MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS
#828a MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS
Scripture John 4:1-42 Date 2/19/1985
Passage: Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7 When 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.) 9 The 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.[a]) 10 Jesus 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? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but 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.” 15 The 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.” 16 He 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. 18 The 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. 20 Our 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. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet 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. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” 25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
27 Just 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?” 28 Then, 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?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him. 31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” 33 Then 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. 35 Don’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. 36 Even 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. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I 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.”
Many Samaritans Believe
39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
42 They 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.”
Purpose: Begin a series lasting through two weeks on THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST, here introducing the Christ who came.
Keywords: Christ the Messiah Doctrine of Christ
Timeline/Series: Doctrine of Christ
Introduction
My father has been an avid reader for most of his adult life. I remember often encountering him in some reading venture. What he particularly liked was westerns, and Bret Harte was a favorite.
One of Bret Harte’s most famous stories was called “The Luck of Roaring Camp.” It is about a wild mining camp in the late Nineteenth Century. Roughness and crudeness were not only acceptable, they were expected. The story revolves around a young, pregnant woman in the camp, who, when she gave birth to a fatherless son, died of complications from the delivery. The miners were left to care for the baby. Unexpected changes began to take place. The baby was kept in an immaculately clean room, amidst the rubble of the camp. But soon, other areas began to improve in appearance. Cleanliness became the order of the day. Swearing, which had always been the language of the men, came to be strictly forbidden. Their favorite pastime had always been drinking. After the coming of this child in among them, they spent their off hours taking care of “their” baby. What a difference one little baby can make in one’s perspective of life.
Grapple, if you can, with the reality of what it has meant, not only to the believing Jew of the first century who expected Him, and to whom He came, but to all of us, that the Christ has come into our world and became one with us.
I heard a classic recently about children, and pleasure derived. Someone said “If I had known how much I was going to enjoy my grandchildren, I would have had them first.”
I. The Samaritan Woman Allows Us to Examine the Expectations of Messiah. V25 “The woman said to Him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When He comes, He will tell us all things.’”
First, a word about Samaria. When David’s kingdom was divided during the reign of Rehoboam, it was divided north from south, between Judah, and a confederation of the other tribes. 25 years after the death of Jeroboam, their first king, Omri, then King, bought a site identified as the Hill of Samaria (I Kings 16:24), and built a new capital called Samaria. This kingdom collapsed in 721BC, many of the people were taken away, others brought in. The feelings between Judah and Samaritans worsened. After Judah fell, people returned, Samaritans sought to prevent settlement and reorganization.
The Samaritan: She comes to Jacob’s well, away from her village. Why? She opens up immediately to Jesus. She senses quality, she has religious values. Jesus shows His concern for an unseemly woman. She identifies her concept of Messiah, limited to Samaritan horizons. “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain”—the shrine at the site of destroyed temple on Mt. Gerizim. Settle human differences.
It will surely help to understand better what the Jews expected. The term means “anointed.” Word has various Old Testament uses not referring to Christ. “Christ” is Greek form. Some expected a warrior/anointed, a David.
Others expected a priestly Messiah who would be like God’s regent. What is clear at Masada is that these faithful Jews waited for a “deliverer.” When none came, they committed mass suicide.
We will talk a little later about what Jesus taught of the Messiah.
II. Jesus Gives Us Our Best Practice of Messianic Expectation. He identifies Himself as a Jew, but not a standard Jew. He is in Samaria. He is at Jacob’s Well talking to a Samaritan woman. V7 “Give me a drink.” It is not that they do not drink from a vessel. Sugchrontai—to use in common.
He reveals to such a one as the complex reality of His messiahship. He has established Messiah’s humanity. (See John 1:14—and the Word was manifested among us.) He was weary, needed food. He refutes any idea of nationalistic deliverer.
He affirmed His message. She spoke of “proclaimer,” v25. He acknowledges this. V26 “I Am.” Exodus 3:14, “And God said to Moses, ‘I Am who I Am’” . . . say . . . ‘I Am has sent me to you.’”
Jesus identifies Himself as THE ANOINTED OF GOD:
- In Jerusalem, John 10:24f, “If you are the Christ, tell us.” “My sheep . . . follow me.” Salvation is His goal.
- In the garden at prayer, John 17:3, “That they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.”
- At Jesus’ trial before the High Priest, Mark 14:61, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus replied “I am.” Then He stresses that His throne is heavenly not national.
- The Risen Christ so identified Himself, Luke 24:26f, to the couple from Emmaus—“ought the Christ to have suffered these things?”
III. Finally, a Brief Word about the Salvation He Came to Offer. V42, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the World.”
Jesus’ enterprise is not material or national, it is spiritual. He came into the world as the promised and anointed of God. To redeem all, and to reach reconciliation among them. He came to fashion faith not for the Jew only, but for Jew and Samaritan; descendant of Abraham and one never having heard; child of faith and one born of superstition; Jew as well as Gentile—Romans 2:10f, “to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile, for there is no respect of persons with God.”
He forever destroyed the barriers that separate us one from the other.
Conclusion
Historian Will Durant is reported to have once said, “The greatest question of our time is not communism versus individualism, not Europe versus America, not even the East versus the West: It is whether a man can bear to live without God.”
Added: Source PBS 12/12/1999, 7:50a.m., “Circle of Light.”
Young Indian boy alone with a fire and the belief that his grandfather’s spirit was in the trees nearby.
Elk comes to rest in still light, scar on his flank
Wolf comes to opposite side, blind in one eye
Flurrying of wings and an eagle rests opposite, leg is broken.
Boy asks each what the fire means: It is a circle of light in which each can rest without fear.