At the church where I serve, we are in the middle of a
sermon series entitled “Wired for worship”. During this series, we are spending
our time together asking and answering the questions “What is worship? Who
actually worships? Does worship really matter? Why are we supposed to worship?
What happens when we worship? And how are we supposed to worship?”
During this series, we are going to discover that all
humanity has been wired for worship. And during this series our hope and prayer
is that God would move in our heads, hearts, and hands in a way that results in
us understanding and embracing the life of worship that we were created for in
a way that results in us worshipping Jesus with our lives.
This week, as we continue in
this series, I would like for us to spend our time together looking
at an event from history that is recorded for us in an account of Jesus life in
the Bible called the gospel of John. Now
the gospel of John was written the person who had perhaps the closest
relationship with Jesus while He was on earth, a man named John. And
it is in this event from history that we see John reveal for us a timeless truth
when it comes to the reality that we are wired for worship. So let’s discover
this reality together, beginning in John 4:1:
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 again 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.
John gives us a front row seat
to this event from history by providing for us the context in which this event
from history would take place. John explains that once Jesus knew that the
Pharisee’s, who were the self righteous religious
people, became aware that Jesus had become more popular than John the Baptizer,
Jesus left Judea and went to Galilee.
You see, Jesus knew that His growing popularity
would be viewed as a threat by the Pharisee’s to their position and power that
they loved. And Jesus knew that the Pharisee’s would attempt to harass and
attack Jesus, just like they had done to John the Baptizer. So, Jesus decided
to leave Judea and the Pharisee’s animosity in order to continue the mission He
had been given in Galilee. John states that Jesus had to pass through Samaria.
But what is so significant about Samaria that John would mention the fact that
Jesus had to travel through there?
To answer this question, we first need to understand
a few things. The first things that we need to understand is where Samaria was
located in relation to Judea and Galilee. Judea was located in what is now
southern Israel. Galilee, on the other hand, was located in what is now
northern Israel. And in between Judea and Galilee was the region that John
referred to as Samaria.
Now this leads us to the second thing that we need
to understand, which is the history of the people that lived in the region of Samaria.
At one time, Samaria was a part of the northern Kingdom of Israel. Then, in 722
B.C., the Assyrian Empire conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
In order to help control the regions that they
conquered, the Assyrian Empire developed a strategy that involved deporting large numbers of Jewish people and replacing
them with large numbers of people from the nation of Assyria. The Assyrians who
moved to Samaria worshipped false gods and simply added the worship of the One
True God to their worship of their false gods.
Over time, the Jewish people
began to intermarry and adopt the religion and culture of the Assyrians. These
Samaritans then rejected all of the Old Testament except the first five books
and refused to worship at the temple in Jerusalem. Instead, the Samaritans
built their own temple on Mt Gerizim in 400 B.C.
Now, as you might imagine, the
Jewish people did not respond well to what was happening in Samaria. And over
time a great deal of animosity built between the Jewish people who lived in
southern Israel and the people who lived in Samaria. The closest cultural
comparison to how views viewed Samaritans would be that Jews viewed the
Samaritans in a similar way to how many whites in the southern United States in
the 1950’s viewed a black and white married couple. The Jewish people came to
view the Samaritans as “half breeds” and wanted nothing to do with them. The
Jewish people would later burn down the temple in Samaria in 128 B.C.
So, if a Jewish person had to
make a trip from Judea to Galilee, they would often cross the Jordan River in
Judea, travel north until they reached Galilee, and then cross back over the
Jordan River to get into Galilee. That is how much the Jews hated the Samaritans. However, Jesus had to pass through Samaria.
John then tells us that Jesus
arrived at the city of Sychar. Upon arriving in the city, Jesus, tired from the
long trip, decided to rest at a well. John tells us that it was the sixth hour,
which was noon. So, Jesus, wearied from His trip, is sitting by a well in the
heat of the dessert day, when a most unexpected encounter occurs. We see John
record this most unexpected encounter beginning in verse 7:
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?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
John tells us that as the
disciples headed to town to get lunch, as Jesus rested by the well, a Samaritan
woman approached the well to get some water. Now, here is a question to
consider: Why is the Samaritan woman getting water at the well at noon? Would
that be the time that you would choose to go get water from a well if you lived
in the middle of a dessert? No, you wouldn’t. Instead you would do what most of
us do, which is to go out to get water either early in the morning, or late in
the day, when the sun is not at its highest and hottest point.
You would only go to get water
at noon if you did not want to see anyone else. You would only get water at
noon if you wanted to avoid people. So what does that tell us about the
Samaritan woman? You see, the Samaritan woman was ostracized and isolated from
the community that she lived in. The Samaritan woman was an outsider who was
far from God and was far from others.
Jesus, however, responded to this ostracized outsider by asking her for a drink. John then gives us a glimpse into the animosity between the Jews and Samaritans by how the Samaritan woman responded to Jesus: "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" You see, the hatred between Jews and Samaritans was such that they did not even speak to one another, let alone offer to drink from one another’s cups.
The Samaritan woman basically
said to Jesus “aren’t you Jewish people too good for us, so why are you even
talking to me”. I wonder how many people who are far from God feel the same way
about the Christians that they encounter in their day to day lives. Just
something to think about.
Tomorrow, we will see how Jesus
responded to the animosity of the Samaritan woman…
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