The Woman at the Well
John 4:1-42
If you have your Bibles, turn with me to John 4…. John 4. I’ll begin reading in verse 1.
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2(although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4And he had to pass through Samaria. 5So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
The story of the ‘Woman at the Well’ in John 4 this morning is a beautiful story that reveals so much about Jesus and his heart to connect with outsiders. Jesus crosses national, social, gender and religious barriersto connect with a Samaritan woman who in the end ultimately encourages a whole flock of other Samaritans to put their faith in Jesus the Messiah. A woman of no influence is turned into an influencer for Jesus’ sake. And when we’re reminded that this story comes right after Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemusin John 3, we realize that we’ve moved from the top of the first century’s social and spiritual ladder to the bottom of such a ladder and we’re reminded that Jesus came to challenge and connect with the entire ladder[1]--Jewish teachers need Jesus and Samaritan outcasts need Jesus as you and I need Jesus. Amen to that, eh? Look at this quick comparison between Nicodemus(John 3) and the Samaritan woman (John 4)
In our time today we’ll become acquainted with…
Diving into the text, verses 1-3 tell us that Jesus decided to get out of town so to speak because his ministry was getting too much attention with the Pharisees. So the normal route out of Jerusalem up to Galilee would take Jesus and his disciples through Samaria. Let me show you that on a map.
You can see Judea at the bottom of the map and Galilee at the top of the map withSamaria in between. You want to go to Fort Worth from here? You’re going to have to go through Dallas to get there. And so it was traveling north from Jerusalem you had to go through Samaria to get to Galilee…if you stayed on the west side of the Jordan River.
It’s been suggested that because of the animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans—and more on that in a moment--some Jews crossed the Jordan down by Jericho and headed north on the east side of the Jordan River to bypass Samaria and then crossed over to the west side when the coast was clear so to speak. But Josephus the historian tells us that most Jews preferred the shorter route through Samaria.[2]
Now verse 4 specifically tells us that Jesus had to go through Samaria and there’s some delicious ambiguity in those words.[3] Sure there is a geographical necessity but could it be that John telling us that there was some divine necessity that Jesus go through Samaria? (And the idea of divine necessity shows up throughout the book of John[4]). It does seem reasonable to me that John is telling us that the Father had a divine appointment for Jesus to make.[5] Jesus had to go through Samaria. And having studied the book of Acts recently, the movement from Jerusalem to Judea and then to Samaria is not an unfamiliar pattern.[6]
5So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar[7], near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.[8] The Samaritans traced their lineage back through Joseph.
Verse 6 tells us that Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey sat beside the well…Jesus 100% God and 100% man, was weary and he sat beside the well. Augustine writing on this passage said: “Jesus we see is strong and weak: strong, because ‘in the beginning was the Word’; weak because the Word was made flesh”[9]
{Now a well or spring (like a gate of a city) ‘in the ancient world was a place of encounter….and indeed springs and wells in the Bible could be places of divine encounter’[10] So the setting is pregnant with possibilities.}
And we should note that the word for ‘well’ in verse 6 is a word that means ‘a running spring’. Down in verses 11-12, the word for ‘well’ is different and it means a ‘cistern or dug-out well.’ It turns out that “Jacob’s well was both; it was dug out, but it is fed by an underground spring that is remarkably reliable even to this day.”
It was about the sixth hour. And verse 7saysA woman from Samaria came to draw water.
Now the sixth hour would be 12:00 noon. It would be the heat of the day. It wasan unusual time for women to fetch water…It would be more normal to come early in the day when it wasn’t hot yet, so they could have water for the housekeeping chores for the entire day[11]…and many take this as an indication that this woman was an outcast because of her immoral past…she came at noon because then she would be alone…more on that in a few minutes…
{Additional note: Archaeology has revealed that there were water sources closer to the women’s town.[12]Why does she come this distance, alone, and at this uncomfortable hour? Might it be to avoid the disapproving look from the other women? Or might it be that she was being urged to come here by the same Spirit who was compelling Jesus?[13]}
The woman’s arrival at the well set up a crisis in light of the traditional Jewish customs of the day. It set up a crisisfirst because she was a woman—“Jewish men avoided speaking with women in public, even their own wives”[14]but more importantlyit set up a crisis because she was a Samaritan[15].
The Samaritans were regarded by the Jews as despised half-breeds.Theywere descendants of northern kingdom Jews who intermarried with foreigners. [16] Briefly the story goes like this. The Assyrians in 722 BC, after sacking the Northern Kingdom of Israel, transported large numbers of Jews to other conquered sites and repopulated the territory of Samaria with other conquered people. You can read about this in 2 Kings 17. So the Jews who had been left in Samaria intermarried with the foreigners who had been brought there and a syncretistic religion resulted—it was a little bit of this and a little bit of that. For example, the Samaritans used only the Pentateuch—the first 5 books of the Old Testament. And the scriptures they used were different in some places than the ones we use. Secondly, for a while they had their own temple on Mount Gerazim[17]—and by the way the well Jesus is sitting at is in the shadow of Mt Gerazim. (or at least you could point to Mt. Gerazim from the well. The temple is no longer there as Jesus speaks to the woman but the Samaritans still worshipped at the top of Mt. Gerazim.
But we should add this. Because the Samaritans did use Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, they were awaiting a future deliverer in keeping with the promise of Deuteronomy 18:15-19. {In fact we’ll see later in the story that the Samaritan woman does express hope in the coming Messiah.}[18]
Soto this racially inferior, heretical, outcast woman,Jesus said “Give me a drink.” And in speaking to her,as we said, “he is deliberately reaching across almost every significant barrier that people can put up between themselves. In this case a racial barrier, a cultural barrier, a gender barrier, and a moral barrier.”[19]
Follow with me as I read verse 7-19….
7A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”…when it comes to social power, an ‘asker’ puts himself beneath the ‘asked one’…it’s a good evangelism technique…. 8(For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.)…you probablywouldn’t find kosher food in a Samaritan village… 9The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans….Samaritans were considered by many Jews to be in a continual state of uncleanness and so many Jews would have thought that drinking water from this woman’s jar would make a person ceremonially unclean.[20]10Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”11The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,14but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”….{we ran across the word that is translated “welling” in Acts 3 when the paralyzed man got healed…he was walking and leaping and praising God… this spring of water is leaping up, its gushing up…} 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”17The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;18for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”19The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
In these verses Jesus is using a physical metaphor, a physical picture like he does often in the book of John, to teach spiritual truth. Water is a physical metaphor or picture of life, the life that God gives and living water (flowing or spring water) is a metaphor for eternal life. The metaphor is kind of lost on us because we have ready access to running water. But if we lived in arid climate like Israel we would instinctively know what Jesus was talking about.
One author says it this way….“Because our bodies contain so much water, to be in profound thirst is to be in agony. And then to taste water after you have been truly thirsty is about the most satisfying experience possible”[21]
So throughout these verses Jesus is speaking on one level about the life that God gives and the woman can only think about physical water and physical thirst. And unbeknownst to her, Jesus is tapping into a rich spring of Old Testament texts that connect water and God, water and salvation. “When God comes into our lives he gives us cleansing, healing, satisfaction, energy, sustenance, strength, and refreshment—that’s what God will do”[22]
Zechariah 14:8… there are living waters pictured flowing out of Jerusalem to the east and west
In Ezekiel 47…living water is flowing out of the temple
Isaiah 12:3 With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation
Isaiah 55:1“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money,come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Isaiah 44:3 3For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.
Note the connection in Isaiah 44:3 between water and spirit
But it’s over in John 7 that the living water is specifically identified as the Holy Spirit. Jesus stood up in the temple on the last day, the great day of the Feast of Booths and said these memorable words….
POWERPOINT
John 7:37–39
37On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.38Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”39Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
But it’s a reference in Jeremiah, however, that helps us bridge to the Samaritan woman’s experienceand our experience….
Notice what God is saying there in Jeremiah. The people had forsaken God, the fountain of living waters, and they were looking for life in other places. Isn’t that a picture of your life and mine at times? Here God is a fountain. And somehow we lose sight of that and our eyes settle on some other so-called means of refreshment. And we dig and we dig and we make a cistern just perfect, we pour all of our energy into it and in the end it just doesn’t satisfy.
So what is Jesus saying to this outcast woman? He’s saying this, and I’m quoting Timothy Keller here: “I’ve got something for you that is as basic and necessary to you spiritually as water is to you physically. Something without which you are completely lost.”
And continuing with Keller: “But the metaphor of the living water means even more than that. Jesus is not just telling us that what he has to offer is lifesaving—he’s also revealing that it satisfies from the inside. He says, “My water, if you get it, will become in you a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” He’s talking about deep soul satisfaction, about incredible satisfaction and contentment that doesn’t depend on what is happening outside of us. (When you and I think of things that will really make us happy, inevitably it’s something on the outside isn’t it?). Some of us have our hopes set on romantic love, some on career, some on politics or a social cause, and some of us on money and what it will do for us. …Yet Jesus says there’s nothing outside of you that can truly satisfy the thirst that is deep down inside you. ….you don’t need water splashed on your face; you need water that comes from even deeper down inside you than the thirst itself… And Jesus is saying…. “I can give it. I can put it in you. I can give you absolute unfathomable satisfaction at the core of your being regardless of what happens outside, regardless of circumstance.”[23]
Now most people don’t recognize their ‘soul thirst;’ they don’t connect the longing in their souls to their need for God. In fact it can be argued that they can’t without God’s help. Years ago, the great tennis champion Boris Becker said, “I had won Wimbledon twice, once as the youngest player. I was rich… I had all the material possessions I needed…it is the old song of movie stars and pop stars (who take their own lives). They have everything, and yet they are so unhappy. But I had no inner peace.”[24]
Now what does this have to do with the Samaritan woman? How had she constructed cisterns that in the end held no water? Well I think that’s why Jesus does what he does in verse 16. Look at verse 16. It’s in verse 16, I think, that Jesus gets to the heart of the woman’s true thirst and how it had expressed itself in her life. In a sense I guess we could say he exposes her cisterns (which she had found held no water).
16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;18for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” Jesus reveals her sin AND his omniscience.
The woman was looking for life in men. Mark Driscoll said it more strongly, “She worshipped men”[25]
John Piper said it even differently…
It’s in light of these quotes that I think I see for the first time why a discussion with a Samaritan woman would segue into a discussion about worship—because looking for life apart from God is really misplaced worship.
Again quoting Keller, “Why does Jesus seem to suddenly change the subject from seeking living water to her history with men? The answer is—he isn’t changing the subject. He’s nudging her, saying, “if you want to understand the nature of this living water I offer, you need to first understand how you’ve been seeking it in your own life. You’ve been trying to get it through men, and it’s not working, is it? Your need for men is eating you alive, and it will never stop.”[26]