Religion is a funny thing. Martin Luther said that even after seeking God for decades and ministering His grace to others constantly he still felt the "dirt" clinging to him of a heart that wanted to do something so that God would necessarily do something in return.
Our sin nature can result in an affinity for religion. It becomes a career and a political pursuit. In the last lesson we saw how Nicodemus working to manipulate religion and God ran into Jesus and he was stumped. He said, "How can these things be?" Nicodemus was the best that organized Judaism had to offer. But God had, and has always maintained, a people that He kept for Himself. John the Baptist was the epitome of God's work in keeping sinful man pure during the life of Jesus.
John 3:22-30
After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming and being baptized (for John had not yet been put in prison). Now a discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a Jew over purification. And they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him." John answered, "A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, 'I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.' The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease."
Being a Baptist it is only right for me to stop here and comment that it strains credulity to think that Jesus and John went to a place where water was plentiful so that they could sprinkle or even baptize by effusion. I understand the cultural and historical reasons for other modes of baptism but I'm happy to be a Baptist. However, mode of baptism is not the most important thing in these verses. Look at the humility of John. The reaction of John to the increase of Jesus' ministry is remarkable because it is so contrary to human nature. It is contrary to your nature. Only a man with a deep surrender to God can rest in what he has done and leave his fate with God.
The last of the Old Testament prophets sees the bride (the Church, those believers called by the Spirit) moving toward the bridegroom and his joy is complete. When John the Baptist puts it in those terms then we see how inappropriate it would be for John to protest or fight to retain his following. I our lives we have a real difficulty in trusting God's sovereignty when He redirects our life. For John the Baptist, God had dealt with his pride, He had a sense of calling in submission to God, He was walking as directed by God, and He trusted God with all that he was and would ever be. John was announcing the Gospel.
John 3:31-36
He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Here is John the Baptist preaching the Gospel. Just as Jesus would later tell Peter that "flesh and blood" had not produced the revelation of the person and work of Jesus, it is also true in this case that John the Baptist had this revelation by the Holy Spirit. These verses pair with what Jesus said earlier in the chapter. Jesus said, "whoever believes" and John says "whoever receives" but John also points out that the testimony of Jesus was not received. Many people were interested in the preaching and miracles but only those the Father gives the Son by the Spirit respond. John knew that and knew he served by the grace of God.
There has been some question about the "He" who gives the Spirit without measure. Some have said that it means that God gives Christ the Spirit without measure. Some say Christ gives the Spirit without measure. In context it seems clear to me that Christ utters the words of God as the Word of God perfectly because God the Father sends God the Spirit to God the Son without measure. The verse that follows teaches that God the Father loves God the Son and gives all things into His hand. John the Baptist also teaches that Jesus is the only way to peace with God and eternal life. We are naturally in rebellion against God and are by nature Children of Wrath. Prior to salvation, we are in treason against our creator.
Even in various religions we work to develop a "quid pro quo" for our purposes. We look for a force we can manipulate. We want a benefit for our devotion. This is just more sin heaped up against us for the Day of Judgment. So the just wrath of God doesn't come as a result of not obeying the Son. The wrath is there already as a result of your sin even before rejecting Christ. After the Jew Nicodemus stumbles and the Jew John the Baptist testifies faithfully to Christ then we turn to a person who was a heretic along with having "issues" in her life. Jews considered the Samaritans unclean because they didn't follow the law faithfully and had heretical beliefs about worship. They were generally lost but they claimed Abraham as father just like the Jews.
John 4:1-9
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
The heat from the Pharisees would not extend to Samaria. In fact they would cross to the other side of the Jordan and avoid Samaria. The strange part for the woman at the well was not that Jesus would speak to her (although that was odd enough) but that he would drink from her vessel. It would be viewed as ritually unclean. Notice also that Jesus was tired. It seems like a small thing to realize that Jesus, fully God and fully man would be tired. However, for folks who have the false teaching that Jesus was God and only appeared to be a man then this verse hurts. You'd need to believe that Jesus was pretending to be tired. Jesus was tired. His human body got tired, thirsty, and hungry just like yours does.
John 4:10-26
Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock." Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water."
Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he."
Jesus is that gift for the forgiveness of sins. The woman spars a bit and actually does better than Nicodemus did but she has some humility. She was probably there at noon to avoid the other women. Living or moving water was considered a sign of God's provision (Jer. 2:13; Zech. 14:8). From her point of view he needed a vessel and hers would be viewed as unclean. She was not ashamed of being a Samaritan and had a sort of pride in the historic well that she used each day. She goes at the core of the separation between Jew and Samaritan by arguing against Jerusalem. She was wrong but Jesus deals quickly with that dispute and goes at the deeper problem that no one worships in spirit and truth unless the Holy Spirit is within and that the Holy Spirit will enable that worship soon.
Knowing that she was speaking to a prophet, she points to the expected Messiah who could come and speak with authority and Jesus simply says that He is that prophet. Even the Samaritans understood what "Messiah" and "Christ" would be. So she takes off to tell people about who she found out at the well.
John 4:27-38
Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you seek?" or, "Why are you talking with her?" So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" They went out of the town and were coming to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, "Rabbi, eat." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Has anyone brought him something to eat?" 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, then comes the harvest'? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."
Jesus was ministering where the Holy Spirit was working. When a harvest is ready you don't wait. Here the Holy Spirit (the sower) and the Son (the reaper) are rejoicing together. The disciples were going to participate in this same harvest soon. Jesus was ministering to those groups of people coming out of Sychar and for the joy of the harvest was not eating.
John 4:39-45
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me all that I ever did." So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world."
After the two days he departed for Galilee. (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.
There was revival in Samaria in this town of Sychar and the Holy Spirit made real disciples there. I imagine that the Pharisees would have found it a scandal that Jesus was even in Samaria but Jesus stayed with them and taught them. They learned enough to say that He was Messiah and the Savior of the world. Galilee would be tougher because of a presumed familiarity and that assumption, like Nicodemus, that they were right with God. They were blind to the Messiah, would argue with Him, and reject Him.
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