A Lost Sheep (John 4: 1-34)

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1 1 How was the Samaritan woman like the lost sheep in the parable in Matthew 15? 2 Did the Samaritans derive any benefit from being part-blood Israelites? 3 Which of us are letters from Christ written in the Spirit of God on tablets of human hearts? 4 How can an individual soul be very nearly irrelevant, and at the same time absolutely essential, to the work of Jesus Christ? 5 In what sense do we who receive living bread and living water from Jesus Christ never hunger or thirst again? A Lost Sheep (John 4: 1-34) I The story of the woman at the well exemplifies the love of the Good Shepherd for his lost sheep. (We should not read as much as we usually do, into the fact that Jesus, as a Jew, spoke to a Samaritan, or that the Samaritan was a woman. Both of these facts seem to be incompatible with Jewish culture, but then most of what Jesus said and did was incompatible with human culture. The fact that His disciples were not present, or that the woman had been married multiple times are details that give an interesting glimpse into a day in the life of Jesus, but are of little use in understanding the life and work of Christ. This woman needed to be forgiven just as we all do. Jesus changed her life, and she testified about Him to friends and neighbors. This is the way things should go when anyone meets Jesus.) A In one of Christ's parables, a shepherd had 100 sheep and 1 of them wandered away. (This parable is particularly relevant in John 4, because Jesus was the Good Shepherd. In the KJV, He told His disciples, I must needs go through Samaria. Perhaps it raised a few eyebrows; but then, the shortest distance from Judea to Galilee went through Samaria. And after all, they wouldn't need to have anything to do with Samaritans just because they were walking through their country, just like believers do not need to have a worldly lifestyle just because we share the same air with worldly people. (We choose our compromises, do we not?) For Jesus, it was no compromise. He needed to pass through Samaria to

2 find some of His lost sheep. He found one, at the well. Then when the lost sheep in Samaria realized that their shepherd had found them, they followed Him into His Kingdom.) B The Samaritans were lost sheep from the House of Israel. (Sheep get lost for several reasons, notably, wandering away, and carelessness by shepherds. Samaria got lost because their first shepherd, King Jeroboam, was careless with their spirituality, which led to their conquest and dispersion by Assyria. Displaced Israelites were replaced with new neighbors from other parts of Assyria, who brought more infidelity with them, and intermarried with remaining Israelites. Yet Samaritans were Israelites first, and still God's people, just as idolatrous and hellenistic Jews were; and their Shepherd still loved them.) II A shepherd's love for his sheep is only partly related to their economic value. (We have to believe that the biggest reason a shepherd, or anyone else, chooses the career path that he does is economic. In broad terms, agriculture and animal husbandry, and related secondary and tertiary industries, account for about 45% of the GDP in the US, and more in some countries. But beyond economic considerations, people who choose to spend most of their time caring for plants and animals do so because they prefer that to interacting with people. After all, plants and animals don't betray friends, and they only demand what they need for living. People usually demand more of our material and emotional resources.) A There is a life-force connection between the shepherd and his sheep. (A life-force connection exists independently of the economic benefits of animal husbandry, and of the absence of a need to interact socially with people you don't like. Some people find strength in knowing that an animal in your care would be entirely helpless without your intervention on his behalf. This is why people feed pigeons in parks, or homeless cats on the street. It is why our empathy is aroused by pictures of sick and hungry children in Africa. And it is why God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to save us from sin. The Will of God is that all humanity should be reconciled to Him, and Jesus came to do the Will of His Heavenly Father. How sad, that we don't make this our life's purpose too.) B Samaritans had only part-israelite bloodlines. (It is not correct to say that Samaritans

3 were half-breed Jews. The term Jew refers to the descendants of the tribes of Juda, Benjamin, and Simeon, and some Levites, that were exiled to Babylon after the conquest of Judah by Nebuchadneezar in the time of Jeremiah. The rest of Israel was part of the northern Kingdom, until the Assyrian period. Most Samaritan Israelites were exiled and replaced by other Assyrians, who intermarried with the indigenous population. The Samaritans in John 4 are their descendants. Yet the city itself had been built by an Israelite king (Omri). As far as real Jews in Jerusalem were concerned, Samaria was rightly one of their cities, and its people were their distant, disowned and disaffected, cousins. All people were nonetheless created by the same God, and some of them had the DNA of Israel. This was enough of a reason for Jesus to seek for lost Israelite sheep among the Samaritans.) III Jesus felt an evangelistic responsibility for everyone, and so should we. (We assume that Jesus needed to go through Samaria for the same reason the shepherd in Matthew 15 left 99 sheep and went searching for one that was lost. That part is speculation. We can say with confidence that Jesus came into the world to do the Will of God, and in Matthew 15: 24 He described His mission as to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He did not say the lost sheep of [any of the Tribes], but of Israel. There is a pattern here, that we should note. God chose Israel out of all the tribes and nations of earth to be a Kingdom of Priests, in Exodus 19:6. He chose the tribe of Levi out of the tribes of Israel to be priests in the Tabernacle, and later, the Temple. He chose the family of Aaron to be hereditary high priests in the tribe of Levi. Now note that Aaron and his successors did not minister to all Israel, but only to the priests who could fit into the courts of the Tabernacle, or the Temple. The levitical priesthood did not minister to the entire world, but only the part of it that visited them in the Temple and the synagogues, that is, to Israelites. The nation of Israel was supposed to represent all the world in front of God, and represent God in front of all the world. This is a pattern of vicarious representation. Now in John 4, Jesus met one Samaritan at a well. He recovered one of the lost sheep of the House of Israel for the Kingdom of God, in much the same way as God recovered Abraham from among all men on earth at

4 that time, to establish His Covenant with him. She went back into town and testified about what Jesus had said and done. More lost sheep were subsequently recovered, when they followed her to their Shepherd. We note (v 2) that Jesus Himself did not baptize people, but His disciples did. In v 39, the Samaritans believed in Jesus because of the woman's testimony, not because Jesus went into the town and conducted an evangelistic crusade. This pattern (of vicarious representation) is how God worked in the Bible, and it is how Jesus still works now. He can use recovered sheep from any house, to recover other lost sheep.) A There are many church members who still need to meet Jesus. (We see that Jesus was in the world for evangelistic reasons, but not to be the Evangelist. He came to be the Lamb of God Who would die in vicarious atonement for the sins of the world. Evangelists are believers who know this about Jesus, and testify about it to others. Christ is the High Priest chosen from among men, for the establishment of a new Covenant (of grace) in His own blood, and mediate this covenant between men and God. Now Christ sits at the right hand of God, to interceed for us with God, through His Spirit which is in us (believers). All true believers are born again by the power of the spirit of God, and now we represent Christ to the rest of the world, by the witness of godly living, and the testimony of faith. We are, as Paul put it in II Corinthians 3:3, a letter from Christ, the result of [the apostles'] ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Now which of us are letters from Christ, written with the Spirit of the living God, on tablets of human hearts? As members of the Body of Christ we must be. Membership in a church does not produce that writing. Some faithful members of institutional churches still need to meet Jesus, just as much as any of the Samaritans did. ) B Unbelievers now meet Jesus only if believers introduce them to Him. (The woman at the well in Samaria was fortunate to have some of the DNA of Israel in her blood. That made her one of the lost sheep of the House of Israel, whom Jesus came to seek. Other lost sheep followed her into the sheepfold of the Good Shepherd because of her testimony. Any one can enter the Kingdom of God on the same basis; but after the Apostle Paul, nobody

5 else met Jesus in person. DNA does not get us an emergency appointment with the Lord now, and neither does recitation of the Apostle's Creed, Baptism, or Communion; but we still have an emergency. The only way out of the world, into Heaven, goes through a door named Jesus, and the only way anyone finds that Door is when one of us, who knows how to open that door, introduces him to Jesus. Then let evangelism define our service to God, as it did Christ's service to us, and without regard for human restrictions on the service.) IV An individual believer is relatively unimportant, compared to the community of all believers. (If we needed to secure something with a chain, we would need to use the whole chain, not just one or two links of it. If you think about it, the chain is all of its links, and one or another individual link means nothing, compared with the entire chain. Yet chains cannot exist without individual links. So the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The Body of Christ is something like the chain. One soul may well have infinite worth to God, but the chuch must be many more than one soul. At the same time, one soul more or less will not change the utility of the Church for her Lord. In other words, God indeed shall accomplish His Will, with you or me, or without us; the Will of God will be done, and if we as individuals, are part of the doing or not is very nearly irrelevant. Yet one individual soul is still important. Sheep follow other sheep, either to our shepherd or away from Him. So let us be sure that if someone follows us, we all arrive at where Jesus wants us to be.) A We must decrease, and Christ must increase. (That was the conclusion of John the Baptist. Jesus must increase, in importance and influence, and ultimately, in responsibility in front of God. John, and we, must decrease. That is, our individual roles in the Body of Christ are like links in the chain, that are only useful by working together with many other links. Egos, dreams, ambitions, and strategies for finally arriving at a place and time in life when we can do as we please and tell the rest of humanity to let us alone, all must decrease until ultimately, they disappear from our hearts and minds, and are replaced by Christ.) B One Samaritan woman was a messenger. (There was just one link in the chain, that stretched from the faith of Abraham into Samaria that morning in John 4. The link was the

6 woman at the well. The whole chain was Jesus Himself. If you or I are ever as important to the eternal destiny of anyone's soul as the woman at the well was to Samaria, it will be because in us, Christ increased and individuality decreased. We should note that any Samaritan could probably have been that link, but only one of them was. So it is for us, in church work. Let us, as John, have a realistic understanding of Who Christ is, and who we are.) V Christ had meat to eat that the disciples did not know about. (The conversation between Jesus and His disciples is related to His conversation with the woman in two significant ways. We will follow up on that thought in the next message. For now we should note that the disciples thought only about material food, but Jesus, about evangelical responsibilities. They thought someone else was bringing lunch for Jesus. Jesus intended to provide living bread and living water for everyone who would eat and drink it. In order to understand His comments rightly we must understand responsibility rightly. Jesus said that His meat was to do the will of Him who sent [Him] and to finish the work. God created the entire world in six days, and then rested on the Seventh; not because He was tired, but because His work (Creation) was done. Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father in Heaven to rest from His Work on earth, because His work was done. We need to have a better understanding of what it means to serve God, or work for the Lord, because most of us hope to find rest in Heaven with Christ long before our work is finished. We are lazy.) A Responsibility is like hunger or thirst awaiting satisfaction. (Let us remember that everyone has a soul that will spend eternity somewhere, and that God loved each soul so much that He sacrificed His only begotten Son for our redemption. We were not the sacrifice, or the priests who sacrificed the Lamb of God in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. So what is our role? It is the same as the woman's, at the Samaritan well. A lost sheep (i.e. you or me) must meet Jesus, and then be a witness to our friends and neighbors, testifying to the power of God to save us, through Christ. Some of us will own this spiritual responsibility, and some of them will follow us into the Kingdom of God. The satisfaction of spiritual hunger and thirst by Christ is the faithful discharge of spiritual responsibilities.

7 The rest will hunger and thirst again, without living bread and living water from Jesus; and no one can get it from us until we get it from Him.) B The satisfaction of our hunger (of spiritual responsibility) is our union with God through Christ. (Jesus achieved that union when He ascended into Heaven, and He prayed that we would achieve it too, in John 17. In union with God through Christ, the will of God and the mind of Christ become our will and mind too. We start to think like Jesus thinks, and then start to do like Jesus did. These thoughts and actions are our confomity to the image of Christ, and that will be the obedience of Christ that God imputes to us (as righteousness), when we meet Him, on the Last Day.)