John 4: 27-42
Revival in Small-town Samaria
Turn in your Bibles to the gospel of John, the fourth
chapter verse 27-42. This is our Missions Conference week, and this morning we
were focusing in the worship service on Psalm 67, the theme for the entire
conference. We were reminded of the theme of that Psalm summarized by the title
of John Piper’s book Let the Nations Be Glad, and here in John 4,
we have a story of the conversion of a woman of Samaria–a woman from a
different ethnic background to the Jews. A story that involves not just her
conversion, but the conversion of many other Samaritans as a consequence of what
she did.
Now, it’s very interesting as all of these things
work out in God’s providence; and not perhaps by design on my part, but in verse
24 in this chapter, there is a marvelous verse that in some way brings together
what we hope to do during this entire missions conference, because in verse 24
of this narrative of Jesus’ discourse with the Samaritan woman, He interjects a
conversation with her that, at first, looks like a digression on her part. I’ve
never been persuaded that it was a digression on Jesus’ part; Jesus knew exactly
where this conversation was going, but it is interesting that in the midst of
trying to evangelize this woman, she introduces the theme of worship.
This morning Ligon quoted that very famous statement
by John Piper, who said that “the goal of the church is not missions but
worship. Missions exist because worship doesn’t; and that the ultimate goal of
God in the plan of redemption is to have a people who will worship Him.” And
it’s interesting here that Jesus says to the woman in verse 24, “God is Spirit
and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.” God is
seeking worshippers. He’s not just seeking those who will call themselves
converts; He’s not just seeking numbers; He’s seeking worshippers–men and women
who will fall down and acknowledge Him to be the one true and living God, men
and women who will come in and through Jesus Christ to acknowledge Him as king
of kings and Lord of Lords. Missions exist because worship doesn’t. Now let’s
read together from chapter John 4:27.
“At this point His disciples came, and they marveled that
He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why
do You speak with her?” So the woman left her water pot and went into the city
and said to the men, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have
done; this is not the Christ, is it?” They went out of the city, and were coming
to Him. In the meanwhile, the disciples were requesting Him, saying, “Rabbi,
eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” The
disciples therefore were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything
to eat did he?” 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 and
then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, “Lift up your eyes and
look on the fields that are white for harvest. Already he who reaps is receiving
wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who
reaps may rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true, ‘One
sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored;
others have labored and you have entered in to their labor.” And from the city
many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who
testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” So when the
Samaritans came to Him, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed
there two days and many more believed because of His word; and they were saying
to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we
have heard for ourselves and know that this one is indeed the Savior of the
world.” Amen. May God bless to us the reading of His holy and inerrant Word. May
we pray together.
Father, we thank you for the Scriptures. We thank you
that holy men of old wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Now
bless this word to our hearts for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Several hymns come to mind as I read this story. One
is “O Christ, in Thee My Soul Hath Found” and you remember the lines: I tried
the broken cisterns, Lord; but ah, the waters failed. Even as I stooped
to drink, they fled and mocked me as I wailed. Now, none but Christ can
satisfy. None other name for me. There’s love and life and lasting joy, Lord
Jesus, found in Thee. This woman had come to the well with her water pots,
and we won’t go into the whole of that story. She had been coming for many, many
years to fill her water pots, but the point that John wants you to understand is
that however often she may have filled those water pots with water, the cisterns
of her soul were empty. She was a woman who had been married, at least
she had been with five men and the man she was now with was not her husband. She
had had a very colorful life shall we say. She had been trying the broken
cisterns of this world and she had found them to be empty. She had found them to
be unsatisfying–to be such that they had never filled her deepest requirements.
And now she meets another man. She meets Jesus of
Nazareth, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and it is as though He says to her,
“Will you have this man to be your Savior? And will you love Him and serve Him
and follow Him all the days of your life?” That which you have found to be
wanting in the world will be more than made up with your relationship with Me.
“From heaven He came and sought her to be His holy bride, and with His own blood
He bought her and for her life He died.”
And what happened as a consequence of the conversion
of this adulterous woman, this prostitute, this low-life woman of Samaria? As a
result of her conversion, wonderful and astonishing and marvelous as it is, she
goes back to her town and tells the men of her town–it would be interesting to
know which men she actually told–perhaps some that she had been intimate with.
Who knows? But the marvel of sovereign, seeking grace is that many of these men
believed. It’s a wonderful account of a spiritual awakening in the New
Testament. It’s actually the first account of a spiritual awakening in the New
Testament.
It’s what we would call a revival. Not the
kind of revival that is announced in churches all over the South here, that
revival takes place next Wednesday at 7:00, and we’ll meet for two weeks–that’s
not a revival. Whatever that is, it’s not a revival. A revival is a
sovereign work of God where He quickens not just one, but many all at once and
brings them into a living and vital relationship with Himself and at the same
time, stirs the hearts of His people that they might be aflame with love and
zeal for Him.
I. What kind of people does God
need as evangelists for revival to happen.
I want us to think through this narrative this evening with our
missions conference in mind, and first of all, I want us to ask the question:
What is the instrument that God uses in this awakening, in this revival? And the
answer is: A single woman. A solitary woman whose life has been dramatically
turned around; she has abandoned her water jar. Didn’t you see that in the
reading in verse 28? The woman left her water pot. Imagine if this were Stephen
Spielberg or Francis Ford Coppola making a movie. Imagine what they would do
with something like this. This water jar had been a symbol of her life, and now
that she has found Jesus, she no longer needs that broken, empty water jar that
could never satisfy. I think that if this were a movie, the last few scenes
would be this water jar and the camera coming out with this wide-angle shot of
this water jar–the symbol of all that she has left behind. She has found Jesus
Christ. She has found a living, vital Savior and what does she do? She
does what she cannot prevent herself from doing: she tells others of what Jesus
has done for her.
Now, I’m fascinated by asking the question: What
technique did she use? And the answer is that she had no technique. She did
three simple things. She pointed them to who Jesus is. Verse 29 says,
“Come, see a man who told me all the things that I had done.” And she had done
some things. Oh, perhaps some of you have a similar testimony when Jesus found
you. In your sin-twisted condition, He found you in the mess that your life was
in. In the inadequacy of your life; in the fact that your life was not
integrated, not coming together–everything under the sun was vanity and Jesus
found you. And this woman points them to who Jesus is. In verse 29, “Come see a
man who told me all the things that I had done. Surely this is the Christ, the
Messiah, the long-expected Savior.” She points to Him. He is the one who found
me. He is the one who knows more about me than I know about myself. He knows
more about me than I want anyone to know about me. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that she tells what Jesus has
done for her. This is the man who told me everything that I ever did.
She tells them of what Jesus had done for her, to the whole community she tells
this. It was extraordinary, a woman who by nature would be defensive and would
have reacted defensively if anyone came to near to her personal life. She’s
telling everyone, that here is someone who has uncovered the deepest recesses of
her heart, and exposed her wretchedness, and exposed her need, and exposed her
sin. And she invites them to come to Jesus, and to find the same thing. “And
if you come to Him,” she says to them, “you’ll find Him to be the same as I have
found Him.” That’s all she did.
Is that all that it takes? That’s a fair enough
question to ask. Is that all that it takes? And the answer is, “Yes” and
“No.” Yes, in the sense that it doesn’t take great eloquence. It doesn’t take
a Ph.D. It doesn’t take seminary training. It doesn’t take 20 years of Bible
study to be able to tell some else of what Jesus has done for you. It doesn’t
take great social standing. It doesn’t take great amounts of education. This
simple woman told others what Jesus had done for her.
But, no, that’s not all it takes, for when she said
what she said, she said it out of a full heart. She said it out of a heat
that’s fallen in love, and, I’m going to say, for the very first time in her
life, with someone who has, can I say it, ravished her soul. She says it out of
the fullness of her heart, she says it out of out a transformed life, and not a
transparent life. They could see, but there was something now about this woman
that was different. Her life has been transformed. She had a sense of her
need, and she had been lifted by the power and grace of Jesus, and that’s what
it takes. That’s all that it takes. Transformed lives.
You know, as we come to a missions conference, we
think automatically of all countries, way, way across the oceans somewhere, one
of the great continents of the world. But missions involves at its most basic
level, speaking for Jesus here and now in the communities in which we live. And
here’s this woman, she’s going back to her own community and to her own people
and to her own kind, and those who knew her well, and she tells them what Jesus
has done, out of a transformed life. And those are the instruments that God
uses.
God can use you. You don’t have to go to the
uttermost parts of the world. You don’t have to go even beyond your neighbor
across the fence. Just speak, just tell them what Jesus has done for you, and
do it out of a heart that is full of love for Him. And that’s all God used.
Isn’t’ that extraordinary? That’s all He used. The testimony of this woman.
Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Isn’t’ this the Christ?
You know, it’s not a great testimony, is it? There
are better testimonies than that. I was thinking, what great testimony could I
use to illustrate this, and every single one that I was thinking of, and I was
thinking of John Bunyan, and John Newton, and John Calvin, and John Knox, but
all of them were getting too complicated. Because the point of this narrative
is that this is a lisping, stammering, tongue, giving testimony to Jesus. You
know, you don’t have to have courses in evangelism to witness for Jesus.
Instruction in evangelism is useful and we need it, but you don’t have to have
that to be able to testify for Jesus. If you are waiting to be instructed about
how to give testimony for Jesus, there’s something wrong. Just speak, just tell
people how much you love Him, and how much He has done for you, and that you
couldn’t live for one second without Him. That’s all she did. Doesn’t God use
broken jars of clay in order to promote the sovereignty of what He’s doing?
II.
But the second thing I want us to see is the explanation that Jesus gives
of this revival.
There’s a sort of split screen thing taking place in this narrative.
First of all, we’re with Jesus and the disciples. Then, we are with the woman
in this little town in Samaria. Then, we are back with Jesus and the
disciples. And then, we are with these Samaritan people coming to Jesus. It’s
flip flopping between these two scenes, and the focus now of the conversation is
between Jesus and the disciples who are blind about spiritual matters. They’re
speaking to Him, they’re all in a tizzy because Jesus has missed his dinner.
Now let’s not be too hard on them. That was good, it was honorable of them to
be concerned that He had missed His lunch. “Do you want anything to eat, Jesus,
You must eat?” And He says this extraordinary thing, “I have food to eat that
you don’t know anything about.” He had been so energized, He had been so caught
up in witnessing to this woman. It takes so much energy to speak about
something that’s intensely personal and intensely profound, and something that
is intensely close to you. If angels rejoice when a sinner in converted, Jesus
must have been bursting at the thought that this woman was coming to faith. As
He could see before His very eyes the work of the Holy Spirit transforming her
heart and bringing her out of darkness and her sinful past and into a wonderful
relationship with Jesus. And He must have been bursting. You know, when you’re
on that spiritual, emotional high, and you adrenalin is flowing, and Jesus had
adrenalin. He was a real man. He wasn’t concerned about food, He wasn’t even
thinking about food, and even now He’s still not ready to eat.
And we can imagine Jesus with the disciples at the
well and these Samaritans are coming toward them. The Samaritans wore these
white clothes, and many still do in areas of Samaria today. Perhaps there were
hundreds, I don’t know how many, but they were coming towards them at the well,
and it’s like a field that’s white unto harvest. “Look,” He says, “the fields
are white unto harvest, the time of reaping has come. The sower has been sowing
and now it’s reaping time.” I’m not sure what Jesus is saying here. He may
have been referring to the conversation He’s just had with the woman. He has
sown and reaped all at once. Now, that’s not always the case. Sometimes people
will sow for years and years and years, and another person will come and reap.
But in this instance, He had sown and reaped all at once, and the one who was
sowing and the one was reaping are rejoicing together. He may have been talking
about the fact that John the Baptist had been baptizing in this area, that was
referred to back in chapter 3, and He may have been saying, “John has been
sowing and now we are reaping, and the two of them have come together.” Maybe
He’s making a more general point and He’s saying, “The Old Testament has been a
period of sowing and now is the period of reaping. Now the Spirit is being
poured out. Now the end of the ages has dawned and is already breaking forth
into this world so that even now we’re seeing just a little glimpse of this
woman and perhaps the conversion of the Samaritans in all their whiteness coming
towards Him as though the fulfillment of Psalm 67 is there. Let the nations be
glad. And we’re seeing just a little glimpse of that.
So the explanation for the revival is twofold: a
plowing and sowing has been taking place. And don’t ever despise, if God calls
you to be the sower and not the reaper. I was thinking of William Carey, that
wonderful, godly astonishing man who goes to India in 1793 after writing this
tract, this small booklet, Inquiry into the Obligations of the Christians to
use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen. They gave books titles like
that then. There was a godly elder on the missions board who stood up and spoke
to Carey, “Sit down, young man, if God intends the heathen to be converted, He
will do it without your aid or mine.” Which sounded very Calvinistic, but it
wasn’t. It was very unbiblical. Carey was in India for seven long, hard years
before he saw a single convert. When he died he had seen the Scriptures
translated and printed into many, many, some say thirty or forty different
languages. He had founded a college, he had become a professor, he had seen
many, many converts to Jesus Christ. Don’t ever despise if God calls you to be
a sower, giving the word for Jesus, testifying for His greatness, His beauty,
and maybe someone else will come along and reap what you have sown.
The second explanation is the timing of God. These
disciples couldn’t see it, but the day of reaping had dawned. A new age had
dawned, and Christ had already beginning to march through the world and call the
nations to Himself. It’s a beautiful little cameo sketch that we have here, of
what Christ is still doing, marching through the world and claiming the nations
and people groups to Himself.
III.
There’s a third thing that I want us to see, and that’s the effects of
this revival.
They are, of course,
glorious. They are basically simple. What happened in this woman happened in
the community. What happened in this woman in the transformation of her life
happened now in the community in many, many people, all at once. And that’s
what a revival is. Notice, they want to have Jesus stay with them. That’s a
good sign. When they want to have Jesus stay with them. I wonder if I can
stretch this text just a little. Seminary students be quiet a moment. Let me
stretch this text just a little, because sometimes it’s all too clear in our
lives that we’ve had enough of Jesus for today, and the sign that a work of the
spirit of god had descended upon this community was that they hadn’t had enough
of Jesus, and they wanted Him to stay. I was going to make a poor illustration
about Super Bowl Sunday at this point, but I’ll refrain, because the people to
whom I want to apply it aren’t here. You understand.
Notice that they want to be taught by Jesus. It
isn’t a great method that God uses. That’s something that Robert Murray
McCheyne, in his very brief life once said, “It’s not great methods God uses;
it’s great men.” And he meant men and women, filled with the Spirit. Men and
women who are in love with Jesus Christ.
In his book, The Second Evangelical Awakening
in 1859, Edwin Orr describes something that took place in Northern Ireland,
where I was a minister for 18 years. The townsfolk of Colerain in the part of
County Derry, close to the County Antrim revival centers, witnessed some of the
most amazing scenes in the whole revival. A school boy, under deep conviction
of sin, seemed so unable to continue his studies that the kindly teacher sent
him home in the company of another boy already converted. On the way home, they
found an empty house and entered it to pray. At last, the unhappy boy found
peace and returned immediately to the class to tell his teacher, ‘I am so happy,
I have the Lord Jesus in my heart.’ His innocent testimony had its effect upon
the class, and boy after boy after slipped outside. The master, standing on
something to look out the window, observed the boys, each one on his knees in
prayer, a little apart from each other. The master, so overcome, asked the boys
to comfort them. Soon, the whole school was in strange disorder, and the
ministers were sent for to deal with seekers after peace. School boys, school
girls, parents, and neighbors, the premises being occupied until eleven o’clock
that night.”
You know, that was a hundred and fifty years ago or
so, and are you saying, friend, “That could never happen today.” Are you
saying that couldn’t’ happen at First Pres Day School? Are you saying that
couldn’t happen at JA or Prep or somewhere else in town? Because in saying
that, you’re denying the sovereignty of God. Do you believe that’s the
challenge? Do you believe that what happened in 1859, do you believe that what
happened in this town of Samaria, could happen here in Mississippi, in Jackson?
May God fill our hearts until they overflow, so that we might believe that what
God has done in the past He can do today and tomorrow. Let’s pray together.
Father, as we begin this Missions Conference and
this Missions Week especially, fill us with faith in Your greatnesss, in Your
glory, in Your sovereignty, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.