-Transcript-
00:38 Thank you for joining me. Welcome to the cafe. Today we are getting into the book of John.
00:41 Oh man, what a wonderful book, amen, and there’s so much that comes out of the book of John that we can learn from.
00:50 In fact, the book of John is one of those books that, I should say the Gospel of John is one of those books that I recommend new Christians get into, amen,
00:59 to understand the character of Jesus, the struggles that he had on this earth, and his triumphant victory over death in the grave.
01:07 That’s all the book of John there, and we have a wonderful passage or parable, if you will, of the Lady at the Well in Samaria, and there’s a lot we can learn from this.
01:20 In fact, we’re going to have a five-part message on this each day looking at a new trait, a new idea that we see come from Jesus, come from his Word that we can take to heart and that we can use in our own lives, and that’s what it’s all about.
01:35 The Bible wasn’t written so we could learn history and say, well now we know what history means or what history is. The Bible was written for us to apply it to our hearts and our lives.
01:46 I hope that’s what you do when you get into the Word or when you hear the Word preached. That’s all I’m trying to do is help expound upon God’s Word, help explain God’s Word. I can’t add anything to it.
01:58 I certainly wouldn’t take anything away from it. Amen. I’m commanded just to preach it straight, and so that’s what I’m going to do here today, and so we’re going to read a good chunk here of John chapter 4.
02:08 We’re just going to go through it and then we’ll pick up on some lessons.
02:13 When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples, he left Judea and departed again into Galilee, and he must needs go through Samaria.
02:28 So here in the first three verses, or four verses I should say, of John 4, we learn a lot. We see that the Pharisees, they’re jealous of Jesus, they hate Jesus, they want to kill him.
02:40 You say, Brother Clark, why do they want to kill him? Well, they don’t like the fact that he is claiming to be the Son of God.
02:48 They don’t like the fact that he is breaking the Sabbath by doing work on the Sabbath, by doing things like healing people. They don’t like the fact that he’s exposing their hypocrisy.
02:58 They don’t like the fact that he is associating with sinners and those that they’ve deemed unclean or unlawful, and he is explaining that he is the way, the truth, and the light, that no man cometh to the Father but by him.
03:09 They don’t like any of that, and so here we see in verse four that he goes through Samaria. He must needs go through Samaria.
03:16 In verse four here, we see something. We see God’s providence, or God’s guidance. Now, we know that Jesus is the Son of God, right? So we know he’s part of the Holy Trinity.
03:30 You’ve got God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It’s three all in one. I used to have a preacher.
03:37 Mike wrote a wonderful preacher, and he would say it’s like ice and water and mist or something like that. He would beat that example over our heads, and I understand that. It’s the same thing in different forms.
03:43 Look, Jesus Christ is our Savior and our Lord, but he also on earth modeled what it’s like to be a Christian. So he was obedient unto his Father. So even though he was God in the flesh, he is God.
04:04 Amen. When we pray, we pray by the working of the Holy Spirit, those that are saved, through Jesus to Father God. So by the Holy Spirit, through Jesus, to Father God. Jesus is our mediator, the Bible calls him.
04:19 The Spirit is our comforter, and oh, Father God, that’s our Creator. That’s the that’s the one on high. Amen. And we understand that Father God is a spirit.
04:31 Amen. Like the Holy Spirit is a spirit, but Jesus, he was in an earthly form, and he was obedient to God. In fact, in the Word, it says that he did the will of his Father, and that he did what God had called him to do. Amen.
04:41 And so he was obedient, and as we see here in verse 4, it says he must needs go through Samaria.
04:48 Well, let’s take a minute and look at what Samaria was like at that time. Now, Samaria was not friendly to the Jews. In fact, in the same book, we read that he couldn’t go through Samaria later on.
05:01 I’m thinking of the book of Luke. Yeah, that was it, the book of Luke. I was in there this morning.
05:08 I got the two confused. So in the book of John 4: 4, he says, Jesus says he must needs go through Samaria. And in the book of Luke, there’s something around 8th and 9th chapter there, where the disciples want to throw fire down on these Samaritans, because they wouldn’t let him through the area.
05:25 They wouldn’t let him through as he was getting ready for his passion. And that’s when Jesus rebuked the disciples, when they said, hey, should we throw fire down on him? And Jesus says, no, I didn’t come to kill or destroy. I came to save.
05:39 Amen. And so this Samarian group, this people, they didn’t get along with the Jews. The Jews didn’t get along with them. The Jews didn’t view them as the chosen people.
05:50 And yet Jesus says, I’m going to go through there. He must go through there. And so what we see here is God’s providence.
05:57 And we see God in the flesh modeling what it’s like to be a Christian by saying, I’m going to be obedient to the Father. You know, if you know anything about Jesus, you know that he prayed often. Amen. He’d pray all night long.
06:08 And if you think about that, that’s quite an accomplishment. Have you ever been able to stay up all night and pray all night?
06:16 We’ve had all-night prayer meetings at church, and everybody’s either falling asleep or going home by two or three in the morning. It’s very rare to be able to pray all night long, but Jesus did.
06:25 Amen. He prayed to his Father constantly. You know, the Bible in 1 Thessalonians says to pray without ceasing. Oh, how we need to pray without ceasing.
06:36 We need to make that part of our everyday life. And when we do, and when we pray to God, and when we call upon God, and when we ask God, petition to God to show us the way, he will.
06:45 And we see here an example of that with Jesus, that God was showing the way to Jesus and saying, look, Jesus, go through Samaria, which is how we get on John 4, for it says, and he must needs go through Samaria.
06:59 Verse 5, then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his sonJoseph. I’ll just read here, I’ve got another point, but I’ll just read here a little more.
07:11 Verse 6, now Jacob’s well was there, Jesus therefore being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well, and it was about the sixth hour.
07:19 So we have here something very interesting. You know, in our church on Sunday nights, we study the Old Testament, and we’ve spent the whole year in Genesis,
07:30 and sometimes I think I get a couple long looks from the congregation, because we spent a lot of time talking about Abraham, and the Abrahamic covenant, and Abraham’s son, he had Isaac, right?
07:37 Abraham, Sarah had Isaac, Isaac and Rebecca had Jacob, and then here we see Jacob’s well, and I was able to kind of bring it full circle as we spoke about this in our prayer meeting last night, about the idea that this is very relevant.
07:56 What you see in the Old Testament is very relevant to the New Testament, and how would you understand the context of Jesus Christ coming to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to Joseph?
08:05 Now I think of Jacob, that’s Israel, amen. That’s the chosen people, and Joseph, of course, can be a picture of Jesus as well in Genesis.
08:13 There’s a huge portion of Genesis dedicated to Joseph. Remember, Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, but he ends up helping his brothers and his dad in the end.
08:25 He was forgiving and long-suffering, even though they had done him wrong, and that’s the picture of Jesus, and how God’s people have done him wrong.
08:33 In fact, God’s people, what do they end up doing? They were the ones that ended up putting him on the cross, amen.
08:37 Now, yes, the Romans were involved in it, because the Jews didn’t believe it was lawful to do that on their own, so that’s why they had to petition Pilate to have him killed, and Pilate kept saying, you didn’t do anything wrong, you’re just…
08:50 Pilate knew that they were just jealous of Jesus, amen. But he was a politician, and they had this custom where they would let one go, and they let Barabbas go, and Jesus was named to be crucified, and it’s just like the brothers selling Joseph off into slavery.
09:04 They threw him in a pit, they were gonna kill him, but then they sold him off into slavery, and then all what happens now, later on, Jacob and the brothers, they’re going to starve to death, and there’s a great line in the Bible where Jacob says, look, children,
09:18 we’re gonna starve here, there’s corn in Egypt, go get that corn in Egypt, of course, Egypt being a picture of the world, and they went to get the corn, they end up meeting their brother, not knowing it’s their brother, amen.
09:28 And we see God’s providence through it all, God’s supernatural providence, and Jacob ends up going there, and that is the birth of the 12 tribes of Israel, I mean, literally there.
09:41 They go into Egypt, a small group, and they come out, many, many thousands, maybe, I think, 600,000 was the Exodus story.
09:50 Some say by the time of Exodus, it was even closer to a million, if you count the others with them, and that all started there with Jacob, and then here we see Jesus right here in John 4:5-6,
09:58 then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there, Jesus therefore being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well, and it was about the sixth hour.
10:11 So there we see Jesus there at that very well, and we see full circle the importance, number one, that the entire Bible is about Jesus, and number two, that these places in this area,
10:24 oh, you can still look up on a map today, in fact, if you can get over there, you can still go to some of these places, and no, not all of these artifacts are intact, but some of them are,
10:34 and others are close to it or close examples of it, like there would be a tree that’s written about in the Bible near one of these wells, and the tree that you could see today at a nearby well may not be the exact tree,’
10:47 but it’s the same species of tree that was written about in the Bible, or whatever you want to say.
10:53 It’s amazing what God does for those that get in the word and search his word, and today all we’re talking about is God’s providence, how we have Jesus doing something unconventional,
11:03 going to Samaria when that was not really looked at as good, and intentionally going there, even though there’s probably other ways that he could have gone to go his route,
11:13 so that he could have this encounter with a Samarian woman, and we’ll learn later on in the next few episodes that she wasn’t exactly perfect, that she wasn’t someone the Pharisees would want to meet with,
11:24 but oh, Jesus wanted to meet with her, and oh, does he want to meet with you today, amen,
11:29 and fellowship with you, and sup with you, and spend time with you, and guide you, and lead you in his providence, because he has a great plan for you, and we don’t always understand his plan.
11:41 This preacher don’t understand his plan half the time, amen. There are situations that I’m in, I’ll look and say, God, I have no idea, but you know my Bible says that when I am made weak, he is made strong,
11:50 and so I take comfort in that, knowing that while I don’t know, certainly when it comes to plans and many other things, I’m very weak.
11:58 I don’t understand what tomorrow holds, but I understand today, and what the Lord does is he rewards that obedience by showing himself in little and big ways, and by working of the Holy Spirit, and of helping us along that journey.
12:10 So what is God’s providence that we see here in the book of John? It’s unconventional, is it not?
12:16 It’s very unconventional. Number two, it’s historical, as we see that Jesus there by Jacob’s well, it’s historical.
12:23 There is something here that we can pull from God’s Word earlier on, and as God guides us, I promise you there are things in his Word that will completely sync up with where and how God is guiding you.
12:34 Let me give you an example here briefly before we go. If you were feeling that you were, again operative word here is feeling, if you were feeling that you were called to minister to a bunch of rich people,
12:49 and to lavish yourself in all the good rich things of life, and to join the country club, and take a vacation every other week, and you know just live for yourself.
13:01 If you felt like that was God’s calling on your life, where is that in the scripture? That doesn’t line up with scripture. Historically that wouldn’t link up. Now of course everybody needs a minister, and in God’s Word,
13:11 though Jesus tells us it’s more likely a camel will go through the eye of a needle, Jesus does say that even the rich can be saved, because all things are possible with God.
13:20 And in the same token, all of these things that you felt you might be called to do, they don’t line up with scripture. Clearly that’s probably not God’s calling on your life.
13:30 But if you said, you know what, I want to sell my possessions and give to the poor.
13:37 You know what, I want to take care of the widows, or the fatherless. Oh, now you’re getting linked up with scripture, friend. Now you can see God’s imprint, or his thumbprint, on your life and on his Word.
13:46 And when those things sync up, then we understand it’s God’s providence. So while God is hidden from us for this season, though not forever, and while we can’t physically see him, or oh how I wish we could just sit down with him.
13:55 I wish I’m at one end of a table recording right now, I wish at that other end was Jesus, and with notes, you know, holding up cue cards saying, all right Brother Clark, say this, say that.
14:05 No, I don’t have that here, but what I do have is the Holy Spirit, and what I do have is his Word, and God expects us to be in the Word, and trust him by faith.
14:15 Thank you for listening. Take care, and God bless.