The One Who Met at the Well

This is Christ the King Sermons. Christ the King Sermons is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church located in Raleigh, North Carolina. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. It's great to be here with you. It has been a while since I have been up here to preach. So I'm a little excited, thrilled to be back. I've been on a medical leave for a while. And so this is my first time preaching since being back, which is really dangerous. It's really dangerous when a Presbyterian gets excited about preaching. Fortunately for you, there's a big clock up there with red letters on it, and I am going to pay very close attention to the time stamps that I put on my notes because I have a lot that I want to share with you.

We have been doing this series on the gospel of John, and I have been chomping at the bit to get in on it. This is a great series. John's gospel is incredibly unique and powerful. One of the ways to think about John's gospel is to kind of think about when it was written versus the other gospels. It's the last gospel to be written. And John, who was one of the youngest of the disciples, spent a long time marinating in the events of Christ's life before he started writing down his account of what happened.

Now think about that for just a minute. Sometimes events happen, and in the moment, you're just kind of like, that's weird. I don't know what's going on with that. What just happened? I have a mentor, a friend who he's a pastor in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And years ago, he was called to consider starting a church up in New York City. They had a bible study that they had started, and he was invited to come and lead that bible study. And he led the bible study and everything went great. It went really well. He got compliments and feedback from various different people who were like, hey, that was really good. You did a great job. We really think you should come and consider planting this church. And Robert Redford's daughter was actually a part of that bible study. She was one of the people that came up to him and was telling him what a great job he'd done.

And afterwards, he went into the bathroom and he started feeling this incredible conviction of his own pride. He's like, wow, I'm really care about what these people think. And he started to get this sense, I shouldn't do this. If I come and do this, it could ruin my soul. Like, I should really pause and think about whether I should do this. And so he prayed about it for the next week and eventually told them, no, I'm not going to come.

He said, but then he called a friend of his, a guy in Virginia named Tim Keller. He said, hey, there's this group up in New York. You should think about going and helping them out. And so he did, and Redeemer New York started. Many of you know that's one of the bigger churches in our denomination. Tim Keller, of course, a bestselling author, has had an incredible impact on our society here in America for the cause of Christ. My friend, he looks back on that and he goes, that's the best no I ever gave. But in the moment, he didn't know what was going on. You could imagine that he was just going, what are you doing, God? Bringing me up here and then telling me no.

An event just happened this morning that I have no idea the significance of it. Just we're going to get to it in a minute, but the passage we're looking at is John 4, the Samaritan woman at the well. Can you show the picture? I got a text from this guy this morning. Guess where he is? He's in Samaria. Guess what he did this morning in Israel? He visited the church that is at the site of Jacob's Well where that story takes place. I have no idea what's going on. Why did God appoint this passage to be preached on the morning that he was going to be there? Jeff loves to plan things, but even he didn't plan this far in advance. I suspect when he comes back, he'll tell us what God was up to with all that.

But every moment of our life is pregnant with meaning. God is always at work. He's always doing things. And sometimes you don't realize that until long after. And so when John was writing down his gospel account, it's unique from the other gospels in that he's not so much concerned with showing an accurate historical account. I believe everything that John writes is accurate historically. However, he's more concerned with the marinated meaning of years of reflection of, hey, this happened, and years later, I figured out what God was up to. Let me show you.

In order for us to get a sense of that, I think I have to do a little bit of introduction before we read our passage. Don't worry.

Once I'm done with the introduction, I've taken into account how long it's gonna take. The sermon's gonna be the same length, but it's gonna take me a little time. Because I want you to see some of the backdrop of what happened prior to this passage, not just in terms of John's life, but in redemptive history throughout the story of God and his people.

The Marriage Covenant in Scripture

There is a rich tradition in the Old Testament of God speaking to his people as though they're married. Are you familiar with those passages? God talks about his relationship with his people, Israel, the nation of Israel, as though they got married. Do you know where they got married? They got married at this incredible church on a mountain called Mount Sinai. That's the way Exodus is written. In fact, if you read Exodus and you're familiar with ancient Near Eastern marital customs, a lot of the events that happen following the Exodus as they lead up to going to Mount Sinai, it's patterned exactly after a wedding ceremony.

And you see throughout the Bible, God speaks to his people, reminding them of this betrothal, this marital relationship.

I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness. — Jeremiah 2:2

You were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness, a symbol of marriage. I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. — Ezekiel 16

God sees himself as married to his people. They are his beloved. He cherishes them like a husband cherishes a bride. But here's the problem throughout the history of Israel. Israel wasn't a very good bride. Israel was a very loose bride. Israel went and worshiped other gods over and over again. Israel ran to every god she could in order to get away from her god, the one that she had married.

And God sent prophet after prophet again and again trying to call Israel back saying, you're my beloved. Why do you do this? Why do you run to these foreign gods? Stay with me. I'm the God who loves you.

The Division of Israel

As time went on, the nation of Israel divided. There was a Southern Kingdom. They were a little bit better behaved. They were called Judah. Right? You could think of them about, like, maybe the lower section of the church. You guys down here are well behaved for the most part. Those of us who sit up in the balcony, we're like the Northern Kingdom of Israel, wild and unruly. That's where I sit, by the way, when I'm not up here.

The Northern Kingdom, they were very poorly behaved. They had kings like Ahab, right, whose wife Jezebel was notoriously terrible. Right? They worshiped the Baals, the gods of the Canaanites. They ran around on God in terms of their worship like you wouldn't believe. And prophet after prophet went particularly to the Northern Kingdom and said, repent. Turn. Judgment is coming. Don't do this.

The last prophet sent to the nation of Israel was a prophet named Hosea. Many of you know his story. God wanted him to plead with the nation of Israel with the personal experience of the pain that God was feeling. He called Hosea to live out a life of prophecy. He called him to marry this woman named Gomer, who was an unfaithful spouse, who not only was she unfaithful, but she sold herself into prostitution. And then he called him to go back and get her, buy her, and bring her back into the house, revealing to the nation of Israel, hey. This is what you're like, and my love will pursue you over and over again. Please come back.

And the book of Hosea ends with this invitation to Israel. Come back. Come back. They didn't. And in 722 BC, the Assyrian army swept in, carried off the upper class into Assyria, intermarried with them, and then brought five nations into the land of Samaria, and they settled those nations with the remaining Israelites who intermarried and became half-blooded. They were essentially lost as the 10 tribes of Israel. Historians talk about them as the lost 10 tribes because their national identity was totally gone.

That's the background of Samaria where this story takes place.

The Text

I want to now turn to our text in John chapter four, because now we understand the context of this very important and powerful meeting between Jesus and this woman at a well. Let's read it together.

Now when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize but only his disciples, he left Judea and departed again to Galilee. He had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar near the field that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. — John 4:1-7

Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink," for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well and drank from it himself and his sons and his cattle?" And Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. The water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." That woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst nor come here to draw." Jesus said to her, "Go call your husband and come here." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You're right in saying you have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you said truly." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on 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 the hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming. He who is called Christ, when he comes, he will show us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." — John 4:7-26

The woman left her jar and went away into the city and said to the people, "Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" They went out from the city and were coming to him.

This passage, in the context of that story about Hosea, is rich with meaning. It's a picture that I hope to convince you is something that the original audience would have immediately recognized—this story is in the genre, or almost like a cliché, of the kind of story about where a man meets a woman and they fall in love and get betrothed. Now, I'm not saying that Jesus and this woman had any kind of romantic relationship. That's not what I'm saying. But if you were reading this story and you were a Jewish person in the first century, you would have immediately recognized this story as that kind of story.

Almost like in our modern culture, if you were talking to somebody and they're saying, "Hey, a guy and a girl walk into a bar and then they meet," you have an expectation of what's coming, don't you? Or maybe for you younger folks, I was on Twitter and I was swiping. Tinder. I'm old. We did things differently. They did things differently in the first century. The well was the Tinder of the ancient world.

The Well as a Meeting Place

You might not believe me, but let me make the case. If you look in the Old Testament, there are several stories where this happens. If you look outside of the Old Testament in the ancient world, there are several stories where this happens. It begins, interestingly enough, with Rebecca and Isaac. Their marriage was arranged at a well. Do you remember? And then there's also a story about a guy named Jacob meeting his wife, Rachel, at a well. Right? Notice, interestingly enough, that John makes a point of mentioning Jacob specifically in this passage, almost like he's winking and saying, "Hey, remember those well stories? Remember about Jacob and Rachel?"

And it's not just them. Moses and Zipporah also met at a well. And if you look throughout ancient Near Eastern literature, wells were the place where guys and girls met and had flirtatious conversations and then formed a covenant relationship and lived happily ever after. So this story is building that.

Not only that, but John has been building your expectation for a story like this. Remember a couple of weeks ago when Robbie Hinton preached and he talked about the wedding at Cana? Do you remember that? Do you remember what Jesus told his mother? "My time has not yet come." Well, that begs the question: When is his time? When is he going to get married? It sounds like he's anticipating that at some point he's going to have one of these things for himself. But this isn't his. Right?

In John chapter three, if you look, John the Baptist, when he's talking about Jesus, he uses a curious analogy to talk about him. He says, like, I'm just like the best man. He's the bridegroom. He uses that over and over again. So the previous two chapters, John has been building this expectation of who is Jesus going to wed. And then you have this almost cliche story about a man, Jesus, going to a far off land, which is the pattern, meeting a girl, and oh, she's a Samaritan. What? That's not what you expected if you were a Jewish person? Surely he's not going to marry a Samaritan woman. The expectation is almost like, is this literally going where I think it is? But there's a plot twist.

They start their conversation, and there's this exchange about water, Jesus saying that he has living water. Of course, part of this exchange usually is there's some sort of act of hospitality on the part of the woman, and then the husband then covenants to take care of her for the rest of their life. Right? That's kind of the pattern in the Old Testament. That, hey, you give me a drink of water, then I'm gonna take care of you for the rest of your life, that kind of a thing. So Jesus is asking for water, and then he says, I'm gonna give you living water. And she says, are you greater than our father Jacob who's watered this whole area for generations? And he's saying, yeah, this is living water. It's gonna go on forever, baby. Right? You see what's going on there?

But so that's building the expectation. It's still going to—are they going to get married? And then he says, well, why don't you go get your husband? Oh. What? She's already married? She says, no. I have no husband. Perhaps she's ashamed of the fact that she's had five of them, and she's living with somebody who's not her husband now. Right? And she wants to keep the flirtatious relationship going. But Jesus won't allow that. He says, no, actually, you've had five husbands, and the guy you're living with now is not your husband. What? This isn't how this story is supposed to go. Right? We have a hard right on the cliche story of the man and the woman at the well. And what's going on here?

The Deeper Spiritual Meaning

There's certainly a literal sense in which I believe this woman had five husbands and was living with someone who was not her husband. But there's also, if you know your Old Testament, a little bit more, that John probably later in life was going, oh, I get it. I see it. If you go back to two Kings chapter 17, when it describes Israel, the Samaritan forerunners, right, the 10 tribes, when they were carried off into captivity, it specifically lists five other nations that moved into the area and intermarried with the people. And it is specifically condemning in the fact that the people not only intermarried with those other nations, but also worshiped those five gods.

There's also a little play on words here. The word Baal, right, which has an Aramaic component that sounds almost exactly like Baal, is a word that can be translated in two ways. One is God, and the other is husband. Jesus in having this conversation with a literal woman who had literally five husbands is really having a spiritual conversation about the spiritual relationship of God with his people, the 10 tribes who have been carried off, and she is the physical representation of that. Do you see? And years later, John saw it, and he wanted us to see it.

He wanted us to see that God hadn't given up with Hosea, that that wasn't the end of the story, that he sent his only son into Samaria. That's how this passage begins. He had to go into Samaria to meet with this woman to have this conversation that you can often think of as really just about something else, but it's really about the redemption of those tribes. Do you see it? Are you convinced?

Now let's think for just a moment. I did a little research this week because I wasn't familiar with the nations that they resettled. Some of them I had known, but I was kind of like, I'm curious, what were these five gods? What were they all about?

One of them was all about sexual pleasure. It was a temple prostitution cult. One of them was all about physical power and control, a god of war and domination. One of them was a god of health, one that would, if you worshiped him, ensure longevity and no injury, that sort of thing. One was a god of astrology, looking to the stars to discern the future. And one was a god of the sun and a god of success at all costs, where they sacrifice children.

Now, that may seem like a very foreign set of gods to you. But I would maintain that if you think about our culture, you can find parallels to all of them. We have a country that has one of the largest sex slavery trafficking environments in the world.

This god of sexual pleasure, you don't think there are people that worship that god, so to speak, today? We have the largest army in the world. Spend more money on it than anybody. You don't think we like power and control in this country? We spend more on medicine than anyone in the world. In fact, we have lapped second place, which is Germany. You don't think we worship the God of health? Astrology, self attained knowledge, we look to the stars and everything else, science, anything that we can to predict the future. We want to know what's going to happen. And we want to be self assured if we think we can figure it out. And success at all costs? Just ask my kids. How much do we spend time with our kids versus sacrifice our time with them in order to go to work and accomplish the things that we think are important?

As I read through that list, as I studied that, I was incredibly convicted. This Samaritan woman who had five husbands that are representative of God's—guess what? We're right there with her. And yet, despite that pursuit, despite the hundreds of years of heartbreak that this people had brought God, Jesus makes a point of going into Samaria and having this exchange. The spirit makes a point of highlighting this for John, to make a point so that John can show us and everyone afterwards that Jesus loves broken sinners who chase after other gods. He loves them so much and pursues them and gently calls them back. That's what's happening in this passage. Do you see that?

Worship as the True Subject

Now, the conversation quickly shifts to a conversation about worship, which I love this. Right? Jesus talking to this woman, he brings up her five husbands and the other one that she's living with that's not her husband. And she goes, well, let's talk about worship. It's like anytime I'm having a conversation and it starts to go somewhere convicting, people love to just talk about theological curiosities. What do you think about infra supralapsarianism, pastor? Oh, I'd love to talk to you about that instead of whatever convicting thing we were just talking about. That's what's going on here. Right? Do you see that? She's like, so, Jewish guy, what do you think about worship? Right? This is something we care about. Right? Samaritans and Jews, we've been fighting over this. Right? She's changing the subject, but I want you to see he's not. Right? It's what he's been talking about all along. That's the kind of irony of this passage. She thinks she's getting away from it. He's digging deeper. He's going for the spiritual reality that this has always been about for him.

So you have to understand that worship—worship is the intimacy, the intimate relationship within the covenant of marriage that God sees with his people. Right? It's like, this is the good stuff. This is why you marry God so that you can come into his presence and be intimate with him.

Think about God's people throughout the years. Moses begged for this. Let me see your glory. Show me your glory. Just show me your face. God's like, I can't show you my face, but you can check out my backside as I pass my glory in front of you. Moses is like, please show it all to me.

Right? You think about David. If I could just have one thing, God, it'd be you. I don't care about the rest of it, the kingdom. Take it all. Just give me you. I just want you. Intimacy and worship and David was called a man after God's own heart because of that.

And then think about Isaiah. You come into this intimate moment with an all powerful infinite God, and you are undone as a person.

Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips — Isaiah 6:5

Right? When you come into an intimate relationship with God, it blows your mind. It is the most incredible, powerful experience that you will ever have. Do you know why? Because you were made for it. You were made for it. And when God wooed his people and brought them in, that's why—for that intimacy. When they came out of Egypt, why was it? So that they can worship me in the wilderness, Moses told Pharaoh. That's why God wants his people to come for worship. It's the good stuff. It's the thing that really matters in our relationship with God ultimately.

You know, Piper says that evangelism is not ultimate. Worship is ultimate because we're going to do evangelism for a little while, but we're going to do worship for eternity. It's what God gives us in this marriage. So this is something that matters a lot to Jesus. She knows it. That's why she's changing the subject.

And some historical context on Samaritans and Judean worship—basically what happened is when the Judeans were eventually carried off by the Babylonians, similar to how the Assyrians carried off the Northern Kingdom. So you guys down here, you're better, but you're not that much better. Right? Eventually, the Judeans get carried off as well.

But they come back and still have their ethnic identity, and they start rebuilding a temple. And the half blood Samaritans up in the North, they say, "Hey, we wanna help." And the pure blooded Judeans are like, "No, no. You guys sold yourselves out to other gods. You're not touching the temple." So the Samaritans said, "Well, fine. We'll build our own temple on Mount Gerizim," which is where Jeff was just in that picture. In Gerizim, they build another temple, and they started temple sacrifices, and they pretended like it was Jerusalem. Like that's what God told them to do when he hadn't.

In fact, they got rid of everything but the first five books of the Bible and stopped reading them in order to reassure themselves that this is actually what God wants. This they built another house for God, put his picture up in it, pretended like they were having intimacy with him, but never invited him, called him, or continued to hang out with other gods. You can imagine the analogy, right? It's like you're married and what you decide to do is move off to a foreign country so you can be closer to your other lovers. You keep the picture of your husband up in the house and you tell all your friends, "Oh yeah, I'm a respectable married person. Still committed to this guy." No, they weren't.

This is what Jesus is saying and why the analogy is so perfect. She's living with a man who's not her husband. There's no covenant relationship with God. And this is why Jesus says, "We worship what we know, you worship what you don't know." They'd forsaken God, but they were pretending like they were still faithful. And Jesus is calling them back, calling her back through this conversation about, "Hey, a time is coming and now is when we will worship in spirit and in truth."

Worship in Spirit and Truth

Now a lot of ink has been spilled over that verse, because everyone thinks they know what it means. I think I know what it means too, and I'm gonna tell you. But I think oftentimes people come at this and they go, "Okay, spirit, spirit, what is worship in spirit? Well, that's the emotional vigor that we feel in worship, right? Like, you're going to worship in spirit, you're going to really mean it. Our worship should be in spirit in that sense." I don't think that's what Jesus is saying here.

When he says our worship is in spirit, they've just been having a conversation about where is worship supposed to be? Is it in Jerusalem or on Gerizim? Which temple, which house is the appropriate place? And Jesus is saying the temple is going to be a spiritual temple. Paul talks about this in Ephesians two. He talks about how once Jesus saves us, the spirit is poured out on us, and we become living stones of a new temple built on his foundation—him and the apostles—into a new temple where he dwells with us forever. We worship in spirit, in unity, together.

I just got done teaching a class for Temple Baptist on Presbyterianism for Baptists. It was lovely. I got up in front of a bunch of people who disagree with me on a bunch of different things and talked about all of those things. That was weird. But one of the things that we kept coming back to is that we are still one because we have the same spirit, the same savior. We worship the same God. Even though we have disagreements, even though there are differences among Christians, if they be full of the Holy Spirit, saved and in Christ Jesus, they're part of the temple.

It's kind of coincidental, don't you think? Our last building was Praise Temple. Now we are worshiping in a place called temple. The point is that there's no building that is the temple—Jesus's point is you all are the temple. Our spiritual reality is we're being built into a new temple. We're one in fellowship because of what he's done.

And here's the beautiful thing: we don't have to achieve that. He's done it. He's not saying to her, "Hey, you gotta get it together and get it right like us Jews." He's saying, "No, I got it right for you so that we can all worship in spirit."

Do you see? And then truth. This is the one we like. Presbyterians, let's worship in truth. Doctrinal purity. Is that what it means? No. Should we worship in doctrinal purity? Yes. I am still a Presbyterian. I believe that. And I think we should search the scriptures, regular principle all the way, baby. Point is, this passage isn't about that.

What Jesus is saying: you're gonna worship in truth. They've been talking about all these false gods, false husbands and false gods, false worship of God. So it is in some sense about doctrinal purity. But Jesus is saying, essentially, you're gonna worship in truth. You're gonna get to worship the true God. All these other gods that you worship, they're gonna betray you. They're gonna let you down. They are going to ruin your life.

But what I have made is a way for you to be brought together into one people, one spiritual temple, and to worship the true God in truth because I have earned it for you. The idea is that opposite of false gods, we get to experience the true God. Do you think about worship like that?

I think it's so easy for us to fall into other ways of thinking about spirit and truth. We could come in here and I've heard many of you comment on how we're the frozen chosen. And golly, I wish we'd get some emotion in here. Nothing wrong with that desire. But be careful with that because it can make a works righteousness of its own. Like, I've got to become emotionally worked up enough so that I am really worshiping God. It's on me.

Or more commonly, I hear people who come in and say, let's talk about our doctrinal purity. Are we doing it right? And everybody's watching the service with their little check cards going, okay, confession of sin, check. Liturgy was a little much today. That sermon, I'm just not so sure James knew what he was talking about. And we lose sight of what's happening. We start to think it's about us. The person who does that chiefly is me. You don't think I'm up here thinking about my performance? And that's the exact opposite of what Jesus wants. He wants us to look at him to see that he's done it, that he's here with us, and that we have everything in him.

Worship as Intimacy, Not Performance

You know, marriage is hard. It's a lot of work. You can ask Katie. Oftentimes, I find myself in our marriage going, am I doing enough? I start to create checklists in my head—did I hug her enough times today? Did I say I love her? Did I do all the right things? All that's good. I think it's good to do the work of marriage. It's important to think about that.

But the picture of worship that Jesus has—you know, when I get that? It's when I look in her eyes. Katie has these deep blue eyes, and I just get lost in them. That's a picture of worship. Not the checklist, not the am I doing enough, not the is he doing enough, but the gazing at the Savior, the lover of our souls, who pursues us even though we run around with other gods, even though we are sinful, even though we are broken, even though objectively in an eternal sense, we are not attractive by comparison. He invites us to gaze upon him, and all we feel is just pure joy and grace and love and amazement that he died for us.

CTK, may we worship the Savior who we have. May we forget our foreign gods that we chase after and find in this moment on Sunday morning a beautiful opportunity to gaze into our loving Savior's eyes and remember that this is the time of the week where all of that doesn't matter. All that matters is that we are here with him and he's done everything we need. This is a place where you should feel total freedom to be who you are before God. That's why we confess our sin. It doesn't matter. He loves us. Just like God pursued Israel, the Northern kingdom, the wild ones, and presented that truth through this story with this Samaritan woman, he loves us just as much.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the lover of our soul, that you are the one who calls us to yourself, and that you have done everything that we need. Lord, help us to gaze upon you and not see all of the distractions, not see the things that we get drawn into, but instead see you and be able to rest and rejoice in loving intimacy because of your greatness and your goodness. As we turn our attention to the supper, Lord, help us to let down our guard, to come into your spiritual house, your temple, which is made up of all of us together, and rejoice and worship you. We pray this in your name. Amen.