John 4: 26 NIV
Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you
am he.”
Are You Ready For A Change?
There is in each of us a
strong desire to be right. We want to be
the one with the correct answer…to know how it really is when others are just
guessing. Yet how can we be right when
we don’t have an answer, when we just have questions? When I went away to college, I did not know
what I was doing. I had no idea what to
expect, what I would gain from going to college, what sort of career I would
have when I finished. If someone asked
me, “What do you plan on doing after you graduate”, I had no idea. I did not go to a small college to get
something out of it or to accomplish something; I went because I knew God was
sending me there. Because I had never
before stepped foot on the campus or even been to the state where it was
located, I had nothing on which to base my opinion of how it would go or even
should go. I had no answers to give to
those who wondered what I thought the future held for me. You might say that I was “clueless”. Now that I am an old man and have lots of
experience to inform my thinking, I still don’t know what to expect nor do I
know why I am here. I am just as
“clueless” as I was back then. All I
have to offer anyone about the state of my affairs is that God makes the plans
for my life just as He did when I went away to college.
Perhaps you are wondering
what God is doing with you. You may even
question His wisdom, the benefit of letting Him be in charge. It could be that you do not even really
believe that He has anything much to do with you and how things go in your
life. Many think of God as an absent
father, a dad who is never there for them.
That might be you. Or you may
have put your trust in Him to take care of your big issues but the small ones
might be bothering you. What should you
do about dinner? How can you get your
kids to finish their homework? What
should you do about your retirement funds? Can your career get upgraded? Is there hope for a happy marriage? Perhaps those sorts of issues you feel like
you must solve on your own if anything is to be done.
When Jesus famously
chatted with the Samaritan woman looking for water at the village well where
Jesus sat and rested; a fascinating conversation ensued. This lady who had been married and divorced
five times and was living with someone new was not exactly a prime candidate
for deep theological discussions. Yet
the things that were said there were some of the most important teachings on
God and worship found anywhere in the Gospels.
The Jews, Jesus said, had an edge on the Samaritans when it came to
worship and living with God. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we
worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when
the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are
the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. (John 4:22-23 NIV)
An important choice of
words is used by Jesus that the NIV version captures. The Samaritans worship “what” they don’t know
rather than “who”. The Jews worship also
“what” they know rather than “who” they know.
Worship for both groups was impersonal and not interactive. It had nothing to do with the actual person
God. It was like a young man falling in
love with the idea of a particular woman rather than a woman herself. We sometimes criticize those who spend lots
of time playing on line games with others because they are not hanging out with
actual people. Yet the truth is that
they are talking with and listening to real people. The Jews and Samaritans had quit trying to
worship God Himself and had given themselves over to the forms of worship
instead. There no longer was an
interaction between two personalities; it was just thousands of ones acting
within themselves hoping that God or “luck” would be in their favor if they
performed all the right rituals. It was
worship grounded in superstition rather than relationship. Jesus came to change that.
Jesus insists that that
by coming, He established a link between God and all people. By Spirit you connect with God. As real as the wind that blows and the breath
that passes through the lungs, the Spirit creates the pathway through which you
build your life with God. How many
people give up on God because they are not familiar with the way He connects
with people! It seems surreal, even not
real like a fairy tale or a Nordic myth when someone who has never met God by
Spirit hears of it. The Samaritan woman expresses
this same skeptical hope when she returns to town and tells the villagers, “Come,
see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"
(John 4: 29 NIV) The Greek text which
was the original language used to transcribe this conversation makes it clear
that the woman saw little likelihood that it would be so, that the man she met
at the well actually was the long awaited Messiah but she hoped He was. Many, even today hope God exists and that He
cares about them, maybe even loves them, but they don’t really think it could
be so. Like this unnamed woman, the
promise of a loving and healing and almighty God who can raise them from the
dead seems too good to be true yet they want it to be more than a fable.
Now what happened next is
one of the great miracles recorded in the Bible. It may not seem like much to many who read of
it but it really was astounding what took place. They came out of the town and made their
way toward him….Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because
of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they
urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became
believers. (John 4: 30, 39-41 NIV)
How could a woman, who had been divorced five times, who was living with a man
not her husband, who did not go to the well to get water at the time when the
other women went and socialized, have pulled a crowd together from her own home
town and led them out to meet with Jesus, a hated Jew?
If you just give a little
thought to human personality and how people are, it was unreasonable for this
crowd of villagers to make their way out to Jesus just at the inspiration of
their immoral neighbor. Why would any of
them have interest in a despised Jew?
Yet they did. The text in the
Greek tells us that the people left the town but then kept coming and coming to
Jesus in a continual coming. Some force,
some supernatural force pulled them out of their huts and away from their fields
and over to where a man they should have hated greeted them. The woman was in such a hurry to tell her
neighbors about Jesus that she completely forgot her water jar and the water
she came to get. She rushed off in a
flurry of amazement and wonder. It is
not unusual for someone to make us lose track of time and space being around
that person. A celebrity, someone with
great creativity or wit or beauty can do it to us. Yet the Bible tells us that there was nothing
about Jesus that made Him attractive…just the force of his life with the
Father. And that force came to bear on
the woman looking for water and the people of the town who came to see Him at her
invitation.
There is a strangely
wonderful shift in the text that must be noted.
This woman, who was a Samaritan woman and a many times married woman and
even an immoral woman was relabeled as the account concluded. Jesus
told the disciples that the fields which He probably pointed to nearby were
ready to be harvested. Do you not
say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and
look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now
he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be
glad together. (John 4:35-36 NIV) He
was not talking about corn or wheat or barley though. He was speaking of the need for all the
people around Him to have eternal life.
“Look at them”, He was saying.
“They all need a Savior. You are
the ones I want to welcome them into Salvation.” Yet it is none of the disciples who are used
by God to pull the crowd there in the Samaritan village to eternal life. It was the most unexpected of all people to
be the means by which this little town became a pocket of salvation, a well of
eternal life. Pay careful attention to
verse 39. Many of the Samaritans from
that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me
everything I ever did." (John 4:39 NIV)
We call her the “Samaritan
woman”. Some label her the “sinful woman”. Many speak of her as the “woman at the well”. But here as the account comes toward a
conclusion, she is literally termed “the witnessing woman”. That is a strange revelation. Someone so off base, so spiritually disoriented,
so dysfunctional was named by God, “the witnessing woman”. How can this have been so? What force or motivation turned her life
around so dramatically that she became someone completely new, someone unknown
before meeting Jesus? It is not a force
nor a motivation but rather a person. When
God as Spirit becomes a part of you and works His way through you, a
transformation occurs which changes who you are and what you do. The woman did not understand really who Jesus
was and she could not explain what to make of Him but she did know that
everyone in her town needed to come find out for themselves and so with God
working in her, she gave the rallying cry to go to the well and meet
Jesus. Once God got a hold of her and He
worked in her Spirit to spirit, she became someone new to God. She was the “witnessing woman”.
Are you ready for God’s
Spirit to transform you? What do you
think He might make of you? Is there a
name God could give you that would be surprising? The witnessing woman did not make something
of herself or try to rehabilitate her lifestyle. She simply spent time with Jesus and the
Spirit of God worked within her to take what was thoroughly broken and
dysfunctional and remake her into someone you might say was a superstar in
God’s Kingdom. She had no great message
to offer. She certainly was not straight
theologically. Her reputation in town
was not fixed. What she did have which
made all the difference in the world was time spent with Jesus! In those brief moments alone with Him, the
Spirit of God began to rework her mind so that she got to make something of the
life she had been given. I wonder what the
witnessing woman would say now, if you asked her, “Was it worth it spending
time with Jesus?” What could be the
benefit to you if you gave Jesus some time alone with Him? What might happen to you?
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