“Who Can Be Saved?” – John 4

Tony Campolo is a professor and evangelist and he tells the story about flying to Hawaii to speak at a conference. The way he tells it, he checks into his hotel and tries to get some sleep. Unfortunately, his internal clock wakes him at 3:00 a.m. The night is dark, the streets are silent, the world is asleep, but Tony is wide awake and his stomach is growling. He gets up and prowls the streets looking for a place to get some bacon and eggs for an early breakfast. Everything is closed except for a grungy dive in an alley. He goes in and sits down at the counter. The fat guy behind the counter comes over and asks, "What d'ya want?" Well, Tony isn't so hungry anymore so eying some donuts under a plastic cover he says, "I'll have a donut and black coffee." As he sits there munching on his donut and sipping his coffee at 3:30, in walk eight or nine provocative, loud prostitutes just finished with their night's work. They plop down at the counter and Tony finds himself uncomfortably surrounded by this group of smoking, swearing hookers. He gulps his coffee, planning to make a quick getaway. Then the woman next to him says to her friend, "You know what? Tomorrow's my birthday. I'm gonna be 39." To which her friend nastily replies, "So what d'ya want from me? A birthday party? Huh? You want me to get a cake, and sing happy birthday to you?" The first woman says, "Aw, come on, why do you have to be so mean? Why do you have to put me down? I'm just sayin' it's my birthday. I don't want anything from you. I mean, why should I have a birthday party? I've never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?" Well, when Tony heard that, he said he made a decision. He sat and waited until the women left, and then he asked the fat guy at the counter, "Do they come in here every night?" "Yeah," he answered. "The one right next to me," he asked, "she comes in every night?" "Yeah," he said, "that's Agnes. Yeah, she's here every night. She's been comin' here for years. Why do you want to know?" "Because she just said that tomorrow is her birthday. What do you think? Do you think we could maybe throw a little birthday party for her right here in the diner?" A cute kind of smile crept over the fat man's chubby cheeks. "That's great," he says, "yeah, that's great. I like it." He turns to the kitchen and shouts to his wife, "Hey, come on out here. This guy's got a great idea. Tomorrow is Agnes' birthday and he wants to throw a party for her right here." His wife comes out. "That's terrific," she says. "You know, Agnes is really nice. She's always trying to help other people and nobody does anything nice for her." So they make their plans. Tony says he'll be back at 2:30 the next morning with some decorations and the man, whose name turns out to be Harry, says he'll make a cake. At 2:30 the next morning, Tony is back. He has crepe paper and other decorations and a sign made of big pieces of cardboard that says, "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" They decorate the place from one end to the other and get it looking great. Harry had gotten the word out on the streets about the party and by 3:15 it seemed that every prostitute in Honolulu was in the place. There were hookers wall to wall. At 3:30 on the dot, the door swings open and in walks Agnes and her friend. Tony has everybody ready. They all shout and scream "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" Agnes is absolutely flabbergasted. She's stunned, her mouth falls open, her knees started to buckle, and she almost falls over. And when the birthday cake with all the candles is carried out, that's when she totally loses it. Now she's sobbing and crying. Harry, who's not used to seeing a prostitute cry, gruffly mumbles, "Blow out the candles, Agnes. Cut the cake." So she pulls herself together and blows them out. Everyone cheers and yells, "Cut the cake, Agnes, cut the cake!" But Agnes looks down at the cake and, without taking her eyes off it, slowly and softly says, "Look, Harry, is it all right with you if...I mean, if I don't...I mean, what I want to ask, is it OK if I keep the cake a little while? Is it all right if we don't eat it right away?" Harry doesn't know what to say so he shrugs and says, "Sure, if that's what you want to do. Keep the cake. Take it home if you want." "Oh, could I?" she asks. Looking at Tony she says, "I live just down the street a couple of doors; I want to take the cake home, is that okay? I'll be right back, honest." She gets off her stool, picks up the cake, and carries it high in front of her like it was the Holy Grail. Everybody watches in stunned silence and when the door closes behind her, nobody seems to know what to do. They look at each other. They look at Tony. So Tony gets up on a chair and says, "What do you say that we pray together?" And there they are in a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, half the prostitutes in Honolulu, at 3:30 a.m. listening to Tony as he prays for Agnes, for her life, her health, and her salvation. Tony recalls, "I prayed that her life would be changed, and that God would be good to her." When he's finished, Harry leans over, and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he says, "Hey, you never told me you was a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to anyway?" In one of those moments when just the right words came, Tony answers him quietly, "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning." Harry thinks for a moment, and in a mocking way says, "No you don't. There ain't no church like that. If there was, I'd join it. Yep, I'd join a church like that."

What do you think about that story?  How do you think you would have responded if you were in his shoes?  How do you think Jesus would have responded?  Well, thankfully, we pretty much know how Jesus would have responded because there is a similar occasion related by the Apostle John in his Gospel.  No, they weren’t in Hawaii and Jesus wasn’t jetlagged, but He was tired and there was a promiscuous woman there so let’s look at John 4:1-42. 

Jesus has called His disciples and is just starting His ministry.  He is leaving Judea and heading north to Galilee.  Now, any other good Jew would have done whatever it takes not to go through Samaria even though it would be a much longer trip.  Samaria was between Judea and Galilee but Samaria was full of…you guessed it…Samaritans and Samaritans were half breed Jews and Gentiles and therefore despised by everyone.  In fact, in the time of Jesus, the only thing worse than being a Samaritan was being a woman.  Just keep all that in mind as we read John 4:1-42.

¹Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John- ²although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. ⁴Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. ⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" ⁸(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." ¹¹"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?" ¹³Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." ¹⁵The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." ¹⁶He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back." ¹⁷"I have no husband," she replied. Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true." ¹⁹"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." ²¹"Woman," Jesus replied, "believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth." ²⁵The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." ²⁶Then Jesus declared, "I, the one speaking to you-I am he." ²⁷Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?" ²⁸Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?" ³⁰They came out of the town and made their way toward him. ³¹Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." ³²But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." ³³Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" ³⁴"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. ³⁵Don't you have a saying, 'It's still four months until harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. ³⁸I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor." ³⁹Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. ⁴¹And because of his words many more became believers. ⁴²They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

Okay, we had a really long opening illustration and a really long passage to read and now I don’t have time to preach, so I hope you are blessed.  Have a great day!  No?  Okay, well then, I will preach fast if you promise to listen fast.  Actually, to top it all off, I want to spend just a minute talking about something that is not the main focus of this passage.  Look again at verses 1-3.  This is just a set-up for the rest of the passage but even here I want us to learn a very important lesson. 

It says that the religious folk were spreading a rumor that Jesus was baptizing more people than John the Baptist was when in reality, Jesus was letting His disciples do the baptizing.  Now, Jesus could have gone and set those guys straight.  Let’s make sure the record is clear about all this, right?  No.  Jesus realized that this was drama that could be avoided and should be avoided and since it did nothing to promote His work, He walked off from it.  That’s all I’ll say about that for lack of time but just save the drama for your llama and the Pharisees, okay?

Now, because He was leaving all that, Jesus goes through Samaria and meets this woman whose name we will never know until we see her in Heaven.  It says that Jesus was tired and so He waited there at the well which was some distance outside of town for His disciples to go buy lunch.  We know it was noon; it was lunchtime because it says it was the sixth hour and that’s how they told time back then.

When all of the sudden…what a coincidence, right?  This must be good luck or good karma or something for Jesus to meet this woman, don’t you think?  No!  This is a divine encounter.  This may be the only reason that Jesus went through Samaria.  In fact, this may be the whole reason He was headed to Galilee, just so He could meet this woman and I want you to see the process that happens in this woman’s mind about who Jesus is as He talks to her.

She first recognizes Him as being a Jew in verse 9.  If you write in your Bibles, you might underline or circle that.  Just underline the name “Jew”.  By the way He was dressed and how He talked, she recognized Him right off and she was probably shocked that this man would even look at her much less talk to her, much less ask her for a drink.  This was twelve kinds of scandalous.  This just doesn’t happen.

I tried to think of a similar group of people that some Americans might hate today but nothing compares to the hatred that Jews and Samaritans had for each other.  It was deep-rooted and vicious and ugly so when Jesus simply asks for a drink, it was a big deal.

The typical time for women to go this well for water would have been in the cool of the morning and evening but this woman was obviously trying to escape some drama herself since she probably had a bad reputation among the other women of the town and didn’t want to hear about it.  So, there she is at noon, in the heat of the day and this Jew just happens to be there.

Jesus immediately understands the situation and knows that this woman’s greatest need is not water.  It’s not companionship.  It sure isn’t judgment.  What she needs is salvation so He starts to turn the conversation that way as soon as possible by telling her of living water.  This term “living water” was what most people then would have understood as water from a stream or river.  It was moving water, not the stagnant water from a well.  Moving water or living water would have been fresher and better so this piqued her interest, although we know that is not what Jesus was really talking about.

The Samaritans were proud of this well, though, because they considered themselves children of Jacob and Jacob was said to have dug this well and it provided what they needed.  So, see in verses 11-12 that she now asks Him if He is better than Jacob.  Jesus went from being some Jew to now He is better than her forefather so He’s making progress.  Underline “greater than Jacob.”

Have you ever noticed that when Jesus talks to people about salvation that He never uses the same method twice?  He doesn’t have a canned speech or a one-size-fits-all approach.  He literally and figuratively meets people where they are in life and talks to them in terms they understand.  This woman was drawing water.  What better way than to talk about living water?  If she had been a farmer, He would have changed it up so it was obvious to a farmer.  Everywhere Jesus went, He went with a purpose and every conversation He had would ultimately lead to the Gospel.

Then, because Jesus is God and He knew this woman’s story before she told Him, He told her to go get her husband and when He says this, notice her response.  It’s the shortest sentence she says in this conversation.  “I have no husband.”  I imagine her eyes went down and she blushed a little as she said it.  She probably thought she was glad He didn’t know her whole story.  That would be embarrassing.

The problem was she was talking to Jesus and He tells her her story.  But notice that He doesn’t do it in a way that condemns her or puts her down.  He just states the facts and even does it in a loving way.  Then in verse 19, she promotes Him to prophet.  Underline that.  Now he’s a prophet.

Just like this woman does, we can also expect people we are talking to to change the subject when things get real personal.  She tries to get Jesus talking about how and where to worship but He gradually brings the conversation back to where it needs to be.  He didn’t get distracted.  He keeps the main thing the main thing and in doing so, she brings up the subject of the Messiah in verse 25.  Jesus unlocked the door.  She opened it and walked through.

Okay, just a few more verses to look at here.  In verses 28-29 she leaves her water jar and runs off to tell her friends and neighbors, calling Him the Messiah, the Christ, as she goes.  Underline that as well.  Her life has been changed and what used to be important (getting water) is not so important anymore.  Now she has good news to tell and the words of Isaiah 43:18-19 come back to mind.  ¹⁸"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. ¹⁹See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

She forgets why she even went to the well because now, because Jesus loved her and spent just a few minutes with her, this promiscuous woman is now a new creation.  She also sees Jesus differently as well and so do all her neighbors.  In verse 42, Jesus isn’t just a Jew.  He’s not just a good guy or a prophet.  He’s even more than just a fulfilled promise.  Underline that He is the Savior of the world!  He is the One who knows, who forgives, who loves, who saves and changes– even wild women!  Even big bad bikers, meth-heads, drunks, perverts, Atheists, Democrats - even you – and believe it or not, even me.  Thank you, Lord!

While the music plays, I would love to pray with you and for you.  Come to the front right now for prayer about whatever is on your heart.  Maybe today is the day you accept Jesus to be Lord of your life and you ask Him for forgiveness of your sins.  Repent - turn away from - those sins and accept His love, forgiveness and salvation today.  There is no other way to Heaven.  There is no other way to have lasting peace and joy in this life.  Do it now.  None of us are guaranteed another day.