Opposites

Opposites

John 3:1-3

1 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

John 4:7, 19-24

7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.”

19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.

20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”

21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.

22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.

23 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.

24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

   John chapter 3 and chapter 4 contain two of the best one-on-one stories of Jesus in the Gospels.  Chapter 3 is the famous meeting at night with a member of the Jewish ruling council, Nicodemus.  Chapter 4 is the meeting with the Samaritan woman who has had multiple marriages and now is shacking up with a man she isn’t married to, kind like a soap opera, huh?  Yet the two stories are similar, in an opposite way.  Nicodemus was too correct and the woman was too wrong.  He was a good Jew and she was Samaritan, who are traditionally hostile to the Jews.  He worshipped in Jerusalem, the traditional site of worship to God; she worshipped at Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans could worship without going to Jerusalem and facing the hostile attitude of the Jews.  They worshipped at Mount Gerizim because when the Jews entered the Promised Land, God commanded that the Law be read to all the people.  The blessings were read from Mount Gerizim and the curses from Mount Ebal.  (Deuteronomy 27:4–8, 12-13.)

   Nicodemus couldn’t believe because he was too familiar with the Law.  The woman could not believe because she was too ignorant of the Law.  Nicodemus is a little too caught up in his position as a Jew, a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, and a renowned teacher of the Old Testament law.  She wanted nothing to do with the Jewish Law. 

   Nicodemus is willing to acknowledge that Jesus is “a teacher who has come from God” (3:2); yet he falls a little short of actually saying that Jesus is a prophet.  When Jesus tells him that he will not make it into the kingdom of God as he is, without being reborn from above, he seems to try to get Jesus to change His requirements rather than to change his own beliefs.  Nicodemus does ask questions, but there seems to be little progress toward genuine faith, at least at first.  His questions do not convey a willingness to change his thinking, but rather a resistance to what Jesus is saying.

   The woman at the well is a Samaritan, and Samaritans have their own distinct religion, a corruption of the Jewish faith.  If the woman at the well is to come to a saving faith, she must change her beliefs as well.  She is as far from Christ as Nicodemus was, just as I, a life-long Sunday school student who had never asked Jesus into his heart was just as lost as my friends who had never been to church in their lives. 

   Both Nicodemus and the woman at the well must decide what to do with what Jesus has told them.  They need to both come to grips with Who Jesus is and need to believe in what He is saying to them.  The more Jesus tells Nicodemus about Himself and His teaching, the more Nicodemus’ questions and comments become shorter and shorter, until he simply disappears from the text.  The conversation with the Samaritan woman is different.  The conversation moves from literal drinking water to the spiritual “water” of salvation.  Her grasp of who Jesus is grows with each issue He talks about until she eventually trusts in Him as the Messiah and goes to tell her town about Him.  While Nicodemus comes to faith very slowly and somewhat reluctantly, the woman at the well seems to quickly grasp Who Jesus is and trust in Him as Savior.  While Nicodemus, an influential leader among the Jews, is not recorded to have brought a single person to Christ, the woman at the well brings the whole town out to hear Jesus because of her testimony. 

   Both life-long church-goers and those-who-never-darken-the-door-of-a-church types need to come to terms with the salvation message.  Both types need Jesus.  A young pastor recognized that even though I had been in church since infancy, I was still unsaved and lost.  But I would still have ended up in eternal separation from God just like all those sinners who’ve never heard the Gospel preached.  Had Nicodemus turned away from Jesus’ words, he would have been lost for eternity.  Had the woman not stopped to respond to Jesus’ request for water, she would have been lost for eternity.  The Gospel needs to be preached to everyone.  Do your Christian friends profess Jesus as Lord?  Have your non-Christian friends heard any of your testimony?   

Stephen Cram                            April 3, 2011                   Colossians 2:8