The Woman at the Well - People Jesus Met Part 34

You know, my wife Brenda comes from a long line of farmers. Her grandfather was a farmer, her great-grandfather was a farmer, her great-great-grandfather was a farmer all in western Maryland and Pennsylvania. And when Brenda's grandparents were still living, we used to go up and visit them fairly often and one thing I noticed, I know nothing about farming, but one thing I noticed is that they raised a lot of hay.

And on this farm, I noticed that when the hay was ready for harvesting, when it was ripe, it would turn a bright white color as it glistened in the sun. And seeing that reminded me of a passage in the Bible, seeing that made a passage in the Bible spring to new life. And it's that passage that we're going to talk about today, John chapter 4, the story of the woman at the well. Don't forget, we're in a series of messages entitled People Jesus Met and today we want to go back and see what Jesus said to the woman at the well and to the disciples that were there with her.

And then we're going to wind all of that forward and we're going to talk about, okay, so what difference does that make to you and me? So here we go. As I said, John chapter 4 is our passage and we begin at verse 3. So Jesus left Judea, the Bible says, and went back to Galilee and he had to pass through Samaria. Samaria was inhabited by a group of people at Jesus' time called Samaritans.

And let me tell you just a little bit about the Samaritans. In 721 B.C., the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, Samaria, and the Assyrians exported most of the Jews that were living there and imported Gentiles from all around their empire into Samaria. Well, the Jews that remained intermarried with all of these imported Gentiles and they produced a race of half-breeds, half-Jewish, half-Gentile called the Samaritans. Now at the time of Jesus, the Jews despised the Samaritans. At the time of Jesus, no self-respecting Jew would be caught even talking to a Samaritan.

So it's important we understand that as we go forward. Verse 5. So Jesus came to a town in Samaria called Sychar.

Jacob's well was there. And Jesus, tired as he was from his journey, sat down by the well. And a Samaritan woman came to draw water. So Jesus said to her, please give me a drink, for his disciples had gone into the city to buy food. And the Samaritan woman said to Jesus, how is it that you, as a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan, for a drink?

John the Apostle, the author of the book, adds, for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Verse 10, Jesus answered and said to her, if you understood the gift of God and who it is that's asking you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks the water from this well, the one where you and I are, ma'am, will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst again.

Now let's stop for a moment. Do you see what Jesus is doing here? He's dangling a little piece of spiritual bait, if you will, in front of this woman to see if she's interested.

Okay, at this point she is. Verse 15, the woman said to him, sir, please give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. Now she doesn't quite get it yet, does she?

At this point she's still thinking he's going to give her some kind of physical water, but the important point is that she was interested. Now we might have expected at this moment Jesus would have immediately moved on to talk to her about who he was, to talk to her about the plan of salvation, to talk to her about the gospel, but he doesn't, not yet. Notice verse 16. Then Jesus said to her, go, call your husband and return. Then the woman said, well, I have no husband. 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 that you're now living with is not even your husband. What you've said is quite true. Hey folks, Mother Teresa, this lady wasn't.

Do you understand what I'm saying? She'd already been married five times. She'd been divorced five times. She'd now shaken up with some man. But the important thing I want you to see is that when Jesus confronts her with her sinful behavior here, the woman makes no excuses.

The woman makes no alibis. The woman just stands there defenseless in front of the Lord Jesus and owns her stuff. Verse 25. Then the woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, John adds for our benefit, he who is called in Greek the Christ, and that when he comes, the woman says, he will explain everything to us. Then Jesus said, verse 26, I who speak to you, am he. My friends, this is the clearest, the most straightforward declaration of his Messiah ship that Jesus has made to anyone up to this point. And would you please notice that he made it not to a Jewish person. He made this great declaration to a Samaritan woman, to an outcast woman. But she was a woman who was ready to do business with God. You know, the beautiful thing about the Lord Jesus Christ is that he doesn't really care where we are in the world's pecking order, my friends.

He doesn't care whether we're an outcast or whether we're a big shot or whether we're somewhere in between. If you and I are ready to do business with God, whoever we are, Jesus is ready to reveal himself to us and do business with us. I remember when I was talking to the man on the street that led me to Christ, Bob Eckhart, on the streets of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. As we finished our very first conversation, which went about two hours, he gave me a Bible. And he said, I want you to take this Bible and I want you to put it by your bed stand. I want you to read a little bit every night. He said, if you read something you don't understand, don't worry about it. There'll be enough in there you do understand.

Just keep going, which was great advice. And he said, I want you to start every night with a little prayer. And here's a little prayer. He said, I want you to pray. I want you to say, God, I am willing to believe in you.

I am willing to do business with you if you reveal yourself to me and prove to me you're who you say you are. Amen. And I said to him, Bob, how in the world is God going to reveal himself to me and prove to me he's who he said he is? And Bob said, Lon, don't worry about it.

What difference does it make? That's not your job. That's God's job.

Your job is just to make sure if he does it that you're willing to do business with him. And so I prayed that little prayer every night. And I read the Bible for a few minutes every night. And one month later, I got on my knees absolutely utterly convinced that Jesus was exactly who he said he is, the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world. And I asked him in my life, to this day, I can't explain to you how Jesus Christ convinced me that he was who he said he is.

But what difference does it make? And if you're here today and you've never trusted Christ in a real and personal way, I want to challenge you to do what Bob Eckhart challenged me to do, to read the Bible a little bit every night. If you read something you don't understand, don't worry about it.

Keep going. And to pray and say, God, I'm ready to do business with you if you're ready to do business with me. Convince me you're real. But friends, you've got to be ready to do business with him. If he does that and he'll know the truth, I was.

And the Samaritan woman was. And if you are, he'll reveal himself to you. You say, how? Don't worry about it. He will.

I promise. Well, let's go on with the story. Verse 27. Just then Jesus' disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with this woman, a Samaritan.

But none of them dared ask him why he was speaking with her. Then the woman left her water jar and went back into town and said to the people, come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this man be the Messiah? So the whole town came and made their way toward Jesus. Wow, can you imagine what this must have looked like as Jesus and the disciples stood there at the well, looking off in the distance and seeing an entire town full of people walking out for the express purpose of meeting with Jesus?

Wow, what a great thing. Verse 35. Then Jesus said to his disciples, do you not say four months more and then comes the harvest, pointing at all these townsfolk on their way out to meet him. Jesus said, behold, fellas, I say to you, open your eyes and look at the fields. Not fields of grain, but fields of humanity, fields of people. I tell you, Jesus says, these fields are already white for harvest.

You see, this was January in John chapter 4. The physical grain fields they were standing in were four months away from reaching harvest. But Jesus said to his disciples, hey, open your eyes and look at the fields of humanity. We don't have to wait four months to harvest in that field. In fact, we don't have to wait four hours to harvest in that field.

That field is ready now. There are people out there who are ready to listen now. There are people out there who are ready to believe in me now.

And look how right he was. Verse 40. So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they urged him to stay with them and he stayed there two days. And because of his words, many became believers. Verse 42.

I love this. Then they said to the woman, the people in the town, said, we no longer believe just because of what you said, but we have heard him for ourselves. And now we know that this man is indeed the savior of the world.

Wow, that's exciting. Almost the whole town came to Christ. Now, friends, I want us to understand that the fields are white unto harvest right here in our modern world today. George Barna, the famous pollster, conducted a survey recently and here's what he said, and I quote. He said, a recent nationwide study we conducted among unchurched adults indicated that 25% would attend a church if a friend ever made the effort to invite them. Barna continues, our best estimate is that the unchurched population of this country is roughly 60 to 70 million people, which means, Barna says, that 15 to 18 million adults are waiting to be asked to go to church. He goes on to say that's more people than live in all of Belgium or all of Holland.

It's twice the population of New York City, end of quote. Now, we all understand, don't we, friends, that bringing people to church is not the central issue. Bringing people to faith in Jesus Christ is the central issue. But what Barna's report tells us is that there are people in America today who are spiritually open. People in America today who are willing to listen. People in America today who are willing to believe in Jesus Christ, millions and millions of people, if you and I will simply get out there and tell them. But I'm sad to say that Jesus' lament 2,000 years ago is still true today.

He said, Matthew chapter 9, the harvest is plentiful but the harvesters are few. Now, that's as far as we want to go in the passage today because we want to stop now and we want to ask our most important question. And you know what that is, yes? Yes, okay. And all you folks on the Internet, we want to hear you too. So when I say three, are we ready?

You're not inspiring me with great confidence. Okay, are we ready? Here we go.

One, two, three. Oh, that is sweet. Thank you so much.

You guys are awesome. God bless you. All right, now, you say, Lon, I hear this about John chapter 4. It's a wonderful passage. I think I understand what happened there but I just don't see, I'm sorry, I don't see what all this has so much to do with me.

Let's talk about that. Let's go back and remind ourselves what happened at the well there in Sychar. Jesus was sitting alone after a long day's journey when this Samaritan woman appears and Jesus strikes up a conversation with her. And all of this begs the question, what was Jesus' purpose in talking to this lady?

You say, well, he was just trying to be friendly. Nope. He was thirsty and he wanted something to drink. Nope. He was lonely and he wanted companionship.

Nope, nope, nope. Friends, Jesus' purpose in talking to this woman was unashamedly evangelistic. Jesus' purpose in talking to this woman was to try to bring her to saving faith in himself. As a matter of fact, every conversation that Jesus had with every non-believer that he ever met was overtly evangelistic in its intent. It was an overtly evangelistic conversation. And here in John chapter 4, what Jesus was trying to get the disciples to understand and what he's trying to get us to understand is that we need to have the same kind of witnessing passion everywhere we go as he had.

We need to enter into every encounter, into every conversation that we have with people hoping and praying that we can turn that encounter, that we can turn that conversation into an evangelistic conversation. And, you know, I'm thrilled that this is exactly what the woman at the well did. Remember what she did. The Bible says she left her water jar at the well.

She forgot all about the water. And she went running back to town and said, you guys have got to come and meet this man. You won't believe this man. I think he's the Messiah. Come on with me.

You need to go meet this guy. Wow. Jesus said, now those are the kind of footsteps I want you guys to walk in. You say, but Lon, time out. I mean, you're on a roll. You're on a roll, buddy, but stop a minute. You see, Lon, you just don't understand the problem.

The problem is that I understand that the fields are white under harvest here in Washington. I understand there are people out there probably willing to listen, but the problem is, Lon, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be a good evangelist. I don't know how to be a good witnesser. I don't know how to be a good harvester for Christ. Okay.

Fair enough. So why don't we go back to John chapter 4 and watch how Jesus did it, huh? Why don't we pull the principles out of John chapter 4 that lay at the foundation of how he witnessed to this woman, and why don't we encapsulate them and say, if we do it the same way, then we don't have a better example in the world than the Lord Jesus, right? Okay. So there were three principles here for being a good witnesser, and the Lord Jesus Christ followed all three of them.

Here we go. Number one. Want to be a good witnesser?

Then number one, deal with the interested. Verse 10. Jesus said to the woman, if you understood the gift of God and who it is that's asking you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

Remember what we said earlier. What was Jesus doing here? He was trying to find out if she was interested. He was trying to dangle a little piece of bait and see if she would bite. He didn't just rush right in and share the gospel.

He wanted first to find out, is the woman even interested? Now, what would have happened if the woman would have said to him, Look, pal, I'm not interested in any living water. Okay. I got a lot to do today, and I'm already behind, so if you don't mind, just move your parts over and let me get my water, and I'm gone.

Okay. What would Jesus have done? He'd have let her go because he let other people go who had no interest. And why would Jesus have let her go? Well, because John 6 44, Jesus said, Nobody can come to me unless the Father is drawing them. And when we meet people, this needs to be the very first thing that we have to find out, and that is, is the drawing ministry of the Holy Spirit full and complete and mature in that person's life? If it isn't, friends, all the witnessing in the world won't bring them to Christ right at that very moment.

There's more work the Holy Spirit has to do in their heart first. You say, Well, Lon, how do we find this out about a person? Well, we find it out the same way Jesus did. How did he find it out?

He put a little bit of bait out there. He put a little spiritual teaser out there, and he waited to see how the woman responded, whether or not she took the bait. You know, we say to people today, I'm a blessed man. I'm a blessed woman. Lord willing.

You know, it wasn't luck. It was the Lord. The Lord's been good to me or whatever. And we wait and see if people grab ahold of that comment and show any interest. Do we go on to step two, which we'll talk about in a minute? If they don't, friends, we switch our strategy from preaching to praying because they need to be drawn more fully and more maturely by the Holy Spirit.

And that's something we need them to pray for. A few weeks ago, I was on a flight on my way out to California for Jews for Jesus board meeting. And I love to fly to these meetings, you know, because I got five hours going one way with my laptop and my Bible. And I work on my sermon. I don't sleep and I don't watch the movie and I don't eat the meal.

I give it to the flight attendant. I just work on my message and four and a half hours back. It's great.

No fax machines, no emails, no telephones. Wonderful. So I've got my laptop out, my Bible out, and it's a little crowded, but you can get it done. And sitting right next to me, I was on the aisle right next to me in the seat was a Jewish man. You say, how do you know he was Jewish? What kind of Jewish person would I be if I couldn't spot another Jew, all right? I mean, come on now.

Give me a break here. I knew he was Jewish and he knew I was Jewish. We all knew. We knew. We knew. Trust me.

We did. So I'm about four hours into the flight and I'm working and the flight attendant came by me and said, hey, I noticed you had your Bible out. Are you a Christian? And I said, yes, I am. As a matter of fact, I said, I'm a Jewish person who believes in Jesus. She's like, really? She said, where are you going? I said, well, I'm on my way out to a Jews for Jesus board meeting.

He didn't even flinch. I tried to talk to him and open a conversation. After that, he wouldn't even recognize I was trying to talk to him. So we got off the plane.

He's just a little bit ahead of me in the terminal. And I caught up to him and I said, hey, excuse me. I said, you're Jewish, aren't you?

And he said, well, what's that got to do with anything? See, I was right. I knew I was right. I told you I was right. I said, well, I'm Jewish, too, but I believe in Jesus. And I said, I wanted to give you this CD because I always carry CDs of my life story with me.

I want to give you this CD that tells you how I came to believe in Jesus. He said, I don't want it. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, but I really think you'd enjoy this. He said, I don't want it. He said, that's my right, isn't it? I said, well, sure. I said, but I don't see how it could hurt you just to listen to it. And, you know, I said, Jesus Christ changed my life.

He could change your life, too. He says, if you give it to me, I'm going to throw it in the very next trash can I pass. I don't want it. Now, I think it's fair to assume this person wasn't interested. Would you assume that? OK, so you know what? At that point, you stop. There's no point going on.

And I've been praying for him ever since then. I mean, I don't know. Maybe I planted the seed and somebody else will water and maybe the guy will end up in heaven. But you can keep pushing it.

It's not going anywhere. The drawing ministry of the Holy Spirit was obviously not full and mature in that person's life. I love what Robert Murray McShane said. He said, when preaching fails, try praying. And a lot of times, my friends, it's not about what we say to somebody. It's about what we pray for somebody that really makes a difference. Well, let's say you've got somebody who's interested.

Then what do you do? Well, what did Jesus do? The very next thing He did was to emphasize repentance. Verse 16, Jesus said to her, go call your husband in return. And she said, I don't have a husband. And He said, you're right.

You've had five. You're shacking up with man number six. Now what was Jesus trying to do here in step number two? Well, what He was trying to do is to force this woman to acknowledge her sinful behavior. To admit her sinful behavior that she was shacking up with this guy. And as we said earlier, she was willing to do that.

She stood there completely defenseless. No alibis, no excuses. Acts 20, verse 21, the apostle Paul said, I preach to both Jews and Gentiles alike, look at the verse, that they should put their faith in Jesus Christ. Uh oh, wait a minute. Didn't we leave something out?

Let's go back. Here's the verse. I preach to both Jews and Gentiles alike that they must, what's the next word? Repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ. And what exactly is biblical repentance? Well, two things. Number one, it's a willingness to admit our sinful behavior before almighty God.

No excuses, no alibis. And number two, it's a willingness to turn from our sinful behavior as part of embracing Jesus as our personal Savior. Listen friends, if a person is not ready to repent, a person is not ready to come to faith in Christ yet. You know Bob Eckhart, the man that led me to the Lord, in that two hour conversation we had the very first day, as part of that conversation he said to me, you know we were in, this wasn't his opening line, but as part of it he said to me, you know, he said, you're a sinner before almighty God. I said, I know that. He said, and you've broken the laws of God, just about every one of them. And I said, I know that too. And he said, and because of that you're under the judgment of God for your sin. And I said, I know that.

And he said, and you're alienated from God and separated from God. And I said, I know that too. I said, Bob, I know the problem.

I need some way to fix it. The problem I'm not arguing with you about. See, so many times my friends, we try to give people a prescription when they're not even willing to admit they're sick yet.

You can't do that. We've got to preach the whole counsel of God to people. We've got to help people understand that they're sinners in the sight of a holy God, that they're under the judgment of God for sin. Only when people understand this does the love and the mercy and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ make any sense to them. And when we come across people who aren't yet ready to repent, we need to do the very same thing that we do when we come across people who aren't yet interested. We need to switch from preaching to praying because you're not going to convince somebody they're a sinner in the sight of God.

And I'm not going to do that. That's the work of the Holy Spirit in a person's heart. This is why Jesus said, John 16 8, it is the Holy Spirit who convicts and convinces people regarding sin and judgment. And if a person's not ready to repent, then we need to start praying that God the Holy Spirit will do His convicting work in their heart with fullness and completion so that they're ready for Christ. All right, so let's say number three. We've got a person that's interested. We've got a person that's ready to repent. What do we do?

Number three. Well, we need to keep people focused on Jesus. Verse 20, John 4. Then the woman said, Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, where you and I are, Jesus, Mount Ebal, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is Jerusalem. Okay, so here you got a woman at the well. She's interested. She's willing and ready to repent. But what happens here? She gets off on some religious rabbit trail about what mountain you're supposed to worship on.

And we've all met people like this, haven't we? You try to share the Lord with them. And before you know it, they get sidetracked on some issue of religious performance of one kind or another. They say, Well, you know, I haven't been going to church much. And, well, you know, I haven't really been keeping the Ten Commandments very good. Well, you know, I haven't been taking the sacraments.

And we have to constantly come back. A good witnesser says to them, Look, salvation is not about church, and it's not about sacraments, and it's not about the Ten Commandments. It's about Jesus Christ. We get people back on Jesus. And sometimes we meet people who get all sidetracked about non-religious things.

You know, about evolution or creationism or what the Bible says about Adam and Eve or what the Bible says about homosexuality or what the Bible says about money or the scandals that have plagued the Christian church. And we need to say to them, All of that aside, none of that has anything to do with eternal life and going to heaven. Let's get back on Jesus.

That's the key point. And Jesus did that for this woman. This woman, Jesus responded to her about when she talked about the mountains, you know.

And He said, look what He said. Verse 21, The time is coming, Jesus said, when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. Jesus said, Forget the mountains, lady. The mountains don't make a bit of difference.

Forget the mountains. He said, The time is coming and has now come when God's true worshipers will worship Him in spirit and truth. Jesus led her to say, verse 25, I know that the Messiah is coming to which He said, I who speak to you am He.

What did He do? He took this woman's rabbit trail and brought it right back to the main thing again, which was Himself. This is what good witnesses do. They don't let people get off into the weeds of church attendance and spiritual performance and evolution and Jonah and the fish. I've said to some people before, look, it doesn't really matter whether Jonah got swallowed by a fish. That has nothing to do with you going to heaven. Let's get you born again and then Jonah and the fish will take care of themselves.

I promise. Let's deal with the first thing first here. Friends, good witnesses keep Jesus Christ front and center in every conversation they have about heaven and salvation and eternal life. They keep the main thing the main thing.

So let's conclude. What have we learned today? Well, we've learned that as followers of Christ, God wants us to see the world the way He sees it. He sees it as fields of humanity that are white unto harvest. And then we've learned that Jesus wants us to take seriously His call on our life to go out there and be harvesters, to go out there and be witnesses.

And how do we do it? Well, here are the three principles Jesus followed. Number one, we deal with people who are interested and we pray for those who aren't. Number two, we emphasize repentance and we pray for those who won't.

And finally, number three, we keep people focused on Jesus and their personal relationship to Him. I had a guy in the lobby come up to me and say, I just prayed the sinner's prayer with you three weeks ago. I said, that's great. He said, but I'm an Episcopalian. I said, well, I'm Jewish. What difference does it make?

It doesn't make any difference. It's not about being Episcopalian or Jewish. It's about Jesus and your surrender to Him, right?

That's what we do. Now, listen, if you want to hone your witnessing skills a little more, I encourage you to sign up for Christianity 301, which starts right after Easter. And in six weeks, we'll go over and teach you how to be a better witnesser.

You should take advantage of this course. But here's, I have a challenge for you this week. Here's my challenge.

My challenge is to ask God to give you one person this week where He opens the door for you to have an evangelistic conversation or an evangelistic opportunity and ask Him to give you the courage to step in and take it. Listen, friends, witnessing can be nerve-wracking. I understand that. Witnessing can be scary. I understand that.

You know, our armpits get all wet and soggy and we get cotton in our mouth and our stomach kind of flips over. Listen, it happens to me too, honest, honest. But I found once we get the first words out of our mouth, the rest of it gets easy. The Lord takes over. And you know, I had to debate, do I go after this guy in the terminal or do I just let him walk off?

And I was like, God, there's people all around. But the Lord said to me, Hey, Lon, it's real simple. You know what? Your wet armpits and the cotton in your mouth is worth that man's soul.

Go after that man. And friend, that's why we do it. We don't do it because it's not sometimes nerve-wracking and we don't do it because it's sometimes not scary.

We do it because people's souls are on the line and it's worth a little bit of nerve-wracking in our own hearts. So this week, this is your assignment. Lord, this week, one person at least. Open that door. Give me the courage to step through.

Give me the words to say. We can trust God for one person, can't we, this week? What do you say? Okay, one, two. Thank you. Can we trust God for one person this week?

Yes? All right. And just watch out.

Let me just warn you. If you pray that, if you ask God for that, you're going to get it, so you better be ready to take it. I promise you, you ask God for an open door, you're going to get one. And that's great.

That's what it's all about. Let's go out and be great witnesses for the Lord Jesus this week. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for talking to us today about something we all know we should do.

But honestly, very few of us do it. And that is stepping out and being bold, outspoken witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, I pray today that you would grab ahold of our heart. You would help us see the fields of humanity the way you see them. And God, you would give us a passion like you had, a passion like that woman at the well had, to tell people about yourself. Lord, give us that one chance this week, or maybe more. Give us the courage to take it.

Give us the words to say. And God, open people's hearts this week that we might share Jesus with them. Bring us people who are interested. Bring us people who are ready to repent. Bring us people who are ready to come to Christ. We commit our week to you and pray that we would represent you well here in Washington, D.C. this week, or wherever we go. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. And what do God's people say? Amen? Amen.