October 12, 2003

Service Theme – "Our God Is Our Savior"

John 4:1-26

"I Am the Messiah!"

  1. Introduction
    1. Illustration – This quote appeared in Leadership Journal: If we or the world could be saved through human kindness or clear thinking, Jesus either would have formed a sensitivity group and urged us to share our feelings or would have founded a school and asked us to have discussions. But knowing the ways of God, the way of the world, and the persistence of human sin, he took up the cross, called disciples, gathered the church, and bade us follow him down a different path of freedom (as cited on PreachingToday.com).
    2. Context – We can be very thankful that Jesus chose a different path of freedom for us. But I believe that we often don’t realize how it works. This morning we’re looking at a well-known passage of Scripture, Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well, to help us understand how freedom in Christ really works and how much we need Him to set us free.
  1. Scripture Passage
    1. John 4:1-26 (from the New Living) – (NEW SLIDE) Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, "Jesus is baptizing and making more disciples than John" 2 (though Jesus himself didn’t baptize them—his disciples did). 3 So he left Judea to return to Galilee. 4 He had to go through Samaria on the way. (NEW SLIDE) 5 Eventually he came to the Samaritan village of Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. (NEW SLIDE) 7 Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Please give me a drink." 8 He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. 9 The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. (NEW SLIDE) She said to Jesus, "You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?" 10 Jesus replied, "If you only knew the gift God has for you and who I am, you would ask me, and I would give you living water." (NEW SLIDE) 11 "But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket," she said, "and this is a very deep well. Where would you get this living water? 12 And besides, are you greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his cattle enjoyed?" (NEW SLIDE) 13 Jesus replied, "People soon become thirsty again after drinking this water. 14 But the water I give them takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life." 15 "Please, sir," the woman said, "give me some of that water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to haul water." (NEW SLIDE) 16 "Go and get your husband," Jesus told her. 17 "I don’t have a husband," the woman replied. Jesus said, "You’re right! You don’t have a husband—18 for you have had five husbands, and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now." (NEW SLIDE) 19 "Sir," the woman said, "you must be a prophet. 20 So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped?" 21 Jesus replied, "Believe me, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father here or in Jerusalem. (NEW SLIDE) 22 You Samaritans know so little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews. 23 But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." (NEW SLIDE) 25 The woman said, "I know the Messiah will come—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." 26 Then Jesus told her, "I am the Messiah!"
  1. Who is the Messiah?
    1. It’s easy for us to look down on this woman – an adulterous half-breed who doesn’t have any idea who God is or how to worship Him. In fact, it’s so easy to focus on our feelings about this woman that we lose sight of what Jesus is trying to say. So what’s really going on here?
    2. Well, to start out with, we find something very interesting in verse four. He had to go through Samaria on the way. Jesus and his disciples were travelling from Judea to Galilee. Samaria stood right between. But most Jews would travel many miles out of the way and go around Samaria to the east instead of going through it. They looked with extreme contempt on Samaritans. After all, they were the descendants of very poor Jews who were allowed to stay in Israel after the exile, who had intermarried with people from other nations whom the Assyrians had moved to Israel. Old Testament law strictly forbade marrying someone from another race, so the Samaritans represented the sin and rebellion of those earlier Jews. They were impure, unclean, disgusting, and hated, and anyone who would associate with them was put out of the synagogue. Not only that, but at the time when Antiochus Ephiphanes gutted the temple in Jerusalem, the Samaritans disowned the Jews in order to keep their own temple, which Sanballat the enemy of Nehemiah had built on Mount Gerizim, from being destroyed. Jews considered Samaritans to be the scum of the earth. (NEW SLIDE) Jesus didn’t have to go through Samaria to get to Galilee. He had to go through Samaria to accomplish His Father’s will. And a big part of that will was talking with this woman.
    3. So the woman was a disgusting Samaritan – a woman born in sin and living in sin. Who would want to talk with someone like that? Jesus. He talked with her, and it shocked her. "You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?" She was trying to sidetrack Him, to get Him off the subject, to remind Him that He was violating social taboos. Jesus replied with the truth – "if you only knew." We’re kind of like that woman. We’ve all violated social taboos at one time or another. We’ve all sinned at one time or another, and we may be living in a sin today. (NEW SLIDE) But Jesus offers us a better way: "If you only knew." "If you only knew the life I have for you. If you only knew the peace you could be living in. If you only knew the joy you could be experiencing. If you only knew the great glory you could be bringing to the Father. If you only knew."
    4. The woman tried to distract Him again and again. But He kept pointing her to the truth. The truth about herself, about her worship, and then, finally, about Himself. Finally she throws the door wide open for Jesus. She says, "I know the Messiah will come—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." It’s hard to tell if the woman was simply trying to put Jesus off by giving Him the supposedly unanswerable question, or if she was so startled by what He had been saying to her that she had begun to wonder if He really was the Messiah. But she threw down the gauntlet. She wanted Him to either put up or shut up.
    5. He put up. I like the way the New Living puts it so clearly. "I am the Messiah." That’s what He was telling her. Yet in the English translation we lose something. The Greek of this verse, literally reads, "I I Am, the one speaking to you." Why is that a big deal? Because when God told Moses His name in Exodus 3:14, He used the same phrase. God said His name is "I Am." The Samaritans used the first five books of the Old Testament, so they were very familiar with that passage. The woman understood exactly what Jesus meant. And when the disciples came back to Jesus, she ran off and asked the people of the village, people who had never heard of Jesus let alone talked with Him, "Can this be the Messiah?" Translation – "I think He is, what do you think?" And if you read further on in the chapter, you will find that many of them did come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah.
    6. But let’s focus back on verse 26. "I am the Messiah." What a loaded statement! What Jesus was saying in a nutshell was that He was and will always be everything we need. The Jews were looking for a military savior. The Samaritans – who knows for sure what they were looking for. But what Jesus was trying to tell this woman was that it’s not about being Jewish or Samaritan or anyone else, it’s all about God. But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. (NEW SLIDE) God is the focus of a lifestyle of true worship, and Jesus came to present God to us, so that we can know God. "I Am the Messiah! No matter what you’re going through, I am with you and will sustain you. No matter what circumstances come your way, I am with you and will give you wisdom. No matter what sin you are in bondage to, I am with you and will break you free. No matter what, I am. Worship only me and you will truly be free!"
    7. Sounds to good to be true, doesn’t it? Having Someone who will come into our lives and help us through this mess we call life. I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know. But the problem is that we relate to this Someone very well intellectually – that is, we know who He is and get along with Him based on our knowledge of Him. But He wants more than that from us. He wants us to see through His Word and through personal time spent with Him in prayer who He really is. He wants us to see how passionately He wants to be the Messiah in our every day lives. He wants us to see how much we need a personal Savior, not only to save us from our sins, but to save us from our own selves in our every day lives. To save us from our fear of intimacy. To save us from our fear of ridicule. To save us from our fear of looking bad. To save us from our fear of making mistakes. To save us from the need to be in control of everything in our lives. (NEW SLIDE) We focus on the fact that the Messiah came to personally deliver us from our sin, and rightly so. But the Messiah also came to personally deliver us from ourselves. Will we let Him?
    8. I don’t care how long we may have been a Christian or how much we know about the Bible, because length of time and breadth of knowledge have nothing to do with knowing Jesus the Messiah well enough to trust Him to deliver us from ourselves. Did you know that this Samaritan woman was the only person Jesus every explicitly told He is the Messiah. Yes, He acknowledged Peter’s confession of Him as the Son of God, but He never just plain told Peter or the disciples that that’s who He is. Yet He told this hated Samaritan woman. Why? Because she wasn’t interested in His reputation. She wasn’t interested in making Him a military deliverer. She didn’t come into the conversation with Him with grandiose expectations. She simply came as a woman in deep need of Messiah. And that’s exactly who she got!
    9. (NEW SLIDE) The question of the day is: where is each one of us in this process of knowing and being personally delivered by the Messiah? Some of us may not even have a personal relationship with Him yet. That’s okay, because it’s easy to start one. Just sincerely confess your sins, tell Him how much you need Him, tell Him that you receive Him and trust Him as your Lord and Savior, and then thank Him for coming into your heart and life. Then there are those who have a personal relationship with Jesus, but haven’t really allowed Him much freedom to impact your lives. You’ve received Him, and try to do what’s right, but you haven’t really told Him how much you need Him to be in charge of your life and then let Him do it. Sincerely confess to Him how much you need Him to save you from yourself, and then invite Him to do just that. Some folks here have been walking with Jesus for a long time, and have a fairly solid and committed relationship with Him. But there is an area or two in your life where you haven’t let Him in the door. Maybe you’re ashamed of what’s in there and afraid of what the Messiah might have to do to save you from it. Maybe you can’t imagine giving up control of those areas of your life because they are kind of like a security blanket – yes, it’s old and ratty and stinky and should have been thrown out years ago, but it’s all you know. This is probably the greatest fear. And yet Jesus says to you exactly what He said to that woman, "I Am the Messiah!" "I came to save you from sin and from yourself, if you will just let me do it." If this is you, confess your sin and your fear to Jesus, and let Him lead you through the process of cleansing and healing. (NEW SLIDE) If any of us will take the risk and allow Him to be the Messiah in all His fullness in our lives, then we will be truly free to worship Him for who He really is. And we will be truly grateful for Someone who loves us enough to save us from our sins and from ourselves.
    10. Illustration – Joel Preston writes, My name is "I AM" I was regretting the past and fearing the future. Suddenly my Lord was speaking: "My name is "I AM." He paused. I waited, He continued, "When you live in the past with its mistakes and regrets, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not ‘I WAS.’ When you live in the future with its problems and fears, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not ‘I WILL BE.’ When you live in this moment it is not hard; I am there! My name is ‘I AM!’ (as cited on SermonCentral.com).
  1. Conclusion
    1. Please bow your heads and close your eyes. How much does Jesus want you to remember that He is with you now in this very moment, and that He will always be with you? How much does Jesus want you to remember that He is the Messiah that came to save you from your sin and from yourself? What is in your heart and life that is standing in the way of Him doing just that, saving you from your sin and/or from yourself? Let’s spend just a few quiet moments listening to the Holy Spirit speak to our hearts about these questions.
    2. If Jesus is inviting you to receive Him more fully than you ever have as your Messiah, your Savior from your sin and yourself, now’s the time to receive His gift of Himself. Pray right now and ask Him to come into your heart and life more fully, to take over any areas of your heart and life where you haven’t allowed Him to deliver you, and ask for His help to keep accepting this gift. Remember, for those of you who already have a personal relationship with Jesus, I’m not just talking about receiving Him for the first time, although some of you may be doing just that. I’m talking about allowing Him to more fully deliver you from sin and yourself so that you can be filled with His love and joy and peace and see what the life the Messiah came to bring you is really all about. So if you want to receive Him more fully than you ever have before, pray right now and tell Him what’s on your heart and ask for His help in accepting His gift.
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