Advent – Jesus is Your Prophet
Advent – Jesus is Your Prophet
The strange man at the well said something intriguing to her. “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life” (John 4).
“All right,” said the woman. “Go ahead and give it to me.”
“First, go call your husband, and bring him back here.” Oh no, the woman thought. It’s the oldest routine in the book to find out if I’m married. How can I get out of this one? Maybe I’ll just go with the truth. Who knows, maybe this guy’s a better catch than that fat, lazy drunk who says he’ll marry me next summer. He’s said that three summers running.
“I don’t have a husband,” she answered.
“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said. “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
Silence. For what seemed like an hour, she just stared at him, dumbfounded. Inside, though, her mind was racing – did he know someone in town who had told him about her reputation? Had they set her up just to be humiliated?
But then her mind wandered to a conversation she’d overheard in the market. About a guy who wandered around and warned people to repent for their sins. John. Over at the Jordan River. With a long, shaggy beard full of locust bits. That was it. This man was…
“A prophet. I can see that you are a prophet. Right?” Her mind continued to race. What did God want with her? With all of the sinners in the world, why was he picking on her? She tried nervously to change the subject: “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.””
“Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him.”
“I know that the Messiah is coming” said the woman, perplexed at the words the man had just spoken. “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”
Thud. The woman’s water bucket dropped to the dirt. As she stood there, reeling from the man’s outrageous claims, a few more men came down the path from town. They didn’t say a word, but the woman could tell from the man’s look that they were with him. She couldn’t think straight. Impulsively, she bolted from the well to go back to town. Her bucket stayed where it was in the dirt.
The whole way back, she debated what she would do with this incredible story. Even if she could get someone to talk to her, they would never believe that Messiah would come to visit, of all people, her. But she couldn’t hold it in, not this.
Here was a man who claimed to be Messiah – and he could actually back it up with proof! Only God had the kind of knowledge this man had: “Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I stand up; you understand my thoughts from far away” (Psalm 139).
The woman came face to face with the fact she had been trying to deny for so many years – God knew everything about her! There wasn’t anything in her life she could keep to herself, because God saw it all.
Imagine one day, God came to your doorstep, and rang the doorbell. You went out to the door, opened it, and there was God standing on your doorstep. He says, “Hey there. How you doin?” “Fine” “Yeah, well, I noticed you were watching some inappropriate YouTube videos last night.” “Um, yeah.” “Just wanted to let you know I was watching.”
Wouldn’t that change your life? Wouldn’t you think about every thought that went through your head from then on? Wouldn’t you think about every action you were about to do from that point?
That’s the kind of experience this woman had. Suddenly, she realized that God knew everything, and revealed that through Jesus Christ. But it wasn’t just a negative experience. She soon came to realize that while God knows every bit of evil lurking in our hearts, he also knows every bit of potential that his grace can unleash in us.
Jesus used this woman to proclaim the gospel to her entire village. Salvation came to Sychar, and soon to the entire nation of Samaria, and it was inaugurated through this one sinful, adulterous woman.
Jesus the prophet knew something about her that strangers couldn’t. He saw gospel-fueled potential in her that her loved ones wouldn’t. What does he see in you?