JOHN191 - She Didn’t Know What She Was Looking for and She Didn’t Know Who She Was Talking To, but That’s All about to Change

0:20 Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And at some point along the way, I told you a story that I'm about to tell you again. When did I tell you this story? I have no idea because we talk a lot and we hang out. And this is just what happens when you've known somebody for a long time, and sometimes you just get stories again.

0:37 Maybe it wasn't even on this podcast. I don't remember, but here we go. I was at the Loud American. It's a restaurant in Sturgis, South Dakota. Sturgis is where we have the big giant million person or whatever motorcycle rally every year. It's a little rough around the edges. Loud American is a very loud bar and grill where they do shows and whatnot.

0:56 They got signs on the doors that say like no biker colors in here. So I don't totally know what that means, but I think it means like if you see somebody who's wearing the wrong motorcycle colors and you're in a motorcycle club, you gotta stab them or something. And they don't want people getting stabbed at their restaurant.

1:11 Yeah, that's right. I frequent places like this and I bring my family. No, I was in there on a Saturday in the off season, and I was supposed to go see that night Diamond Rio. That's what it was. I was supposed to see Diamond Rio that night at another place in Deadwood, South Dakota. Uh, you are walking your way.

1:32 I'll start walking mine. We'll meet in the middle, meet that old Georgia, or whatever it is. I mean, they're Diamond Rio's great, right? So we we had tickets, it was a whole big thing. But that day at lunch, we're sitting there at Loud American eating food. There's nobody there. And then this old dude walks up on the stage, grabs an acoustic guitar.

1:54 I'm like, well, that's kind of odd. There's no introduction, there's no lights. Okay. And he's awesome. We have talked about this. We've talked about it because Jeff covered this song for me the last time I told you. Whatever. I'm still telling you the story. He was amazing. And nobody cheered or clapped after he got done just doing this little cute love song.

2:15 And he just went over and he sat by himself in a booth. And I was like, somebody needs to go talk to that guy. I don't know why he did that, but it was good. Somebody should encourage him. And so I went over there to encourage him and I asked him questions about his life. And I'm like, dude, you're really good.

2:27 That was great. You should do it more. And he's like, well, thank you. Thank you for the encouragement or whatever. And I was like, well, my name's Matt Whitman. He's like, my name's Doug Stone. And I was like, oh, yeah. Yep. Like the multi-platinum country music multi-time Grammy Award winner, Doug Stone.

2:43 Oh, I get it now. So he was doing a show that night and he invited me to come to the show. And I was like, ah, sorry, Diamond Rio's in town. I gotta go to that show. And then Diamond Rio canceled and I didn't go to either show, and it was lame. Here's the point of the story, and why I probably brought it up last time I brought it up and why I'm bringing it up again now.

2:58 I just didn't know who I was talking to. I was talking to somebody who presented himself in a very humble way. But he is a gigantic deal. And if I'd known who I was talking to, I probably would have approached the conversation a little differently instead of being like, that was really good. You should do it again sometime.

3:17 I might have been like, dude, would you just play a couple more Doug Stone because of how you're Doug Stone? Likewise, in John chapter four, we get one of those kind of scenes where the unwitting person, in this case, the person in my position, is a Samaritan woman. She has an encounter with somebody and doesn't really know who he is or whatever.

3:37 And as a result, she doesn't really ask the right questions or get the situation, but it's forgivable because she just doesn't know. She just doesn't recognize. But the person she's interacting with is a really big deal. And if she knew who she was interacting with, she probably would have asked a different question or come at it a different way than she did.

3:57 Here's the story. Now Jesus had to go through Samaria. This is John 4, 4 and 4. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sycar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour, so like noonish.

4:13 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, You're a Jew, and I'm a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

4:40 Okay, that's a lot, right? I'm grateful, just as a point of comparison here, that Doug Stone did not totally give me that treatment. He just sort of chuckled at my ignorance and my moment of recognition. Jesus is God in the flesh. Jesus is the answer to this woman's problems. So she is coming into the conversation thinking that she is the answer to Jesus' problems.

5:05 He's haggard and tired and sweaty and probably stinky. It's not sacrilegious. Jesus is all God, all man. When he walked around and got sweaty, he probably smelled bad. And here he is, just all alone by this well, some guy whose accent demonstrates that he's not from around here. And he's asking for a drink because he doesn't even have a vessel to drink from.

5:31 The Samaritan woman is going to think to herself, what anybody would think? Which is, oh, I am the answer to this person's problem. But the mistake she's making is she just doesn't recognize who she's talking to. She doesn't get it. This isn't just some guy. This is God in the flesh. This is the centerpiece of God's redemptive plan.

5:52 This is the Christ, the Messiah, not just for the Jews, but for everybody. This guy isn't just the keystone, the cornerstone that holds everything together and makes everything work for the whole giant story of redemptive history for the Jews. He is the chief cornerstone and the key that unlocks and makes everything work for the redemptive story that the Samaritans have been trying to cobble together.

6:17 He is the answer to the grand problems of the world, the smaller problems of her people, the smaller problems yet of her village, and the smaller problems yet of her personal crisis, the state and fate of her life and her soul that we learn more about as we go along. And indeed, she's in pretty rough repair.

6:38 Jesus looks like the one who's in the position of weakness and beat up here, but really she's the one who's in the position of great need. Okay, well, come on. No harm, no foul for not recognizing Jesus. I would submit to you that if you traveled back in time right now and just wandered around willy-nilly in Judea or Galilee, and Jesus was just sitting there, I don't think you'd know what he looked like either.

7:02 I mean, it wasn't like there was a sign that you know carried around like I'm Jesus of Nazareth. Uh, you know, is it there weren't pictures or anything? How would you know, right? Like uh Judas had to kiss Jesus, even though he was massively famous, so that the authorities would know, oh, that's the guy we got to arrest.

7:20 Why? Because they didn't know what he looked like. Okay, so come on, she doesn't know what he looks like. I have no excuse. Doug Stone, he's a country music legend, should have recognized him, even with a few more miles on the tires and wrinkles on his face. I should have had that. Come on, Whitman. But she had no reason to know who Jesus is.

7:38 So she just makes the obvious play. You're a Jew, I'm a Samaritan. What are you doing? It's interesting though. She doesn't say no. Did you catch that? She's like, no. You're a Jew, I'm a Samaritan. Gross. What are you doing? She just raises an objection, which is kind of clever, kind of sophisticated on her part.

7:57 She didn't close the conversation, right? Things are still open. It's interesting. But then in the same way, and I don't remember exactly how the reveal went, but in the same way that Doug Stone revealed to me that he was Doug Stone in that booth. It's funny because there are a lot of you who are like, I have no, I've never heard of that guy.

8:14 I don't have country music. Trust me, he's a big deal and he's really good. He's a bard, he's gifted. But in the same way that somehow he revealed to me at some point in the conversation, well, you know, I'm I'm Doug Stone and I make music. So at this point, Jesus begins the process of revealing to her, but he kind of starts with a a tease, a hypothetical, as if to say, like, if you knew, you would this.

8:38 Now, I think this uh construction that Jesus uses here is really fun. Maybe we'll do a rabbit trail on it tomorrow or something, maybe we won't. But Jesus will often use this counterfactual construction for his thoughts. If you knew this, or if you'd seen that, or if this generation had seen what you'd seen, then this is the outcome that would have happened.

9:05 It's it's called a counterfactual. So it's interesting that he's demonstrating a knowledge of her mind, her heart, her motives, her wiring, how she works, because his answer is if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, so if you were aware of who you were talking to, then you would do the opposite of what you're doing.

9:26 If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him. And he would have given you living water. So he turns the thing around and he you know, he still hasn't uh said who he is, but he's held out two ifs and he follows it with two thens, right? The two ifs are if you knew the gift of God, what are we talking about here?

9:51 Well, uh salvation, uh life in Christ, just what the end goal or what the point is of going from death to life in God. So if you knew the one gift of God, so like if you even really knew what you were looking for, but you don't know what you're looking for, and you still haven't found what you're looking for because you can't even picture it.

10:16 You couldn't even picture it if it was right in front of you. So that's if number one. If you knew what you were looking for, what the gift of God is, and if you knew who it was that is sitting here asking you for a drink, who is it? What's the one who can deliver the gift of God that you don't even know that you're looking for yet?

10:31 It's the Christ, the Messiah. Now we'll see in a minute that it looks like she has some kind of concept for that. But there's a double if. If you knew the gift of God, and if you knew who you were talking to, that being the arbiter, the distributor, the earner, the giver, the maker of that gift, then, and now here's the double then in the back half of the counterfactual, you one would have asked him.

10:57 So if you knew who you were talking to, and if you understood what you were looking for, your soul kind of knows, but you don't know, if you had that nailed down, you wouldn't have even waited for him to ask you for a drink. You would have sprinted up to him and said, I I want a drink. Can you give me the drink?

11:13 But then the second half of the counterfactual is it's not a normal drink. Any idiot with a jug and a rope can get water out of the well. No, it's living water. And of course, this idea is gonna get fleshed out as we go along. But this living water is something that Jesus, I mean, it's a word picture to describe salvation, life in God, right standing with God at the expense, regardless of the what team you're on or what side of the dividing wall of hostility you're on, or regardless of how you uh you know, envision yourself in terms of your ethnicity or your story or whatever, mmm, it transcends all of that.

11:51 So you, even you as an outsider, lady, if you knew the gift of God, if you knew what you were looking for and who it is that you're talking with right here, you'd be asking him not just for water, but for something better, living water, the water of life, the water that is representative of right standing with God.

12:10 But at this point, she doesn't know. And again, I say, I think we can forgive her that. I think we can empathize with that. I think we can also maybe empathize with not even really knowing what we're looking for. It's a very common theme in the last 50 years of art. So much of our art has just been about that theme.

12:29 What is the point? We live in a world where we got money, we got fast food, we got vehicles that can transport us all over the place super fast. We got black mirrors in our pocket that have all the knowledge of human history. We never have to be bored ever. Everything's at our fingertips, live long lives now.

12:49 We're all rich, at least compared to people historically. And then here we are, unsatisfied with all that we have. Why aren't we satisfied? And now here comes Jesus and he says to her, and well, as well across the ages, he's saying to us, You don't know what you're looking for, but I'm about to bring it into focus.

13:08 And that's what happens next in the story. There's more give and take that we're gonna look at, and ultimately, Jesus is not content to just be like, Well, you had your chance, you could have recognized me, you should have known what you were looking for. And instead, he goes even further than he's already gone by taking on flesh, and he's gonna spell the thing out in a way that makes sense to her, and her life is gonna be changed.

13:29 So much more to unpack here. I'm guessing Jeff's got some dugstones sitting around somewhere for us. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.