Understanding Gods Acts So He Can Lead
October 5, 2007 – 5:10 am
Among the hardest attitudes and behaviors for a Christian to learn is the attitude and behavior of humility. Yet, humility is a critical attitude in Christian existence. Our humility is essential for accessing God’s strength.
It is hard for American Christians to understand and to accept the fact that they are not in control. It is a part of our culture to emphasize the importance of the individual. The American dream stress opportunity for every person. Our constitution declares that it is a personal right to pursue happiness.
As a culture, for the past few decades we have attacked any cause of low self esteem. We have changed the American vocabulary. We have developed a ‘politically correct’ language. We stress the importance of being sensitive to other’s struggles. While it is true that each of us regard some things as an over reaction to past insensitivity, most of us also agree that some of those changes are good.
However, one undesirable affect of stressing the individual is the encouragement of arrogance. Arrogance often focuses on the importance of the individual. As individuals grow in a sense of personal importance, they grow away from a sense of humility. Arrogance erects barriers between a person and God. Humility destroys barriers between the person and God.
Through Christ God offers us incredible help. Humility allows the person to respond to and accept that help. We desperately need that help. We do not need to arrogantly instruct God. We need to humbly be instructed by God.
Unless we learn to listen to God, we destroy ourselves. Often our personal prayers focus on telling God what we want. Rarely in our personal prayers to we listen. To often in our service to God we see ourselves taking care of Him. God is alive. God is active. God will continue to be alive and active long after we are gone from life on this earth. God will continue to be a presence in this world as long as this world exists. You and I will not!
This evening as we read, may I challenge you to listen. After you listen, I challenge you to respond to what you hear by singing. We will think together by reading and we will respond to what we hear by singing.
4:5 So he came to a city of Samar’ia, called Sy’char, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 4:6 Jacob’s well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 4:7 There came a woman of Samar’ia to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 4:8 For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 4:9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samar’ia?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. 4:10 Jesus answered her, “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.” 4:11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? 4:12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?” 4:13 Jesus said to her, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, 4:14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 4:15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.” 4:16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 4:17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 4:18 for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.” 4:19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 4:20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” 4:21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 4:22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 4:23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. 4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 4:25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things.” 4:26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
John 4:5-26 RSV
4:27 Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, “What do you wish?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 4:28 So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city, and said to the people, 4:29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 4:30 They went out of the city and were coming to him. 4:31 Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 4:32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” 4:33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has any one brought him food?” 4:34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. 4:35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest. 4:36 He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 4:37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 4:38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
John 4:27-38 RSV
4:39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 4:40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 4:41 And many more believed because of his word. 4:42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
John 4:39-42 RSV
4:46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Caper’na-um there was an official whose son was ill. 4:47 When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 4:48 Jesus therefore said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 4:49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 4:50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went his way. 4:51 As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was living. 4:52 So he asked them the hour when he began to mend, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 4:53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live”; and he himself believed, and all his household. 4:54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.
John 4:46-54 RSV
[Prayer for faith (trust)]
I. John 4 reveals to us a very unlikely situation in the Samaritan woman. I would like to call some things to your attention.
A. She was a very unlikely (to us undesirable) person for Jesus to use to alert Sychar to God’s work and actions.
1. She is a Samaritan, and the Jewish people contemptuously considered Samaritans as religiously undesirable outcasts.
2. The fact the she was alone when she came to draw water may indicate even her own people in her own village considered her an undesirable person.
3. She was a divorcee–divorced five times!
4. By Jewish standards and Samaritan standards (both accepted and followed Genesis through Deuteronomy), she is an immoral woman–she lived with a man to whom she was not married.
5. Only Jesus would pick such a woman to be the first to carry news about him!
B. Jesus used a daily, physical need (water) to increase her awareness of her eternal need.
1. ”You come to draw water that can only last until you return to draw water.”
2. ”I offer you water that is a permanent solution.”
3. ”I know who you are and what your real need is.”
C. ”God this very moment is in the process of changing the concept of worship.”
1. ”It will no longer be a ritual that is regarded to depend on ‘doing the right things at the right place.’”
2. It will arise from the adoration of God from the individual regardless of where he or she geographically is.”
D. She asked about the Messiah (how unlikely a person to know about the Messiah), and Jesus identified himself as the Messiah.
E. Though she was an outcast, she led her village to the Messiah.
1. Because she saw, they saw.
2. Because they saw, faith came from themselves.
II. The second event also involved a very unlikely person–a man who was an official to the ruling Herod.
A. As commonly is the case, rulers are not well liked.
1. Consequently, being attached to the ruler had disadvantages as well as advantages.
2. The man came to Jesus for miraculous help, and Jesus helped him–even though he knew the man’s motivation.
B. Even though the man was an official, he confronted a situation he could do nothing about.
I challenge you to realize the fact that though we or any other person is undesirable does not mean Jesus cannot help us or use us. Jesus gives the hopeless hope. Use your life in the joy of having hope from Jesus. This week use what Jesus does for you to give hope to the hopeless.
Used with permission from David Chadwell, West-Ark Church of Christ
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