Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1678
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, September 10, 1882
“And upon this came His disciples, and marveled that He talked with the woman, yet no man said, What do You seek? or, Why are You talking with her? The woman then lefther waterpot, and went her way into the city, and said to the men, Come, see a Man which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ? Then they went out of the city, and came unto Him.” John 4:27-30.
Behold our Lord and Master with divinely skillful art seeking after a single soul! We must have large Congregations or we are disinclined for soul-winning. The habit of the age is to do nothing but what is ostentatious—every work must be with beat of drum or sound of tambourine! I pray that the Lord may work in us the steadfast desire to do good on the quiet, by stealth, when no one looks on, when not a single disciple is near. Oh that we may have such an estimate of the value of a single soul that we count whole days well spent to bring one fallen woman or one drunk to the Savior’s feet! Blessed is he who works on though he is never heard of and looks for his reward from his Master.
In the heat of the day the Lord Jesus found rest and refreshment in speaking to one whom many would scarcely look upon except with eyes of scorn. Blessed Savior, we do not marvel, as the disciples did, that You did speak with the woman, but we do wonder with a higher kind of astonishment that You ever did speak to the likes of us who have so sadly fallen, done You dishonor and grieved Your heart! We are amazed that He who is the Glory of Heaven, “Light of light, very God of very God,” should shroud Himself in the likeness of sinful flesh and, being found in fashion as a Man, should seek after us unworthy ones. Oh, the compassion of the Redeemer’s heart!
Read this chapter through carefully and see the skill which that compassion taught Him. How sweetly ready He was to converse with her and take up her questions. Never imagine that the 30 years of retirement at Nazareth were wasted. I would gladly go, if I were young, for 30 years to learn how to talk as He did, if His own Spirit would teach me the lesson. He was a perfect Teacher because as Man, He had lent a willing ear to the heavenly instruction of the Holy Spirit and, therefore, grew in knowledge and fitness for His work. As says that notable Scripture, “The Lord God has given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: He wakens Me morning by morning, He wakens My ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God has opened My ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.”
By communion with God in private and by watching men in seclusion, He learned both the mind of God and the nature of man, so as to know how to handle the human mind. Men are “unpredictable cattle,” and can only be managed by a wise hand. Many an earnest fool has driven a soul to Hell in his endeavor to drag it to Heaven by force, for human wills yield not to such rough force, but rebel the more. Souls have to be brought to salvation by a gentleness and wisdom such us the Savior used when He fascinated the Samaritan woman into eternal life and enticed her to the truth—so I can only describe that wondrous power which He exercised over her in the few short but blessed sentences with which He addressed her.
Now, turn a moment from that Glorious One, that perfect Man and yet infinite God, whom we would lovingly adore before we look away from Him. Here come His disciples! They have been in the city to buy food—an errand most neces-sary—that they and their Teacher might live. But look! When they perceive Him talking with a woman, they marvel, each in his own way. Some are dumfounded and cannot explain the phenomenon! Others look as if they would interpose, if they dared, and would cry to the woman, “Away you vixen! What right have you here, speaking to such a One as our Leader, whose shoe-laces even we are not worthy to unloose? Your approach dishonors Him! Take yourself away.”
They did say so with their eyes, though awe of their Lord restrained their tongues, for these disciples of Jesus were steeped in the customary antipathies of the age. First, it was sufficiently offensive that the person with whom Jesus was conversing was a woman. My beloved Sisters, you owe much to the Gospel, for it is only by its agency that you are raised to your proper place. For what said the Rabbis? “Rather burn the sayings of the Law than teach them to women.” And, again, “Let no man prolong conversation with a woman. Let no man converse with a woman in the streets, not even with his own wife.” Women were thought to be unfit for profound religious instruction and altogether inferior beings. My Sisters, we do not think that you are superior to us, though some of you, perhaps, fancy so, but we are right glad to acknowledge your equality and to know that in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female! Jesus has lifted you up to your true place, side by side with man!