Jesus Broke the Barriers

Jesus Broke the Barriers
By Rev. Robert P. Elkins
All scripture verse is from the NIV Bible unless otherwise noted


What are the barriers each of us face in our daily walk today? There are many kinds of barriers to be encountered by each person and sometimes we never know where they are going to come from or where they will take us but each has an effect on our life, how we treat other people, how we react to other people or how we react to the circumstances we encounter. Some barriers are healthy and some are not, knowing that there is a barrier between us and something that is harmful or dangerous for our person or our spirit is a healthy barrier, knowing when to stop and not enter into a situation that could have a negative effect upon our witness for Jesus Christ is healthy for both the person and the spirit. A barrier that is insulting or restrictive in nature stopping us from accomplishing what God has in store for us is not something that we could call a healthy barrier, if it’s not productive or positive for us then we should avoid that barrier at all cost. Barriers come in all shapes and sizes, in all colors and conditions, they can come at any time in any location and when we least expect to see them but know full well that at some point in our life a barrier is going to come before us and have to know instinctively how we are going to react to that situation as it happens.

The Bible is our best book of instruction and example for how we should act when a barrier is placed before us, knowing what God’s word says and how to apply it in our life should be the goal of every Christian and it’s only through study or divine intervention of the Spirit that the answers and solutions will come to us when confronted by the barriers of life. For some of the barriers we will encounter we can find comfort in knowing that Jesus has already addressed them for us and he has broken those barriers and cleared a way for us to pass through with little or no problem whatsoever. It is with this thought in mind that we progress into the land of barriers and look at how Jesus handled them and what the end result is for us the believer of today who is dependent upon Jesus, his Holy Spirit and the direction of the Father of all creation.

The first barrier we see is the racial barrier, today there is much emphasis being placed upon race as a barrier, there is division between the races, between the white and the black race, between the Hispanic and the oriental or maybe the middle eastern people of the world. The news media feeds us information that fuels the fires of controversy calling attention to differences and usually finding the slightest incident and then making it look as if half the world were focused in on that incident when in reality there is little to nothing at all to be made from the situation the media is trying to hyperbolize. Is there racial difference between the peoples of the various nations and races? Of course there is; that’s what makes us so wonderful. It’s the fact that there is difference between us that makes life bearable. If we were all the same it would be a very dull world indeed. If every person we met was exactly as we are it would be like looking at the sands of the shoreline and never seeing a sea shell or any of the wonders the ocean brings forth on that sand. If it were nothing but sand it would be nice but after a while it would be boring to look at and there would be no challenge to the imagination. We need those differences to add spice to our life. Think how boring it would be if every person you met were female; had red hair, green eyes and the perfect size body, the right weight, the right height and dressed impeccably.Sure it’s a pleasure to see someone like that but if everyone were like that and no one stood out in the crowd it would be so common place that you would never look at anyone at all because what good would it do if they were all the same? But if you are in a room filled with a variety of people and someone with those characteristics enters you take notice of them instantly we admire them. Jesus addressed the racial issue when he talked with the woman at the well as recorded in the gospel of John in the forth chapter.(John 4:1-9) “The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, 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 town in Samaria called Sychar, 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. 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.)"

On the surface this doesn’t sound like much of a racial barrier today but in the time of Jesus’ physical presence on the earth for Jesus to even talk with the woman at the well was a great taboo or barrier and he broke four barriers of his day with his simple question of asking for a drink of water, and it is this four barriers that we will look at starting with the racial barrier. Jesus was a Jew and the woman was a Samaritan, she was of the people that Father God had specifically told his chosen people, the Jews, to avoid in the Old Testament. One of the arguments some people have against granting Jesus his rightful place as Deity, as God, is that he didn’t establish any divinely inspired rules or regulations but such is not the case because right here we see Jesus establishing a new rule or ordnance which ended the old order of things by ending the racial barriers which up to that point had been in place. Were this action of Jesus, the talking to the Samaritan woman, a violation of the will of Father God Jesus would have never spoke with her. But by his talking with the woman Jesus was fulfilling the will of the Father and making a public statement that those racial barriers are to me no more. By Jesus talking to this un-named woman he crushed years of tradition and ended one of the long standing barriers that separated the people in the land in which they lived. They walked by each other on a daily basis, they may have shopped next to each other, worked next to each other but they didn’t communicate with each other, it was taboo, it just didn’t happen. Sounds strange doesn’t it, can you imagine working by someone or shopping next to someone or just passing by on the road and not saying hello, not stopping and talking or at least saying good morning to that person? And yet doesn’t this happen right now today in America, a tradition that has been around for two hundred years. We have laws that say it doesn’t happen we have mandates and regulations that say it doesn’t happen but it does happen every time we walk past someone and don’t acknowledge the presence of that person. There was a time when people would pass each other on the street and men would tip their hat to each other, children stepped out of the way from the adults, and ladies would nod hello, such is not the case today, we are too busy, maybe talking to someone on a cell phone, texting or something like that. We can’t acknowledge the person we are passing; they might think we are up to something. We wouldn’t want them to think that we were going to be so bold as to approach them now would we? I mean why in the world would we even think about talking to a stranger? Why? Because Jesus did that’s why, he entered into a conversation with a woman and in the end he liberated an entire race of people. Maybe a kind word from any one of us today would liberate someone from bondage or a barrier they had been trapped behind for a long time, it may sound strange but you never know, it may just work a miracle in that person’s life… and maybe in your own.

The second barrier we are going to look at is the barrier of gender. Over the years gender has been a very hot topic in the public view. When Jesus talked with the woman at the well he did so in a time when just the act of talking to the woman was taboo, forget that she was a Samaritan, she was a woman, period. Woman were not treated as equals in the days of Jesus, they were looked upon more as a possession than an equal helpmate. And although we as a people have flip flopped back and forth over this issue how much has it changed for the better in the past few thousand years. Fast forward to just about 90 years ago and we see woman in America starting to say enough is enough, we want our rights, we demand our rights, and they were right in saying so, they didn’t have the power of the vote, the right to hold public office, they couldn’t have a job on their own if they were married and if they did have employment outside the home their earning was controlled by the husband. So they protested and marched and paraded and got their right to vote, to hold public office, to get equal pay for equal work. But it didn’t stop there, they demanded more and more and more and they got it, all that they wanted and then some. The feminist movement became a political agenda, women in America were determined to have their place in the workplace, the public office, the military, and just about everything else. From the time of Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden the perfect balance that God had originally established between man and woman had been ended and there has been bias on some level between one of the two genders ever since. When everything was male dominated there was oppression of woman and then the woman’s movement came to be and every since there has been a shift in society and what little balance there was went out the window and the scales now are tilting in the wrong direction once again, family life has been affected, the economy has been affected, marriages have been affected by the millions, but is life any better for either gender? Abortion is now a popular means of birth control, single parent families are the norm, welfare and public assistance is the standard, inflation is rampant, domestic violence is common practice for both the man and the woman, they are both abusive and violent, there are more woman in jail now for violent crime than ever and the competition level between men and women is at a all time high with each trying to undermine the other and all for the name of gender greatness. Both men and women now live in a pressure cooker environment that is self induced and we see no balance of any kind between the two. And I fear it will remain this way until there is another shift in policy and there is another attempt at forcing authority over the opposite sex regardless of which gender is the aggressor. And that will be the norm again until one of two things happens, the polarity changes and one gender surges over the other or both genders take to heart the words of God and the example of Jesus Christ is followed. Unless the word of God is re-established as the ruling factor over the lives of both men and women there will never be true unbiased liberty for either of the genders. There will always be a form of competition between the two, one will always be trying to flex it’s might over the other and the problems of the past will be repeated over and over again in a never ending cycle of frustration.

Is this what Jesus intended or started when he said “Will you give me a drink?” No, we can’t blame this on Jesus and his simple little question. When Jesus asked for the drink of water he opened a door of communication between the genders that was meant to be a healthy, loving, caring and compassionate line of communication and we the people have taken his words of kindness and perverted them into something God never intended to be. We’ve lost the concept of helpmate in the marriage relationship, of working together as partners and equally sharing in the good, the bad and the ugly. We lost the concept of godly wisdom as found in King Solomon’s writings of the cord growing stronger when there are more strands braded together.(Ecclesiastes 4:12) We’ve lost the concept of unity and power when we work as a team united in marriage and we’ve developed into a people that are at odds with each other. When Jesus said “Will you give me a drink of water?” he opened the door to the restoration of that lost balance, when he made his powerful statement Lord Jesus didn’t just talk to the woman at the well , he was talking to all men and woman letting them know that as God he was ending gender bias and opening the door to full and complete acceptance of all of God’s children as equal, each loved by the Father of Creation but the only way we can know or understand this concept is through reading and instruction of the Word of God as found in the Bible. When that word is read, studied and understood the wonder and beauty of Jesus’ simple little statement comes to life in the heart of the hearer and transformation of the spirit opens the heart to accept each other, regardless of gender as an equal partner in every aspect of life.

And finally when we talk about Jesus breaking down the barriers with his open conversation at the well we have to look at his removal of barriers of religion. There was a time when God seemed to have selected for himself a single people from all of the people on the earth but when Jesus opened that door of communication he removed the last obstacle of religious bias. When Jesus talked with the Samaritan woman he showed through example that it is well and good for all of us to be offered the invitation of fellowship with the God of our creation. Jesus started the ball rolling and Paul by the leading of the Holy Spirit placed life in institution of communication between the religious factions. Jesus spoke to the woman at the well and then left earth but gave his Spirit to others, in this case Paul, to continue the teaching of openness to all who will come to God. Jesus said “Will you give me a drink of water?” and Paul said “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:28-29). Jesus said “Will you give me a drink of water?” and Paul said “I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches.” (Romans 11:13-16).

So you can see that Jesus did indeed break down the barriers that were once in place that separated people by religion, by gender and by race. Father God sent his Son in human form to talk with the people, to explain in word and show by example how we are to work in unison with each other and he did so through the simple illustration of meeting with a woman at a well and asking for a drink of water. Sometimes it is the simple things that can mean so much, learn from this example of the King, follow his lead and break down a few barriers that have been placed around you, Jesus changed the world when he did what he did, try it and see how much of the world you can change by following his example. You might be pleasantly surprised by what can happen.
Grace & peace