The Woman at the Well

Intro

There’s an old movie I used to watch when I was late middle school, early high school called Love Don’t Cost a Thing. It’s about a guy who is one of the nerds of his class, and he just wants to be cool for one year in his life. He and his friends are social out casts. The movie takes place during their senior year, and the main character is in this scholarship competition and he has to earn money to buy a new piece of machinery for this engine he’s been building. Long story short, he bribes the popular girl at school to go on a date with him, so that he can seem cool. And since it’s a movie, it actually works. He becomes the talk of the school, he’s invited to the parties, all of the sudden people seem to care about what he has to say. As he gains popularity, he starts to neglect his original friends, and he also starts to be a jerk toward the girl he bribed to date him. Finally, the main actress who plays the girl has had enough towards the end of the movie, and she basically just calls him out. And while she’s bringin him back down to earth, she has this quote that has stuck with me since I saw the movie. She says, “ Al don’t you get it? When you’re the cool, popular kid, it’s work to get in, work to stay in.” And the reason I think that quote has stuck with me, is because I think that kind of describes the predicament we find ourselves in as people every day. Every day we wake up, and we have these desires to achieve, to find meaning, to find acceptance, to belong. And try as we might, there are always things that block us from satisfying those desires. Yet we constantly run back to things that will only satisfy us temporarily, knowing that it can never ultimately fill the voids that we fill.

Body

Tonight , we are going to look at a story about a person, who like the character in the movie, kept running her reality, and kept trying to solve her problems with temporary, cheap, faulty, fixes. Join me in John 4.

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Okay, so let’s start out with a few observations and make sure we have a full grasp of the setting here. As we kind of established last night, Jews and Samarians don’t vibe with each other, they have mad beef. So just by being there, Jesus is once again breaking down barriers.

Secondly, back in that day men didn’t typically speak to women in public, so Jesus being a teacher and interacting with this woman at all, was controversial for the culture. Furthermore, Jesus is asking her for her service. And remember, this is Jesus who is the Son of God, created all of nature, asking for help. We can know that Jesus was a real servant, because while He came to serve us, he also existed among us while being at our mercy.

Another point worth noting is that this interaction is taking place during the hottest part of the day. Typically, women would go to draw water from a well early in the morning before the sun is at its highest point. The fact that this women is out here when she is, suggests that she is trying to avoid something at the expense of her comfort. Which probably has to do with her relationship history...

I think that there is a lot for us to learn from this encounter with Jesus. but the main point I hope that we can take away is this:

Point: Encounters with Jesus open our eyes to the truth, not for our shame, but for our dignity

How does Jesus do this? First, as already alluded to earlier, Jesus despite his status as Son of God, subjects Himself to the same struggles that we go through, such as the simple need for water. Because of the social norms of the time, the fact that Jesus, Jewish man, would be speaking to a Samaritan woman and asking her for help, would have been SHOCKING at the time. It would be similar to someone incredibly rich and famous, with a wealth of resources at their disposal asking a random person struggling to get by for help. Because of the social

He starts to point out her need for more than what she is currently doing.

He calls her to confront her sin, facing the truth, helping her move out of the shadow of her shame into the light of knowing the Messiah.