John 4:1-45
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Handout
What does it look like to grow in intimacy with Jesus?
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
Jesus’ ministry is beginning to grow. We saw last chapter that Jesus’ had already passed that of John the Baptist. Jesus was in the southern portion of Israel known as Judea and was going back through Nazareth, back to Galilee where He did most of His ministry.
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria.
John adds a detail about the route Jesus was taking to get from Judea to Galilee. Typically the Jewish people would cross over the Jordan through Jericho and would walk their way all the way around Samaria. Samaria was this big portion that sat in between Galilee and Judea.
The Jewish people hated the Samaritans. Why?
Seven hundred years before Jesus was born the Kingdom of Israel existed in two halves. You had the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The Northern Kingdom was attacked by the Assyrians and was destroyed and never really heard from again. About a hundred years later the Southern Kingdom would be attacked by the Babylonians and taken into captivity for 70 years. This is when you get stories like Daniel, Esther, etc. The people of Judah would be preserved as a remnant and be sent back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and rebuild Jerusalem. The line of Abraham is seen as being carried out through this pure bloodline despite their captivity. When we look at the narrative of Scripture it follows this line.
The Samaritans were the descendants of people who lived in the Northern Kingdom of Israel who survived the attack by the Assyrians but intermarried with them. They weren’t Israelites anymore they were a blend of Israelites and Assyrians.
The Samaritans were seen by the Jewish people as dogs and as worthless. There was hostility between the two groups of people. The Samaritans believed the same things as the Jewish people but they could not worship at the Temple. Instead they worshipped at Mount Horeb, or Sinai.
The Jewish people didn’t like Samaritans and went out of their way to avoid any interaction with them, but Jesus was compelled by the Spirit to travel through Samaria.
So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The 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.)
Jesus, tired from His traveling, sits down at a well in a town called Sychar. John includes this essential detail to help us understand the frailty of Jesus. He is the almighty God who created all things with a word, who floods the earth with rain, who sent plagues against the Egyptians. Yet, He is tired. Jesus was fully God and fully man. He got tired. He got thirsty. Jesus isn’t a far off God who doesn’t understand what we go through. He understands us fully because He lived a human life but did so without ever sinning.
It was about the sixth hour or about noon. Here Jesus sees a woman coming to draw water from this well. There are a couple of odd things about this encounter.
It was the middle of the day. The time to draw water was early in the morning while it was still cool. It would have been quite hot at noon. The sun would have been baking and she would have to walk all the way to the well and carry all the water back to her home at one of the hottest hours of the day.
She was alone. This was likely intentional. Like Nicodemus going to Jesus at night, this woman went to the well at noon likely to avoid judgmental eyes. She was a social outcast even in the eyes of her own people. We will see why later.
Jesus speaks with her. Jesus was a man, and culturally men wouldn’t speak to strange women. More than that He was Jewish, and the Jews didn’t ever speak with Samaritans. Culturally, the Samaritan women had no reason to expect this man to acknowledge her in any way let alone speak to her positively or with respect.
Jesus calls out to her and asks for a drink. She is unsure of His intentions.
Living Water
Living Water
Jesus 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.”
Again, just like Nicodemus, Jesus says something mysterious. With Nicodemus He said, You must be born again. Here He says that if she knew God’s gift to the world and who this was sitting in front of her, she would ask Him for living water.
Jesus is the gift of heaven. There is no greater gift that God can give us. To have Christ is to have everything. God loved the world in this way, He gave His Son Jesus. Through Jesus we have life. We have a relationship with God. We have the forgiveness of our sins. We have hope for eternity. Peace in anxiety. Joy in sorrow. Jesus is the greatest gift we could ever receive.
Jesus is the gift that keeps on giving. Receiving Jesus wasn’t a one time offer. Jesus was offering living water. A continuous fountain of life that she could go to and drink from. God’s grace and forgiveness are for everyday.
The women doesn’t quite understand what Jesus is saying.
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”
Her response is a very human response. Just like Nicodemus. She says, you have no bucket. How are you getting water? She also knows this well and its historical significance. As a people disconnected from the Temple and Jerusalem this well was a connection to Abraham and their patriarchs that wasn’t commonplace. What water could this man have that is greater than what connects her to her ancestors?
Jesus wasn’t offering her water that connected her to her father Abraham, He was offering her water that connected her to the God of Abraham and the One who created her in her mother’s womb.
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but 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.”
A question to ask as we think through this, “Where am I drinking from?”
Jesus offers the woman at the well living water and He does the same for us.
Jesus is referencing Jeremiah 2.
for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.
Rather than drink from the fountain of living water God’s people chose to dig for themselves broken cisterns. A cistern is like a well. It is a wide hole in the ground that collects rain water. Wells aren’t wide but are much deeper than cisterns. Wells are sources of water, they are deep and produce ground water. Cisterns are not sources of water they just collect water like rain. The difference is significant.
Jeremiah says that God’s people have exchanged the source of their joy, peace, love, life. They exchanged the source of those good things to try and catch it through a cheep substitute. The problem, their cistern couldn’t hold water. Its like drinking from the faucet versus drinking from a bucket that has a whole in the bottom. You can’t build a life on empty buckets but Israel did it and we do it too.
Where are you drinking from?
Are you looking for life to fulfill you? To quench your thirst?
Jesus is the only one who can satisfy our souls. We may find rest for a time in what this world has to offer but it never satisfy. People spend their whole lives searching for more. Dissatisfied. Desperate for something that means something. Like walking through the dessert people are dying of thirst and Jesus alone has what we need.
The woman at the well has been searching. She is in need of water and Jesus has just what she needs.
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
The Woman at the well thinks Jesus is talking about actual water. She is excited at the prospect of not having to walk in the sun for water anymore. She doesn’t want to feel the shame of being an outcast and hopes that never having to draw from Jacob’s well could get her out of it. Jesus is offering an eternal solution to her soul’s searching but she is looking for a temporary fix. She doesn’t understand the hope Jesus offers is more than a band aid. It is new life.
Go, call your husband
Go, call your husband
We want temporary solutions to permanent problems, but Jesus is bringing transformation. Following Jesus is a friendship and a marriage. Part of those kinds of relationships is accountability. Jesus offers living water to this woman. It is a free gift to her. But she can’t have this fountain and her cisterns as well. She can’t follow Jesus and follow the world. So because Jesus is a loving husband and a good friend, He brings her sins into the light. He does this, not to shame her or condemn her, but so that He can offer grace and healing.
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
Sin must be brought into the light so it can be killed. When we try to hide our sin and when we try to stay in the dark we allow sin to grow and take root in our life. Sin has to be dealt with. Jesus confronts the woman with her sin and she tries to be religious about it.
The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
The woman tries to get out of the conversation by giving Jesus a question about theology. Religion sometimes becomes a mask we hide behind when we feel like our sin is being confronted. We use it to show people we have our lives together and are good people, but Jesus sees right through the mask. There is no hiding from Him, but Jesus uses the question to further communicate the greater hope that sat before her. Something greater than Jacob was here.
The question she asks is where should a person worship? Should we worship in the Temple like the Jews or at Sinai like the Samaritans?
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Jesus says true worship is in Spirit and Truth. There are those two words we have been talking about. We worship in Spirit through being born again of the Spirit. By having the Holy Spirit living inside of us. This is the New Covenant. This is the Gospel. We worship God through the Spirit at work in our lives. It isn’t in a building or on a mountain. Worship happens anywhere the Spirit is. We worship God with our lives.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Worship is how we live not where we live.
We worship in truth through the testimony of Jesus. What is true? He is true and what He says is true. If what we do in life is worship Scripture teaches what a life of worship looks like. Worship is faithful and obedient to all that Scripture teaches. It revolves around the truth of Christ’s testimony, that He is God in human flesh, that He lived a sinless life, that He died on the cross and rose again on the third day. It is the good news that even though we are dead in our sin, Jesus has made a way for us to have new life with Him by grace through Faith in Christ. The truth of the Gospel is that we don’t have to look to the world to satisfy us. We can trust in Christ, our fountain of living water.
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
The woman wants hope but this is just some regular guy, or so she thought. She wants this good news. She want to believe that she can have a relationship with God. She is outcast and broken, it seems too good to be true. She wants living water but believes that she will never escape these broken cisterns she lives by. The good news is that Jesus isn’t some regular guy. He is the one she is hoping for. He is the Messiah.
I have food to eat that you do not know about
I have food to eat that you do not know about
When she heard this she left everything and ran into the town to tell the people what she had heard. She doesn’t care about the shame or ridicule that she might receive. She has good news.
Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They went out of the town and were coming to him.
The good news of the Gospel is that Christ knows every evil and selfish thing I have ever done, and He loves anyway. I can have a relationship with Him despite it all. That is the best news. She had five husbands and the man she was with now was not her husband. She was an outcast of the culture but Jesus invited her into intimacy with Her creator. Exchange the immorality you were searching for in exchange for the intimacy that only comes from Jesus. The Gospel wasn’t an excuse for her to continue in her brokenness and have a way out of consequences. It was a fresh start at redemptive life. The man at the well is offering living water to any who would take a drink.
She takes off and leaves Jesus behind with the disciples who have just now walked up to the scene. They had been getting Jesus food and now were all kinds of confused as to what just happened.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.
Jesus’ food is doing the will of the Father. Not actually, He did need food to live, but being obedient to the Father was essential to Him. He could not live without being obedient. He was willing to miss a few meals for obedience. Following Jesus will put us in situations where the needs of others are more important than our own. It happens often. The opposite is true as well. If we are so concerned with meeting our needs and satisfying our desires we will miss out on opportunities to be obedient to God. Does that mean that we can only be obedient when we are uncomfortable? No. But obedience is putting God first above all else. If we can’t put Jesus over our comfort it is because comfort is the God we worship not Jesus.
Eating the fruit of obedience requires discipline and consistency. Like a good farmer Jesus labors for the Kingdom and is getting to share in the fruit of that labor with His disciples. What the disciples got to be a part of something very special ministering with Jesus. They were a part of seeing the world change. They got to work in that labor but they weren’t responsible. God has been working throughout all of human history to bring about His plan of redemption. He has been moving through Abraham, Moses, David, the Prophets. These were people God partnered with in His work. Now the Disciples are getting to play a role. God is using regular ordinary people to accomplish an extraordinary task.
The fruit of God’s labor is before them. Not just metaphorically. There was a large group of people walking to the well to hear about this Messiah that the woman told them about. Jesus is wanting to use us in His labor. He calls us to seek first His Kingdom. Find where God is calling us and serve. Sometimes we serve like the woman who left everything and told the towns people about Jesus, sometimes we serve like the Disciples who went to get Jesus food. There are countless ways that God uses us in His Kingdom. Sometimes we labor and labor and never get to see the result of it. Sometimes we didn’t do anything and we get to reap from someone else’s work. Either way it is God’s will that sustains us and it is a privilege to have a place to serve in God’s Kingdom.
We have heard it ourselves
We have heard it ourselves
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
The people didn’t just take the woman’s word for it. They came to investigate for themselves. In doing so their belief was strengthened. They said we believe now not just because you told us, but because we have experienced it for ourselves.
Are you a Christian because someone told you that you should be one or are you a Christian because you have seen for yourself the goodness of God. I grew up in church and this was a question I really had to make sure I knew the answer to. Was I Christian because it was what my family was or did I actually believe it?
