Text:  John 4: 5-26

I remember a time when I was going door to door in an area of mobile homes.  As I moved along I came to a place strewn with trash, a big mess.  I thought to myself.  Do I want to go there?  They probably have a list of problems a mile long.  So I hesitated.  I was tempted to pass that house and move on to another.

But then as our Baptist friends like to say, I was convicted.  I realized I was not following my Savior’s lead.  How dare I avoid someone because they are not “our kind of people.”  How dare I pass up an opportunity to put someone in contact with Jesus and his Word.

For you see that’s not the way Jesus operated and that’s not the way he wants his servants to operate.  He didn’t avoid those caught in a web of sin.  He did just the opposite.  Our text is a good example as Jesus reaches out to this Samaritan woman.

When we travel, most of us like to go as direct as we can.  We don’t like detours.  They cost us precious time.  Well the shortest distance between Judea and Galilee was through Samaria.  But the strictest Jews would go another way. They took a big detour around Samaria.  Why?  Not because the roads were bad or filled with bandits.  Rather because they wanted nothing to do with the Samaritan who they considered a half breed, second rate believer.

But here we’re told [Jesus] had to go through Samaria.  He had to go because the Son of God had an evangelism call to make at Jacob’s well.  Watch Jesus now as he gently leads this woman to know.  In fact, he comes to us this morning in this Word to do the same.

JESUS LEADS US TO KNOW GOD’S GIFT
I.  He shows us our great need.
II.  He shows us where to find God’s gift.

            It was about 12 noon, the hottest part of the day.  Jesus was tired and thirsty so he sat down by this well.  His disciples had gone into town to buy some food.  A woman came out to draw some water.

That was kind of unusual.  Not that she came to draw water, but the time she chose to come.  The hottest part of the day is not when most people want to be doing heavy work.  That tells us something about this woman.  She probably came at this time to avoid the other women from town.  She wanted to avoid the ugly looks, the whispered comments her reputation would bring. But this day, someone was there.  Someone was there who cared deeply about her soul.

Jesus made what might seem to us a natural request.  He’s tired, hot.  Will you give me a drink?  But it wasn’t so natural. Jesus sure had her attention.   “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” He was a man and she a woman.  He was a Jew and she a Samaritan.  They were separated by a great divide.  Jesus wanted to bridge that distance between them.

And it was so much more than just about a drink of water for a very thirsty traveler. Jesus had come to this time and place to offer her something, something lasting, something sure.  Jesus said it this way, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, In other words, the water from that well could take away her thirst for a time.  But like so many other things in this world of ours, what it offered was quite temporary.

It’s the same with so many wells from which we draw.  Think about money.  Money can buy some nice things for us and others.  Or think about success in school or on the job or in sports.  It feels good to succeed.  It feels good to win.  It feels good to be recognized.  But those wells can only offer us so much.  They can’t offer us any real certainty.  They cannot give us any real hope or lasting joy.  So at times people thirst after something more, something better, something more lasting than the water from those earthly wells.

We see that here.   When Jesus said, whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst, the woman responded.  “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” Obviously she did not yet understand what Jesus was  offering her.  She probably thought it strange.  It seems that what Jesus said of living water and eternal life blew right past her.  Yet she thirsted just the same.  She thirsted for something of lasting value, for something she had not yet found.  She thirsted as so many people do today.  Yet they do not understand why.

And so Jesus took her a little further down the road to understanding.  He said to her, Go, call your husband and come back.    Kind of an odd request.  She must have thought so. For she quickly replies.  I have no husband.  And there the conversation could easily have ended.

But her answer was no surprise to Jesus.  It was exactly where he wanted to go.  He wanted her to see Her great need for God’s gift.  He wanted her to understand the cause of her thirst, not a thirst in the back of her throat but a thirst in her heart.  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.”

So often people turn to sin as a source of satisfaction.  Like this woman we may even find it gives some short term pleasure.  It may feel good to gossip or complain about someone.  It may at first feel good to put someone down or vent our anger against them.  It may feel good to roll around in the gutter of sexual sin like this woman.  It may feel good to live life with me as the selfish center of everything.  Yet like this woman, sin leaves no one unscarred.  Marriages are broken.  Relationships destroyed.  Hearts become laden with guilt or sometimes worse, callous and indifferent. And worst of all sin puts a deadly distance between us and God.

We’ve all been there.  Maybe we are there now.  Sin can seem so inviting but ultimately it leaves our souls dry and parched. It leaves us with a thirst we cannot quench and often do not understand.  And so Jesus shows us our need.

But Jesus doesn’t just reveal our problem and go on his way.  He doesn’t leave us wondering, what now?  He is not like some eastern guru that sends us on a quest.  He shows us where to find God’s gift.

This woman was obviously amazed at Jesus’ insight into her sordid life.  She granted Jesus a new found respect.  ¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.  But then she expressed her frustration and confusion.  Maybe even an excuse for going no further.  ²⁰ Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”  Do you see what she’s asking?  Where do I go, Jesus?  To Mount Gerizim or to the temple in Jerusalem  Where do I hear the truth?  Where is the true church? Good question.  Important question.  Not enough people ask it.

The true church had been the temple in Jerusalem.  It was the place the Lord had commanded his people.  But there was another very important reason Jesus gives here.  He said to her, You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  The Samaritans only believed the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses, to be God’s Word.  So they missed out on so much of what God said through his prophets and in the psalms about himself and the coming Messiah.  They worshipped what they did not know and they did not know that their Savior would be born a Jew.  But the temple, the church in Jerusalem had that Word.  They may not have understood it.  That sure was the case when it came to Jesus.  But the truth was there for all who would listen.

But that was only for a time.  He wanted her to know: A time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.  What was Jesus telling her? The true church was no longer to be found in a certain place or building.

Rather this is where the true church can be found.  The true church is found wherever people come together to worship God as Jesus says here:  in spirit and in truth.  Think of those two words. They say a lot.  In spirit- Not just going through the motions but worship heart to heart, spirit to spirit.  For God is spirit, Jesus reminds us.

But Jesus tells us something else is essential.  How many people will tell us today, oh yes, I’m spiritual.  They may even get together with others for some kind of worship.  But then you ask them what they believe and you are likely to hear all kinds of things.  All kinds of opinions, I think this or that.  But too little truth.  But that’s where the true church is found.  Where worshippers come together around the truth of God’s Word.  Not changed or explained away, not invented, but the truth of God’s Word preached, taught and believed.  That’s where Jesus sends us. And that’s where we will find God’s gift.

Because there in such a church we will find the Savior or better yet, he will find us.  For there Jesus comes to us and reveals himself in his Word.  He reveals what he has done.  How he, the Son of God, became our brother and lived a perfect life in our place.  How he God’s own dear Son offered himself to suffer and die for you and pay the price to set you free.  In such a church, God’s gift flows for you.  The living water of the gospel.  The living water that wells up in faith to eternal life.

And today that gift flows for us in a very wonderful way.  Jesus comes to us in his Supper.  Not to all of us at one time, but he comes to each of us one by one.  He comes to us personally individually with his true body and blood.  He comes to us and tells us in this very special way.  I love you, I died for you.  You are forgiven.

If you knew the gift of God… Jesus said to the woman.  Do you know the gift of God?  In a real way, Jesus answers that question for us all in the last words of our text.  I who speak to you am he  Amen.