The Samaritan Woman: God Still Wants Us (John 4:5–42)

Johnathan Arnold preaches on the lectionary texts for the Third Sunday in Lent: Exodus 17:1–7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1–11; John 4:5–42. God knows every single wicked thing that we’ve ever done. God knows all of our wounds. But God still wants us, and he sent his Son to save us from sin and satisfy us with himself. God calls us to turn from sinful folly and trust in his Son completely.

Transcript

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God knows every single wicked thing that you've ever done. God knows all your wounds, and God still wants you. Make no mistake, God will judge us if we persist in that path. But God never stops seeing us as someone he created in his image for so much more.

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This morning, God has spoken to us through his word in Exodus 17, Psalm 95, Romans 5, and now John 4. And I noticed several truths that run through these passages. First, God knows every single wicked thing that we've ever done. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman and she asked him for this living water, Jesus told her to first go and get her husband. She wants the living water, but first he says, Go and get your husband. Why? Because Jesus knew that this woman had a past, she had a story, and she was currently living in sin, and that she would answer deceptively and try to conceal her situation. And he wanted to bring her sin out into the light. And sure enough, the woman said, I have no husband. But Jesus said, You've had five husbands, and you're living with a man who isn't your husband. And as a timely rebuke, Jesus added, What you have said is true, you have no husband. In other words, you have no lawful husband. You're living in a sinful arrangement. Later, the woman gave the testimony, he told me all that I ever did. Ever since the Garden of Eden, we have been trying to hide the truth about just how sinful we really are. But God sees through all of our fig leaves. Hebrews 4 13 says, No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give accounts. Has someone ever discovered you in a secret sin? Have you ever had a time in your life where maybe you can imagine it even if it's never happened to you? Maybe you lost your temper. You flew off the handle and you thought the phone was on mute. Or you were looking at something sinful on the internet, and at that very moment your grandma walks in. Or your parents walk in. That feeling is gut-wrenching. Because you, you know, when you're doing it in secret, you know it's kind of bad, but you deceive yourself into thinking it's not really that bad until there's a witness. And then you realize how sinful and selfish and wicked you really can be. Well, Jesus has been a witness to every single sin that we have ever committed. Jesus has watched it all go down. And simply to be in the presence of God's holiness, Isaiah said, I'm undone. I'm just undone by God's holiness. Every angry word Jesus has heard, every lustful thought Jesus has known, and every sinful, selfish deed, Jesus has witnessed. And just as Jesus told the Samaritan woman all that she ever did, Jesus warns that when he comes back, he will expose everything that sinners have done. Luke 12, 2 to 3 is not a real well-known passage in Jesus' teachings, but I think maybe it ought to be because it's one of the most gut-wrenching things that Jesus ever says. He says, Nothing is covered up. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed. Nothing is hidden that will not be known. Whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light. The Apostle Paul speaks of judgment day as that day when God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. In modern terms, we might say that God has a recording of every sinful thing we've ever done. And he will play the movie of every sinner's life for all the world to see, so that no one questions the justice of his judgment. Brothers and sisters, sin is serious. God hates it and it makes him angry. In Exodus 17, we read about Israel's sin at Meribah and Massa, and Psalm 95 tells us exactly how God felt. I tell you, I'd feel a lot less tension in my chest right now if I was preaching on comfort and love and peace, but the Bible is very honest and very forthright about the fact that God is a God who stands in utter and complete opposition to all sin. He does not tolerate it. And Romans 5, 9 says that what we need to be saved from is the wrath of God. Yes, we need to be saved from our sin. We need to be saved from death. We need to be saved from all of these things, but we have the God of heaven and earth who has witnessed our sins, and his wrath, Paul says, is being stored up for the day of wrath when his judgment will be revealed against all ungodliness. Verse 7, we heard it again this morning. It said that sin makes us enemies of God. To sin is to oppose God, it is to defy his laws, his authority, and his claim over our lives. Brothers and sisters, God knows every single wicked thing that we've ever done. But secondly, I also see that God knows all of our wounds. All of our wounds. This point I don't think is as obvious to us on the surface, but it would have been pretty obvious to the original readers. Because John 4 is filled with indicators that this woman, this Samaritan woman, was someone who was despised and mistreated. First of all, she was a woman who was often viewed as inferior in that culture. That's enough of a problem. And verse 21 says the disciples marveled that he was talking with a woman. We can underestimate how radical Jesus was as a male, a Jewish rabbi, including women in his ministry, talking to them, having theological conversations. They marveled. So she had that going for her. More importantly, though, she was a Samaritan woman, and the Samaritans were hated by the Jews. She's shocked that Jesus asks her for a drink because he has nothing to dip the water up. She has a drinking vessel. And so by asking for a drink, he's asking her to give him her drinking vessel, which means that they're drinking from the same cup. And the Jews in that day would have never done something like that because the Samaritans are unclean. It'd be like touching a leper. So she would have been just shocked inwardly, could never have had an experience like that in all of her life. We're told in the text the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. And then there's the fact that she came to the well alone. As a woman, you didn't do that in that culture. You came in groups because it was dangerous. She was alone. She had nobody. She had nobody she could trust. She had no friends, evidently. And then the time that she goes, she goes at noontime. It says it was about the sixth hour. You know, those are the details that we pass over and think nothing of, but the sixth hour was not the time for drawing water from the well because it was noonday in the heat of the day. In fact, Genesis 24, 11 refers to the time of evening, the time when women go out to draw water. Every time we see women drawing water in the Bible, they're always in a group, and it's either morning or evening. So this was unusual. It indicates to us that this woman was not only alone, she was a social and moral outcast. We could criticize the religion of the Samaritans just like we could criticize the religion of the Jews, but they were very religious people. They had a lot in common with the Jews, and evidently they had rejected and mistreated her and cast her out because, probably, of her five husbands and the fact that she was living in a sinful arrangement. And that's wrong. We need to confront sin. We don't ignore somebody's sin. We need to deal with it. But the answer is not to isolate ourselves from them or make them feel like they're not welcome or not loved. And they had evidently pushed her away. She was like a leper in her community. And we don't know her whole story, but Jesus did. And after Jesus exposed her sin, he kept talking to her. It was as if Jesus was saying, I see you. I know you. I know the choices you've made, but I also know the way that the world has chewed you up and spit you out. I know your wounds, I know your hurts, and I know your shame. Just as God moved towards Adam and Eve, clothed in their loinclaws behind a bush, as if the God of heaven and earth couldn't find them. Just as God moved towards them in mercy, Jesus moves towards this woman. And it's very possible that one of the reasons why this woman had been married five times and was living with this man is that she had been mistreated and abused by men all her life. It's possible that Jesus was the first man in her life who had genuinely sought her best interests. Brothers and sisters, God knows every single wicked thing that you've ever done, but he also knows the whole story. He never excuses what we've done, but he understands better than anyone. He sees our hurts, he sees our wounds, he sees our brokenness. And the book of Genesis records another time when God went out to meet a woman who was alone in the wilderness. Her name was Hagar. And after her encounter, Hagar said, I will call the name of the Lord who spoke to me. You are a God of seeing. Elroy, the God who sees me. For she said, Truly, here I have seen him who looks after me. God sees all our sins, but he also sees how we have been bloodied and bruised by our own sin and the sins of others. Which brings me to my third point. These texts teach us that God still wants us. God still wants us. God knows every single wicked thing that you've ever done. God knows all your wounds, and God still wants you. In the story of the woman at the well, we often focus, and it's a major part of the story, but we often focus on how Jesus offers a drink of living water, spiritual water, to this thirsty woman. We focus on her thirst, and that's a major theme, but I'm going to talk about that in a moment. But Augustine makes an interesting observation that in this symbolically loaded story, the first person that we learn is thirsty is Jesus. Jesus is thirsty, and he tells the woman, I want to drink from you. And Augustine says, Jesus was thirsty for the woman's faith. God is thirsty for us. God wants us. He desires us. He longs for us to return. Like the father of the prodigal son, he waits and he watches and he draws us to himself because he wants us. Before we ever seek God, God seeks us. We see it in verse 23 as well. The Father is seeking those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Jesus was there on purpose that day. He was seeking her. It was no coincidence that their paths crossed. It was God's sovereignty organizing that meeting because God was thirsty for her, sinful and bloody and bruised as she was. God didn't want her to be alone, but he wanted her to come home and to find grace and mercy in him. God always makes the first move. And if you love him, brothers and sisters, it's because he first loved you when you were unlovely, when I was unlovely. God never stops seeing what we can become by his grace. Like that father of the prodigal son. He never stops longing for us to stop feeding on the scraps of the world and come to our senses and return to him. Which brings me to our fourth and most important point. God sent his son to save us from sin and satisfy us with himself. Romans 5 says, while we were still weak, while we were still sinners, while we were still enemies, God sent his son. God showed his love. And more than all that, he paid the ultimate price to bring us home. There was nothing more costly. There was nothing more that God could give, and we couldn't deserve it any less. But that's how much he wants us. How much he loves us. Don't believe the lies of the devil, of the accuser, that because of your sin, God doesn't want you anymore. God is not going to bring you back. God might begrudgingly bring you back, but he's never really going to be pleased with you. Don't believe the accusations. God wants you. When Jesus offered salvation to the Samaritan woman, they were sitting at a well, and so Jesus uses this metaphor of living water, which a well is still water. It just sits there waiting to be drawn up. Living water is moving water, like a mountain spring coming out of the mountainside and flowing into a stream, a mountain stream that you can cup your hands and drink right out of it. And it just flows and flows and flows and it flows and it never runs out. You can get it anytime you need it. It's always there. And Jesus here is drawing probably from the prophet Jeremiah, where God says, They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters and hewed out cisterns for themselves. That's a powerful image of what we all do when we look to anything other than God for salvation. It's like the mountain spring is right there and it's the purest, cleanest water. It never runs out, and all we have to do is drink it. But we turn our backs on it and we start digging a hole and trying to dig a well for ourselves with the pleasures and satisfactions of the world. And eventually, while the we get the water and it tastes good, but it's always poisoned. It's always deadly. And it'll always run out and dry up and disappoint us. But God's saying the fountain of living waters is still here if we'll turn away from all our sinful ways and we'll drink of the water of life. Jesus was offering that something better, that drink from some cool spring to quench the burning of the thirst I felt within. When the woman heard this, she was a bit confused and skeptical. She probably was a little sarcastic, actually. Are you better than our father Jacob? Well, little did she know. Yes. Yes, he was. And Jesus made it clear that he was offering a spring on the inside, the Holy Spirit, a source of life which sustains a person now and into eternity. And Exodus 17, we heard the story of how Israel was thirsty. It was ironic as uh Chandler was reading that passage. I I was drinking water, as it said, and they were thirsty and had no water to drink. It's easy for us to forget how hard it is when we have that thirst and there's no water and to go even a day without water, the just the overwhelming thirst. That's what's going on in our souls. But God mercifully provided water from a rock, and he told Moses to strike the rock. And in this case, he struck it and water came out. And 1 Corinthians 10, Paul tells us that when Israel was in the wilderness, that a rock followed them and provided water for them. In other words, wherever they went, they found a big rock. And whenever they went to it, God would again and again cause water to miraculously spring out of a rock. And Paul says that the rock that followed them was Christ. And that we, as Christians, drink now of the same spiritual drink. He's actually talking about the Lord's Supper, where we can participate in Jesus in that context in chapter 10. But the point of it is that that rock that was stricken and brought forth water was pointing forward to Jesus Christ, the rock of our salvation, who was stricken upon the cross and water poured out of his side, blood and water, providing a cleansing and satisfying stream that would wash away all of our sins and quench the longings and the thirstings that we had within. This is the very day that was foretold in the prophet Isaiah when God said, With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. I will pour water on the thirsty land, I will pour out my spirit, they shall not hunger or thirst. Hallelujah, I have found him. Well of water, ever springing, bread of life, so rich and free. Finally, this morning, God calls us to turn away from all sinful folly and trust in Jesus completely. Verse 28 says, the woman left her water jar. John doesn't include details without a purpose, without a reason. This woman was so overcome by what she had learned about the Messiah that the task of getting physical water from a well just felt so trivial. She just threw down her water bucket so she could run back and tell everyone more quickly. And symbolically, in that moment, she was leaving behind the water of her old life for the living water that Jesus had provided. She went and became a witness to the very people that she was too ashamed to associate with. Whatever the case. These are the same people she went in the heat of the day just to get away from them, and now she goes as a bold witness. And many came to believe that this is indeed the Savior of the world. Brothers and sisters, even as Christians, even as believers, The world is constantly putting in front of us another source of water. Another source of bread. Another source of satisfaction. Constantly, we are bombarded with offers, and the water looks good. It looks clear. And it tastes really good. It brings us some initial pleasure. But like poisoned water, it will never satisfy us. It will kill us from the inside out. The wells of the world always dry up. And so when we're tempted, when we're struggling, we've got to turn back to Christ who dwells within us again and again and again. And when we're struggling, we've got to get into the Word. We got to get to church. We got to get to the place of prayer. We got to feed on Christ and drink of Christ. Because it's only by replacing the world's offer with a better satisfaction that we can find freedom from sin. If you try to defeat sin in your life by just willpower, I'm just going to resist. Your thirst will get the better of you and you'll drink it. The way you beat sin in your life, you pray every day, you be in God's Word every day, you be close to the people of God, you fill your life with holy joys. You eat and drink of the water of life and you feed on the bread of life so much that you're so full of what Christ has to offer that the things of earth grow strangely dim and you can see the world for what it really is. But when you begin to stray, when you don't pray, when you don't read God's word, when you neglect church, when you neglect the means of grace, when you're not living close to God, you know what? You get hungry, you get thirsty, and you become very weak and very vulnerable to temptation. So may God help us to turn from all sinful folly and to drink deeply, to drink richly of the water of life. And as I mentioned, one way in which we do that is as we remember the sacrifice of Christ, as Paul says we participate in the blood and body of Christ as we come to the Lord's table here in just a minute.

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