ULDAH MINISTRY

No,71　　September. 2001

【 WHAT IS THE REAL ISSUE BEHIND YOUR BEHAVIOUR? 】

　 The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptising more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptised, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a 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 [noon]. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you know 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." … " …Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?" Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back." "I have no husband," she replied. Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true." "Sir," the woman said, " I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain [Mt. Gerizim, a sacred place to a Samaritan, equivalent to Jerusalem to a Jew], but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth." The woman said, "I know that Messiah"(called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. … The woman went back to the town and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" They came out of the town and made their way towards him. Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labour."
John 4:1 ~ 38

The first paragraph quoted above is the famous story of Christ's talking with a Samaritan woman, which is often referred to as a good example of Jesus' method of counselling. Here, Jesus frees her from one of the ego devised defence mechanisms of the personality, or "intellectualisation," in special terms. His approaching a Samaritan and also, a woman, was as a Jew, very unusual in His days, on the grounds of both sex and race. Samaritans were considered as total outcasts by the Jew and were a severely despised race because they had originally been pure Israelites, but had intermarried with the surrounding nations. Accordingly, His request for a drink and friendly talk to her would have been more astounding, embarrassing and dumbfounding for the disciples than for her because no Jewish rabbis would have behaved in such a way in the street due to traditional prohibition.
　　　It was a very hot midday and Jesus was tired, thirsty and hungry when a Samaritan woman showed up. On such a hot day, no one would have come out to draw water, unless perhaps one wanted to get away from the crowd and avoid others, as was probably the case with this woman. Jesus, who discerned that she was sinning by breaking God's commandments over moral issues and thus, that she had problem in her heart, immediately begins referring to her deep need for ' the gift of God,' i.e., the gift of the Spirit bestowed only by Christ. During the conversation, she attempts to keep the discussion in the intellectual realm, such as how Jesus could draw the living water out of the deep well and the right location for worshipping God. Her defence mechanism operated to keep attention away from her disturbed feelings because of sin, for fear of confrontation, which might cause further damage to a sense of personal insignificance, self-worthlessness and insecurity, from which she was already suffering considerably as a social outcast. The defence mechanism automatically works to keep emotionally negative aspects detached. However, Jesus, gently draws to surface her real issue of having cohabited with five husbands-her sin and buried negative emotions- and taught that each individual needed salvation through Christ. The time of worshipping God in each individual heart, rather than in Jerusalem as the Jews claimed or in Gerizim as the Samaritans claimed, has been inaugurated by Christ.

Despite her belief in messianic hope her understanding of Christ was very limited probably because the Samaritan's Bible consisted only of the first five books written by Moses, i.e., the 'Pentateuch' as they had rejected the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the Prophets and the Writings. As a consequence, the Jews had a much fuller revelation than the Samaritans, through the whole Hebrew Bible. If she had read the whole Hebrew Bible she might have then been informed about the coming Messiah well enough, without expecting the Messiah to explain everything at the time of His coming. Accordingly, for her, Jesus' teachings were completely new, rather than being a different interpretation of the Hebrew Bible concerning the Messiah. It was indeed, the very exciting gospel, good news: Jew or Samaritan, whoever believes in Jesus as his Saviour can live eternally because within him a spring of unquenchable living water continually wells up. Each individual is equal and precious in God's sight and has absolute worth. Those who believe will neither need a human-made well any longer, nor a special sacred place to worship God. Those who worship outwardly and those who blindly follow the old rituals of worship were no longer to be accepted by God, as already given repeated warnings by the Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah.

In the return of the disciples from town, the woman left the place and the story enters a new phase, where Jesus then deals with His disciples' problem, as depicted in the second paragraph quoted above. Seeing that His disciples were emotionally very disturbed by His unusual fellowship with a Samaritan woman and also that their concern was deeply restricted in the material things alone, Jesus turns the subject to a more spiritual issue: 'my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.' The disciples had a biased view of the Samaritan woman, considering her not worthy of being evangelised and they probably assumed that the woman had given Jesus some food. Jesus, however redirects their thinking, reminding them of the priorities as followers of Christ, i.e., to do the Father's will. Discerning that the Samaritans, who would have just this moment heard the woman's testimony about Christ, were already coming to seek Him, Jesus then gently drew the disciples' attention to their dull sense of discernment of time and opportunity: "Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest."
He implied that these people were the spiritual harvest from the seed sown in the renewed heart of the woman. As a spiritual harvest is not governed by reapers and seasons, so the disciples were to be ready to reap the harvest at any time, i.e., to finish the Father's work. Prejudice stood a big barrier for them perceiving the Father's will and to achieving it. Jesus also reminded them of the dangers of falling into the trap of self-sufficient mission, in which they could forget the fact that their present achievement or ministries owed highly to others' labours. Whereas it is true that 'the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life,' in other words, that the reaper deserves a reward for his work, it is also true that no reaper can harvest apart from the work of their predecessor, the sower. To put it another way, both the reaper and the sower should equally share their joy of harvest, i.e., of finishing the Father's work. When Jesus said to His disciples, 'Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labour.' He was probably very conscious about John the Baptist and his followers and all the other Old Testament prophets who had prepared the way for Christ. Actually, John the Baptist was one of the most humble servants of God on earth, whom Jesus highly commended: 'I tell you, among those born of woman there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.' (Luke 7:28). However, from man's point of view, John's life was extremely ascetic and miserable. He was resigned to his role as the one who prepared the way for the Christ, and He openly admitted his subordinate position, knowing that a mere man like himself could not take away the divinely ordained authority of Jesus, and even allowed his own disciples to follow Jesus. Nevertheless, he was able to rejoice in Jesus' success and eventually, he was beheaded by King Herod.

John's disciples, their competitive spirit being stirred up by Jesus' baptismal activity, some time asked John the Baptist: "Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan -the one you testified about-well, he is baptising, and everyone is going to him."(John 3:26) In reply to them, John admonished them for exalting their master John more than God had intended. By that time, Jesus' ministry had already impacted the society tremendously. Consequently, it was natural that Jesus had felt the necessity of engraving such a reminder on His disciples' hearts. He also urgently sensed uneasy repercussions from the Jewish religious leaders over His influential ministry, in that they had information that Jesus, having more disciples, had greater impact than John the Baptist. Even though the leaders might have been threatened by His greater influence and thus the crowd might easily have come to believe that Jesus and His disciples were superior to John the Baptist, nevertheless, His disciples at least, should have correctly understood the spiritual principle that there must be neither superiority nor competition among the workers of the Lord. They were all equal co-workers to complement each other until the Father's work would be completely accomplished on earth.
The passage expounded above shows Jesus'counselling skill. Our heavenly Father sent Jesus as our only true counsellor, 'Wonderful Counsellor'. His skilled and compassionate touch recorded in the Bible has healed many and will continually help us see our situation from a new perspective. Knowing that violation to God's principle results in humans' troubles and dilemma, Jesus gently touched deep wounds in their spirit to expose the root of their problem. In other words, when we lose sight of God and His will in our lives we are in danger of plunging into freshly problems. Each and every individual needs a divine Counsellor Jesus Christ to set him/her free so that God's best for each of us will fully be brought about since only God can transform our hearts. To sum up, on the one hand, every individual has absolute value in God's sight, however, on the other hand, if the belief in the worth of the individual is exaggerated too much, an unbiblical belief, 'Individualism' could arise, in which one could end up enclosing him or herself in their own little private world, seeing only self. Therefore, Jesus might have concluded His teaching by referring to the importance of working co-operatively out of neither competition nor superiority for the good of the whole.

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This month a money gift has been sent to FREDERIC to support his studies in Nairobi, Kenya. He is aiming to take a MA degree in Theology, to fulfil a God-given vision to reach out with the Word of God to his own country men in Burundi in the future. He has just finished evangelising in the surrounding deserted areas of the Kakuma Refugee Camp and is planning to go to Tanzania to energetically extend his reaching area. Pray for the Lord's guidance so that he will see a flood gate being opened before him to reach out to as many unsaved nations as possible.
Thank you for all the encouragement and the warm support -prayerful and financial- for Huldah Ministry, which were granted by brothers and sisters in the Lord during my stay in Japan. All full financial contribution will be used to support those who are devoting themselves in working for the Lord fully all over the world. May the Father's will alone be done on the earth and completely achieved in His timing through those precious contributors in prayer and finance as well as the first-hand labourers.

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