JESUS DIED FOR ALLPRIVATE

JESUS DIED FOR ALL

John 4:5-26

INTRODUCTION: The text for our meditation this morning, the Second Sunday in Lent, is taken from the Gospel reading for today, the Gospel according to St. John where Jesus meets the woman at the well, inviting her to believe: “So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman of 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. Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, ‘How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?’ For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.’"*

We tend to make many distinctions in life, some of them good ones, such as the distinction in a dating relationship between those who are married and those who are not. Those who are married are already spoken for and are not eligible for a date. Those who are not married, on the other hand, are eligible. This distinction is a good one. It helps to keep us from breaking the 10th Commandment, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife...", or husband, for that matter, as well as the 6th Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." In the same way it's useful for the schools to make a distinction between those who are allowed on school property during the day and those who are not. This distinction helps to provide a safe learning environment for our children. Distinctions like these are good ones for us to make.

But there are other kinds of distinctions that are not so good. In fact, many of them are nothing more than a thinly veiled form of bigotry.

Now bigotry comes in many forms, not only in the form of racial bigotry that we are all familiar with and should rightly despise. It also comes in the form of class bigotry, of economic bigotry, of regional bigotry, of ethnic bigotry, and so on and so on. Such bigotry causes us to divide people into different groups: black and white; rich and poor; northerners and southerners; native Southeast Missourians and newcomers to the area. In other words, they cause us to divide people into two groups: ‘us’ and them, whoever the ‘us’ happens to be, and of course, everyone else is ‘them’, and once we have made the division the conflict soon begins.

These kinds of distinctions are not good! They only cause trouble in society at large and they only cause trouble in the church. The Lord does not make distinctions between people based on the color of their skin-we are all descended from Adam and Eve no matter what the color of our skin, and we are all therefore related to one another, whether we realize it or not-nor does He make distinctions based upon how much we earn or on where we live-its all the same to Him- nor does He make a distinction on whether we belong to a union or not, on whether we belong to this political party or to that political party. Indeed, the only distinction that God makes is based upon whether we believe in Him or not, on whether we believe in the forgiveness of our sins that He freely gives to us or not, whether we believe in His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, or not.

These are the only kinds of distinctions that God makes. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God-there is no difference here! And as all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God all have earned the wages of their sin, which is death, not merely temporal death here in time, the death of the body where the body and soul are separated from one another until the resurrection of the dead, but also eternal death, that eternal separation of both body and soul from God in the lake of fire that we call hell, where the worm never dies and the flames never end. There is no difference here. And we have all been redeemed by the shedding of the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son.

There is no difference here, either, for Jesus Christ died for all, whether we are black or whether we are white, whether we are rich or whether we are poor, whether we are from Southeast Missouri or whether we are from some other part of the world, Jesus died for all! And this is very important for us to remember, for if Jesus Christ had not died for all then how could we know that He died for us? We could not! But because Jesus Christ died for all, we know that He died for us! And because Jesus Christ died for the forgiveness of everyone’s sin, and on the third day rose again from the dead, we know that He died for the forgiveness of OUR sins, and so we also know that our sins have been forgiven by Him!

There is no distinction here, either. Jesus died for all and all have been forgiven in Him! But sometimes we seem to forget this marvelous truth! In the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve first fell into sin God made that first gospel promise to them that the Seed of the Woman, namely, our Lord Jesus Christ, would crush the head of the serpent, that is, He would destroy the power of the devil that the devil had gained over us by our sin. That power, of course, was the power to accuse us because of our sin, but that power was destroyed on Good Friday when our Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died on the cross to make atonement for our sin, and on the third day rose again from the dead for our justification. By His stripes we are healed, that is, by His sufferings and death our sins have been forgiven, and because our sins have been forgiven the power of the devil to accuse us because of our sin is no more.

But that first promise was not made only to Adam and Eve. It was also made to all of their descendants as well, even to you and to me, and so that first promise was restated over and over again down through the ages as God made the necessary arrangements for that promise to be fulfilled in the life and death of His only begotten Son.

One of those arrangements we read about in the Old Testament reading for today where God called out to Abraham and said, “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Gen. 12:1b-3] Notice that when God issued the call to Abraham God said, “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” not just those who were physically descended from Abraham.

We sometimes call the children of Israel God’s chosen people. And they WERE chosen by God, but they sometimes forgot and we sometimes forget what they were chosen for! They were chosen, not to be the only ones who would be saved, but to be the ones through whom the Messiah would come into the world to save us as well as them from their sins as well as ours, and they were also chosen to be the ones through whom the Word of God would be given to God’s people and preserved so that we might know who that Messiah was, even our Lord Jesus Christ, and believe in Him, and be saved!

Jesus died, not merely for some, but Jesus died for us all! And so, in the Gospel reading for today we see Jesus bringing that salvation that He came to bring, not only to the Jews, but also to that Samaritan woman whom He met at the well as He journeyed on His way from Judea to Galilee.

Now the Jews and the Samaritans were not on friendly terms although they lived in the same country. The Jews hated the Samaritans and looked down upon them as half-breeds because they were of mixed Jewish and Gentile blood. And the Samaritans hated the Jews in return! And so it was that when Jesus was sitting at the well outside the city of Sychar and a woman of Samaria came up to draw water from the well, it was totally unexpected that Jesus, who was clearly a Jew, should ask her for a drink. But this is what He did. "Give Me a drink," He said. To this she replied, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" Obviously she was surprised by the request and not at all pleased by it. Jesus answered, much more patiently I’m sure than I would have, and said "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water."

Now the gift of God that our Lord Jesus Christ is speaking of here is eternal life, for while the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord [Rom. 6:23], the gift that we receive along with the forgiveness of our sins when we believe in Him. The one to whom she is speaking, of course, is Jesus Christ Himself, the long expected Messiah, the Seed of the Woman promised so long ago in the Garden of Eden, the only begotten Son of God who came down from on high to save us so that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life, and the living water of which He speaks is the Holy Spirit whom He gives to us through His Word and through the waters of Holy Baptism, which is the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we might believe in Him and be saved!

But the woman at the well, although she’s heard the words, did not yet understand them! She said, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?" She obviously does not understand what our Lord Jesus Christ is talking about, nor does she understand who He is, for truly He is greater than Jacob! He was the one who called Jacob forth in the beginning. He was the one who wrestled with Jacob as Jacob was returning to the land of Canaan after so-journeying for 20 years with his father-in-law Laban and He is the one who gave Jacob the name of Israel, so that his descendants would be called the children of Israel, even as they are still called the children of Israel to this very day!

But Jesus is patient with her even as He is patient with us! "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again,” Jesus said, seeking to turn her thoughts from the earthly to the heavenly, “but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life." Now the woman is intrigued! "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw." She is intrigued but she still does not understand!

And so Jesus switches gears and says to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." A troubling thing for Jesus to say to the woman, for the woman was not living a morally upright life! She was not married, and yet she was living with a man as though she was. This is a commonplace sin in our society today, one that we need to fight against because it is leading people away from the salvation that we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not the unforgivable sin, but it does need to be corrected as all sin needs to be corrected, it needs to be repented of, and to be forgiven. And God does forgive! As we read in John’s first epistle, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” [1 John 1:8-9]

The woman at the well was not yet ready to admit her sin to this stranger, but neither did she see a reason to tell this stranger an out and out lie about it, and so she said, "I have no husband," to which Jesus replied, "You have well said, 'I have no husband,' for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly."

Oops! She’s in trouble! This man whom she had never met before in her life knew the truth about her life, even the truth about those things that she would rather admit to no one! How did He know these things?

She’s puzzled, she’s not yet ready to repent, but she is beginning to think about the heavenly things and not just the earthly! "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet,” she said. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship."

"Woman, believe Me,” Jesus said, “the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

"I know that Messiah is coming," she said. “When He comes, He will tell us all things." And Jesus replied, "I who speak to you am He." Before that day was over the woman believed in Jesus, not only as her God and her Lord, but also as her Savior from sin. And not only did she believe, but many of the Samaritans who lived in that city believed with her because of what she told them about Jesus, and by the time our Lord Jesus left two days later, many more believed who had come out to hear Jesus speak to them Himself!

“This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. . . .” [[1 Tim. 1:15a]

There are many sinners who need to be saved and Jesus died for them. Do not shun them simply because they are not like your or me, but invite them to come and see Jesus, and by the grace of God they will believe in Him and be saved. "I heard the voice of Jesus say, 'Come unto Me and rest; Lay down, O weary one, lay down Your head upon My breast.' I came to Jesus as I was, So weary, worn and sad; I found in Him a resting place, And He has made me glad." Amen.