The living water; John 4:1-42

I cannot read the story of the Samaritan woman at the well without thinking of a similar story my dad used to tell.  He grew up in a very isolated rural area of North Carolina during the depression years.  His family were what were known as sharecroppers, which is the poorest sort of farming.  Others own the land, and basically you get to live on it and farm it, but the owners gets the lion’s share of the profits.

So as a young man, dad would often hire himself out to other farmers in the area to work the fields for extra money.  And he tells the story that one day he was working in a farmer’s field, and it was hot and he became very thirsty.  He had seen a ramshackle house a little bit down the road that looked pretty sketchy, but eventually he was so thirsty he decided to walk over there to see if he could get a drink of water.  Now in those days there wasn’t any town water or even electricity in rural areas of North Carolina.  So he went up to the front porch and knocked and an old woman came to the door.  Dad said that this woman was a sight.  She epitomized all that you might imagine a country bumpkin would look like.  She was filthy.  She smelled.  She had no teeth.  And to make it worse, she was chewing snuff which had run down the corners of her mouth and stained all over the front of her blouse.

Dad tried not to act too put off by her looks though, and took his hat off and politely asked her if he could please get a drink of water.  She said “yes, of course, follow me!” and led him around the back of the house where there was a well.  Dad let down the bucket into the well, and then cranked the handle to draw it back up, and then the woman handed him this old stained up gourd that had been made into a dipper for him to dip into the bucket to drink out of.  Now normally, in the fields the men would all share the same dipper and not think too much about it.  But Dad said this woman was so rough looking, and the snuff staining her mouth and chin was so disgusting, he couldn’t imagine drinking out of that dipper thinking that he was going to be putting his mouth where her mouth had been.  But there was nothing else to use.  Then he had a bright idea.  The gourd had a long curved handle that was hollow and at the very end there was a hole which was made when the dried out the gourd.  So Dad figured that he would fill up the gourd with water, but rather than drinking out of the cut out part on the fat end, he would drink from the end of the handle, the end with the little hole.  That way he wouldn’t have to put his mouth on the part that the woman would have used.  So he scoops up some water, and then held it up and drank backwards out of the gourd by putting his mouth over the little hole at the end of the handle and sucking on it like a straw. 

And when he did that, the old woman began to practically convulse in a fit of laughter.  Dad thought it must have been because he looked silly drinking that way, but he didn’t really care how he looked, he just didn’t want his mouth to touch where hers had been.  But he said she was laughing so hard, and then she clapped him on the shoulder and said, “My lord boy!  I ain’t ever seen anybody else drink water out of gourd the same way I do!” 

There is a word in the Greek text in vs.9 that basically is saying the same thing.  It’s a word that conveys the idea that the Jews so despised the Samaritans that they would not even touch the same utensils, or drink from the same cup.  This attitude illustrated the hatred of Jews for Samaritans.  But as we look at this story today, we see Jesus deliberately, purposefully, arranging not only to meet this woman that would have been hated by the Jews, but also to drink water from her cup. 

In Jesus’ day, there was obviously no running water.  Things we might consider a hardship were typical things you had to deal with during the course of the day.  Typically, the women of the village or town were the ones who were responsible for drawing water.  You remember Rebecca drawing water for the camels when Abraham’s servant went to the well.  But they would usually do so in the evening when it was cooler, or perhaps first thing in the morning. 

This woman in Samaria is going to the well in the middle of the day.  Around the sixth hour would be the Jewish way of saying around noon. So this wasn’t a typical time for her to be drawing water.  And Jesus has arrived at this well, which is identified as Jacob’s well, and is sitting there by the well.  There were probably step that led down to the well. 

The text says Jesus was sitting there because He was weary from his journey.  Jesus and His disciples had been walking all morning having left Judea probably very early while it was still cool.  Most commentators believe that He had walked at least 20 miles that morning.  That’s quite a walk.  And it’s not a flat plain he walked either, but hilly terrain and rocky paths.  That’s the equivalent of walking from my house in Millville to the Cape May/Lewes Ferry.  I don’t think I could even ride a bike that far, much less hike that distance in five or six hours.

So Jesus was tired, he was worn out.  So much so that he sent the disciples ahead of Him into the village to buy food while he waited at the well.  Now I want to suggest that this is not happenstance.  I think that this is a case of divine appointment.  The normal way to go from Jerusalem to Galilee for most Jews would have been to go the coast route or across the Jordan and then go around Samaria.  Orthodox Jews would have avoided going through Samaria.  They hated the Samaritans so much that they would go miles out of there way to avoid even walking through Samaria.

And part of the reason they hated them seems almost justified from a certain perspective. The Samaritans were considered half breeds - half Jew, half pagans - that had come about when the 10 northern tribes were taken into captivity by the Assyrians about 700 years before.  The educated, wealthy people were taken into captivity, but the Assyrians left some of the poorest Jews in the land to care for the land so that it did not revert to wilderness and to care for the cattle and so forth. But over time, these poor Jews left there intermarried with the pagan people that moved in to that area, and they adopted many pagan customs along with worshipping pagan gods while maintaining a certain worship of the God of the Jews.

When the Jews came back into the land during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, these people tried to hinder the returning Jews from rebuilding the temple.  The Jews ended up shunning them, and so the Samaritans went off in a huff and built their own temple in opposition.  So though the Samaritans claimed to be Jews, they had desecrated their heritage by intermarrying with pagans.  They claimed to worship the One True God, but yet they also worshipped foreign gods.  They claimed the Jewish scriptures, but they only recognized the first five books of the Old Testament, called the Pentateuch.  So it would seem that the Jews were almost justified in their hatred of the Samaritans. 

Yet Jesus has traveled by foot 20 miles across hot dry wilderness to get to this village in Samaria in time to meet this woman, who is coming out to draw water from a well outside of town, at a time when it was unlikely that she would meet anyone, which was obviously her intention.  The obvious question, is why?  Why would Jesus leave an area where all were coming out to Him, where He was having bigger crowds than John the Baptist, so much so that the Pharisees were taking note of Him as a new threat… why leave that success and head off to a place where no one even knew who He was? 

Well, I think the answer is hinted at in the previous chapter when Jesus tells Nicodemus that God so loved the world, that He sent His Son into the world, so that the world might be saved through Him.  Jesus Himself would say later, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”(Luke 19:10)  This woman was from the lost tribes of Israel.  She was truly lost.  Her people were worshipping God in ignorance.  And they needed to know the truth so that they might escape the judgment which is upon the whole world.

Furthermore, I think Jesus comes to visit this woman as a counterpoint to the coming of Nicodemus at night which we studied in chapter 3.  Nicodemus was a religious leader, he was the religious teacher of the Jews.  He was moral, an upright citizen.  He represented everything the Samaritan woman was not.  If as I said before, Nicodemus was the representative man, the best that man had to offer, then this woman was the representative sinner, even the worst of sinners.  A woman who was considered extremely immoral.  She had been married 5 times, and was now living with a man who wasn’t her husband.  She was lost.  And the good thing was, she knew she was lost.  Nicodemus thought he was a good man, and consequently Jesus had to show him that he wasn’t ever going to be good enough to be able to enter into the kingdom of heaven.  But this woman knew she was a sinner, and though she tried to hide it, what she needed was for Christ to tell her about the grace of God.  Jesus came to save sinners.  He traveled 6 hours through the wilderness by foot to take the gospel to one woman who knew she was a sinner and was looking for redemption.

See, what we think of as good moral people, pillars in the community will usually come to church, they will seek for religion.  Unfortunately, they tend to come to church though in order to bolster their sense of self righteousness and entitlement, as we saw with Nicodemus.  But people who are trapped in sin and are suffering the consequences of their sin rarely think of the church as a refuge.  Maybe they feel too guilty to come to church.  And yet these are the very people that we are called to go seek out to tell the good news.  People that are sick, the outcasts, the downtrodden, the world weary.  They are ideal candidates for the gospel.  As Jesus said in Mark 2:17,  “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

So Jesus travels 20 miles by foot to meet this woman.  And He is tired.  That shows us His humanity.  He was fully man.  But it also shows His omniscience.  He knows the woman is going to be there at noon.  He sends the disciples away so that He can talk to her privately so as not to unnecessarily embarrass her.  He knows her past, which she tries to hide.  His omniscience shows His divinity.  He is fully God, and yet fully man.  This is the mystery of Christ, born of a virgin, and yet fathered by the Holy Spirit.  Fully God and fully man. He is the Messiah, or the Christ.

And let me stress something on this point; He was fully human, fully God, that He might be our substitute, that He might be our Savior, but also, so that He might be our example.  That we might do as He did.  This text is one of the greatest passages in the Bible that illustrates how we are to go about being evangelists of the gospel.  How we are to witness to the lost.  There are many important principles to be learned from this passage, but not the least of them is how we are to evangelize the lost.

Notice then that Christ’s mission was calculated.  He was purposeful, He was strategic. He planned it, executed it, timed it perfectly so that He might set up this divine appointment with this woman. And note secondly that He was confrontational without being condemning.  When I say confrontational, it sounds menacing, doesn’t it?  But it doesn’t have to be.  It can simply be engaging.  In Jesus’ case, it was confrontational because it was unexpected.  It wasn’t considered appropriate for a Jew to speak to a Samaritan.  It was even more inappropriate for a man, a rabbi, to speak to a woman.  Yet Jesus says, “Give me a drink.”

If Jesus is omniscient, which I believe this text and many others clearly demonstrates that He was, then He certainly knew that she was an immoral woman.  She came to the well in this location, at this time, presumably to escape scrutiny and scorn from the other women of the village who would usually all come at the same time to draw water and talk of the business of the day.  But Christ comes to a sinner, and yet as chapter 3 vs. 17 says, He did not come to judge her, but to offer her salvation.  He shows her compassion.

Now notice though that Christ does not condone her sin.  The gospel message  has two pillars on which it depends; repentance and faith.  Jesus confronts her about her sin, and then tells her that He is the Messiah.  To receive the gift of salvation requires that both principles are enacted on our part.  We have to acknowledge our sin, confess our sin, and He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  At the same time, we have to believe that Jesus is the Savior from sin which He accomplished by being the righteous substitute who paid the penalty for our sins.

Now to accomplish all of that, notice how Jesus skillfully weaves the conversation around, starting  from a normal everyday occurrence such as a drink of water, and using it to teach a spiritual principle.  He asks for a drink, and she responds with a sarcastic response; “why are you asking me for a drink, knowing I am a Samaritan?”

But Jesus knows better than let Himself get sucked into a debate with this woman over race, over the cultural divide between Jews and Samaritans. Instead, He turns the tables on her.  And says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who says to you, “Give Me a drink” you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

Rather than focusing on her insufficiencies of heritage or race or culture or even morality, Jesus changes the conversation from one where she is automatically defensive, and instead He is the benefactor, rather than the beneficiary.  He doesn’t need her water, but He has something that she needs. 

Notice the difference between His approach with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman.  With Nicodemus who thought he was righteous, who was rich, who seemed to have everything including morality, Jesus told him what he lacked.  He had nothing.  He had to be born all over again.  Nothing he had was good enough.  But with this woman, who had no standing in the community, who was culturally an outsider, and was a known immoral person, Jesus offers her the gift of God.  Grace that covers all her sin.  Eternal life which will spring up in her like living water. 

Though some principles in the gospel can not be deviated from, such as faith and repentance, we need to seek the discernment from God to know how to approach different people in different circumstances and from different environments.  God will give you the wisdom if you ask for it.  But notice that there isn’t a one size fits all approach to Christ’s evangelism.  He has divine discernment which we don’t have.  But we do have the wisdom that God gives to those that ask for it, so that we might do His will.   Recognizing those that are ready to receive the truth and those that are arrogant and think they know all the answers is possible through the discernment of the Holy Spirit as we witness in obedience to Him.

So first Jesus sidesteps her natural tendency for defensiveness, her attempt at being argumentative by turning the tables from her giving Him something, to Him giving her something.  But she still wants to argue.  Some people are like that.  No matter what you say, they want to argue.  The Bible says we are to be wise as a serpent, and harmless as a dove.  The devil is a serpent, isn’t he?  So we are to be wise to his schemes, and yet harmless as a dove.  As much as it depends on you, Paul said, be at peace with all men.  You aren’t going to win disciples to Christ by being argumentative, or by debating someone.  And neither are we going to win souls by insinuating that they need to become moral to be saved.  We become moral by being saved.  First there must be a change of heart, and then out of the heart comes a new morality. 

I’ve found when I deal with people who are hostile to me, who are defensive about their actions, that instead of focusing on the negatives or the repercussions of their decisions, if I focus on how much God has done for them and what God wants to do for them, how much God loves them, then many times that will have a softening effect on their heart and we can break through their defenses.  For instance, if you are dealing with a person who is caught up in drug use, rather than focusing on the consequences of using drugs, focus on their spiritual vacuum that is making them desire drugs. Focus on what Christ has done to give us a new life, a more fulfilling life.

That’s what Jesus is doing with this woman.  He knows her life is unfulfilling.  How many times she must have had her heart broken.  How hopeless she must have been to have seen five marriages crumble and now even given up on marriage and living in open adultery.  So Christ offers her new life;  the gift of living water if she will just ask for it.  But instead she is still defensive. She is not ready to trust Him yet.  She hasn’t gotten over this whole race thing, this whole us versus them mentality between the Jews and Samaritans.  So she says, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?”

Basically, she appeals to her sense of national self righteousness.  The Samaritans claimed Abraham as their father just as the Jews.  So she says Jacob, who was also called Israel, is her father as well and he gave them the well.  Again there is little jab on her part as she says “You aren’t greater than Jacob, are you?”  Well, of course He was.  He was the seed of Jacob from whom the whole world would be blessed.  He was the promised seed of Adam who would crush the serpent’s head.  He was no less than the promised Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God. 

And yet Jesus doesn’t argue with her.  He doesn’t defend His honor.  He simply goes back to the metaphor of the water and the gift that God has of eternal life.  And in a very understated way He says that the water that Jacob gave has only the power to slake thirst temporarily, but the water that He gives will be a well springing up to eternal life. Vs.13, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

He is saying I am greater than Jacob, and yet He doesn’t say it outright. He is not saying I am greater as an arrogant, boastful claim, but He says as His water is greater water, and so by extension He is greater than Jacob.  He is making the point that the tangible blessings of being a child of Abraham might be evidenced by their land, by this well of Jacob, but the blessings of being a child of God far exceed temporal blessings.  They are spiritual blessings that spring up in him supplying an endless supply of blessings throughout eternity.

Well, finally she starts to show a crack in her armor at this point.  She is obviously tired and weary and ready to have this blessing that Jesus is talking about.  But like a lot of people, they are interested only in the physical and not the spiritual.  She says, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” 

Now what do you do with that?  On the one hand, she is saying I want this water that you are offering.  You offered it, then give it to me.  But on the other hand, she reveals her motivation; she wants physical relief.  She wants the spiritual water but only for a physical benefit. 

Well, it’s interesting to see Jesus’ response.  At first glance, it would almost seem like there must be something missing between vs.15 and 16.  Jesus says in response, “Go, call your husband and come here.”  What’s that about?  Does she need her husband to get the water?  What relation has the husband to do with her desire for the gift of water? 

What I believe Jesus is doing is He is accepting her request for water, even though it is founded on physical desires, but He is going to treat it spiritually.  So even though she asks with imperfect intentions, Jesus is going to treat it spiritually and apply spiritual principles in order to bring her to salvation.  And to do that, He says, “ok, if you want the  living water, go bring here your husband.”  Jesus already knows that she doesn’t have a husband.  So He is saying this in order to get her to confront her sin.

Her response is still defensive.  She’s not argumentative now, but she is still defensive.  Jesus is touching a nerve but she doesn’t want to address it yet.  So she says, “I have no husband.”  And then Jesus reveals His divinity.  Vs. 17, Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” Now that’s pretty specific revelation.  That’s not general information and He had no way of knowing that kind of personal information.  And so it must have floored her which is evident from her response. She said “Sir, I perceive you are a prophet.”  Now she knows someone greater than Jacob is here.

But before I get into her response, notice that Jesus says to her “you are speaking the truth.”  He actually says that twice.  You have said correctly, and you have said truly.  Twice Jesus emphasizes that she has spoken the truth, even though she doesn’t speak the whole truth.  The whole point of what Jesus is doing here is to get her to recognize and accept the truth.  And before she can do that, she must first start telling the truth to God.  That’s what repentance is.  That’s where it starts; with telling God the truth.  You can lie to men, you can lie to yourself, and you can lie to God.  Even though God knows the truth, yet men still lie to Him.  Repentance starts with telling the truth about yourself.  And then accepting the truth about God. 

It’s amazing how people can lie to God, and yet we do it all the time.  We somehow don’t think that God sees.  David said in Psalm 66:18, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”  He says again in Psalm 51:6 “Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.”  The gospel is the truth, and we need to tell people the truth, and help them to tell God the truth, so that the truth would set them free. When someone finally comes to the point of recognizing the truth and confessing to God the truth that they are a sinner in need of salvation, then as Jesus said in John 8:32, “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Well, we are not going to finish this study today.  We are going to have to continue it next week.  But what I want to impress on you today is that Jesus is our model for personal evangelism, that we might walk in His footsteps.  By His example we should be better equipped to fulfill the great commission in our neighborhoods, with our relatives, even with strangers who may be defensive or argumentative, as was this Samaritan woman.

But I hope to leave you with a committment to be like Christ in your personal evangelism.  We obviously are not going to possess divine discernment as Christ had, we are not omniscient like Christ is.  We are not great teachers as Christ was.  But we do have the Spirit of Christ living in us.  And we do have the power of the Spirit to help us and give us wisdom if we will ask for it. 

However, I don’t think you nor I need to be omniscient to think of someone today that we know needs to hear the gospel.  They are not saved.  You could probably write down on a note card at least 5 people in this community that you are certain do not know the Lord as their Savior.  I pray that you will write down those names, and then make a plan to go see those people, to talk to them specifically about their need for salvation, about the gift of God which He has for those that will ask for it.  I challenge you to start to do this with at least one person on that list this week.  Come up with a plan, be purposeful about it, strategic.  Get rid of all possible distractions.  Then confront them with the gospel.  Expect them to get defensive.  Expect them to be argumentative.  But be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove; in other words, don’t argue with them.  Stay focused on the gift of living water which satisfies every thirsty soul,  which God has prepared for those that will receive Jesus as their Savior. 

I would ask you to deliberately decide this week to be compassionate.  There is no greater show of compassion than to present the gospel to someone.  There is no greater love than to lay down your life, lay aside what you are so busy doing, what you would rather be doing, lay that down, lay down your pride, and go take the gospel to those that are perishing.  This is not just the job of a pastor.  This is your job.  This is what you were saved for.  This is what God has tasked you with while you are on this earth. 

The gospel is pretty simple.  As I said, there are only two steps you need to remember; repentance and faith.  Pray for discernment and wisdom and then pray for the opportunity.  And then go in faith and present the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit.  I believe that God has someone for you to talk to this week.  I hope that you will do it.  Let’s pray.