The Seventh Man
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· 759 viewsSamaritan woman has been pursuing love and failed until she meets the Seventh Man.
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Why is Jesus leaving Judea?
Why is Jesus leaving Judea?
Pharisees knew That Jesus was growing in popularity above John the Baptist.
His disciples were baptizing more people than John the Baptist.
Where is Jesus going?
Where is Jesus going?
John 4:3 Tells us that Jesus is traveling from Judea to Galilee.
What piece of real estate is between these two locations and what can we know about it? (Samaria)
As Jesus travels north He and the disciples go through Samaria. Long before they took this trip changes to the population had occurred.
2 Kings 17:24-41 tells us that the king of Assyria resettled this part of Israel with people from other countries who did not serve God. The text further tells us that God sent lions “which killed some of them.” The king of Assyria then sent priests from God’s people, at the request of the new residents, to teach them how to worship the true God. In verse 33 we read that “They feared the LORD, yet served their own gods—according to the rituals of the nations from among whom they were carried away.”
This mixture of religions was something that caused the Jewish people in Jesus’ day to view Samaritans with great disdain.
Imagine someone preparing you a salad with the choicest ingredients and washing all those choice ingredients in your toilet bowl… Samaritans were not appreciated.
According to the footnotes in the Andrews Study Bible “The Jews of that time hated the Samaritans and felt they defiled everything they touched, so it was remarkable that Jesus even spoke with the woman in this story.”
So Sychar is where our story takes place.
English Standard Version Chapter 4
5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
This is Jacob’s Well at Shechem from the SDA Bible Commentary.
It looks like you need a little bit of rope to get to the water at the bottom of the well.
This stereoscopic picture was taken in 1900. There is a structure above the well, which I don’t imagine being there when Jesus sat down by the well to refresh Himself.
Jesus sat down by the well and waited for the audience to arrive for His divinely appointed lecture. He was reviewing His notes when the audience of one arrived in the middle of the day.
Jesus begins the interaction simply enough.
Give me a drink
This is your wonderful message, Jesus? Give me a drink?!
How about “I am the Messiah that you have been waiting for”?
She is just as incredulous as we are at this moment. She responds with...
John 4:9
The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
As we will soon find out she has her reasons to distrust this strange man by her sacred time alone at Jacob’s Well. All she wanted was privacy prying eyes with knowing glances and whispers from those around her. She has been hurt.
Maybe if she is a little harsh this Stranger will leave her alone.
But He is no ordinary stranger and His response to her question changes the flow of favors in the opposite direction.
Jn 4:10
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.”
Jn 4:11-15
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Now we have come past all the preliminaries. Her interest is peaked and she wants what it is that Jesus has to offer, even though she does not fully comprehend what it is. She thinks He is offering actual water. In reality what is He offering? … Himself, the Creator of water. But we are jumping ahead of the story.
Such a marvelous gift must be given to more than one person at a time, right?
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
There is no accusation or knowing whispers with side glances. There are not guilt trips given. Her struggles to find the right man and true love are laid bare between her and this Stranger by the well.
After He has let her know that He knows about the six men in her life, what would be your question?
Her next question reveals that she has more than a passing interest in things of eternal value.
The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
What are you doing lady? You are deflecting the previous observation. He knows you better than you know you and you start a theological debate?!
Jesus does not miss a beat, though. Let’s read on.
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 is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Jesus takes her from the idea that worship is locational to the knowledge that worship is relational.
This woman has been on a long journey. The city she lives in is uncomfortable for her. She comes to the well to get away from the whispers and knowing looks. Her own heart has not given her peace. She has believed that happiness and peace is attainable, but after being married five times and shacking up with a sixth man she has yet to find a place of peace.
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”
She has just pinned her hopes on a divine promise. Messiah is coming!
When He comes everything will be different. My life will be much better.
since most of us have read the story before we know what is coming. But I ask you to see it from her perspective. She has tried her best to find love and peace.
Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
She has just met The Seventh Man.
Her life has been a series of pain and sorrow.
She has been presented with part of truth and has been thirsty to know the Messiah.
Not only has she met the Messiah, but He has accepted her. Through kindness He has demonstrated to her that He loves her. Her life is immediately transformed. Her relation to the people in her home town is transformed in an instant.
What happens when she learns that she is speaking to the Messiah?
So the woman left her water jar and went away into town 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 of the town and were coming to him.
She becomes an evangelist to her own people.
The disciples had a special role in relation to Jesus. Just prior to this story we find that they are baptizing and probably teaching people about Jesus. They left Jesus at Jacob’s well and have gone in to town to get food. But they did not bring anyone back with them to meet the Messiah.
They had a similar mindset to what the woman felt Jesus should have, being a Jew.
Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”
Jesus could see into their hearts. While she is sharing the good news of the Messiah, Jesus is breaking down the barriers in their hearts so that they would be willing to share the gospel with those that they considered unworthy to hear the Gospel.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”
So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.
Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.
For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’
I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
The Bible does not tell us who did the sowing. But Jesus has started harvesting. The disciples have not felt it worthwhile to harvest souls in this worthless area, but Jesus knows that the people here are receptive to the gospel. He will not turn away from those that hunger and thirst for salvation and He also works on breaking down the prejudices of His own disciple’s hearts.
Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.
The people are headed to Jesus from the town and Jesus points to them so that the disciples understand that He means to save them in His kingdom along with the rest of God’s children.
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.”
So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.
And many more believed because of his word.
They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
People are still meeting Jesus today for the first time.
They have heard talk about Him. Some of them have heard that they are not good enough.
Not too long ago I met with a dear lady who was approaching the end of her life. She knew of the Messiah and loved Him deeply.
She had gone through a similar experience as the woman at the well, but different to match the issues that our society is facing.
Married
Left him
Same sex union
Back to husband
Back to same sex partner
and finally alone.
she is in love with God and reveling in the knowledge of His love, but is certain that her sins will keep her from being with God.
She was feeling excluded from heaven.
So I shared some passages with her...
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
I also shared with her Paul’s self assessment.
This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them all.
I returned to visit with her a few weeks later.
She shared with me that for the first time in a long time she had finally been at peace. She had the assurance that she had also met The Seventh Man.
Have you heard Jesus speak into your heart?
Does He know you just as He was able to gaze into the heart of the woman at the well?
Maybe we are asking the wrong question.
The truth is that He does know you. The real question is:
Will you accept the One thirsting to save you, from the life filled with those things that do not matter, into a relation with the Seventh Man, the Messiah, the One who gave His life to be close to you?
If you have never encountered Him as the woman at the well did that day, but today you are hearing Him speak love, peace and acceptance into your heart, would you stand today and invite Him to continue to speak peace into your heart?
For those who have encountered Him before and now you see another facet of God’s love and wish to respond to Him, I invite you to stand in commitment togo and share with those in your sphere of influence the love of God, like the Samaritan woman.
Would you stand with me?