Ordering Chaos – Pt 3

take their Bibles and turn back
once again to the Gospel of John. We find ourselves in Chapter
4. John Chapter 4. Just by way of a quick review,
as we began this consideration of John Chapter 4 a couple weeks
ago, we discovered that in a very real way this is a in microcosm
a picture of the chaos that is the heathen world, the godless
world, the world of idols, the world of sin, godlessness. We discovered that essentially
the Samaritan race had been cultivated by a heathen king who brought
together godless people from a number of different regions
and repopulated former Israel. Israel was carted off as we saw
there in 2nd Kings chapter 17. They were captured, then exiled,
and this heathen king repopulated their land with other unbelieving
peoples. What transpired from there we
saw was this syncretism, this blend of both Jews and unbelievers. And the logical outcome of that
was a syncretism of religion as well. They came up with essentially
an entirely new religion. And what came out of that was
nothing short of chaos. We find Jesus dealing with this
Samaritan woman, and we begin to see just the breadth of the
chaos in which we find her as we read John chapter 4 once again. John chapter 4, and we’ll begin
once again in verse 1. Therefore, when the Lord knew
that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing
more disciples than John, although Jesus himself was not baptizing,
but his disciples were, he left Judea and went away into Galilee,
and he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a city of Samaria
called Sychar near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to
his son, Joseph. and Jacob’s well was there. So
Jesus, being wearied from his journey, was sitting thus by
the well. It was about the sixth hour.
There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to
her, give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away
into the city to buy food. Therefore, the Samaritan woman
said to him, how is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink? since I am a Samaritan woman,
where Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and
said to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is who
says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and
he would have given you living water. She said to him, sir,
you have nothing to draw with. And the well is deep. Where then
do you get this living water? You are not greater than our
father Jacob, are you, who gave us the well and drank of it himself
and his sons and his cattle?” Jesus answered and said to her,
everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever
drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst,
but the water that I will give him will become in him a well
of water springing up to eternal life. The woman said to him,
sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty nor come
all the way here to draw. He said to her, go call your
husband and come here. The woman answered and said,
I have no husband. Jesus said to her, you have correctly
said, I have no husband. For you have had five husbands,
and the one whom you now have is not your husband. This you
have said truly.” The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that
you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this
mountain and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where
men ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe
me. An hour is coming when neither
in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for
salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now
is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and truth. For such people the Father seeks
to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who
worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to
him, I know that Messiah is coming, He who is called Christ. When
that one comes, He will declare all things to us. Jesus said
to her, I who speak to you am He. Jesus stepped down into earth. He took on human flesh. And he
stepped right into the midst of the chaos that was the heathen
world. And here we see, again in microcosm,
a picture of that chaos. There’s racial chaos. There’s
gender chaos. There’s moral chaos. There’s
chaos with regards to worship. There’s chaos at every turn. And Jesus Christ has come for
the very particular purpose of restoring God’s standards and
doing away with chaos. It won’t be as we conceive it
to be. It wasn’t as the Jews conceived
it to be. They believed that this Messiah
would come back, that he would take political control, that
he would, as it were, wave a magic wand and everything would be
good. And the Jews could enjoy life as it was meant to be lived.
Jesus is going to deal with the chaos. Jesus is still dealing
with the chaos, but it is not the model that we believe it
to be. With regards to economics, with
regards to race, with regards to spiritual standards, even
with regards to worship, God has His own way of setting things
back in order. And the way that God has chosen
to set things in order is none other than the gospel. As Jesus
begins to interact with this woman, Jesus is recoiling literally
from this interaction that the Pharisees were having with John
the Baptist. We saw that at the close of chapter
3. where John the Baptist saw his own ministry in decline and
there was a lot of hubbub over the fact that Jesus’ ministry
was growing. They were quite unclear of the
concept that Jesus Christ had come and that John the Baptist
had come as his forerunner and that his ministry was going to
die down and that Jesus Christ’s ministry was going to grow and
flourish. They were unclear of that. The
Pharisees likewise were unclear, but they were quite intrigued
at the whole scene. And that very scene causes Jesus
to recoil because He is not prepared at this point to confront them. And so he begins to withdraw,
as we see in verses 1 and 2. And he went away, verse 3, into
Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria. Well, we found that
that isn’t an absolute necessity. There were many Jews that would
avoid Samaria at all costs, even by adding a lengthy portion to
their trip. They would go literally around
Samaria. But in God’s providence, it was
necessary In order for this divine appointment, it was absolutely
requisite for Jesus Christ to pass through Samaria, and He
does so. And He comes to this little town,
a town rich in the history of the Jews, and He comes there
for the purpose of interacting not only with this woman, but
with the heathen people. And He sits down, And through
God’s providence, this scene opens before us where he simply
starts a conversation with this woman, a sinful woman, a Samaritan
woman, one of the half-breed race, and he asks her simply
for a drink. The first thing that we saw in
Jesus reassertion of divine standards was that Jesus went against,
in fact he rearranged the race and gender taboos that were so
prevalent in his day. It was absolutely forbidden for
a man of his stature to meet and to talk with a woman of her
stature, essentially a slave woman carrying water And a heathen
woman at that? Jesus isn’t bound by man-made
taboos. Jesus isn’t bound by man-made
rules. And so he engages the woman and
therefore begins the process of resetting the order of race
relations, resetting the order of gender relations. Jesus Christ
wasn’t going to be bound by those things. He says to her, give
me a drink. And that provokes her. You can
almost see in her a disdain in her answer. How is it that you,
being a Jew, ask me for a drink, since I’m a Samaritan woman?
And then John the Apostle adds that parenthetical comment at
the end of verse 9, for Jews have no dealings, no dealings
with Samaritans. They are outcasts. They are considered
filthy, dirty, half-breed, almost animals. And so Jesus engages
her. And he asks her for a drink of
water. And that begins this process of Jesus essentially resetting
divine standards. He not only resets race and gender
standards, but he begins the process of restoring really restoring
the priority of spiritual needs in this woman’s mind. This will
obviously go far and wide as she begins to tell her friends
as the story unfolds. Glance down at verse 10. Jesus
restores the priority of spiritual needs when he says to her, if
you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, give
me a drink, you would have asked him and He would have given you
living water. He points to the fact that if
she only knew that He was the Messiah, if she only knew that
He had come from being face to face with God and that He offered
forth to her as a gift living water, eternal life, salvation
by faith in Christ, if she only knew that, the tables would have
been turned And she would have gladly looked to him for a favor. But she’s confused about it.
Bewildered, in fact. She has no clue what he’s talking
about. And she says to him in verse
11, Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.
How can you suddenly produce water like this? Are you greater
even than Joseph who gave us this well? The woman was obviously still
caught up in this earthly perspective of things that she could see
no further even than this well. And this living water that Jesus
pointed to could have perhaps been a spring, a brook, and perhaps
Jesus knew of a source of water that she didn’t. She can’t even
make that leap. goes on to clarify that the water
that she had come to draw, the water that she would likely drink,
would never really truly satisfy her spiritual thirst. And he
begins to play that angle with her. He begins to press forth
that truth. Everyone who drinks of this water,
literal water, the water from this well, or even from the purest
mountain stream, will thirst again. But there is a kind of
thirst, a spiritual thirst, that Jesus had come to satisfy, that
no earthly stream could ever satisfy, but Jesus Christ could. And Jesus Christ was willing.
If only she would humble herself and ask, if only she would acknowledge
her spiritual need. Jesus Christ has come to reassert
divine standards. Jesus Christ has come to rearrange
not only race and gender taboos, Jesus Christ has come to restore
the priority of spiritual needs. And as we see this morning, Jesus
Christ has come to reestablish the concept of sin. That comes
about essentially because of the woman’s response to this
water. This is where we left off last
week. The woman said to him, verse 15, Sir, give me this water. It sounds great. And even though
this well has been used for 2,000 years by our people, and even
though it has been perfectly good for us, You say that you
have this special water. You say that you have water that
is going to not force me to walk all this way every day, that
it’s going to be this perpetual supply. Yes, please, is essentially what
she says. Sir, give me this water, one,
so that I will not be thirsty, and two, nor come all the way
here to draw. How convenient will this be,
that I will never thirst, that I’ll never have to make this
trek, that I’ll never have to go through this whole ordeal
again of drawing water and carrying it, lugging it all the way back
to my hometown. And Jesus providentially has
her exactly where He wants her. Because now the Lord Jesus can
begin to deal with her sin. To this point, the woman, you
could probably almost characterize her as smug. She believes that
Jesus is beholden to her for a simple drink of water. She
believes that she has the upper hand, as it were, but she hasn’t
even yet faced her sinfulness and the whole purpose of God
here is to bring her to that acknowledgement. Look at verse
15. The woman said to her, Sir, give
me this water so that I will not be thirsty nor come all the
way here to draw. He said to her, Go, call your
husband. and come here. One of the sad features as we
began to talk last Lord’s Day, one of the sad features of our
day is that if you were to give a gospel presentation, you would
go to the Super Bible Store and buy a Super Bible Store tract. Most of the tracts of our day
don’t even address sin. It’s not even part of the gospel
presentation. J.C. Ryle said a great number of years
ago that there are very few errors and false doctrines of which
the beginning may not be traced up to unsound views of the corruption
of human nature. His point was that if you have
a faulty view of human nature, if you have a faulty view of
sin, if you have a weak view of sin and the sinfulness of
humanity, the remedy is going to be faulty as well. He goes
on and says, wrong views of a disease will always bring with them wrong
views of a remedy. Wrong views of the corruption
of human nature will always carry with them wrong views of the
grand antidote and cure of that corruption. Now the point is, the point is that as we saw last
week, The Gospel presentations of our day are so weakened and
so watered down, so devoid of any treatment and consideration
of sin, that as A.W. Pink said, there are some who
are saved before they have any feeling or sense of the need
of a Savior. They don’t even know they’re
lost. They don’t even know their desperate condition. Well, Jesus
isn’t going to be content with that. Jesus isn’t going to be
content with ignoring the sinfulness that is literally taking this
woman down. The sad thing is that even in solid,
otherwise solid churches, you have a lot of people claiming
to be Christians. A lot of people professing themselves
as such that haven’t even dealt with the basic lesson that Jesus
here deals with this woman. Let’s pause for a second. Look
at the passage, verse 15, and note here briefly that in her
address, she again uses the term that she has used now the second
time in this short conversation, Sir. She uses this address also in
verse 11 as we saw. And you may know that the Greek
word there is kurios. You may also know that that could
very well be rendered Lord. And there were some, some who
over the course of centuries translated it accordingly. It is consistently translated
as Lord in our Bible in most of the other places. but you
have to back away here and ponder, is this turn, is the fact that
she calls Jesus Lord, or Kurios, or Sir, is it an indication of
an initial turning of her heart? Is she really recognizing this
stranger, even if vaguely, as the Lord Himself, the Messiah,
I don’t think so. It was a very common term of
respect. What else could she have called
this man? The use of this word was very
common in her culture. And as we go on in the conversation,
her request seems to verify this more general use. She just refers
to him respectfully as sir. She doesn’t fall upon knees of
repentance because she hasn’t even acknowledged her sin yet. She merely asks for a drink,
and really that born out of a convenience, out of some pretty petty and
basic motives, so that she wouldn’t be inconvenienced by human thirst. It sounds good to be true, but
if it’s true, give me this water. It sounds too good to be true
that I’m not going to have to come here day after day, lugging
this water back to my village. But if you say so, I’ll bite. Go ahead, give me this water.”
The woman though, had any idea of the meaning that Jesus had
in speaking of living water? It’s almost as if she is eschewing
the whole idea of salvation. Here is Jesus standing before
her, pleading with her soul, pleading with her to acknowledge
her sinfulness, pleading with her to acknowledge her spiritual
need, and she’s playing games, essentially. Word games. She’s
still thinking. She’s locked in on this physical
need of water. But if she can spare her human
thirst, if she can spare these daily trips to the well, sounds
too good to be true, but if you say so, give me this water. If the water is this good, let’s
go for it. Give me some of this water. If
it’s as good as you say it is, I won’t ever have to do this
chore again. Come to think of it, I won’t
ever even be thirsty again. It sounds too good to be true,
but let’s try it. That’s how it goes with her.
And if she were more familiar with the Jewish scriptures, she
may have recognized the obvious spiritual metaphor that Jesus
was using here. The metaphor of drinking or imbibing
or enjoying God’s spiritual bounties. Listen to how plentiful this
metaphor is. But these are all passages that
the Samaritans had conveniently clipped out of their Bible. Remember,
they used only the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch. They
were oblivious to Isaiah 23. You will joyously draw water
from the springs of salvation. That’s the same metaphor. Isaiah
44.3, I will pour out water on the thirsty land and streams
on the dry ground. I will pour out my spirit on
your offspring and my blessing on your descendants. It was living
water, spiritual water that referred to there in Isaiah. It was a
common metaphor used in Jeremiah as well. Jeremiah 2.13, My people
have committed two evils. They have forsaken Me, the fountain
of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns
that can hold no water. Well you know the situation there.
It was idolatry. And He’s saying, how could you
turn from Me the fountain of living waters to go drink from
a well that has long since dried up, empty, bone dry? Jeremiah
17.3 uses the same metaphor. Oh Lord, the hope of Israel,
all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away
on earth will be written down because they have forsaken the
fountain of living water. This is a familiar metaphor.
And had the woman had access to those, she wouldn’t have been
playing word games. She likely would have humbled
herself before the Messiah Zechariah 13.1, in that day a fountain
will be opened for the house of David, for the inhabitants
of Jerusalem, for sin and for impurity. Zechariah 14.8, in
that day living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them
toward the eastern sea, the other half toward the western sea.
It will be in summer as in winter. In other words, it will be a
perpetual supply of spiritual blessing. But she’s oblivious. Unfortunately, these passages,
as I said, all came from portions of the Bible that the Samaritans
had rejected outright. And so with this familiar language, used for centuries with God’s
people, she’s completely, completely oblivious. The woman’s request, in essence, comes down to the
prayer of a troubled, anxious soul who is hopeful, wishful
thinking. Perhaps Jesus had piqued some
interest, aroused some desire in her heart at this mention
of eternal life, at this mention of a perpetual blessing. But
there is this vague hope hope-filled desire that there’s got to be
something to it. And so she asks him, give me
this water. And Jesus’ reply, now things
really become interesting because Jesus’ reply in verse 16 gets
to the heart of the matter. He said to her, go call your
husband and come here. It’s a simple request. And he has a yet to be identified
purpose in this. He’ll get there in time. And
initially, at least, the woman is clueless as to the purpose.
We should acknowledge here that Jesus isn’t being coy or deceitful. He knows full well her situation. He knows her marital standing.
He knows her history. He knows her heart. He knows
her inclinations. He knows her weaknesses. But
he wants her to know that he knows. And he wants her to face her
circumstances squarely. He wants all sinners to face
their sin. We can’t come to Christ until
we face our sin. Some commentators suggested that
there were a number of different possible reasons that Jesus would
want her to go and retrieve her husband. These were pretty astounding. Some said that the woman herself
may have even had to entertain even though she doesn’t acknowledge
any of these reasons. Some people said that since this
was a private conversation between a man and a woman, it had gone
on long enough and Jesus decides that he’s uncomfortable with
the situation, that if we’re going to go further in this conversation,
would you do me a favor and go call your husband? Well, certainly
it was true among the rabbis that it was forbidden for a rabbi
to talk with a woman alone. I remember early in my Christian
years, I heard about Billy Graham, how he would have this team go
into his hotel rooms and search every square inch, under the
bed, in the closet, in the showers, for any sign of a woman hiding
in there that would possibly besmirch his ministry. We have
the same standard in our counseling that men are not to counsel women
alone or vice versa. And so there is an element of
propriety that’s at least possible, we can entertain this, but I
don’t think that’s it. I don’t think that’s it at all.
That Jesus was uncomfortable and so now he wants her to go
call her husband. We’ll see in a moment. In order
to sanctify the moment, he merely says, go call your husband so
we can keep talking. Another suggested that because
she was so unable to understand Christ’s meaning, he asked her
to go get her husband. Let’s get him involved and maybe
he can help you understand. That too is intriguing, but I
don’t think that’s at all the explanation. Still another said
that he wanted her to you share this gift of salvation with her
God-given husband. And if you would only go retrieve
him, I think you’re going to be very happy at what I give
you. There’s certainly hope of that. There certainly is hope that
this will create a rapid-fire succession of conversions. But we see very quickly what
Christ’s purpose is. He makes this casual, seemingly
innocuous request. Would you do me a favor and go
call your husband? And by doing that, He goes right
into her heart of hearts. Right into her innermost life
to address the sin that she was most familiar with and that In
a sense, nobody else had confronted that even the husband that she
had currently wasn’t really her husband. As one said, there is
a close connection between the woman’s request for the water
and Christ’s command to call her husband. Does the woman desire
living water? Then there must be a thirst.
See, she’s not even thirsty yet. She didn’t even know how bad
her situation is. She doesn’t even know how desperate
she is for living water. As he continues, he says, the
thirst will not truly be awakened unless there is a sense of guilt,
a consciousness of sin. The mention of her husband is
the best means of reminding her of her immoral life. That’s exactly
how Jesus started his ministry, isn’t it? Repent. for the kingdom
of heaven is at hand. Deal with your sin first and
foremost. It’s not an aside. It’s not an
inconvenience to our gospel presentations. It’s not optional to our gospel
presentations. It is the very starting point
of our gospel presentations. Well, we can only imagine what
this woman was going through. how she probably immediately
recoiled, shocked at the request. But she tries to downplay it.
Look at verse 17. I have no husband. Oh, you got
the wrong gal. Sorry, no husband. Next subject. But in essence, what she says
is, look, stranger, you’ve gone way too far. You’ve overstepped
the line here. And she likely thought to herself
that she was amused by all this talk about water. And as big
as his boasts had been, she is not going to allow him into her
private life. And with a short, pointed answer,
she blurts out, I have no husband. But Jesus has touched her where
her need is most. Watch this. Just note, glance
down at the passage just generally. In the woman’s reply in verse
9, she replies with 11 words. In her second reply in verses
11 and 12, she uses 42 words. In verse 15, she says 13 words. But suddenly now, the cat gets
her tongue and she says only three short Greek words. Not,
I have a man. three words in the Greek. And those words probably had
a tone of sadness to them. They were literally the truth. She wasn’t currently married
to a man. It’s a true statement in as far
as it goes, but it’s the kind of answer that really is intended
to shut down that part of the conversation and essentially
say, Next subject. Let’s move on. I don’t have a
husband. But Jesus knows. Jesus knows
her situation. Look at the end of verse 17.
Jesus said, you have correctly said I have no husband. You can
begin to sense the woman absolutely squirm, knees knocking, trembling
at the news that Jesus brings. You have correctly said, I have
no husband. For you have had five husbands. You’ve been married five times. And the one whom you now have
is not your husband. This you have said truly. Now the woman is likely a little
bit relieved here. She thinks that she has just
successfully redirected what would have become a very uncomfortable
conversation. Jesus, let me tell you what happened.
See, I got married. I was a young lady. That one
didn’t work out. Then another one came along and
that one didn’t work out. But Jesus isn’t going to be thwarted.
Jesus isn’t going to be brushed aside. He has purposed to call
this woman to repentance, to lay out the gospel clearly before
her so that she can come to repentance and faith. And no abrupt denial,
no matter how artfully conceived by a sinner, no matter how clearly
articulated, is going to succeed in derailing Jesus’ attempt. He knows her heart. He knows
her past. He knows that her greatest need
is salvation, living water, and He will not relent. He will not
quit. As one pastor said, the stroke
goes deeper. It lays bare the secrets of all
those years over which she thought the veil of the past had forever
been drawn. She thought that nobody else
cared anymore. Nobody else was even bringing
up her sin and her sinfulness. He continues, the bright days
of joy and dark days of sin, the heart’s promises made and
broken, the sad days of death, which five times had robbed her
of a husband, or worse than death, the sin which had severed those
sacred bonds, the shame of the present shameless life, all those
were at least hidden from a stranger. And so he commends this woman,
this sliver of honesty woven into her crafty answer. Correct! You have no husband. That’s exactly
right. You have no husband. But he takes
her not only to the truth, but to the whole truth. And the reality
was that while she was not at the moment married, she had been
five separate times. And we need to be fair. There
isn’t anything in this passage about the cause of those broken
marriages. This is without a doubt a heartbroken
woman. A woman who was truly weighed
down with her sins, as Paul says. But we don’t know the circumstances
of these five marriages. We don’t know that they were
in any way clandestine, broken up by adultery. And even if they
ended in divorce, it wasn’t easy for a woman in that day to file
for divorce. She likely would have been the
victim, brushed aside capriciously by
a wayward husband. She would have been the victim,
the injured party on all five occasions. But we don’t know
the circumstances. We don’t know if they were all
divorced. Did one husband or more than one husband commit
adultery and leave her? Very possible. Did one husband
or more than one husband capriciously dismiss her for some trivial
reason like burning the noonday meal? That was common. Did one
husband or more than one husband die nobly on the field of battle? It’s very possible, even likely
given the unrest of the days in which she lived. Did one husband
or more than one husband die an early earthly death, cancer,
heart attack, murder, accident? Very possible. But whatever the
situation, whatever the blend of possibilities, whatever the
manner in which all five marriages ended, the result was, what’s the use? I’m done with
marriage. I’ve tried it five times and
five times it’s failed. I’m just going to go ahead and
live with my boyfriend is essentially what she decides. We talk about
a contemporary approach to the problem. I’m done with marriage,
she says. Come to think of it, given her
track record, this guy was probably all too willing to skip marriage
himself, wasn’t he? After all, he didn’t want to
be number six. So, Jesus brings her face to face with her greatest
spiritual need. If there’s any sin in this report,
It’s that she has no husband because the nearest thing to
a husband in her life is the man that she’s living with. He
isn’t her husband. And in exposing this sin, this
has been the purpose of Jesus from the very start, hasn’t it?
From the very outset of Jesus’ discussion with her, He was aiming
and angling for this very moment. And very effectively and very
tactfully, Jesus identifies her sin of adultery. And it’s possible that it’s even
worse than that, isn’t it? Because instead of just being
an adulterous relationship with a single man, the positioning
of the descriptive word, you, in that sentence, of you, indicates
that this man might actually belong to another woman. Jesus
literally says, and now whom you have is not he, not he is
of you, man. He is not your husband. Now we need to pause and digest
all this, don’t we? Was Jesus just being rude, beyond
all measure, talking to this woman in the first place, then
abruptly turning the conversation to her marital status, or lack
thereof? Was He just teasing her, needling
her, because of her poor marriage track record? Absolutely not. Jesus was doing the most loving
thing He could in exposing her sin. Without that, she might
have continued on indefinitely in some kind of blissful ignorance. But that ignorance was no blessing
to her. Without facing and repenting
her own sin, there could be no salvation. Now the woman has
tried once to turn this conversation in a different direction and
she failed miserably. Perhaps if she tries a little
flattery, a little theological debate. Perhaps that will work. In verse 19 she says, Sir, I
perceive that you are a prophet. I think she probably meant this
quite literally. You know what? You know more
information than would be readily available even in a small town.
I perceive you’re a prophet. I sense that you have supernatural
knowledge. God-given knowledge. Can I ask
you a theological question? That’s essentially what she does.
Just that quick. Verse 20. Our fathers worshipped
in this mountain. And you people say that Jerusalem
is a place for men not to worship. You can just see this the way
it goes. She wants to change the subject
as fast as she can. But her sin is before her. And
that is by God’s doing. That is by God’s doing in the
life of every child of God. That is the beginning of the
Gospel presentation. That is the beginning of the
recognition of our need for salvation. The recognition of our own sin.
Now Jesus wants to use this very occasion of her essentially taking
this direction in a theological debate. Jesus wants to use that
to point out a fourth area that we’ll take up next Lord’s Day
where he will begin to reinstitute biblical worship. But for now,
Jesus has been very successful in reestablishing in this woman’s
mind the concept of sin. And we need that as well, don’t
we? We don’t do anyone any favors in ignoring their sin, especially
an unbeliever. We do well to graciously come
before them and to point out God’s standards and to stand
there and plead with them to turn from their sin by God’s
grace and to turn to Christ in faith. That’s why He came. not to gloss over someone’s sin,
not to pretend as if it isn’t there, but to deal with it squarely,
to deal with it in repentance. We’ve dealt with it by God’s
grace in our own lives, and if we haven’t, we should. Let’s
humble ourselves before Him in prayer. O merciful God, we see in this
picture a Savior who’s so gracious, so
gracious to come to this woman providentially, knowing all the
while exactly who He was dealing with, exactly the nature of her
sin. And instead of toying with it,
instead of ignoring it, instead of glossing over it, lest she
feel uncomfortable, The Lord Jesus, in all faithfulness, humbly
takes her to task for her sin, effectively calling her to repentance,
to acknowledge her sinfulness and her need of a Savior. Oh
Lord, if she only knew who were there in front of her, the very
Messiah, not just the one who could articulate the gospel,
but the one who would soon pay for her sin on the cross. Lord
God, for us, for we who have acknowledged our own sin and
sinfulness before you, and have been drawn in repentance, we
know that moment. We know that moment so well. We saw our sin. We were so humbled,
so aghast at the nature of our deeds. So aware of our desperate
need of a Savior, we felt absolutely hopeless. Until we looked up and we saw
a Savior who had already paid for our sin. Lord Jesus, we rejoice. We rejoice
in your faithfulness. Not to gloss over our sin, but
to point it out. To reveal it to us in as full
as we could even bear. Because to look at the totality
of our sin would be absolutely overwhelming. But you showed
us what we needed to see. To see that we needed a Savior
desperately. You called us to repentance and
you granted to us faith and eternal life, forgiveness. Lord God,
if there is anyone in this room, if there’s anyone in this room
that’s still toying with the idea of hiding and glossing over
their sin as if you don’t know about it. Merciful God, we pray,
bring them to repentance. Let them know that you see everything
that we ever think or do or say. And that the Lord Jesus Christ has
paid for those sins. Draw them to faith. Draw them
to repentance. We pray all of these things in
Jesus name. As we close, if you would take
your bulletins and we’ll stand and sing in Christ alone.