SHARING THE WONDER

John 4:27-38
"And at this point His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, "What do You seek?" or "Why are You talking with her?"
The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into this city, and said to the men, "Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"
Then they went out of the city and came to Him.
In the meantime His disciples urged Him, saying, "Rabbi, eat."
But He said to them, "I have food to eat of which you do not know."
Therefore the disciples said to one another, "Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?"
Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work."
"Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest?’ behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!"
"And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
For in this 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 into their labors."

Message:
In the verses just preceding our text, Jesus has made a startling announcement to the woman of Samaria. In response to her admittance that she and her people were awaiting the Messiah who would make all things clear as to this matter about where and how to worship, Jesus says: "I WHO SPEAK TO YOU AM HE."
The moment the Samaritan woman expressed her desire for Christ, He answers, "You have Him; He is now speaking to you." Nothing more was needed. The Savior of sinners stood revealed! That was enough. All was settled now. It was not a mount nor a temple; Samaria nor Jerusalem. She had found Jesus -- a Savior God. A detected sinner and a revealed Savior have met face to face, and all is settled, once and forever!
I WHO SPEAK TO YOU AM HE!
Unfortunately, the full import of Christ’s claim is obscured by the English translation. As we read the words, they seem to express no more than the claim: "Yes, I am the Messiah." That is important in itself, of course, and we shall come back to it. Nevertheless it is less than the words imply. Actually, the words are a title. To be precise, Jesus did not really say, "I am He." The "he" has been added by the English translators. He simply said, "I AM." The

***Page break***
(Page Two)

point of His claim is that the title "I AM" was similar to, if not identical with, the great Old Testament name for God: JEHOVAH.
Exodus 3:10-15 is the Old Testament setting for this title.
"Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt."
But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of the Egypt?"
So He said, "I will certainly be with you. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain."
Then Moses said to God, "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, "The God of your fathers has sent me to you," and they say to me, "What is His name? what shall I say to them?"
And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, "I AM has sent me to you."
Moreover God said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: "The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations."
At this point we can understand why it is possible to call this title--"I AM"--the greatest of all names for the Lord Jesus Christ! It is possible to understand why Paul wrote of Him: "Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Phil. 2:9-10). The name which is above all other names is "Lord" which means JEHOVAH. This is in its turn an exact equivalent of the words "I AM."
Obviously, not all of this was known to the woman or even could be known to her. Yet, the use of God's name--JEHOVAH--could not fail to be striking. "Can this be the Messiah?" she must have asked. "Is he a spokesman for God?" "Is He one who is so close to God that He can use God's name for Himself?"
No doubt she was pondering these questions as she went off to call others to the One "who told me everything I ever did."
At the very moment that Christ made this announcement about His Messiahship, the disciples returned from the city where they had gone to buy food.
There is little wonder that the disciples were in a state of bewildered amazement when they returned from their errand to the city of Sychar and found Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman. We have already noted in previous lessons the Jewish idea of women. The Rabbinic precept ran: "Let no one talk with a woman in the street, no, not with his own wife." The Rabbis so despised women and so

***Page break***
(Page Three)

thought them incapable of receiving any real teaching that they said: "Better that the words of the law should be burned then delivered to women." They had a saying: "Each time that a man prolongs converse with a woman he causes evil to himself, and desists from the law, and in the end inherits Gehinnom." By Rabbinic standards Jesus could hardly have done a more shattering unconventional thing than to talk to this woman.
There follows a curiously revealing touch. It is the kind which could hardly have come from anyone except from one who had actually shared in this scene. However staggered the disciples might be, it did not occur to them to ask the woman what she was looking for or to ask Jesus why He was talking to her. They were beginning to know Him; and they had already arrived at the conclusion that, however surprising His actions were, they were not to be questioned. A man has taken a great step to real discipleship when he learns to say: "It is not for me to question the actions and the demands of Jesus. My prejudices and my conventions must go down before Him."
The disciples were learning and receiving a lesson send in the true emancipation of womanhood. Though they continued to wonder at what they saw and heard, their reverence for their Master was so great that no questions needed to be asked.
Please note with me this little phrase: "And at this point His disciples came..." Once again we may discern the providential dealings of God, regulating and directing the slightest movements of His creatures. These disciples of Christ left the Savior seated on the well, while they went into the city to buy meat. Had they remainder they would have only been in the way. The Lord desired to have this woman alone with Himself. His purpose in this had now been accomplished. Grace had achieved a glorious victory. Another brand had been plucked from the burning. The poor Samaritan adulteress had now been brought out of sin’s darkness into God's marvelous light. The woman had plainly expressed her desire for Christ to appear, and the Lord had revealed Himself to her. "And upon this came His disciples." Though they had not been permitted to hear what had been said between Christ and this woman, they returned in time to witness the happy finale. They needed to be taught a lesson! They must learn that the saving grace of God was not limited to Israel, that it was reaching out to sinners of the Gentiles, too.
I find it very interesting when I pause to look back over nearly fifty-five years of serving Christ, to note the various times in my life when His timing changed my course of direction...and always for the better! As concerning our story of the Samaritan woman, I have wondered about the various delays that God brought into the errand of the disciples to prolong their time away from the Master while

***Page break***
(Page Four)

He patiently brought this seeking sinner into the light of the glorious grace of God! When His task was finished, the disciples returned! Oh!, that we learn to accept and appreciate God's timing in our lives.
Back to our story! "The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city" (4:28). The wonderful news which the woman had just received (and which she just HAD to tell others), as well as the arrival of the disciples, caused her to go back to town. She left her water jar at the well. Very generally this is interpreted to mean that in her excitement because of the strange happenings she FORGOT her pitcher as she hurried back to tell everybody the news. Please let me suggest another interpretation!
To the well comes to this woman equipped with a pitcher to draw water. SHE DRAWS WATER, FILLING HER PITCHER. Viewing the filled jar, a total stranger, whom she recognizes to be a Jew and who is sitting by the well, asks her for a drink. Knowing that it is not customary for Jews TO THE USE VESSELS TOGETHER WITH SAMARITANS, she does not immediately offer the requested gift, but asks the stranger to explain His strange request. An increasingly interesting and revealing conversation develops. Having heard the stranger's great declaration, and being now fully convinced that genuine worship is of an entirely spiritual nature and that accordingly there can be no basic objection to the idea of Jews and Samaritans drinking from the same pitcher, SHE PURPOSELY LEAVES THE JAR AT THE WELL, said that Jesus may quench His physical thirst, and so that He may know that she has taken to heart the lesson anent the nature of true religion. Afterward, having led a multitude of people to the well, she can retrieve her pitcher. In this connection we should remember that our verse does not say...SHE FORGOT, but SHE LEFT her water jar. Exactly the same form of this word (verb) was used earlier, in this same chapter (4:3); the LORD...LEFT JUDEA. He did not FORGET Judea, but He purposely LEFT it. So here also, she did not FORGET her water jar but she purposely left it, left it there for Him to use! In reality, the vessel of her heart was filled with spiritual water...the joy of her new discovery. Once there is a clear PERCEPTION of Christ to the soul, once He is KNOWN and received as a personal Savior, there will be a turning away from that on which before the carnal mind was centered.
"And went her way into the city, and saith to the men, Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?" A proof of a genuine change in the woman of Samaria is a new concern on her part for others. She had a verbal confession followed by a change in values. Now she had a concern for the lost. Previously she had known many of the people of Samaria. Some of them she had known too well. But she had never been concerned for them. Probably they had often used her, at least some of them had. She had

***Page break***
(Page Five)

used them. Now for the first time she was concerned for their salvation. On the basis of the things she had learned she was now overflowing with a desire for them to meet Jesus.
What made her want to share her discovery? There is only one answer. IT WAS LOVE, the love of the Lord Jesus already beginning to spring up within her. She had learned of this love from Christ. He had loved her, a sinful woman. Now she was to love as he loved. Before, she had loved in one sense only. It was an imperfect, human love. Perhaps it was even largely sexual. Now she was able to love with a measure of the love with which Christ had loved her. This was a divine love, and it changed her completely.
Back to the city without her waterpot! Dr. Barclay in his excellent little commentary writes some thoughts at this point. He suggests: "The fact that she left her waterpot showed two things. It showed that she was in a hurry to share this extraordinary experience, and it showed that she never dreamed of doing anything else but come back!
HER WHOLE ACTION HAS MUCH TO TELL US OF REAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.
(1) Her experience began with being compelled to face herself and to see herself as she was. The same thing happened to Peter. After the draft of fishes, when Peter suddenly discovered something of the majesty of Jesus, all he could say was: "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." (Luke 5:8) Our Christian experience will often begin with a humiliating wave of self-disgust. It usually happens that the last thing a man sees is himself. And it often happens that the first thing Christ does for a man is to compel him to do what he has spent his life refusing to do--look at himself.
(2) The Samaritan woman was staggered by Christ's ability to see into her inmost being. She was amazed at His intimate knowledge of the human heart, and of her heart in particular. The Psalmist was awed by the same thought. "Thou discernest my thoughts from afar...Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether" (Psalm 139:1-4)
It is told that once a small girl heard a sermon by C. H. Spurgeon, and whispered to her mother at the end of it: "Mother, how does he know what goes on in our house?"
There are no wrappings and disguises which are proof against the gaze of Christ. It is His power to see into the depths of the human heart. It is not that He sees only the evil there; He sees also the sleeping hero in the soul of every man. He is like the surgeon who sees the diseased thing, but who also sees the health which will follow when the evil thing is taken away.
(3) The first instinct of the Samaritan woman was to share her discovery. Having found this amazing person, she was compelled to share

***Page break***
(Page Six)

her find with others. The Christian life is based on the twin pillars of DISCOVERY and COMMUNICATION. No discovery is complete until the desire to share it fills our hearts; and we cannot communicate Christ to others until we have discovered Him for ourselves. First to find, then to tell, are the two great steps of the Christian life.
(4) This very desire to tell others of her discovery killed in this woman the feeling of shame. She was no doubt an outcast; she was no doubt a byword; the very fact that she was drawing water from this distant well shows how she avoided her neighbors and how they avoided her. But now she ran to tell them of her discovery. A person may have some trouble which he is embarrassed to mention and which he tries to keep secret, but once he is cured he is often so filled with wonder and gratitude that he tells everyone about it. A man may hide the sin; but once he discovers Jesus Christ as Savior, his first instinct is to say to men: "Look at what I was and look at what I am; this is what Christ has done for me."
Think with me for a moment on this great subject of personal evangelism...the joy of bringing a lost soul to the Savior. The bringing of a soul to Jesus is the highest achievement possible to a human life. When you turn to the Holy Scriptures, they are as clear as light, that God expects every friend he has to go out and see if he cannot win other friends to the same great side and service Jesus. "Ye shall be witnesses unto me," said Jesus, "both in Jerusalem, and Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth."
The earthly church went out and in one short generation shook the Roman Empire to its very foundation! It was a pagan, selfish, sodden, rotten empire, and yet in one short generation, that earthly church had affected that Roman Empire from center to circumference, and kindled a gospel light in every part of the vast domain.
And they did it by the personal method. The men and women and the children who loved Christ, went out everywhere, and talked for Christ, in the hearing of those who knew Him not, and the hearers became interested, and followed on, and found out for themselves the saving truth that there is in Christ's gospel.
In the earlier part of this gospel, we noted in the first chapter that..."One of the two who heard John speak, and followed Him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon, and said to him, "We have found the Messiah (which is translated, the Christ). AND HE BROUGHT HIM TO JESUS,..." (John 1:39-41).
Andrew had just found Jesus...and immediately he is interested in sharing this wonderful experience with his brother.
The words of Christ in Matthew 28:19-20 communicate vividly Christ's

***Page break***
(Page Seven)

understanding of a disciple.
"And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying. All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen.
Jesus saw a disciple as one who becomes a follower, who is taught, who is nurtured in the faith, who in turn goes out to make disciples, who are then taught and nurtured in the faith, who then in turn go out!
Being a disciple in the early church meant a first-hand involvement in the mission of Christ--making disciples. The goal was clear and all encompassing.
An important facet of the early church's disciple-making goal was to continually expand this base to of new disciples. In the book, BACK TO BASICS, the authors note that "inherent in being saved was the redeemed share the Good News. Being a Christian meant worshiping God; it meant doing good to all men, especially those of the household of faith. It meant expecting the Lord to return. It meant sins forgiven. But above and beyond these, it meant telling people that the Savior had come--that eternal life was theirs by believing in Him--that believing gave them the right to become the children of God."
A new converts commitment to Christ included the assumption that he/she reproduce themselves and continue in the disciple-making chain. Inherent in the definition of a "disciple" was one who shared the Good News with others. For the early Christians making disciples was not seen as a compartmentalized activity, OR the responsibility assigned to a designated few! The early church did not have a department of evangelism...everybody was an evangelist. Evangelism was an interval part of the lifestyle of every believer. In observing the characteristics of the New Testament church, a noted church historian has observed that "every member was mobilized and actively involved...all functioned as responsible members of the body life of the church. First-century Christians told the story of Christ simply and graciously. Each believer's actions and attitudes confirmed the centrality of Christ in life. Although fellowship with members of the Body was a vital part of the believer's life, they did not remain in the "holy huddle." Scripture records that everywhere they journeyed, early Christians witnessed to the claims of Christ.
The early Christians knew the deep concern their Lord had for "lost sheep." The early church mirrored their Master's compassion.

***Page break***
(Page Eight)

My prayer as Pastor is that every person in our church be so in love with Jesus that those around us will witness that love through our words and actions and they too, will want to be disciples of Jesus. The woman of Samaria had experience the compassion of Christ and she wanted others to experience it too!
Can you imagine the excitement that must have filled her heart as she made her way back to the city of Sychar...and note the way she worded her invitation: "Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"
COME! This is a great word of the Christian gospel. It has brought peace to millions of restless hearts and satisfaction to many that were empty and lonely and lost.
Think of the great verses that contain it. It was God's word to Abraham, "Come into the land which I shall show thee" (Acts 7:3). It was God's call to Moses to be Israel's deliverer, "Come, I will send you to Egypt." (Acts 3:34). David wrote, "Come and see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth" (Psalm 46:8)
God spoke through Isaiah, saying, "Come now, let us reason together...though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool" (Isaiah 1:18).
The angels spoke the word to all skeptics as they pointed the disciples to the empty tomb, "Come and see the place where He lay" (Matthew 28:6). It was Christ's invitation, "Come, follow Me" (Mark 10:21). "Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28).
Finally, it will be the song of the angels as they invite the redeemed to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:17). And of Jesus Himself as He says to His own, "Come, you who are blessed of my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world" (Matthew 25:34).
If you have heard that invitation from the lips of the Lord, it is your privilege and duty to pass that word on to others! As in the case of the woman of Samaria, God's COME! Must become our "COME!" When Jesus Christ told His disciples that they were to "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28: 19), the Lord was giving them marching orders for the Church! They were to be His witnesses. They were to carry the gospel everywhere.
We are a part of the Church, the Body of Christ! We who have responded to His invitation to believe the gospel...we have our marching orders. "Go and make disciples of all nations" and that means our family, friends, and neighbors and those who work with us at the job. Our "SYCHAR" is different for all of us...but each of us have a "SYCHAR"...the place where we can live out our faith and share Jesus through our words, deeds and actions.