Sermon on John 4:1-26, Jesus’ Outreach to Unbelievers

I am the proud grandfather of 9 grandkids.  Grandkids are grand.  I anticipated that they would be but didn’t realize just how grand it was until that first one was born.  In a recent conversation with first grandchild, my now 16-yr old granddaughter, she shared with me her view that it felt wrong to go after someone who is not a Christian and try to convert them.  She felt that this was imposing our beliefs on someone and that it felt bad and made people feel bad.  On the other hand, she had had a few people who had come to her asking questions about Christianity and God and she felt this gave her just the right situation to share the gospel with them and the people she shared with decided to follow Christ.  But was she right?

I have been in situations in that I felt what she is talking about, situations in which it felt that if I expressed my view of God it would do more harm than good.  It would feel like throwing pearls before swine, as Jesus said, expecting them to value the gems I had to offer when in fact they had no ability or desire to affirm what I was saying and were more likely trample what I said underfoot, even use it to discredit God in the eyes of others.  I remember one time in particular while I was at work that I began to try to get into the gospel with a fellow worker and he cut me short, saying, “Oh, man, you aren’t going to preach that Christian stuff to me, are you?”  No, I guess not.  But there were also times in which it seemed that the most unlikely person to listen to God-talk was the very one who was ready to embrace it and it helped that person find the Lord.

I’ve seen some people who are ready to blurt out the gospel with any and every one and others who would never say a thing.  I’ve seen both approaches do damage.  I’ve seen extremes that thankfully are not common, like people holding up placards and chanting “God hates…” (fill in the blank), or people who have separated themselves entirely from society and normal discourse refusing to share their faith.

What would Jesus do?  That is the question that keeps coming back to me.  Here is the greatest evangelist who ever lived, who happens also to be our Savior and King.  Certainly, part of his purpose in coming as a human being was to show us how its done.  How do we live a life completely sold out to God?  How do we work to see God’s name hallowed and His will done on earth as it is in heaven?

And Jesus has given us plenty of examples of his methods, if you will, of outreach to unbelievers.  We could pull from several of these examples and should, but for the purposes of our message today I want to focus on one in particular, Jesus’ outreach to the Samaritan woman he met at Jacob’s well.  This account is found in John, chapter 4.  May I read it for you?  Would you like to follow along in your own Bibles?  I’m using the New International Version.

1 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

10 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.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

19  “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

The mention of Jesus discovering that the Pharisees heard he was baptizing more people than John is a fascinating statement about Jesus and his reason for leaving Judea, and certainly worth discussing, but for our purposes it gets us to the very intriguing statement that Jesus had to go through Samaria on his way to Galilee.

Much has been made of the fact that some Jews would not go through Samaria if they were traveling from Judea to Galilee or from Galilee to Judea.  This region separated the two, but some Jews would actually cross the Jordan River to the east side and travel north from Judea to Galilee and circumvent Samaria.  There was a tremendous amount of conflict that had happened between the Jews and Samaritans and these Jews wanted to avoid any contact with them.

Seven hundred years before this, after the nation that God created at Mt. Sinai from the descendants of Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel, became, instead of one nation, two nations, Israel in the north and Judah in the south, that northern nation called Israel had been overthrown by the Assyrian nation.  Assyria’s policy for further subduing the conquered populaces was to take large numbers of a country’s people and transplant them in some other region of their realm, and take other conquered peoples and bring them to the newly conquered territory to mix in with the remaining natives.  They felt this sufficiently threw the people off balance and made it difficult for them to mount a coup or retake their land.  They were made more docile.

In Israel, however, they encountered a problem they hadn’t in other regions.  As the people who were transplanted there failed to keep the commandments of Israel’s God, God would send judgments, like wild animals to torment them.  The Assyrians determined that they needed to send someone to Israel to teach God’s commands so the population could avoid destruction through divine judgment.  They sent Jewish teachers to Israel to teach them.  So the remaining Jews still in the land and the transplants created two factors that shaped their view of how to worship God.

One, they intermarried.  And as they intermarried they sacrificed the purity of their race and their religious viewpoints.  And two, they were already used to worshiping at the temple in their region, Samaria, contrary to God’s directing them to worship in Jerusalem.  As the years progressed the southern kingdom was also conquered by another invading army, the army of Babylon, and were exiled from Judah, and then later allowed to return under the rule of the Persians. During this time the differences between the Judaism of the Samaritans and the Judaism of the Jews had solidified and led to conflict between the two.  They had each attacked the other and their respective temples.  The Jews shunned the Samaritans, considering them half-breeds and therefore not real Jews, even though they both worshiped the Lord and obeyed the words of Moses as Scripture.

Jesus didn’t have to go through Samaria in order to get to Galilee, though this was the shortest route and though many Jews did travel through there.  Jews had experienced conflicts by doing so.  In fact, on a later occasion after this, Jesus was traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem and went through Samaria again and received less than sterling hospitality (Luke 9:51ff).  He could have avoided that by taking the long way around, but he chose to go through.  Why?  What made Jesus feel he must go through Samaria?

I believe Jesus was following the lead of the Holy Spirit, and, unlike many of the rest of the Jewish populace, he did not despise the Samaritans, so he felt he should go through there and wanted to go through there.  This tells us the first two parts of Jesus’ outreach approach to unbelievers.

 

1. Jesus listened to the Spirit

Now, I’m sure you all are willing to concede that this was true of Jesus, but I would like to make a case for it, because I think we need to be clear about this and not get confused by thinking that Jesus didn’t really need to depend upon the Holy Spirit the way we do.  He was God, so he could just exercise his deity.  But I believe there was probably only one time during his earthly ministry when Jesus’ deity was actually displayed, and that is on the mount of Transfiguration.

Rather, it is the testimony of Scripture that Jesus depended on the Spirit in all things he did.  Listen to this from another place in John’s gospel:

John 3:31 The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. 32 He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. 33 Whoever has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. 34 For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.

 The Father gave Jesus the Spirit without limit.  Why would He do that if Jesus could just simply exercise his own deity?  The Triune God’s purpose was that Jesus live without utilizing his deity and depend, rather, on the Holy Spirit, just as we must.

Luke 4:1, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan [after his baptism] and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. [Then, after Jesus’ temptation, Luke tells us…] 14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus is reading Isaiah’s description of a figure called the servant of the Lord who will lead Israel to restoration, and who is depicted as being empowered and directed by the Spirit of God, and Jesus is saying that he fulfills this prophecy.  Jesus is that Spirit-empowered and Spirit-directed servant of the Lord.

And then, in Matthew we read this:

Matthew 12:22 Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. 23 All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”

24 But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”

25 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. 26 If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? 27 And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. 28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

Jesus didn’t drive out demons by his own divine power, but by the Spirit’s power.  We will also see that, just as it said here that Jesus knew their thoughts, when Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman, he knows things about her that only, as she says, a prophet can know.  How do we know Jesus didn’t just access his divine omniscience here?  Well, we know Jesus wasn’t accessing his divine knowledge while here among us from two lines of evidence: 1) Scripture says he learned (he learned Scripture, learned patience through suffering, etc.) and 2) when Jesus spoke about his return to set up the kingdom he said no one knew the hour of his return, not even him, only the Father (Mark 13:32).  This tells us that if Jesus had special knowledge about some situation, the Holy Spirit was providing it, just like he does with us.  You see, Jesus lived his life in every way as we must, learning, growing, working in the power of the Spirit and depending on the Spirit for all ministry.

And that is the first principle of Jesus’ outreach to unbelievers.  Jesus had to go to Samaria because the Holy Spirit wanted him to go there and encounter this woman.  My granddaughter is wrong to think that we only need to wait for someone to come to us to give witness.  We need to listen to the Holy Spirit in every situation to see if He might be directing us to give witness.

And I don’t know about you, but that gives me both a sense of some pressure, but also some relief.  The pressure is to be open to paying attention to the Spirit and not becoming complacent and self-sufficient in what I do.  I have done that.  But there is also relief in that if the Holy Spirit is prompting me to speak to someone, I don’t have to worry about whether it is appropriate then to speak to them about the gospel.  He knows what is needed and He is wanting me to instigate a conversation.  On the other hand, if He is not prompting me I don’t have to feel guilty about not presenting the gospel.

Jesus listened to the Spirit, and so can I.  So that is Jesus’ first principle of outreach to unbelievers.  His second principle is love.

 

1. Jesus loved all people

Many years ago I read a book called, “The Cross and the Switchblade” by David Wilkerson.  Did anybody else here read that?  It was the story about how God called Wilkerson to reach out to the gangs in New York city.  He was scared because of the penchant for violence these young people had.  And he got in some pretty hairy situations.  But God had called him to this ministry because God loved these people.  And Wilkerson loved them, also.

Jesus was going to a region many Jews might go around because there was no love lost between Samaritans and Jews.  There had been violence, in fact, between them.  But Jesus loved them.  He wasn’t put off by the fact that this enmity was real and long standing.  It didn’t matter.  These were people made in God’s image and they needed to know the God who made them and loved them.

I have had the opportunity to travel the world some.  I’ve seen people from many different cultures, different economic statuses, and different religious views.  I have found people everywhere to be drawn to the one same thing…someone who loves them.  I have been amazed at how responsive people are when you genuinely love them and treat them with respect and interest.  I’ve been working in an organization recently that has members from all around the world, from many different backgrounds, many of whom are political left leaning and otherwise liberal in their thinking.

One man in particular I have only met online in video chat.  He looks hard to love.  He is bald, has some kind of a tatooed necklace around his neck, a bit of a foreign accent, speaks loudly and animatedly, and, I found out, belongs to the religious sect known as Hare Krishna, an offshoot of Hinduism.  I wasn’t drawn to him immediately.  But he has become one of my friends.  I have had the opportunity to talk about what he believes and to share a spiritual view of the world that others don’t.  God is giving me a path into his life that I hope will lead to the chance to share the gospel with him and hopefully his conversion.

Another person in this organization is one of its leaders and she is now identifying as a he.  But I’ve come to love her and have to practice at referring to her as a he, because that is what she is requesting.  She is very open to and excited about the Christian perspective I bring to the organization.  She knows I don’t condemn her.  She knows, hopefully, that even if I disagree with her view of things I will still love and respect her as a human made in God’s image and as someone infinitely valuable.  I could take every opportunity to tell her and my Hare Krishna friend how wrong they are.  Would that accomplish the purposes of God?  Would that lead to her conversion?  There may come a time when I have to speak to that.  I will listen for the Holy Spirit’s lead.  But that is not what Jesus initially did in his encounter with this normal enemy of his people.  Jesus loved her and expressed that he valued her.  How did he do that?

Look at what he did.  He spoke to her.  You know how big a deal that is because you are aware of how taboo that was in Jesus’ culture.  Men did not speak to women in public.  I hate to put it this way, but the way we see things today in some Muslim countries, not all, is the way it was in Israel in that day.  Women kept covered and silent and it was scandalous for men to interact with them because there was too much chance of untoward relationships developing otherwise.  And in Israel, Jewish men certainly did not normally interact with Samaritan men, let alone Samaritan women.  But Jesus did.  Jesus wasn’t chatting this woman up but was expressing her worth as a person.  Some, undoubtedly, thought he was being inappropriate.

And what blesses me here is that Jesus didn’t let that stop him.  Without a doubt the Spirit of God had prompted him to speak to this woman and so he obeyed God rather than human cultural expectations.  His disciples were perplexed by his behavior.  When they returned from the village with food, they struggled to understand why he was conversing with her.  Respectable rabbis didn’t do this.  Might not someone think less of Jesus for this, or even suspect he had improper motives for interacting with her?  Why didn’t Jesus care?

But you see, this is the most important principle of Jesus’ outreach to unbelievers.  He loved them and if the Spirit of God was leading him to reach out to them, he did.  He didn’t worry about what others might think.

Jesus asked the woman to do something for him, didn’t he.  He asked her to give him a drink of water.  I remember many years ago traveling for vacation from Colorado, where my family was living, to Louisville, Mississippi, where I was born and where my dad had been raised and where his father still lived.  I recall stopping in Jackson, MS for gas and seeing, for the first time in my life, drinking fountains for blacks and restrooms for blacks, separate, of course, from those for whites, because white drinking fountains and restrooms were off limits to blacks.  I was shocked.   I didn’t understand it.  I came to understand that some whites considered blacks to be unclean and maintained separation from them.  They would never ask for a black to give them a drink of water from their well.

But Jesus would.  Jesus treated this woman with outlandish respect from a Jewish man.  She could help him.  She mattered to him.  You know, one way of loving unbelievers is letting them serve you.  Go to their restaurants, bakeries or stores.  Or ask them to labor with you at some task.  Call upon their knowledge.  And, whoa, if they come to you for services you provide, embrace that.  Love them.  Jesus did that for the Samaritan woman, and it changed her life.

Now there’s a third principle to Jesus’ outreach to unbelievers, besides listening to the Spirit to direct him in his interactions with them and loving them.

 

1. Jesus Aroused Curiosity About Spiritual Matters

What would you have done if the woman at the well challenged you as to why you, a Jewish man, asked her, a Samaritan woman, for a drink of water?  How would you have answered her question, “Why are you doing this?”  I guess I might have said, “Because I love you,” but that would have been easily misinterpreted and created quite a stir.  Or I could have said, “The Holy Spirit told me ask you,” and that wouldn’t have been as easily misunderstood.  But listen to what Jesus answers:

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

I’m not the Messiah, of course, so if I said that it would be a rather arrogant thing to say.  So we could not say that.  The point is not to say exactly what Jesus said, but to find like Jesus did something to say that takes this conversation to a whole new spiritual dimension rather quickly, or at least that has that possibility.

Now, it helps here to know that “living water” was a common phrase in that day for stream fed well water or any water source that streamed out of the earth.  It was water that moved and that was filtered through the earth and was therefore more likely to be pure.  You didn’t need to worry if someone had dumped something awful in the water upstream or poisoned your standing water supply.  This was water that brought life, living water.

But Jesus adds the idea that the water he was offering was the gift of God, and that he was in some way unique as the offerer of this water, Jesus is hinting at a spiritual kind of living water, an eternal kind of life that God is willing to give away.  The woman is not quite sure what Jesus means so she checks the literal meaning to disqualify it as a possibility by asking just how Jesus would be able to access this deep-in-the-earth water if he has nothing to draw it with and then she asks if Jesus is greater than Jacob to see what other possible meaning Jesus might have.  She’s a smart cookie.

Jesus confirms that he is not talking about literal water by saying,

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Now the woman knows at what level this conversation is positioned.  And here she has a choice.  She can choose to look at Jesus as some kind of crackpot and walk away, or maybe dispute what he is saying.  Or she can probe some more to get a clearer picture of just what he is talking about, stalling perhaps until she can get some sense of balance in this conversation.  Or, she can do what she does, she can challenge Jesus by going all in…”Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”  You’ve said you can do this…do it!

We’ll talk next Sunday about her response here and the rest of the outreach approach Jesus makes toward unbelievers then, but let’s get clarity on this aspect of Jesus’ approach.  He is trying to arouse curiosity about spiritual matters.

Paul says in Colossians 4:6:

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

That’s what Jesus is doing.  He’s putting a little salt on the conversation, offering words that might stir up a thirst.  He’s not coming right out and saying, “I’m here at the direction of God’s Holy Spirit to tell you the way to heaven.”  That’s too jarring, that’s too in your face, for most people to handle.  Now if the Spirit of God leads you to do that, do it, because that means He knows the person you are speaking to needs that kind of approach.  But generally, that is not what most people respond well to.

I read a fascinating book some years ago now by a group of Intervarsity campus pastors who had all worked for years on college campuses around the world seeking to lead people to Christ.  They put their collective wisdom and experience together to see if they could discern a pattern behind the thousands of people who had come to Christ on their college campus.  And they noticed 5 thresholds that each of these converts had crossed to becoming Christians:

• Each convert had a trusting relationship with the one who led them to Christ.  In other words, they felt loved and respected by this evangelist/friend who was witnessing to them.  That fits, does it not, with that second approach Jesus had when reaching out to unbelievers.  He loved people, all people.  That obvious love generated trust in the one he loved.
• Second, each convert showed a curiosity about spiritual matters that moved them to seek answers from this trusted friend.  Some of these questions were about the truthfulness of the faith (could you give evidence that satisfied their doubts), some were about the facts themselves (who did Jesus claim to be, what is the nature of heaven, how bad a sinner am I considered to be by God, etc.).  If someone did not cross this threshold they didn’t become a believer.  If the woman at the well had no curiosity about the living water Jesus offered, it would have been game over.
• Third, each convert went through a period of determined seeking.  They graduated from mere curiosity about Jesus to trying to determine if Jesus really was the answer for them.
• Fourth, each convert had to count the cost of believing in Jesus, had to wrestle with the amazing claims God was making upon their lives and the requirement to make Jesus Lord of their lives and how that would radically change their lives.
• And finally, each convert had to actually believe.

And believe it or not, we’re going to see each of these thresholds crossed by the Samaritan woman, as well.  It seems all genuine converts alike cross these thresholds before they become saved.  Jesus has amazingly quickly established trust with this woman through his counter-cultural willingness to talk with the woman and treat her with respect and love.  She sees him as someone who is worth listening to about spiritual matters.  He has tapped into her curiosity about spiritual matters by taking the conversation to another level spiritually.  The Holy Spirit has primed the pump, so to speak, has prepared her for this encounter.  She bites at the bait.

Jesus had to go through Samaria because the time had become ripe for this woman to be confronted with the gospel.  As I said, next week we’ll finish this out and see what other principles Jesus followed in outreach to unbelievers.

But for now, let’s challenge ourselves this week.  In light of the example Jesus has set for us, let’s try one or more of these three approaches to outreach this week.

• Let’s begin each day with a prayer to the Holy Spirit that He would direct us to any people He wants us to interact with.  It may not be to actually share the gospel with them yet.  It may just be to begin developing a relationship them or to bless them with encouragement that they matter.  What do you think, is that something worth trying?
• Let’s ask God to give us His love for someone we might normally not even be drawn to.  Maybe that neighbor who gets on our nerves, or that person whose lifestyle we believe is immoral, or that person who is so different from us that we can’t see having anything in common with them.
• Should the Spirit lead us into a conversation, let’s also ask Him how to arouse curiosity about spiritual matters with our words.  Maybe you have heard someone else who is really good at this.  I know someone who asks his waiter what he would like him to ask God for on his behalf while he gives thanks to God for his food.