Sunday Gathering - John 4 : 1-42 - Nick Lugg - Sermon Only

Nick Lugg continues the John series with John 4:1-42, which he titles “If You Only Knew”. It opens with Jesus leaving Judea for Galilee because the Pharisees had heard he was making more disciples than John — though Jesus himself did not baptise; his disciples did. Nick picks up the human detail: last week’s argument about who was drawing the bigger crowds is still in the air, and the narrator sounds faintly defensive on Jesus’s behalf.

John had built Jesus a huge platform — prepare the way, one greater than me, I am not the Messiah — and the ministry was taking off: publicity, momentum, the chance to make an impact. Then Jesus hears the squabbling about popularity and leaves. He does not join in and does not say “make way”; Jesus simply steps out of the place where everything was beginning to revolve around status and perception. If anyone had the right to centre stage it was him. Nick’s reading is that Jesus withdraws exactly where ministry becomes competition — however well dressed up — because his ministry is on the edge. His father-in-law recommended a book, The Pilgrim Church, on precisely that theme.

So he goes through Samaria, which was neither comfortable nor obvious — the satnav might take you that way, but the culture would not. Tired from the walk, he sits by Jacob’s well at noon and asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. She raises every barrier at once: you are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. The contrast Nick draws is sharp — where Jesus met a barrier in the busy, competitive ministry he withdrew, but where a person puts a barrier up he pushes through. The crowds were queuing to be baptised; this woman was simply going about her daily business, asking nothing, resisting, and he said if only you knew.

That phrase becomes the centre of the encounter. She answers with limits: no rope, no bucket, the well is deep, are you greater than Jacob? He answers with living water. Nick calls it an uneven tennis match — if only you knew, against this far and no further — observing that her history forms the walls of what she believes is possible. Then Jesus asks for her husband and names the five, and the man she is living with. Nick is clear this is not exposure to shame her but a demonstration that he knows her — and that the offer of grace did not shrink once the truth was out. She deflects into a debate about Jerusalem and Mount Gerizim — the move we all make — and Jesus lets her lead and still opens it up: worship is not about the mountain but in spirit and truth. Religion was never the answer — religious people crucified Jesus, religious people were driven from the temple. Jesus came to take the lid off. The harvest, finally, is not theoretical: it looks like this woman by the well, exactly the sort the disciples would have disqualified.

Bible passages

• John 4:1-42 — the passage for the morning, read in sections
• John 4:1-3 — Jesus leaves Judea and returns to Galilee
• John 4:4-9 — through Samaria, Jacob’s well, the Samaritan woman at noon
• John 4:10-15 — “if you only knew the gift God has for you”; the living water
• John 4:16-18 — “you have had five husbands”
• John 4:19-24 — Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim; worship in spirit and truth
• John 4:27-30 — the disciples return; she leaves her jar and tells the village
• John 4:31-38 — “I have food you know nothing about”; the fields are ripe for harvest
• John 3:30 — “He must become greater; I must become less” (quoted)
• John 1:26-27 — John’s testimony to the one coming after him who is greater (alluded to, and sung)
• John 2:13-22 — Jesus cleansing the temple (recalled: “Temple Jesus with his whip”)
• John 3:22-36 — last week’s passage, the argument over who was making more disciples (recap)

Key points

• When the ministry became about status and perception, he left the environment entirely
• God’s work is on the margins, not the centre — “The Pilgrim Church”
• “He had to go through Samaria”, a route no self-respecting Jew would take
• “If you only knew the gift God has for you” is the heart of the whole encounter
• An uneven tennis match: “if only you knew” against “this far and no further”
• We filter grace, power and mercy through what we already know, and set limits
• Jesus names her five husbands not to shame her but to show that he knows her
• Worship is not about the mountain but in spirit and truth
• Jesus came to take the lid off religion, not to make more of it

Calls to action

• Ask whether you are reducing Jesus to what you understand, or open to what he wants to do
• Ask what you would request if you really believed what is on offer
• Identify where you have set limits and decided something is not possible
• Pray: show us what we don’t yet see, and give us the courage to ask for more
• Respond during worship — come to the front to pray with the team, or quietly in your heart

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/pHZn10wG660