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Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
The daily news continues to be heart-wrenching and mind-blowing…, from almost every corner of the world. The sights we see on TV day after day, of empty streets, overflowing hospitals, emergency temporary medical facilities, and panicked financial people, are both shocking and numbing. After a while we reach a point of saturation with bad news, don’t we? Have you discovered the secret of balancing the amount of TV news or other entertainment you are absorbing with a significant amount of time spent quietly with God and His Word of truth, comfort and hope, and perhaps listening to worship music? Is God speaking directly to you in these troubled times?
It is so vital that we all spend significant time each day gaining God’s perspective, a longer term perspective, even an eternal perspective, in these radical times. Yesterday was March 23. May I urge us today to put ourselves into the very familiar Psalm 23? “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.” Go ahead, slowly, take it phrase by phrase. Find a quiet spot. Read it out-loud stopping after each phrase applying it to your current situation.
In times of anxiety sheep find comfort being close to their shepherd whom they know and trust. He has earned their trust by his careful watch over them, his faithful guidance of them to lush pastures and clean water, his alert protection of them whenever danger looms. Good shepherds love their sheep. I have two shepherd/sheep pictures for you. . . I wonder which one seems more like how you feel today?
Jesus, understanding how much like sheep we really are, said in John 10 “I am the good shepherd; I know My sheep and My sheep know Me…and I lay down My life for the sheep…My sheep listen to My voice, I know them and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:14,15,27-30) Can you own that my friends? Is Jesus speaking about His relationship with YOU? Do you feel safe and secure in the hand of God?
My friends, few if any of us have ever experienced such a global pandemic of both health and financial chaos. Almighty God our Father, in His sovereign authority over all; and Jesus Christ our Savior; and the Holy Spirit who lives within all people who have fully trusted in Jesus for their salvation from sin… invite us to find our peace and comfort in God’s Words of truth; and also in our genuine, living relationship with Jesus as our Good Shepherd. But few of us have ever found ourselves in a world like this! Now we need a spiritual life which is powerful, very real, and fully engages the harsh reality of our lives today.
The truth is, most western Christians have not experienced the harsh challenges of life our fellow Christians have experienced in South America, Africa or Asia. And with Churches temporarily closed and restrictions on gathering together, we Christians in the west are living through the greatest challenge to our Faith and our relationship with God that we’ve ever faced.
God’s Word will come alive with meaning and power as you do not rush through it, but rather sit and carefully ponder, meditate, pray over the words and phrases you read, asking the Holy Spirit of God to help you absorb God’s Truth in power applied directly to your heart (Hebrews 4:12). These are times to keep a journal where you can write your thoughts, your questions, and then write what God speaks into your mind and heart. Also write down any and all evidences you see of God’s Presence with you, His involvement in your specific life circumstances.
Years from now your journal could be a prize possession as it will chronicle your journey with God through this very difficult time. Watch for the unexpected, even the little things, which are fingerprints of God’s direct involvement as you walk through each day. Talk to God, just as you do a close friend… often, honestly, very personally, out-loud. He is keeping you alive each moment and He knows you better than you know yourself. Now is a great time to nurture your relationship with God to a very close, personal, intimate relationship, perhaps unlike anything you’ve ever had before. He’s ready!
Now let’s rejoin Jesus and a small group of men who are getting to know Jesus, as they journey with Him toward Easter. Yesterday we looked at John 3 and a remarkable encounter with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. Do you see in John 3:22 Jesus and these men left Jerusalem after the Passover festival, beginning their long trek back to their homes in the Galilee region, north about 70 miles.
The region immediately to the north of Jerusalem was called Samaria, a region good Jews avoided at all times. Centuries before when the Kingdom of Israel had divided (1 Kings 12) into the northern 10 tribes, called Israel, and the southern two tribes called Judah, there was constant animosity and frequent battles between them. From the time the northern tribes split away to be their own ‘nation’, they turned away from the God of Israel and worshiped idols. (1 Kings 12:25-33)
When finally in 722bc, the Assyrian army invaded and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, one of their methods of destroying a society was to bring in conquered people from other lands and settle them and urge them to intermarry. This was the plight of Israel, and thus Samaria became a land occupied by non-Jews from many lands. Over the centuries bigotry and resentment was so strong, Jews traveling from Jerusalem north to the Galilee region, would cross the Jordan river to the east, travel north and eventually cross back again near the Sea of Galilee. Or travel west from Jerusalem and then north along the Mediterranean Sea coast road, averting any contact with Samaritans.
For this reason when John, who was one of the men traveling with Jesus, tells us in John 4 that Jesus “…had to go through Samaria…”, it should cause us to pause and imagine the concern the men getting to know Jesus would have had. Why would Jesus feel a need to intentionally go through Samaria?
As we read through this chapter today look closely at the kindness and friendship Jesus offers a woman who has obviously had a very hard life. Do you see a pattern developing with Jesus? First a wedding feast shamed because they ran out of wine, but Jesus was there. Then a legalistic, highly educated, Pharisee, Nicodemus, comes to question Jesus at night. And now a Samaritan woman at mid day, worn by the difficult life she’d lived…but Jesus was there. Do you see His compassionate heart, for all types of people? Can you accept that for you today my friends, where-ever you are physically, financially and emotionally, in our chaotic world?
Water fetching was hard work, especially in the heat of the day, but it was necessary. Homes then did not have running water, and think about all the water you use in a day! In vs. 17 & 18 we learn this woman has been married 5 times, and is living with a man who is not her husband. Let’s be careful here to not jump to unfair conclusions. This means she has either been widowed, divorced, abandoned, several times.
Can you imagine the feelings of heartbreak, rejection, and the pain she has lived with, out of her desperation to not be alone and destitute? Even now, she lives with a man willing to have her under his roof, but as she hauls the water, it appears she’s little more than his servant. And into this broken heart comes Jesus, unlike any man she’s ever met!
It’s mid-day in Palestine. Jesus has been walking the dusty roads for miles. It’s hot. He’s thirsty. This unnamed woman is also thirsty, and weary, worn by the unfairness of life. They talk of water and the prejudices which should separate them. But then Jesus says something strange; “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13,14) It begs an obvious question. . .what about you and me? Of course we understand our daily, physical thirst and we are grateful to God that thirst quenching drinks are so easily available to most everyone hearing my voice today, no matter where you are in our world.
But what about this Jesus given water that “will become…a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”? What is that like in YOU and me? Perhaps never before in your entire lifetime is that question more appropriate than right now, with our world in chaos and fear!
Do you have a Jesus given spring of thirst quenching peace that passes all understanding, as Paul described it in Philippians 4:4-7? “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace that passes all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.“ Has there ever been a time like the present, when these verses are more put to the test in your life and mine?
As Jesus and the woman move their conversation from water to worship, Jesus makes a profound statement: “A time is coming, and has now come, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is Spirit and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23,24) Time for an important question: with your church closed, how do you worship Almighty God in spirit and in truth?
Then comes another ‘defining moment’ for Jesus. “The woman said, ‘I know that Messiah is coming. When He comes He will explain everything to us.’ Then Jesus declared, ‘I who speak to you am HE.” (John 4:25,26) Time stood still. The woman gasped I’m sure, and just held her breath! No one had ever imagined making such a bold statement. She probably expected a lightning bolt or at least this man who had just said it to fall over dead of a heart attack. God would simply not allow anyone to say such a thing and live. . .unless! Unless it was true! Could it be true?
Do you see what the woman did? Vs. 28 says she left her water jar, rushed back to town and began to tell people what had just happened. And their response? They came to see Jesus, and vs. 39 says, “Many of the Samaritans from the that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony. So when the Samaritans came to Him they urged Him to stay with them and He stayed two days. And because of His words, many more became believers. They said to the woman, ‘We no longer believe just because of what you have said, now we have heard for ourselves and we believe this man really is the Savior of the world.” (John 4:39-42)
So now let me ask us all. . . why do you think Jesus felt He “had to go through Samaria”? What had changed in that town and in the lives of the men who were walking with Him, when they left Samaria? And what about you and me today? In this time of global chaos and the pandemic of fear, could it be, we are facing an unprecedented spiritual harvest in the world, as Jesus said in vs. 35 “…open your eyes and look at the fields. They are ripe unto harvest.”
Oh Lord Jesus, in this time of unprecedented fear and global chaos, I’m asking that you would draw each of us much closer to You and that we would experience the miracle of You speaking into each of our lives as you did this Samaritan woman, just exactly what you know we each need to hear.
Click to read today’s chapter: Psalm 23; John 1. (At the top you can choose a different translation.)
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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