The Samaritan Woman

Introduction

Illustration: Is there anyone else like me that gets excited about coming home to your own water?

We’re spoiled in our modern first world countries when it comes to water. It’s everywhere. Every home and business has fresh drinking water in multiple rooms available at the turn of a tap. This has not been so in all times and in all places. Have you ever looked at a map of population density? If you do you’ll notice that people congregate where there is water, because water is needed to keep us alive. Food, oxygen, and water are the most basic needs to maintain human life. For this reason the Bible often uses water as an image to represent life.

The passage we are looking at today is one of the most well known moments where water is used to represent life in the Bible and at the same time one of the passages most centred on loving and forgiving outcasts. Today we continue our many part series “Believe and Live: The Gospel of John” with this passage,

John 4:1–29 CSB

When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were), he left Judea and went again to Galilee. He had to travel through Samaria; so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, because his disciples had gone into town to buy food. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.” “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.” Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.” “Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.” “Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.” “I don’t have a husband,” she answered. “You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’ ” Jesus said. “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” “Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.” Just then his disciples arrived, and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”

You know originally I had planned to do one sermon on this conversation and the follow up with the rest of the Samaritan town because of how interconnected these scenes are, but I thought you guys probably wouldn’t be down for a one hour sermon, so consider this part one of a two part sermon.

Jesus is the master of the object lesson, often taking the things that just happen to be around Him and using them to express deep spiritual truths to those to whom He is speaking. This story is one of those moments. They are by the well, so Jesus tells this woman about the gospel being living water.

The question is, what do we as modern readers learn from God from this passage? How does it help inform us about what it means to be disciples of Jesus, and how we can best make disciples of all nations as Jesus called us to do?

First we learn that fundamentally the gospel is for everyone, no matter how different they are from us or how deeply sinful they are. In fact the more lost and sinful they are, the easier it is for them to admit they need repentance. We learn that just like water keeps us alive God gives us living water that we only need to drink once and keeps us alive forever. We also learn that the only way to truly worship God as He deserves to be worshipped is not to go to the proper place and do the proper ritual, but to accept Jesus’ sacrifice for our behalf and receive the Spirit and worship the true God.

The Gospel is for Everyone

Illustration: Being threatened by a homeless person in Saint John.

I think we are living in incredibly divisive times. I could wax eloquent about why I think the internet and social media algorythms are pushing people more and more apart ideologically but that’s not the point. Watching how people have been reacting about political differences in the last ten years is honestly heartbreaking. We seem to be moving more and more towards an us versus them conservative verses liberal kind of world and that’s not the kind of world that I want to be living in. It’s a step backwards towards societies that divided and held grudges for generations.

Societies like the Jewish people and the Samaritans. When Jesus came to earth He came to a people who held some pretty serious grudges. Not without any reason, but hating people for things their ancestors had done generations ago. This is why Jesus’ actions in this chapter are so radical. Let’s take a look at

John 4:7–9 CSB

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, because his disciples had gone into town to buy food. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

“Jews do not associate with Samaritans” is an incredible understatement of the situation. Here’s what happened to start all of this animosity. Because God had chosen Israel as a special people with a special purpose the Hebrew Scriptures forbid Jewish men from marrying people from other nations. When the Assyrians conquered the nation of Israel they displaced many Jewish people and moved other people into their lands, which is a common tactic employed throughout history by leaders who conquer other nations. Many of the Israelites married foreigners brought in and were then called Samaritans, and they were forbidden from coming to worship at the temple as a result. In response the Samaritans built their own temple and began to worship there, seen as an insult to God by the Israelites, especially combined with the fact that they continued to worship false gods.

So from the point of view of a first century Jewish person, Jesus had every reason to avoid this woman and all of Samaria as Jewish people often did, travelling many miles out of their way to avoid the people of Samaria entirely.

To add more to that we need to understand that even if she wasn’t a Samaritan by their cultural standards it was still taboo for Jesus to speak to her this way. A rabbi speaking with a strange woman like this was forbidden by the traditions of the elders. It gets worse. Let’s hop down a few verses to

John 4:16–18 CSB

“Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.” “I don’t have a husband,” she answered. “You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’ ” Jesus said. “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

Considering at the time that Jewish men had the right to divorce their wives for any reason, the best most charitable view you can take here is that this woman was unfairly left by five different men, but it seems more likely that their was wrongdoing on her part. Yet even if that were the case the Scriptures are pretty clear that “having” a man who isn’t your husband is sinful.

So what is Jesus doing talking to this woman?

Luke 5:31–32 CSB

Jesus replied to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

This woman is exactly the kind of person that Jesus is looking for. See there are a lot of people who look and act righteous and have confidence in themselves yet go on sinning. Those are hard hearts that need to be convinced of their sinfulness before they can be brought to a place of conviction and repentance. This woman I am pretty confident knows exactly how sinful she is. So she is good soil for the seed of the gospel.

This has profound implications for how we view other people. Take a second to consider the fact that the more broken lost and desperate someone is, the more ready they are to accept that they are sinners in need of a savior. So we should not view those who might be our enemies as “them” and “other” and beyond hope, but as just like us. Hopeless without Jesus.

Living Water

Illustration: Have you ever heard of the fountain of youth? Supposedly the Arawak people believed that there was a fountain in the land of “Bimini” that could make someone eternally young. This is perhaps where Ponce de Leon heard about the fountain of youth when he left in search of it. Bimini is located in the Caribbean and the draw of the legend of the fountain of youth was strong enough that Sequene, a chief of the Arawaks, sailed to sea with a troop of warriors in search of it and never returned. He should have asked me where it was and I could have pointed him to our Scripture for today.

I mean, who doesn’t want eternal youth, right? As a parent of three children all three and under, I feel older than I am. I would love to drink some water that would turn back my biological clock a decade so maybe I could keep up with Owen. Am I the only one here? I think the bigger draw behind the fountain of youth is rather the fact that it promises avoiding death. The looming shadow of death hangs over humanity, and many are the people who would go to great lengths to avoid it. I think of the expenses some people go to travelling to other countries and paying for experimental treatments to try to cure their terminal diseases.

Let’s take a look at what Jesus says to the Samaritan woman in

John 4:10–15 CSB

Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.” “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.” Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.” “Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”

Now as an interesting word of explanation, while the term “living waters” is so associated with this Biblical story now that the term means to most people who hear it “spiritual waters that give eternal life,” it was not so when Jesus said this. In fact it was a common Semitic idiom that meant “fresh water.” So let’s re-read Jesus’ first words to the woman and maybe we’ll understand her reaction a bit better.

“If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you fresh water.”

So it’s no wonder that her reaction was to ask how He was going to draw this fresh water without a bucket. They were standing next to a well that was fed by a spring of fresh water. It’s a recurring theme throughout John’s gospel that Jesus speaks deep spiritual truths through mundane images, and it’s also a theme that Jesus is repeatedly misunderstood. Remember His conversation with Nicodemus and the misunderstanding about the phrase “born again.” Jesus speaks heavenly truths but the ones He’s talking to are too earthly minded to hear them.

Even after Jesus explains that this living water is unlike the physical water and will make it so that we never thirst again and will give us eternal life, this woman is still thinking in earthly terms. She responds by saying “give me this water, so that I don’t have to come back to this well.”

There are probably few things in life this woman wants more than to stop coming to this well. Drawing water for your daily needs and bringing it back home was a huge chore at the time, requiring walking sometimes a great distance and carrying a very heavy bucket of water home with you. That’s why most people did so at the beginning or ending of the day, when the sun was just rising or setting and the day was at its coolest.

But this woman came at noon. When the sun is highest and hottest. Why? Because Jesus is not the only one who knows about her history. For Him its miraculous because He’s a stranger, but word is likely well travelled around her town of her reputation. So she avoids the other women by coming to the well at the time of day no one else does and therefore significantly increases the amount of effort necessary.

Jesus knows how to reach people. To an old man Nicodemus he talks about starting over, being born again. To a blind man later in this gospel He will talk about light. To this woman who has to choose between back breaking work in the scorching sun and public humiliation because of her need to draw water from the well He offers water that you can drink to never thirst again.

The gospel you see is the answer to all of our needs. That’s because every pain, every need, every shame that we have comes from our broken relationship with God. Coming to Jesus and receiving the “gift of God” from Him means relief from all of those things. Every fear is stilled, all striving ceases in the face of our relationship with God being restored in Jesus because of His gospel. So we then must come to this well and drink deeply so that we might live forever.

Not only though does this passage teach us about our need to drink this water, but to the wise disciple of Jesus it teaches us something very important about how we approach people who don’t know Him. We need to meet them in their place of need. What is the thing that they need, what they feel they are missing most? The hard thing is that means we need to really listen to people and think deeply about them in order to show them how the gospel meets their needs. Good thing we have the help of the Holy Spirit.

Worship In Spirit and Truth

Illustration: How many of you have already repressed your memories of the pandemic? I know I’m working on it. All kidding aside, I was on the board at my church for at least one of the difficult conversations about whether or not to close our doors. One of the mos consoling factors when considering closing church services was the knowledge that we serve a God who doesn’t live in our church buildings, and doesn’t require that we worship Him here. We gather at this building because God has called us to worship Him together, not because He wants us to worship in a particular place.

Throughout history, and still in some other religions, this was not always the case. This meant for many Israelites travelling huge distances to come to the temple to worship their God. Still now many have to travel across the world to their particular places of worship. So what changed? Why do we no longer need to worship God in Jerusalem?

When God chose Israel to be the nation through which He blessed the world, He also gave them a particular place where they were to worship Him. The Temple in Jerusalem. It was there that God’s presence on earth dwelled and once a year a High Priest could come into the Holy Place to ask God to forgive the sins of the nation of Israel.

Why was God’s presence manifested in particular in this one place? Because God cannot dwell in the hearts of sinful man, so instead He gave them a way to have a small glimpse of His presence among them. Jesus tells this woman at the well that all this is about to change.

John 4:19–26 CSB

“Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”

Before I get to the post temple worship thing, take a moment to see the significance of Jesus’ answer to this woman when she says Messiah will explain everything. In the CSB He says “I, the one speaking to you, am he.” But I took a look at the Greek, and do you want to know what the literal translation of this sentence is? “I AM, the one speaking to you.” Jesus says I am. When Moses asks God in the burning bush what His name is, God answers “I AM.” Jesus is God.

The presence of God for many years dwelt in the Holy of Holies. When the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us God’s presence was a man who walked among us. When Jesus died on the cross, well according to Mark 15:38

Mark 15:38 CSB

Then the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

God’s presence was no longer in one place. Because of His sacrifice for us Jesus made a way for us to be cleansed of our sin so that now God’s Spirit can dwell not just in the Most Holy Place but in the hearts of all of us who follow Jesus and put our active trust in Him.

So when we worship God with the Spirit within us we worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. In Spirit because we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us and in Truth because the only way that can be true is if we follow the true God by coming to Jesus.

So if you want to lift up worship to God that is worthy of His Holy name the only way to do so is to come to the well and drink the water that springs up in you for eternal life and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

So what have we learned today from observing Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well? We have learned that the Kingdom of God is open to everyone, even the most sinful and lost of all people, as long as they come to Jesus and repent of their sins and follow Him. We have learned that the secret of solving our lives greatest problems is to come to the well, to drink deeply of Jesus’ truth and Spirit and inherit eternal wealth. We also learned that doing so is the only way to really worship God, to truly give Him the honour that He is due.

So my friends as we prepare to leave this place I hope that you have rediscovered something of the beauty of the gospel this morning. I hope that for those of us following Jesus we see a renewed passion for serving Him out of a gratefulness for what He has done for us, and a commitment to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. And for those outside the door I pray that you would see the beauty of the gospel and come to Jesus for that drink that gives eternal life.

May we all go out ready to meet people where they are and show them that all their needs are met in Jesus. Let us pray.