MAY 5 2024 | The Gospel of John S3E5 | The Thirst Trap

Sea Change Church · MAY 5 2024 | The Gospel of John – S3 Ep 5: The Thirst Trap
John 4:1-10
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

My lips shall still repeat Jesus paid it all Jesus paid it all Jesus paid it all All to Him I owe Sin had left a crimson stain He washed it white as snow Jesus Jesus made it all All to Him I owe Sin had left a crimson stain He washed it white as snow Amen You may be seated The Gospel according to John Chapter 4 verses 1-10 The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John Although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized but His disciples When the Lord learned of this He left Judea and went back once more to Galilee Now He had to go through Samaria So He came to a town in Samaria called Sikar near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph Jacob's well was there and Jesus tired as He was from the journey sat down by the well It was about the sixth hour When a Samaritan woman came to draw water Jesus said to her Will you give me a drink?

His disciples had gone into the town to buy food The Samaritan woman said to Him You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans Jesus answered her If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink You would have asked Him and He would have given you living water This is the word of the Lord The Lord Oh child, come on in Jump in the water Not going to trouble with a mess You've been lost on the water Oh child, come on in Jump in the water Not going to trouble with a mess You've been lost on the water I could listen to that all day. I just love that song.

If you guys haven't seen The Chosen That is the opening for The Chosen So have your Bibles Open to John chapter 4 There's a bend in the road now In the story of the Gospel with Jesus We've done a lot of theological heavy lifting Talking about light coming in the world John is talking about the cosmos I told you that John hits different than the other three Gospels And this time, in this story, He's bringing in an element And that element is water If you know, you'll see a picture here There's four major elements that we know of It's earth, wind, fire, and water And so the water He is bringing in And in Romans it says You'll leave that picture up for a second In Romans it says that everything that God has created In all of creation He has put His eternal self into it His divine qualities and His invisible nature So everything that has been created Whether it's wood, a star, the sun All of it speaks to who He is Creation cries out, the scripture says And Jesus begins to speak about water here You can bring that down And of this element, of these four elements And so let me just say what water symbolizes Because I think it's important to understand the metaphor Behind what's happening in this well in Samaria Water symbolizes fluidity, adaptability The property of cohesion Which is really interesting There's cohesion, there's unity That's why it bubbles over when you pour it into a glass But at the same time it's liquid Have you ever thought about how amazing water is?

I mean that it's fluid, it can turn to ice It can become hard, it can become soft It can become steam It's an incredible element It speaks so much about God It really speaks about His spirit in ways It's associated with everything that flows And with Jesus here talking about the nourishment About the nourishment of life And so what I want you to do is Write at the top of your notes The word water Because it's key Because when Jesus is speaking about water He's asking What are you drinking?

And what are you serving? What are you drinking? Are you drinking the water of eternal life? And what are you serving? What do you have on tap? All of us have something on tap All of us have something on tap, right? And Jesus is saying Do you have eternal life on tap? Do you have eternal, this eternal water that we have? Let's go to verse four if you were And really interesting As Jesus begins to go through Samaria Verse four, let me read it Now he, that's Jesus Had, circle the word had To go through Samaria Jesus didn't have to go through Samaria Jesus had to because it was an imperative When it says the word had He could have taken a boat around Through the Mediterranean He could have crossed the Jordan And gone up the other side But he had to go through this area Known as Samaria There's a map here I'm going to show you If you're unaware of what Samaria is Samaria had broken up Israel In 722 BC The Assyrians had come And they had raided And they had left some people there And then as conquerors do They had brought some other people in To mix and to have children with the Jews that were there And to create kind of a mixed race So you have mixed loyalties That's conquering 101 If you haven't studied conquering If you plan to conquer any nations That's a great way to do it You know, Charles, excuse me, James I That was his plan in Ireland When they created the plantation of Ulster And you know what's happened in Northern Ireland That's just what they do And so this is what had happened In this area By the time you get to Jesus' time Israel had really been broken up And so you had the Southern Kingdom Judea Northern Kingdom Israel there at the top And then you had this Kind of DMZ No man's land Called Samaria Now it's interesting That Jesus goes through that Because they were not on really good terms With the Jews as we see Jesus marched straight through there For a reason But I said that he had to go And so I think the practical point for us Is sometimes we have to go Somewhere that we don't maybe want to go I think Jesus probably did want to go there But we see him going there And one of my questions is going to be For the day Where's your Samaria?

You, as a believer you have to have a Samaria, right? You have to have somewhere that you go That is uncomfortable Where you share what you have on tap That's the message I could walk away right now That's the message, right? We're going to go a little bit deeper Let me read about the Samaritans It's in your notes The Samaritans of Jesus' time Were a distinct ethnic group And religious group Living in the region of Samaria Situated between Judea, Galilee Descendants of the Northern Israelites Who had intermarried with other people Following the Assyrian conquest Of the Kingdom of Israel In 722 BC The Samaritans adhered to a variant form Of Israeli religion Israelite religion Recognizing only the Torah as scripture And worshipping only at Mount Gerizim Rather than Jerusalem So they had moved the Temple Mount to Gerizim And they didn't read the prophets So the prophets are big to the Jews They're big to the Jews today And they were big to the Jews back then So they were not reading them And they had set up a little schism Jewish Kind of quasi-Jewish religion And you can see where this Would cause a problem Now if you go to verse 6 and 7 It mentions a well that was in Samaria That belonged to Jacob If you were here for the Genesis series You can catch up if you're not on Spotify You can go find us there And go back to January You're gonna find the Genesis series You have Abraham He's the first Jew of all time He's called out of the east He's called out over by Babylon He comes from that region Where his family comes He's the first Jew ever And then he has a son named Isaac And another son named Jacob We haven't gotten to Jacob yet We're gonna get to him next year In January But you're gonna find That Jacob has a well And you're gonna see That it's mentioned here And go if you would To verse 6 and 7 Jacob's well was there And Jesus Tired as he was From the journey Sat down That's the humanity of Christ there We see that he's fully human Fully God And he's tired Sat down by the well It was about the sixth hour That's the heat of the day That's the hot time of the day People don't go to the wells To go draw water at this hour It's a really hot hour You go early in the morning You don't go now And so it's surprising When he comes upon someone Who was there When a Samaritan woman All alone Came to draw water Jesus said to her Will you give me a drink?

Interesting that she came to To know alone If you know Most women When especially in these cultures Travel in groups They travel in groups And you'll see in a moment here Why she was not part of the The group of women Who were going out She was going out by her own She was going out In the heat of the day And probably because She didn't want to be Near those other women For one reason Or another Now what's so interesting here Is if you go to Genesis 29 It talks about this Jacob's well It's really powerful It's I don't believe It might be in your notes I don't remember Sometimes I add things But in Genesis 29 If you have your Bible Verse 10 Talks about Jacob showing up And the first time He comes upon this well So this well has some history It definitely has history To the You know To the Jews When Jacob Saw Rachel The daughter Of his uncle Laban Now we know that Jacob ends up marrying Rachel And Laban's sheep He went over And what did he do?

He rolled the stone away From the mouth of the well And watered his uncle's sheep Now that story goes on What is interesting Is he rolled the stone away I don't know if you've seen that before But when the stone was rolled away The water was available And this is the metaphor That Jesus ends up speaking to her about And so many of us have stones That need to be rolled away The stones are the impediment To the living water And the things that we often time Have on tap Or don't have on tap And so the question for you personally Are there stones that need to be rolled away To get to that living water Or in Jesus' time In Jesus' time To get to the Christ As we saw in the Easter message They rolled The stone was rolled away They couldn't roll away on their own It had to be done by the Spirit And then they experience the eternal In the story of Jesus' resurrection The eternal life of Jesus they experience And then in this story In chapter 4 of John With the Samaritan woman She is seeing the eternal water of Jesus The eternal life And then you see obviously Jacob just getting himself a drink And so those are the three things That are happening You see that stone rolled away I got two things I want to talk about I want to talk about the encounter That was the setting Of what was happening And then let's talk about this encounter Jesus encounters a woman here Who had three strikes against her In her culture of Jesus' day And especially if you're a Jew One, she was a Samaritan Talked a little bit about that Samaritan, someone that was ethnically Racially and religiously different And that was a big deal today It was a real big deal back then as well And the other one was She was not only was she a Samaritan She was a woman So they called the patriarchs Patriarchs for a reason Because there was a patriarchy And that's how it was set up And a lot of that has to do With Genesis and the fall of mankind I don't believe it was meant to be that way At the beginning I've preached about that before As you see the curse One of the things that happened After the curse of mankind Was that woman became subject to her husband It wasn't like that in the garden Right?

And so in this story Jesus begins breaking some cultural taboos While keeping the law But beginning to speak to a woman So back then this was a culture And we see that the gospel continues To free women over and over again I'll bring a little bit more of that up in a moment But this is just that Jesus is speaking to her Is a big deal It's a really big deal He's breaking ethnic lines He's breaking cultural lines for sure I mean when the next week You're gonna see when the disciples show up They're like whoa Why are you speaking to this?

What are you doing? They had no idea what Jesus was doing But this is how Jesus was And the next thing is She's just a sinner She's actually a sinner Let me go to verse 10 And we're gonna say that About the Samaritan woman Verse 10 says The Samaritan woman said to him She understood the difference here You are a Jew And I am a Samaritan First definition Second definition Woman She called it out right there One and two How can you ask me for a drink?

The culture was so divided That she said How can you ask me for a drink? Imagine going to Starbucks And someone who doesn't look like you Is there And your order that you've You know Done on the app And had dropped there on the counter They're standing next to you And you say Oh could you hand that to me? And if they It was so divided That they would turn to you and say How can you ask me to hand that to you?

I don't know if we're there yet We're on our way Guaranteed We'll do a lot better If we start acting like Jesus And figure out where our Samaria is And who our Samaritans are And begin to break things that would culturally Be unacceptable In the name of Jesus But that was happening He said How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans Couple things going on They don't associate And I think that's interesting Is there a group of people Who you just don't associate with anymore?

Just done It's a quiet quit right? It's just a quiet quit You wouldn't tell anybody You're not posting it But you just kind of quiet quit That group of people Right? And so with Jesus here Jesus is breaking these rules We see as I said a moment ago The things that were happening here She was mixed race So there was a racial component The religious difference was huge The Jews had come and destroyed 200 years before Jesus Had destroyed that temple of Mount Gerizim They'd shown up and torn the temple down That's gonna infuriate some people I think if that happens So we saw that There was these religious differences They didn't believe in the prophets Read the same scriptures Had a different temple And then there was this massive culture clash That was happening There was just cultures were colliding And what we see Jesus doing Is being able to step into this and bring peace If you go to the end of the story We're gonna get to the end of the story In two more weeks This woman believes what Jesus says She goes all the way back to the Samaritan people She reaches out to those people And they come out to meet Jesus And begin following Jesus That's a win Jesus isn't taking L's on this one at all He's calling them out And he's doing it in such a way Offering living water That he breaks all those divides In a culture that is incredibly divided Like we are today The only way forward is this way Now the one thing Jesus didn't do Was just say hey Just do whatever you want Que sera sera No Jesus would say things to people Like stop sinning He would set up guidelines It wasn't assimilation without no condition What you keep hearing is assimilation with no condition That's not the church That's not Jesus And if you didn't want to follow Jesus He was grieved in his heart about that But he would let you go your way And so we see Jesus And so two things can be true at once That Jesus is calling people in to follow him And Jesus also has some conditions You need to know the conditions And you need to be able to share them in a way That is welcoming to other people Jesus had the ability to do that So we see these things that are happening there We also see that you know That she is a woman Now I told you Not only is she a Samaritan We talked a little about that Is that she's a woman According to the curse in Genesis upon women There's two things that happen Their childbirth is more difficult That has actually been lessened Through modern medicine So that curse is less than it was I think some of that probably ties into What Jesus did on the cross Because we have to believe That if Jesus died on the cross That he died to break all the curses I don't think that Jesus died Broke all the curses But women still get to keep theirs That's just my argument for it And you see Jesus opening up the way there For this to happen You're in a church American Baptists do believe Women have right to preach And all types of things Now with that said I think that God has created women For some unique purposes That men can't do in the world I know I'm sorry to say that Sorry to make anybody angry Cause any protest out after the service And I believe God has given men Some unique roles But I you know I think there is some play in those And we can discuss those at another point But in regard to preaching the word This woman goes back and preaches the gospel To a whole city Men and women alike Right?

Jesus She went back and preached the God She preached the word of God From the word Right? And they got saved I think you know When you hear that you know Women can't teach men It's a great It's a debate And there are some problematic scriptures For people that believe that women Should be in the pulpit I'm one of those people There I will say There are some problematic scriptures That I wrestle with And I think Oh that's Yeah that's tough to get around I'm not saying I have all the answers to that But when I see scripture The two questions I have Is if Jesus died And broke all the curses Why are women still under the curses?

That's a question I have I've talked about this with many people Here at the church The next thing we see Is that she goes back and preaches the word And what you would say is If a woman wasn't able to preach the word And someone was gonna die That she shouldn't preach to them evangelism The word or teach If it was a man She shouldn't teach him Because she's not allowed to teach him It'd be better if he just died And went to hell Which I don't think is the way to go And the final thing we see Is when Jesus raises from the dead Who's the first person who shows up?

It's a woman Who's the first person that he reveals to himself? In a garden where the curse was It was a woman And who went back and told the men What had happened? It was a woman And so one could make an argument And I gotta say I wrestle with this It's a difficult It's difficult Right? But when I see this happening We do see Jesus breaking some bounds here That a lot of people In churches in America today Would not be comfortable with And so we see that We have to wrestle with that But nonetheless However it plays out And I don't wanna put shade on any churches That believe different things However it plays out Jesus was causing a stir Right?

And he was reaching out Now more than her being a Samaritan More than her being a woman She was a sinner She was a really good sinner She was excellent at it Right? If you go further on Next week we're gonna share And as I look at it He's gonna start asking her questions About her husband And she says You know I don't have a husband He goes hey You've answered correctly Matter of fact You've had five And the one you have right now Isn't your husband either Oops!

What's happening? What's going on there? And so he brings up all this shame I guess But in a way that enthuses her Because at the end when she goes back She goes you gotta hear this guy You guys gotta come to the well right now Because he told me everything I'd ever done Because he's offering her something more Because the tap that Jesus was offering Was the tap of eternal life And he offered it in a way that made people thirsty Or that at least recognized their thirst Recognized their thirst And in Matthew 5, 6 Jesus says blessed are those that what?

Hunger and thirst for righteousness Jesus is looking for people that hunger and thirst for righteousness And so we see Jesus here Speaking to this woman and offering living water So I'll go to verse 16 if you would Verse 16 I'll read that verse I just told you about He told her go call your husband and come back That's so funny because he knew what was up I have no husband she replied Jesus said to her you're right When you say you have no husband The fact is you've had five husbands And the man you now have is not your husband What you have said is quite true She was as Nacho Libre would say A floozy if you have seen Nacho Libre She was a floozy And I love that word And we don't want you to be a floozy And the women knew that she was a floozy And that's why no one grouped with her to go get water She was an outcast She was an outcast person that no one would speak to Who was desperate Who was hungering and thirsting for relationship That was willing to risk perhaps stoning for the adultery that she was committing Because that's what Jesus was saying here She was willing to do desperate things because she was so desperate And what Jesus offers her is relationship and a voice and a seat at his table And Jesus offered a lot of people seats at the table Who many people in Christendom today would say don't deserve to be at the table Let's put it in a modern day context Jesus is walking through Gaza Right?

This is what's happening Jesus is walking through Gaza Stops at a well in Rafa Out in the middle of nowhere And a woman walks up That's exactly what's happening here Do you get it now? That's exactly what's happening here And Jesus begins to speak to that person My question with all that then is this Who's your Samaritan? Who is your Samaritan? Or do you not have any Samaritans?

Or do you have so many Samaritans that you've become the Samaritan yourself And there's no longer any differentiation between you and Jesus and them? Because often times we get so lost with our Samaritan buddies That no one would even know that you're a follower of the Christ And so the question is who's your Samaritan? Where is your Samaria? As a believer we have got to have a Samaria There's going to be a hope I believe the only hope for America For the world Are Christians who understand where Samaria is Know how to go sit it well Find those that are hungering and thirsting for righteousness Or even don't even know they're thirsting for that To reach out to them with an eternal water offer Because the question is will they be cast away by the church itself Or will we stand up and reach out to them?

Where is your Samaria? If you have lost your Samaria Or you drive around Samaria Or somebody bugs you because they're the Samaritans Maybe it's the homeless They get too many breaks They got all that government money Why should I give you any money? You should have that whatever that opinion is All of a sudden you now no longer travel through there They're on this side of the street You go to this side of the street I could go on and on Talk about the migrants I could talk about people of different religions I could talk about Christians you disagree with People of different sexual orientation you disagree with I'm not saying you have to change what the Bible says Jesus didn't change what he knew to be right He just knew how to step into something with the offer of the Holy Spirit When you look at what's on offer The question is what are you offering?

Go to verse 10 Jesus answered her If you knew the gift If you knew Man if they only knew The gift of God And who it is that asks you for a drink You would have asked him And he would have given you living water I love that Because with this offer Jesus is basically setting it up saying Ask me for water Ask me for water He's offering inclusivity He's offering assimilation He's offering cleansing And he's offering the spirit The element water back to the beginning How water can be multiple things at once All pliable It's cohesive yet fluid It can become hard as a rock It can become like steam Like the spirit moving blowing with the wind It's incredible God's character is all over the elements of water And now Jesus is offering us this I would say that as we offer the gospel to people We want to try to let it emulate the element of water Letting it be fluid Letting it be in the spot where it needs to be They say that there is no acid in the world That is effective as a dripping faucet That if you just drip on a rock long enough There's nothing in the world Diamonds, everything will be washed away just by dripping water When we talk about what he's offering He's offering the Holy Spirit You go on later on in John 737 We should get there in about 12 years from now At the rate we're going John 737 through 39 You're going to write this down Jesus speaks again about living water The text clarifies he's referring to the spirit Which he believes he would receive The Holy Spirit is seen as a source So he says He basically says in those scriptures That I will give you living water I will give you the Holy Spirit In those verses And so when Jesus is speaking at the well here What he's offering is the spirit of God What you need to have on tap Is the spirit of God And you're not going to have anything That you're not drinking So my question is What are you offering them?

And I put here at the end You can't offer living water When you're dying of thirst Some of you might be dying of thirst Or at least you're dehydrated Let's say you're not dying of thirst But you're somewhat dehydrated We need to saturate ourself with the spirit How do we do that? You have to spend time drinking from the fount That is silence Away from your phone That is time with his scripture Not just trying to get in the five minute app on your phone That's great It's getting away And letting the word saturate into you It's sitting in silence It's praying It's having a list of things you're praying about It's praying with other people It is reaching out to other people These are the things of the spirit And how you If you were dehydrated It's kind of like a liquid IV of the spirit If you've had those things We can't offer living water When you're dying of thirst Here's a couple practical takeaways I have for you One Identify your Samaritans Identify any prejudices that you might have Those people might still be wrong What they're doing might be antithetical to scripture And you know under the curse of God But that doesn't mean that we stop reaching out And caring for those people Who are your Samaritans Have you lost any Samaritans And I guess the other question that was important Is like if you just become one of them I'm not asking you to become a Samaritan I'm asking you to go in the midst of your Samaritans And reach out to them And then the other thing I would say is Offer something that matters You all have something on tap When someone hangs out with you You offer them something I did a memorial service for Matthew yesterday If you guys knew him Matthew Parsons He was part of our greeting team Sometimes worked in the cafe Just an incredible, incredible kid 28 years old Passed away And the thing they kept saying is When you met that kid He just emulated kindness Meekness, gentleness That's what everybody said It was just what was on offer He had a shirt in Japanese that said I love humanity He just wanted to love people He just loved people And one of the things I found out Is that people who love the most Often feel the most pain Know that if you are on a journey of love with Jesus To love other people It's gonna be painful Because you will feel You will empathize with the things That they're struggling with You will be in their journey And in their lives with them And so my question is What are you offering?

And offer something that matters You're all offering something And is it the spirit? I want to continually offer the spirit One of the people Who have been most influenced by Two people Is Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass A picture of them In 1863 Abraham Lincoln Just a solid believer Really courageous The things that he did At the risk of his life Which he lost for these very reasons 1863 After the Emancipation Proclamation And invited Frederick Douglass One of the America's premier statesmen If you've not read Frederick Douglass Who happened to be black Separate of that He was one of the premier statesmen Of all time in America If you haven't read Frederick Douglass Please read Frederick Douglass And he was invited by Lincoln In 1863 After the Emancipation Proclamation To talk about how we start bringing the country together And they began to speak And Frederick Douglass was a former slave He had gotten out of slavery And he had rose through the ranks And was a lawyer and an author And did speeches And just an amazing American And he began to speak And it was so interesting Lincoln began to bridge this divide And I know there's a lot of things in the world We look back But I have to feel That the moment that Frederick was living in Was probably worse for you know That group of people than it is today Because there was actually slavery going on But yet he was willing to show up to the Oval Office Which I'm not sure many people would And so the both of them Are these two incredible figures Two years later As Lincoln keeps pressing into these ideas Abraham Lincoln is assassinated And if you know that And Frederick Douglass spoke at his funeral And Frederick Douglass said this at his funeral I thought it was amazing He said Lincoln was emphatically The black man's president The first to show any respect to their rights as men You got two Christ figures there That are willing to cross the divide To go into Samaria That meet on common ground And literally change the world I mean those two guys The story of their life together It was short, two years But it was so powerful And we feel it today And I will say to us as Americans Black, white, you know Whatever you are We cannot lose that story And we need to sing that story And to continue to tell it As people try to tell a different story of what happened That's what happened And we need to lean into that as Christians Find your Samaria today Find your Samaria Find your Samaritans And offer them the living water and hope of Jesus We have communion today And Pastor Joe Brandy is going to be leading us through our communion Thanks Amazing word about living water and Jesus interacting with that one woman That reached a village All the helpers could come up Just administration I want to We're going to come up Take the bread Take the grape juice Go back Sit at your seat Do work with the Lord And then I'll read the Lord's words And we'll take it together Representing We're a common one Common one And it was the night of the Passover And our young adults are going through Passover Or through Exodus Which talks about the Passover And the Passover lamb All the Jewish people had to get a lamb And slay it And put the blood over their door And then eat the meal And the angel of death would pass over And Jesus gathers the disciples And says eat this meal with me And he says I am the Passover lamb If you have believed in Jesus And accepted him in your heart This is your meal And he has I'm going to read the words Of the Lord Jesus before you come up The Lord Jesus on the night of his arrest He took bread And after giving thanks to God He broke it and gave it to his disciples Saying take it and eat it This is my body given for you And do this remembrance of me And then the same way He took the cup saying This cup is the new covenant Sealed in my blood Shed for you for the forgiveness of sins Whenever you drink it Do this in remembrance of me Every time you eat the bread And drink the cup You proclaim the saving death Of the risen Lord until he comes If you love Jesus' name And want to celebrate him His broken body And shed blood for you Come and take the meal People on this side come up now People on that side come up Come and take the meal From that side come up Thank you.