LISTEN TO JESUS: MYSTERIOUS MEAL

LISTEN TO JESUS

MYSTERIOUS MEAL

John 4:27 And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?

Susie: If the disciples had come back too soon, they would have interrupted the important exchange between Jesus and the woman. Had they been much later, they would not have been privy to His meeting with her at all. I do not believe in coincidences. God’s timing is always perfect. 

Susan: Jesus probably wanted them to catch the end of the conversation because He wanted them to understand that He did not have the “Hatfields and McCoys” prejudice that was expected of a Jewish man when in the presence of a woman, especially one from Samaria.  

Susie: The disciples were surprised that Jesus was talking with a woman but none of them were bold enough to ask him about it, not even Peter who had a habit of putting his foot in his mouth. 

Susan: Perhaps they did not want to open a can of worms or risk a lecture about why the prejudice that had existed for a long time needed to be set aside. Jesus offered salvation EVEN to the Samaritans.

John 4:28-30 The woman then left her waterpot, 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? Then they went out of the city and came unto him.

Susie: The woman abandoned her water jar in her excitement to tell the very people who had probably scorned her in the past that she believed the Messiah was right there in their town. 

Susan: In her exuberance, the very reason she went to the well flew right out of her head and she left her water behind. All she could think about was sharing the joy of the freedom she had found in the Messiah.  

Susie: Because of her testimony that Jesus knew everything about her without being told, the people headed out to see Him for themselves. 

Susan: The passion in her voice and the zeal with which she was sharing her encounter caused the townspeople to become inquisitive about whether she had truly met the Messiah. 

Susie: Perhaps their entire perspective could be changed as hers was. She obviously had found something they each lacked. The living water . . . 

Susan: . . . the meaning of which flew right past her at first . . .  

Susie: . . . was now flowing through her to others. 

Susan: After her encounter with Jesus, the Samaritan woman became insightful. 

Susie: The Holy Spirit had enabled her to understand at last.

John 4:31 In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.

Susie: Meanwhile, back at the well, the disciples are trying to get Jesus to eat the food they purchased for Him.  They have no idea what just transpired and are only thinking of taking care of His human, physical needs. 

Susan: Jesus had sent them to get food, but now He is not eating it. What’s the deal?

John 4:32 But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Therefore, said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat?

Susie: When Jesus tells the disciples He has food they are unaware of, they (like Nicodemus and the woman) are understanding this in terms of the physical. They wonder where this mysterious meat came from. They do not realize He is speaking of spiritual nourishment.

Ways we can apply this to our lives:

·     The woman immediately dropped everything and ran to tell her neighbors the Messiah had arrived. Are you spreading the Good News that Jesus offers forgiveness and freedom with everyone you know?

·     Do you boldly proclaim Jesus even to people who have shunned you?

LISTEN TO JESUS: I AM HE

LISTEN TO JESUS

I AM HE

John 4:25-26 The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.

Susan: This is the one occasion before Jesus was brought to trial that He point blank declares Himself to be the Messiah in no uncertain terms. In the case of the Samaritan woman, He makes sure she can make no mistake about Who He is. He is God in the flesh, the Messiah.

Susie: In the original language this could be translated, “I who speak to you am.” This is reminiscent of the way God chose to introduce Himself to Moses when He said, “I am that I am.” His statement should clear up the mud in the woman’s thinking about “living water.”

Ways we can apply this to our lives:

·     The woman at the well knew the promised Messiah would hold the answers to all of life’s questions, and Jesus declared “I am He.”

·     Are you thirsty for things only God can provide – forgiveness, cleansing, and power to live victoriously for Him? Have you come to the One who can give you living water? If so, Praise Him! If not, we pray you will understand His invitation to you and surrender your life right now. If you need further information about how to do this, contact us by using the “Contact Us” tab on the website www.PreciousJewelsMinistries.org.

·     Do you have questions? Turn to the Lord in the pages of the Bible and pray to find the answers. God will show you what you need to know.

LISTEN TO JESUS: WORSHIP IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH

LISTEN TO JESUS

WORSHIP IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH

John 4:21-22 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

Susie: Jesus makes the point that it is not worth debating whether to worship in Jerusalem or Mt. Gerazim because He knows that temple worship will soon be ended. There would be no further need of daily sacrifices once His work was completed on the cross. He states that salvation is through the Jews. The promise was made that salvation would come through Abraham’s seed . . . 

Susan: . . . and David’s throne . . .

Susie: . . . but would bless all nations. The Jews knew Who they worshipped, but ultimately only those who recognize Jesus as the Messiah will be the true worshippers.

John 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Susie: Jesus could tell the woman that the hour is now here because He had arrived on the scene. His ministry on earth as the God-Man ushered in the time when people must worship “in spirit and in truth.”  God’s Holy Spirit within us enables us to commune with and worship God who is spirit. 

Susan: Knowing where our life comes from, the Spirit of God, we are constantly intertwined and empowered as we worship Him with complete honesty, transparency, and vulnerability. 

Susie: We need not hold anything back because as previously stated, God already knows.

Romans 8:16 (NIV) The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Susie: We know we are His as we are led by the Holy Spirit. 

Susan: He affirms we are His chosen, adopted children by the way He moves in our lives and enables us to exalt Jesus, blazing an adventurous trail as we serve Him.

Susie: This life we live in Christ is not dull. 

Susan: It is exciting, exhilarating, and fulfilling! Come live in mine and Susie’s home for a while and you will see. 

Susie: It might get a bit cramped since there are already two of us in a small two-bedroom apartment (an upgrade from our original home in a one-bedroom apartment). Perhaps you might stick with visiting us on this blog until the Lord provides a guest room.

Ways we can apply this to our lives:

·     Our place of worship is not nearly as important as who we worship—the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, crucified to redeem us and risen from the dead

·     Where we worship does not matter as much as how we worship—indwelt by the Spirit, transparent before our Lord, and with wholehearted devotion to our Savior, Jesus

LISTEN TO JESUS: GO GET YOUR HUSBAND

LISTEN TO JESUS

GO GET YOUR HUSBAND

John 4:16 Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither.

Susan: Here’s where it gets sticky. 

Susie: Jesus seems to be changing the subject, but He is really transitioning to help her see her need of the kind of water He has to offer. 

Susan: His request draws her out and causes her to reveal what He already knows.

Susie: Once again, we see that Jesus has the power to see deep within us.

Hebrews 4:13 (ESV) And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Susie: We might as well be completely honest with God because He alone knows the complete truth about us. We cannot hide!

Psalm 139:1-3 O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

Susan: Jesus is better than Paul Harvey…He truly knows the rest of the story because, after all, He wrote it.

John 4:17-18 The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.

Susan: She tells the truth that she is not married, but Jesus responds with the entire truth of her past. She was not only astonished that He knew the entire truth but that He was willing to listen to her which was probably something she had not experienced ever.

Susie: Now Jesus is not only talking to a despised Samaritan woman but an adulterous Samaritan woman.

Susan: This woman had probably never been treated as if she had any substantive worth. Jesus did not detest her like most people she encountered. 

Susie: However, He made clear that she could hide nothing from Him.

John 4:19-20 The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.  Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

Susie: The woman acknowledges that Jesus must be a prophet since He knew about her marital situations without being told but then brings up another controversy that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans. 

Susan: The Samaritans only accepted the Pentateuch which is the first five books of the Old Testament, but the Jews recognized the remainder of the Old Testament as well. 

Susie: Both groups could cite references to support which mountain the temple should occupy. Why she brought that up is a mystery to me. Perhaps she is trying to lure Jesus into being judgmental? Or maybe she was trying to take herself and her sinful lifestyle out of the spotlight.

Susan: She may have been truly trying to understand the reason why the Jews and the Samaritans had a different view of the matter. 

Susie: Or maybe she just wanted to leave the squirmy feeling of talking about her adulterous behavior.

Ways we can apply this to our lives:

·     Jesus knows everything about us, so we might as well be completely honest with Him and with ourselves

·     Jesus sees and knows all about us but loves us anyway

LISTEN TO JESUS: NEVER THIRST AGAIN

LISTEN TO JESUS

NEVER THIRST AGAIN

John 4:11-12 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?

Susie: Sometimes when I read the Bible, I am tempted to think, “How dense were these people?!” I forget that since I grew up mostly in church, I know the rest of the story. This woman was talking to a total stranger who seems to be talking in code . . .

Susan: . . . that she is currently unable to crack. She does not yet have the 6^th sense of the Holy Spirit interpreting things for her.

Susie: Therefore, she wonders how He can offer her water when He has no bucket to lower into the well.  After all, He originally asked her to give Him a drink. 

Susan: She wonders if He thinks He is greater than the patriarch Jacob who established the well in the first place. 

Susie: Both Jews and Samaritans revered Jacob as an important forefather of their people. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were the pillars of their culture and their belief system.

John 4:13-14 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

Susie: Obviously, Jesus is not talking about actual, liquid water. 

Susan: Jesus is using a spring of water to represent the presence of the Spirit of God evident in the life of the believer. 

Susie: His Holy Spirit flows in, thru, and from us when we commit our lives to His saving care. He speaks of eternal life, the thing we should really thirst after. Once we belong to Jesus, we need never thirst for God again because He is with us always in the form of the Holy Spirit, the Living Water.

John 7:38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

John 4:15 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.

Susie: Okay, once He spoke of eternal life, I really think she should have had a clue that He was not talking about quenching her physical thirst. I’ve heard preached that she may have jumped at the idea of not needing to come to the well because her reputation would have drawn scorn from the other women there. 

Susan: Instead of gossip at the water cooler, it was gossip at the water well. 

Susie: Never being thirsty would be an excellent benefit, but Jesus was offering her so much more!

Ways we can apply this to our lives:

·     We often seek the temporal things we need—food, clothing, shelter—and God graciously supplies these. However, our deepest need is to be freed from sin and death by the grace of God.

·     Living Water, having an intimate relationship with God because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, is available to all who trust in Jesus.

·     Living Water is an internal reality for those who believe in and trust Jesus as the Son of God.

·     We need to “tap into” the Spirit in order to have abundant life in Jesus

LISTEN TO JESUS: LIVING WATER

LISTEN TO JESUS

LIVING WATER

John 4:4 And he must needs go through Samaria.

Susie: The Jews did not like the Samaritans and would sometimes take the long way around rather than travel through that region. When the Northern Kingdom was taken captive by the Assyrians, a small group was left behind. The Assyrians brought in other groups to live there, and the Jews who remained intermarried with them. Therefore, the Samaritans were despised as “half-breeds” and idol worshippers. They had also built a temple on Mt. Gerizim and worshipped there rather than traveling to Jerusalem.

Susan: An extreme mutual prejudice persisted between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Jews did not consider the Samaritans to be genuine worshippers of the one true God. The Samaritans were loathsome to the Jews and vice versa.

Susie: There were other routes to Galilee that Jesus could have taken as many other Jews did, but he “needed” to go through Samaria. This could have been because it was the shortest route, or more likely it was that He knew of the divine appointment waiting for Him at Jacob’s well. 

Susan: Jesus knew He was about to embark on a life changing encounter, not just for one woman but for an entire community.

John 4:5-6 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.

Susan: Jesus exhibited the frailty of His humanity as He was exhausted from traveling. 

Susie: He experienced hunger and thirst just as we do, so He sent the disciples to buy food. As we learned in John 1:14, “The Word became flesh.” He was completely human, willingly limiting His powers as God.

Philippians 2:6 (Phillips) For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his prerogatives as God’s equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man.

John 4:7-9 There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

Reformation Study Bible:

4:9 Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. This phrase could also be translated, “Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans,” referring to the legislation that forbade a Jew to eat or drink with Samaritans, who were more lax in their understanding of ritual cleanness. The surprise was not so much that Jesus would speak with a Samaritan, but that He would drink from a Samaritan vessel.

Susan: This is reminiscent of the separate drinking fountains for “White” and “Colored” . . . 

Susie: . . . which I even remember seeing as a child in the late 1950’s and early sixties.  

Susan: How sad that these kinds of behaviors were still present and tolerated in our lifetimes.

Susie: However, the separation between the Jews and the Samaritans was due more to religious views than the race issue. The Samaritan woman was shocked that Jesus, a Jew, would talk to a woman, let alone a Samaritan woman. 

Susan: At that time women were not seen as equal to men and were treated like property.  Women had very few rights, and their husbands were in control of all property.

Susie: It was even more astounding that He would be willing to drink out of her water jug since it might not be “ceremonially clean” according to Jewish standards! He was definitely stepping outside the social norms of the day.

John 4:10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

Susie: Jesus, who would later die on the cross to give us the gift of forgiveness of sin and eternity with God, says, “If you only knew who you were talking to!”  

Susan: He basically says, “You don’t know this yet, but you should be the one asking Me for drink.” 

Susie: Jesus IS the gift of God and has the power to give the gift of the indwelling Spirit to those who believe on His name. He speaks of “living water” which goes whoosh over her head because, like Nicodemus, she is thinking literally rather than figuratively. 

Susan: She is only processing His words in terms of her five senses.

Reformation Study Bible:

4:10 the gift of God. This expression emphasizes that salvation is not earned but given (Eph. 2:8). Jesus Himself is the gift of God (3:16; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:25). living water. In the Old Testament, living or running water was employed figuratively as a reference to divine activity (Jer. 2:13; Zech. 14:8). See also v. 14 and 7:37–39.

Ways we can apply this to our lives: Although there is no direct application in these verses, we can draw some conclusions.

1.               Jesus does not harbor prejudice against any people. Nor should we.  “Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10:34-35).

2.               Jesus gives us far more than He asks of us. He asked for water but offered the woman eternal life.

LISTEN TO JESUS: COME TO THE LIGHT

LISTEN TO JESUS

COME TO THE LIGHT

John 3:19-21 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

Susan: The English Standard Version translates the word “condemnation” as “verdict.” According to Webster, one definition of verdict is “Decision; judgment; opinion pronounced; as, to be condemned by the verdict of the public.” 

Susie: We love to think of Jesus as the One who saves the world, but He is also the only one qualified to pronounce a verdict on its sin since He Himself was sinless. Jesus is the One who shines a light on the true motives of people. He did not come to actively condemn people because they had already condemned themselves due to their unbelief and actions. He puts a spotlight on our hearts which will enable those who believe to see their true condition and their need of Jesus to rescue them from it. 

Susan: Those who do not believe and trust in the saving grace of Jesus’ death on the cross in their place fear exposure of their true selves and especially exposure by the Light of Christ. In contrast, those who have surrendered their lives to Jesus, have no reason to fear . . .

Susie: . . . because Jesus has paid the price in full for their wrongdoing. 

Susan: Substitutionary atonement is a fancy phrase meaning Jesus died in their place to pay their debt.

Susie:  When God looks at those of us who believe, He does not see our thick file of bad stuff, but instead sees the righteousness of His Son.

Philippians 3:9 (NIV) …and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

Susie: “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!” This old hymn says it well. Jesus is the only One who can enable us to stand in the light without fear.

Ways we can apply this to our lives:

·      Does the Light of Jesus make you feel naked and exposed? Jesus died literally naked on the cross to save you from the wrath of God and remove that guilt and shame from you.

·       Have you accepted His free gift of salvation? If so, you are covered in His righteousness and enabled by Him to turn from sin to an intimate relationship with the God who created everything!

·      If you have not yet experienced the saving grace of God, pray asking Him to open your eyes to the truth of His word. You may contact us for more details via our website: www.preciousjewelsministries.org