in Samaria, as well as in most parts of the world at that time—certainly those who were influenced by the Old Testament—you were either an endowed wife or a concubine. You either had money from your husband to protect you against divorce or you didn’t. Second time around, you didn’t get a dowry usually. So this woman is—and if you don’t have money, you don’t have protectors who would demand money and dowry, it would prevent your abuse from a husband, you are a pretty needful person. So I think that the fact that she’s gone through five husbands and has now been humbled to the point of living with a man outside of wedlock certainly shows her sin, but more than that, the whole point is to drive home to her overwhelming need for the Savior.

Her overwhelming need for deliverance.

We look at our culture round about us and we see people going through many husbands and finally now we see people just chucking marriage all together, living together. Terrible sinners. People doing awful things, people engaging in great sin, hating God. But God says that what he wants us to do is recognize that Samaria is where he seeks a bride. And Samaria is the place of tremendous need.

Our job is to walk in the steps of the Savior as Philip did. Our job is to preach the word of Christ in such a way as the Samaritans that are called and elect of God come to recognize yes their sin but their tremendous need for the blessings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our job is to train them to forget their idolatries—that they can sustain themselves with the water of this world—and point them to the eternal water of life, the Lord Jesus Christ who is the only one who can bring satisfaction and deliverance and a meeting of the great need of the culture in the context in which we live.

Our job is to understand that Samaria is where we live. It’s very similar to the court of culture we have and it is a very needy culture. Doesn’t recognize that a whole lot yet, but that’s our job in the providence of God—is to speak the word of Christ, ask for his blessings upon that word to the end that the people of our culture, people of Oregon City might recognize that they’re living in Samaria. They need to be called back to Christ.

And I’ve listed some references there. Be good for you over the next month to look up these references, understand a little more about Samaria, its relationship to the Old Testament, and then to the proclamation of the gospel as well. Okay, so we got Samaria.

Secondly, we have Jacob’s well, and I’ve talked about that. It relates the whole thing to the love of God for the bride.

Third, we have Joseph. You know, it says that this was where Jacob’s well was that he gave to Joseph. And again, there in this type scene, we’re supposed to bring—you what’s it talking about Joseph for? We know he’s going to be the greater Jacob. We saw that at the end of chapter 1—angels sending and descending on the Son of Man, Jacob’s ladder. And we’re told here he’s going to be the greater Jacob providing greater water than Jacob could provide. But why are we told about Joseph?

Well, of course, as soon as you ask the question, it answers itself, doesn’t it? If you know what the book of Genesis is about—begins in a garden, involves the fall of man, and then by the end of the book of Genesis, all of the world is being fed by Joseph in a time of great famine. Joseph is feeding the world with bread and all of Egypt—represented by Pharaoh—comes to believe in the God of Jacob, the God of Joseph. Then we recognize that the Joseph here at the beginning sets us up for the last thing that’s told us in the text—that these men proclaim from Samaria. “You’re the Savior of the world.” You’re the greater Joseph, you see. Jesus, the greater Joseph.

Text sets us up for that. Text tells us it’s the sixth hour. Now, I’m going to point out something else at the end, but at the beginning, let’s point this out. The sixth hour is noon. Why is the sixth hour mentioned here? I’m going to suggest another reminder to us at the end of the sermon. But one reminder here is that there’s a contrast going on. You know, we look for comparisons and contrasts.

We have just had another evangelistic meeting, have we not? Nicodemus. And while we didn’t evaluate it and analyze it so much for evangelism and other purposes, it certainly was evangelistic. And there is a comparison as well as a contrast drawn between Nicodemus and the woman at the well.

We know his name. We don’t know her name. He’s important. She’s very unimportant. Five husbands and living with a guy. He’s a Jew. She’s a Samaritan. He’s a man. She’s a woman. He is of the nationality of Judaism or he’s Jewish in nationality. She is Samaritan nationality. He is religiously a whole Bible guy. She’s a short Bible person, right? Great contrast drawn. But the comparison is that Jesus goes both to the teacher of Israel as well as to the woman at the well. And the social conventions do not bother him in crossing these social conventions in his obtaining a bride. See? His disciples are, “What? He’s talking to a woman. That’s odd.” And a Jew is talking to a Samaritan. And a person of the Jewish faith of the whole Bible is talking to somebody that only affirms the Pentateuch. And they’ve even messed with that somewhat, you know. So there’s great separation. But in here, this sixth hour thing draws a contrast.

When did Jesus go to Nicodemus? By night. We’re told that every time we read of Nicodemus—three times in John—he’s at night.