John 4: 1-26 “The Women At The Well”

1:08Many of you may even have a theme that you want to make sure gets covered and emphasized this morning. I may disappoint some of you, I'm sure, because I'm not sure I'm going to cover everything. But allow me to recognize the often mentioned facts on this text. Jesus makes a detour through Samaria. Most Jews avoid that route. Jesus is weary. Jesus meets with a Samaritan. Jesus meets with a woman who, due to having multiple husbands, is a moral outcast in the community.

2:03Jesus surprises the Samaritan woman by being willing to speak to her. Jesus and the Samaritan woman engage in a lengthy conversation that bounces around from living water to Jacob to her adultery to him being a prophet to Mount Gerizim to worship in spirit and truth and to the Messiah. All of you quality time individuals would love to have such a deep, far-ranging conversation with your significant other. So this morning, we're going to approach this sermon in the following manner. First, I'm going to Tell you the story.

3:03And we will look at and we will engage in facts about the story that you may or may not be familiar with. Second, I'm going to break the passage up into four living truths: living wisdom, living water, living witness, and living worship. Our goal this morning is to see the following: Jesus provides us with a gift, living water, through his wisdom and witness that empowers our worship. First, let us consider living wisdom. Verse 1. Now, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although John did not baptize, excuse me, although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples, he, Jesus, left Judea and departed again for Galilee, most likely to avoid the confrontation early with the Jewish leaders. And Jesus had to pass. Through Samaria.

4:34Much has been made of this statement in verse 4 that Jesus had to pass through Samaria. Technically, it was not necessary. Culturally, it was not customary. If you look at a map, you will see that Samaria lies between Galilee on the north and Judea to the south. The shortest distance between two points is obviously meant to go directly through Samaria in order to get to Galilee. But because of the animosity between Jews and Samaritans, scrupulous Jews chose to go east across the Jordan River through Decapolis and Perea, and then would jump in to Galilee and avoid Samaria completely.

5:38So, in what sense did Jesus have to pass through Samaria? From a cultural perspective, one might argue that our Lord may have done so to express his contempt for the narrow bigotry. Of some of the Jews of his day. Certainly, from a divine perspective, Jesus did so in order to bring many Samaritans to faith in himself. But the Jewish historian Josephus used the exact same term, had to pass through Samaria, in a sense of the necessity for rapid travel.

6:28Thus, from a human perspective, it was the shortest and most sensible route. All three perspectives are likely reasons leading Jesus to have to pass through Samaria. So, back to our text, verse 5. 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. Jacob's well is a dug well. When you say, well, all wells are dug. Okay, okay.

7:21It is a dug well in this sense. It was dug 100 feet deep to get to a living spring. So that the water would bubble up and from which you could draw water. In the first century, Jacob's well would have had a short perimeter wall around the mouth, which would prevent people and animals and debris from falling in. It would have a stone lid. It would have a stone trough nearby so that you could take the water and put it in the stone trough to water your animals. And it very likely had some type of tripod with a rope that you could then bring your container, connect to the rope to drop down the hundred feet to obtain the water. This is the well that our weary, hungry, thirsty man, who is also the Son of God, came to be refreshed.

8:24Before we consider living water, I want to learn something about this passage about living wisdom. Many people are troubled about discerning the will of God. How did our Lord discern that it was the will of God for him to pass through Samaria and witness to these people? I personally doubt that he received any spectacular revelation. I personally do not believe that he had a strange inner urge. We know two things about our Lord. First of all, he always acted on biblical principle.

9:17There were racial and cultural barriers to Jews, scrupulous Jews, passing through, but there were no biblical barriers. The Old Testament scriptures told of Israel's responsibility to take the light of truth to all nations. And Jesus acted accordingly. Second, passing through Samaria was the shortest and fastest route. My friends, don't spend hours praying for guidance in matters that can be settled by common sense. If God wants you to do the unusual, to do the extraordinary, he will make it clear. I know of a seminary professor whose flight schedule was inexcusably altered so that he missed his plane. And as he sat waiting in the coffee shop, he encountered a woman.

10:30Who desperately needed a word from God? When God has such unusual appointments, you can be sure you won't miss them. Remember this: God's guidance is always within the confines of what is biblical and most often in accord with what is practical and logical. That is living wisdom. Let's now consider living water. Verse 7. 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. Let's notice three things. First, John, who wrote in 90 AD, who did not write a chronological story, he writes a narrative where he puts snapshots to teach us and instruct us on who Jesus is. John chooses to put chapter four after chapter three. First, John contrasts the woman of this narrative and Nicodemus. Chapter 3. Nicodemus was learned, powerful, respected, orthodox, theologically trained.

12:12She was unschooled, without influence, despised, capable only of folk religion. He was a man, a Jew, a ruler. She was a woman. Excuse me. She was a woman, a Samaritan, a moral outcast. And yet, John notes, both needed Jesus. Second, notice the timing of the woman's appearance to draw water that is in a well about a mile out of town in that day. In this culture, water collection was the responsibility of women. Normally, water drawing took place in the early morning or at dusk to avoid the heat of the Mediterranean sun.

13:15Women normally came in groups to fetch water. The fact that this woman came alone in the middle of the day was due to her. Isolation, her poor reputation, or her moral status in the community. Third, Jesus is not being deceptive here. He does not ask for a drink to simply engineer an opportunity to speak to the Samaritan woman. Jesus was genuinely thirsty. Yet, he perceives the woman's need for salvation, and that need warrants a change of the conversation to spiritual matters. Verse 9: The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

14:32She does not say, How can I, a Samaritan woman, give you water? No, she says, How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink from me? The reason is she knows that there are barriers that prevent him from even speaking to her. She knows that it's improper. For a rabbi to speak to a single woman. He knows that there are barriers of race, lifestyle, and religion that prevent him, a Jew, from speaking with her, a Samaritan.

15:18Yet, Jesus overcomes all of those barriers to the woman's amazement. At this point in the story, the author John inserts an interesting parenthetical comment. Parenthetical comment. For no Jew, excuse me, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. There are actually two possible meanings of this statement. Carson notes, D.A. Carson notes, the verb samkrasthe can mean to associate with, that's how it's translated here in the ESV, but it more commonly means to use together with. The object of using together with is understood from the context. So, what's the context here? It is possible that the woman is also amazed that Jesus was willing to share an instrument or a utensil that is used by a Samaritan, because she knows that that's a possibility because, according to the laws of the Pharisees, the laws of purity, Leviticus 15 as an example, it did not allow Jews and Samaritans to use drinking vessels together.

16:48That's one possibility of what John is meaning. Now, if that's not John's intention, we do know that the parenthetical remark refers to the historical enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans. The origin of the Samaritans, for those of you who don't remember your history, comes from the time of the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom in 721 BC. At that time, the Assyrians take 30,000 Jews and move them away from the country. And then they move tens of thousands of non-Jews into Israel.

17:35It was not long, as you can expect, before those non-Israelites intermarried with the remaining Israelites, racially and spiritually defiling that group. When the Babylonian exiles returned to the Holy Land, the Samaritans said, Hey, Let's get together. Let's merge. And the Israelites did this. They rebuffed and rejected the Samaritans. Around 400 BC, the Samaritans, so rebuffed by the Israelites, hey, I'm going to build our own temple on Mount Gerizim. And then around 128 BC, the Israelites, not liking that very much, they destroy it.

18:31This is the background of this enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans. Verse 10, 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. As with Nicodemus in chapter 3, Jesus answers the Samaritan woman by referring to another world, another reality than the one in which she lives. The water which our Lord offers was of a far different kind.

19:25It was not a literal drink, but it was the life. Giving spirit is a life-giving gift of the indwelling presence of God by the Spirit who produces a continual refreshing and sustaining source of strength and blessing. Verse 11. The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and this well is deep. It's 100 feet. Where do you get that living water? Are you really? That's really the tone of this statement. Are you really greater than our father Jacob? There's skepticism in her tone if you look at the text. He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. This woman is utterly confused.

20:29First, she misses the spiritual reality Jesus is speaking about. That's obvious. Second, Jesus could not be speaking about water from this well. It's 100 feet deep. He has nothing to draw it from it. And to get down to that running water, the living water at the bottom, how can he do it? Third, everyone knows that this region has no other river. Rivers and no other streams. How could this Jewish outsider, someone who barely knew the terrain, offer water that no one else has found?

21:13And finally, if Jesus was offering fresh water without expending the energy to dig or using the means provided, he had to be greater than Jacob or a charlatan. She obviously alludes and believes the latter. Verse 13. Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give 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.

22:04Jesus contrasts the water from Jacob's well, this water, with his gift. The words in verse 13 and 14 in the Greek are a little instructive for us. The word for drink in verse 13 is in the present tense, active voice. What Jesus is saying in verse 13 is something like this. Even if you keep on drinking the water from this well, you will get thirsty again. Verse 14, the word drink is in the aorist tense, active voice. So, in verse 14, Jesus is saying something like this: But whosoever takes just one drink of the water that I give him shall never thirst. In other words, Jesus is promising that just one trip to him will satisfy the soul forever.

23:10If this is true, what is Jesus offering? What is this living water? Jesus is offering salvation, Jesus is offering the opportunity to have all of your sins forgiven. Jesus is offering the opportunity to be right with God. Jesus is offering the opportunity to miss hell and to go to heaven when you die. What is the catch in drinking this water? Brothers and sisters, friends, there's no catch. Jesus Wants you to come before him, confessing yourself a sinner and calling on him by faith.

24:12He wants you to take his death on the cross as the payment for your sins. He wants you to believe what the Bible says about him. He wants you to accept everything he says on the basis of faith. Paul writes: if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. If you do that, he will save you and he will satisfy your soul. The attractions of this world will lose their grip on you.

25:01I asked this morning, would you rather keep drinking from a well that can never satisfy? Or would you rather take one drink from a fountain that never fails to give perfect and absolute satisfaction? That is living water. Now let us consider a living well. Witness. Verse 15. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to drink water. Just as Nicodemus did in chapter 3, she takes, who took the new birth literally, she does not understand Jesus' spiritual meaning. She kind of takes it in a literal sense. She's probably thinking that there must be some magical supply of ordinary water that will make it possible for her to never have to go by herself in the middle of the day to this well again.

26:18Because of this, Jesus now changes tact. Verse 16, Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here. The woman answered, 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. Jesus recognizes that if the woman desires Living water, there must be a thirst for that type of water. And that thirst will never be truly awakened unless there be a sense of guilt and a consciousness of sin. Thus, Jesus exposes the whole truth, as the woman admits in verses 29 and 39, but he does so in the gentlest way possible. He commends her for her truthfulness. I have no husband, while pointing out she has had five husbands. Presumingly, each had died or divorced her, and the man with whom she is now sleeping is not her legal husband at all.

27:52What can we learn from this interchange? One of the most common questions about evangelism pertains to timing. The New Testament reports almost nothing of door-to-door evangelism or some type of cold presentation. Our Lord simply witnessed in the midst of his normal activities. So, allow me to draw three guidelines for witnessing from this interchange. A, when one has the opportunity, B, when one has a listening ear, and C, when one has the proper approach. Let me give you a little details on that. First, the Lord had an opportunity to witness at the well.

28:53She did not ask Jesus the way to heaven. He brought her around to that subject. One far wiser than I gave this guideline to a former pastor of mine, Robert Deffenbaum. Whenever, in the course of a conversation, I have the choice of determining the topic of discussion, I will make every effort to speak of spiritual things. I believe that this is what Paul meant when he wrote this in Colossians 4, verses 5 and 6. Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned as it were with salt, so that you may know how you should respond to each person.

29:53Second, once you've had this opportunity, we should be sensitive. To interest or hostility. Before we cast our pearls before swine by forcing an unwanted discussion, we should follow Jesus' example. Like Jesus, we should pursue a spiritual conversation as deeply as the unbeliever will allow us. Third, finally, there is no one canned approach to evangelism. Jesus used a different approach for every person he interacted with. His approach with Nicodemus was far different than his approach with the woman at the well.

30:56He, Jesus, adapts the very style of his communication to the personality and needs of the person to whom he is dealing with. If I could give any advice to those who desire to share their faith, I would suggest that you learn the gospel so well that you are free to share it with great flexibility rather than in terms of a single canned approach. That is a living witness. Let us now consider living worship. Verse 19. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

31:48The least that the woman means is that Jesus' precise knowledge of her past proves him to be inspired. But the syntax of the Greek allows for a different translation. D.A. Carson notes, you could translate this. I can see that you are the prophet. As a reminder, the Samaritans did not believe that there were prophets such as Amos and Isaiah in the biblical period. They didn't believe they existed because they only embraced the Pentateuch. But they did understand in Deuteronomy 18:18, where Moses speaks of a great prophet that would follow him. And the Samaritans believe that great prophet who would follow Moses would be the Messianic figure of the final day. Therefore, if she is referring to Jesus as the prophet, The woman may be suggesting that Jesus is the Messiah, which leads her to say this in verse 20. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. She brings the conversation around to the theological issue which divided Jews and Samaritans. What is the central place of worship? Was it Mount Gerizim or was it in Jerusalem? Look at what Jesus says in 21 in answer to this question. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

33:53You worship what you do not know. We, Jews, worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and now is 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. The question posed by the woman. Was irrelevant to Jesus. For with the coming of the Messiah, the entire argument of the central place of worship was about to change. No longer did man need to seek God's presence in one place. God is not to be worshipped in a place, but in a person, Jesus Christ.

35:03God is spirit and thus must be worshipped in spirit. One must trust Christ is Lord to truly worship. True worship is not ceremony. True worship is not a place. True worship is a matter of the spirit prompted and produced by the Holy Spirit. And also, worship must be within the confines of truth. The Samaritans worshiped in ignorance. They worshiped what you do not know. Samaritan worship consistently deviated from the revealed truth of God. One particular truth.

36:00Upon which worship must be based was the fact that salvation was to come from the Jews. The Messiah was to be a Jew and not a Samaritan. Thus, it is never, never enough to be sincere. She was sincere. The Samaritans were sincere. But one must worship in accord with truth to be a real worshiper of God. To worship a God who does not conform to the truths of Scripture is to practice idolatry. So, in summary, what is Jesus saying here? Worship concentrates both upon truth and devotion prompted by the Holy Spirit. So, finally, the conversation arrives at the subject of the Messiah, verse 25. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell all things.

37:17The Samaritans, as well as the Jews, were looking for a coming Messiah, although their expectations differed significantly from that of Judaism. The woman not knowing what is true about the Messiah, the Samaritan woman says that when he, the Messiah, comes, all these matters will get straightened out. But Jesus responds to close this discourse with an incredibly important statement in verse 26. I who speak to you am He. At a minimum, Jesus is declaring himself, his own identity, to be the Messiah.

38:09But, brothers and sisters, it is possible he means something more. When our Lord said, I who speak to you am he, the he is not in the original Greek text. It is only supplied by the translators. In the original text, Ritter, Bose, Burge, Carson, Hendrickson, XYZ. In the original text, Jesus says, I that speak to you, I am. If this is the case, in this final verse of this discourse, Jesus is claiming to be both Messiah and God at the same moment.

38:56So, in closing, I want to address one final question. Practical application. Many Christians have an incorrect view of what worship is. Don Carson has observed that worship is a transitive verb. Okay, everyone's going, okay, I don't remember my grammar from the, maybe the young people are all smart and they already know maybe the English majors. A transitive verb is a verb that requires a direct object. And the most important thing about a transitive verb is always the direct object.

39:40Brothers and sisters, we do not meet to experience worship. We meet to worship the Lord God and Him only. And the woman at the well needed to understand that truth because she had the wrong direct object at the end of the verb worship. She was worshiping something other than the true God. So Jesus explains to her who the true God is. In essence, Jesus says, Let me tell you something about God. He is spirit. He's not like you. He's seeking worshippers.

40:31But you're not looking for a God to worship. You're looking to worship your own gods that you make up. But the true God is a spirit who is seeking worshipers. Brothers and sisters, how do you know where and what you worship? Let me give you a hint. You simply follow the trail of your time, your affection, your energy, your money, and your allegiance. And at the end of that trail, you will find a throne, and whoever or whatever is on that throne is of the highest value to you.

41:24In other words, on that throne is what you worship. Sure, there aren't very many of us who will confess, I worship my stuff, I worship my job, I worship this pleasure, I worship him, I worship her, I worship my body, I worship me, but the trail never lies. Brothers and sisters, are you worshiping the creation? Or the Creator. God is a spirit who's seeking worshipers to worship Him and to serve Him only. Caleb read a very important verse in the call to worship. Every single commentator on this passage believes that the Apostle John had Jeremiah 2:13 in mind when he wrote this story.

42:38For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. The people were worshiping that which could not hold water, which was broken, rather than the God of living water. Brothers and sisters, God is a spirit who's seeking worshipers to worship him and serve him only. That is living worship. Our goal. This morning was to see that Jesus provides us with a gift, living water, through his wisdom and witness that empowers our worship. And may I emphasize our true worship. May God bless our study of his word. Let us pray.

43:59Lord, we approach you in humility. We thank you for your wisdom. You provide guidance for us if we but understand your word. For in your word, we will find what your will is. You desire for us to not kill, steal. You desire for us to be obedient, to turn away from sin, to not gossip. You desire for us to pray. Your wisdom is so clear. And you don't ask us to do extraordinary things normally. You ask us. To use common sense, to use the wisdom that you give to us. And we know that if we have to do something extraordinary, you will make it very clear. We thank you, maybe most of all, for salvation. We thank you that we do not have to embrace, that we do not have to accept a broken cistern that cannot hold any water.

45:37Rather, we thank you that you give us living water if we but once approach you and accept your work on the cross to cover our sins so that we might be saved. Lord, we thank you that you call us to witness. We thank you that it doesn't have to be a cold presentation, but much like our gospel workers in South Asia, in East Asia, and in Southeast Asia, it merely requires us to develop relationships. Through a business, through a school, through a neighborhood. And as we develop those relationships, we have the opportunity to witness.

46:44And we thank you for worship. We thank you that you make it very clear that our goal is not to worship anything that we have manufactured, but that we have the privilege of worshiping you and you alone. And we can do that worship through the study of the word, through singing by this worship team, by giving, and of course, by the very prayer that we're having in this conversation with you right now. Because we can worship by admitting our need, our dependence upon you.

47:30You and you alone are worthy of worship. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.