Woman at a Well
January 31, 2010
Series: One on One with the Master
Last week we started imagining what it would be like to sit down with Jesus one on one. We watched as Nicodemas met Jesus in the dark… and how Jesus brought him into the light. We said that meeting Jesus might be a little more uncomfortable than you might think, because He wasn’t one to beat around the bush! In fact, He had a way of knocking down the bush we’re trying to hide behind! Meeting Jesus would be a confrontation with TRUTH! Now, Jesus moves from meeting with one of the religious ‘in crowd’ to a woman who is an outsider. Here’s a woman who’s caught in a maze of tangled relationships. Hopeless, lonely and hurting… Jesus touches a spiritual nerve with her, and in the process we learn some amazing facts about who He is… (READ John 4: 1-30)
The 1st thing we learn is that Jesus is on a mission!
1. He’s on a MISSION:
Jesus came to seek and save the lost… but to do that He has to break down a lot of the barriers that we put up against God. Just like He said last week...”The light from heaven has come into the world, but we love darkness more than we love light! In fact, we hate the light because we want to sin in the darkness. We stay away from the light because we fear that our sins will be exposed and God will punish us.”
So we run…afraid of the light! This lady was a lot like all of us, and Jesus had to force her to face her indifference, her lust, her self-centeredness, her immorality and her own religious prejudice!
The story starts in John 4:1-3…READ vs.1-3 “Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is baptizing and making more disciples than John” 2 (though Jesus himself didn’t baptize them—his disciples did). 3 So he left Judea to return to Galilee.” Look at what’s going on here… Jesus was leaving Judea (which was in the extreme S. of Israel) and taking off for Galilee (which was in the extreme N. end of Israel). Why? Because so many people were flocking to see him and it was stirring up opposition with the Jewish religious rulers. They already hated what John the Baptist was doing, and so you can imagine what they thought of Jesus! So Jesus takes off up North, (not because He’s afraid), but because He has work to do, and it’s not time for a confrontation… yet!
Now, on the way north, vs.4 tells us that… “He had to go through Samaria on the way.” Right smack in the middle of Judea and Galilee was Samaria. And the quickest way from one end of the country to the other was to go through Samaria. But you didn’t HAVE to go through Samaria… you could go around it if you wanted… it would take you an extra 3 days… but most Jews would rather take the extra 3 days. Why? Because they HATED the Samaritans! They didn’t want to have anything to do with them!
I’ll tell you why in a minute, but the fact is…Jesus didn’t HAVE to go through Samaria for geographical reasons… he could have gone around like every other self-respecting Jew. The reason John tells us that Jesus HAD to go through Samaria, was because He had a “divine appointment” at Jacobs Well! If he would have gotten there 10 minutes too soon, or 10 minutes too late, he would have missed it! But His schedule was perfect! Can you think of times where if you’d been just a little bit late or a little bit early, you would have missed a crucial turning point in your life? I can! I think about how if I had disobeyed God and not gone to the college God wanted me to go to, I would have missed my wife!
See, God’s timing is perfect and He has all kinds of “divine appointments” for you and me! God’s divine appointment with this woman happened (according to vs.6) at about the 6th hour. This would have been around 12:00 p.m. Vs.5 tells us that 5 Eventually he came to the Samaritan village of Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well…”
Just outside the town of Sychar, the road to Samaria forks… one branch goes N. and the other goes W. It’s at this fork in the road that there’s an ancient well…called Jacob’s well. Centuries earlier Jacob had dug this well and it had been passed down to his family for centuries. Jesus is tired from his long journey and while he sits down to rest, his disciples go on into town to get some food. (vs.8). So he’s sitting there all alone when (vs. 7)… a Samaritan woman comes along to draw some water. The fact that it’s noon is a little bit suspicious because all the other women in town would come in the morning to get their water for the day. The “well” was like the public gathering place for women back then to share stories, catch up on the latest gossip and spend a little time fellowshipping with each other. But this lady didn’t go in the morning? Why not? Probably because (as we’ll soon find out), she was the focus of some of that town gossip!
What I learn from this is… Jesus will go out of His way to seek you out! One way or the other, He’ll find a way to get you alone and speak to you! You can try and avoid Him all you want… you can try and run from Him, shun Him, mock Him, or ignore Him… but some way… some how… He’s going to get your attention. It might be through a good thing, but most of the time, (because we’re so hard headed)… it’s through a hardship or a sickness. He seeks you out, not because He’s a “stalker”…but because He loves you too much to let you destroy yourself! He’s on a mission to save us from our sin and from ourselves! He wants us to know Him, because He’s our only hope of eternal life, and he won’t stop trying to introduce Himself to you… until your last dying breath! That’s why I say that the only way a person gets to hell is to walk over the bloody, beaten body of Christ! He paid for our sin on the cross with His own life, and He doesn’t will that ANY perish!
And then there’s a 2nd thing we learn about Jesus…
2. He’s MULTI-ETHNIC:
In vs.7b we read, Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” Did you notice who initiated this conversation? That’s right! It was Jesus! Vs.4:9 tells us that…The woman was surprised,(why?) for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?” In Jesus’ one request for help, He was cutting through centuries of suspicion and animosity…and He knew it!
Let me explain why she said what she said… You see, way back in 720 B.C. the Assyrians had invaded Samaria and conquered them. They transported almost the leaders and the educated families to Assyria, but they left the lower class, working Jews behind. Over time these ‘left-behinders’ began to interbreed. So in the minds most Jews, the Samaritans were ‘mutts”!. They’d committed “the unforgivable sin”. They lost their racial purity! In fact even today, in a strict Orthodox Jewish household, if a son or daughter marries a Gentile… they have a funeral service for them, because in the eyes of their parents… they’re dead!
Later on in the days of Ezra, the exiled Jews returned to Israel to repair and rebuild the destroyed temple. The Samaritans came to offer their help…but the “pure” Jews looked down their noses at them and said, “We don’t want & we don’t need your help!” According to the Jews, the Samaritans had lost their Jewish heritage and had no right to help in rebuilding the house of God! That took place in 450 B.C., and 450 years later, when Jesus met this woman… they were still bickering and fighting over it! So for Jesus to sit down and talk to a Samaritan, would be like a Jew sitting down with a member of the PLO today!
On top of that…According to religious custom, Rabbi’s like Jesus were strictly forbidden to greet a woman in public. In fact they couldn’t even speak to their own wife or daughter in public! One group of religious fanatics took this so seriously that they were called “The Bruised and Bleeding Pharisees” That’s because whenever they saw a woman coming down the street they’d shut their eyes. As a result, they’d walk into trees, fences, houses, etc.!!! If a Rabbi was caught talking to a woman in public, it was the end of his reputation!
But even worse… (as we’ll see in a minute) this woman had a bad reputation. The other women of her village shunned her and wouldn’t even talk with her… that’s probably why she was coming to this well at noon instead of the regular morning hour in the 1st place.
Yet in spite of all that… JESUS SPOKE TO THIS WOMAN!!! That tells us a whole lot about the kind of person Jesus was! Here he is busting through 100’s of years of bitterness and hatred…because He cares more about the person than He does His own popularity!
Jesus saw her as a person in need… and that’s all that mattered. Is that how YOU see people? There wasn’t a bias bone in His body! And there shouldn’t be a bias bone in His body (the church) today either! In Jesus mind, all MEN and all WOMEN were created equal. He created them… so He ought to know! Jesus was no respecter of persons. That’s why it’s so sad to me when I hear (or see) his followers look down their noses at non-Christians. To a lot of people, the followers of Jesus are seen as being biased and judgmental. The very OPPOSITE of the way people saw Jesus! Regardless of what you’ve heard, or even experienced… Jesus loves every person, every sex, every nationality… the same! No matter what they’ve done.
I remember a few weeks ago sitting around the supper table with Arson (our Chinese Foreign exchange student). He’d just become a Christian, and noticed that we prayed before our meal. Trying to be sensitive to him, we skipped over him when it was his turn. But now he wanted to learn how to pray for the meal too! The problem was that he wasn’t too confident about praying in English. So I told him, “Arson, if you want to pray to God in Chinese, that’s O.K., God understands Chinese too!” All the sudden he looked at me (and as serious as he could be) he asked…”Why didn’t you tell me this?” I said, “Tell you what?” “Why didn’t you tell me that God understands Chinese?” I think he was a little bit upset with me! We found out that he’d been using the translator on my computer to talk to God, because He thought that God only spoke English! Aren’t you glad that God loves the whole world and EVERY nationality, every culture (no matter how strange it seems to us)?
Aren’t you glad that He’s not JUST the “American God”, but that He’s the God of the whole world? Here’s Jesus, (using this woman as an example)…loving the whole world, not just in theory, but in action! The thing I love about Jesus is that He never set Himself above others… even though He could of! He never judged people by their appearance, or their color, by their education, or by their economic state. (All the ways that we sometimes judge people). None of those things mattered to Him. He judged people by only one thing… their response to the one true and living God! Him! No wonder the woman was surprised!
The 3rd thing we learn about Jesus from his conversation with this woman is that…
3. He doesn’t MESS AROUND! :
Listen to Jesus response to the woman in vs.10-18… As wefound out last week in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemas… when a persons soul hangs in the balance… Jesus doesn’t mess around… He gets right to the point! She asked, Why are you asking me for a drink?” but Jesus turns it around on her and says, “If you knew about the gift of God and who I am… you’d be asking ME for water!” Did you catch the role reversal here? At 1st he’s the thirsty one and she has the water, now he’s telling her that SHE’S the thirsty one and HE’S the guy with water! Now, to an ordinary Jew… “living water” meant “running water”. It was the kind of water you got from a stream and it was “way better” than the stagnant water you got from a well or cistern.
So the woman is asking him, “Where are you going to get this pure stream water? There’s not a river for miles around! Not even Jacob could do that! What are you claiming to be wiser and more powerful than the founder of the 12 tribes of Israel?” If you’re sensing a ‘disconnect’ here, you’re right! She’s talking about physical water, but Jesus is talking about SPIRITUAL water! They’re on 2 totally different wave lengths! Jesus says 2 things that catch this woman’s attention and turns the conversation from just a ‘nice visit’ to a conversation of eternal significance. He mentions ‘the gift of God”… and ‘living water’. In the blink of an eye, He moves her from surface issues to spiritual issues.
She cautiously counters…”How are you going to get this ‘living water’… you don’t even have a bucket and the well is deep”. Historians tell us that Jacob’s well was one of the deepest wells in the country, about 100 ft deep. So she’s wondering how He’s going to pull this off! She’s not getting it! So Jesus begins to explain to her more about the unique properties of His living water… and you need to hear this! 1st of all… He explains (in vs.13) that with physical water, you drink… but after a while you get thirsty and have to drink again… but with true spiritual water… once you drink it, you’re satisfied forever!
In America we have what is called, “IFD Disease”… The ‘I” stands for IDEALIZATION… I imagine how much happiness that new car, that trip, that new home, new relationship, etc. is going to give me…but after awhile the fun wears off. Reality sets in and I get the “F” part of the disease… FRUSTRATION. All of the sudden, the empty hole that was in my soul before those things came along… is back! And so I go after more toys… try to find and worship other gods… but they don’t satisfy for long either. Eventually the “D” sets in… DEMORALIZATION. I begin to wonder if anything can bring me true & lasting joy. So to try and deal with my disappointment and despair, I go back to “I” and repeat the “IFD cycle” all over again. Amazingly, some people spend their entire life, looking (but never finding) the fulfillment they’re looking for…mostly because they think that’s all life has to offer. And in a sense, they’re right! There are a few though who start looking for “living water”. They start looking for meaning and purpose in God.
Do you know what this living water that Jesus is talking about is? Let me be real plain… It’s none other than the Spirit of the Living God! Now since Jesus is God in flesh, He’s the only one who can offer Himself in Spirit form! You might say He’s got an “exclusive distributorship”. I can personally testify this morning to the benefits of having this living water! While non-Christians around me have souls that are as stagnant and dried out as an old cistern…God’s Spirit in me makes my soul fresh and hydrated.
Now listen, because Jesus extends a personal invitation for every person here this morning to drink from His spring of living water! He wants to give you a soul that won’t stagnate and will never run out! It’s like a spring of living water. See, the beauty of a spring is that you never have to re-fill it! There’s a constant supply of water. God Spirit is infinite and so when I’m dry and worn out… He’s got more than enough of what I need!
• When I’m worn out and don’t think I can go on at work or make it through a trial… I call to Him and His strength and power bubble up in me.
• When I need wisdom to deal with a tough situation, or a family problem… I call out to Him and His wisdom bubbles up within me!
• When I’m anxious about my finances, or how my wife is going to get a job… His peace gurgles and bubbles up in my soul and I can stop worrying!
• Whatever I need… whether it’s faith, or patience, or joy or courage, or love for someone I don’t particularly like…the spring of His Spirit bubbles up within me and I have more than enough!
That’s what true worship is… it’s seeking and finding my fulfillment and the answers to all of my problems and needs in HIM! Why go to the dry wells that the world offers, when I have the living water of God’s Spirit available at any moment, night or day? When you really seek after the living God, you never have to (or want to) go after the things of the world again to find fulfillment and happiness…all you need is in Him!
Reminds me of a song I used to sing in Sunday School as a kid…
I've got a river of life flowing out of me!
Makes the lame to walk, and the blind to see.
Opens prison doors, sets the captives free!
I've got a river of life flowing out of me!
Spring up, O well, within my soul!
Spring up, O well, and make me whole!
Spring up, O well, and give to me
That life abundantly!
Now, at this point, the woman is almost convinced. In fact, she even asks for this “living water”, in vs.15… “Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me some of that water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to haul water.” After hearing that, you gotta wonder about her motive don’t you? Does she want the living water because she realizes her deep need for it, or does she want it because it sounds like it will make life easier? After-all, she wouldn’t have to come out to the well everyday to get more! A lot of people are like that… they want Jesus because they think He’ll make their life easier! In reality, they don’t want Jesus, they want what they think He can DO for them! Of course, if life doesn’t get easier… they quickly fall away and look for something else!
But Jesus knows that before you can deal with the “thirst” issue… you have to deal with the “sin” issue! Even though she’s asking for ‘living water’… Jesus doesn’t give it to her! Why not? Because He knew she wasn’t ready for it yet! There were 2 issues that had to be addressed first… 1. Her sin and.. 2. His true identity. See, Jesus doesn’t offer “cheap grace”. Until you’re willing to confront your own lifestyle ‘sin’ issues… He’s not willing to give you living water! Instead, the Lord goes right to the heart of the matter by letting her know she couldn’t hide her sin from God. Out of the blue, He asks her a loaded question…”Why don’t you go get your husband?” Jesus knew she was ‘shacking up’! At this point she could have said, “O.K., I’ll be right back…let me go get him!” and never return! But instead she does something that changed her life forever… instead of covering up…she fesses up! And because she didn’t try to or excuse or rationalize her sin…she was one step closer to God! Instead of excusing her action, she bluntly confessed… “I have no husband. I don’t know who you are…but you nailed me!” To emphasize her true condition further Jesus said… “You’re right! You don’t have a husband— 18 for you have had five husbands, and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now. You certainly spoke the truth!” They say you can’t con a con. You know who else you can’t con? Jesus! He knows the truth about you and about me! You can fool everyone in the world…even yourself…but you can’t fool God! Jesus was proving to this woman that He was God!
I’ll say it again… you can’t receive the living water of eternal life until you confess your sin issues. Jesus uses the #1 tool for flushing sin out into the open… the LAW! The 10 Commandments! See the LAW was given for one purpose and one purpose only… to expose our sin! You don’t have to judge people… all you have to do is expose them to the “law of God”… and He does the rest! That’s what Jesus was doing… He was confronting this woman with the 7th commandment (“You shall not commit adultery”).
Listen…the purpose of the 10 Commandments isn’t to show us how ‘good’ we are…they’re meant to show us how sinful we are! Because the reflect the very nature of God and His holiness…they show us in vivid, living color… how far we fall short of His perfect standard! Nobody can stand guiltless before the law of God!
Let’s say you’re sitting in your living room thinking you’ve done a pretty good job at cleaning up the house. You get up and open the curtains to let the sun shine in. What are you going to see? DUST! Everywhere! Now let me ask you a question… did the sunlight create the dust? NO! It just revealed it right? Well, in the same way… when you let the LIGHT of God’s law shine on your heart…it exposes all the dirt in your life. Prov.6:23 says that “the commandment is a lamp and the Law is a light!” Ask someone if they’re a GOOD person and 99.9% of the time they’ll say…”Yes! I’m a good moral person…and I’m going to heaven”. But the minute ‘the law of God’ is shined onto our lives… all the sudden we realize how dirty and filthy we are, compared to God’s standard of perfection. If we’re like this woman, we realize how badly we need His forgiveness and pardon!
So Jesus addressed this woman’s sin issue… but she still needs to know one more thing before receiving the living water…who He is. That’s the 2nd issue and the 4th thing we need to know about Jesus…
4. He’s the MESSIAH :
READ vs.19-26…
Did you notice how when things got a little too personal, the woman tries to get Jesus off track? That’s exactly what we do when someone starts to talk to us about the need for God in our lives! The minute you start confronting people with the seriousness of their sin…they’re going to want to change the subject! Conviction has a way of doing that! So she asks the 1st spiritual question that comes to mind…“So… tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped?” –vs.20 She’s trying to get into an argument that will take the spotlight off herself. While Jesus is trying to get her to focus on her need for Him…she starts arguing with Him over which mountain people should worship on. It happens every time! You take one tiny step to point people to God… and they bolt! They take the 1st rabbit trail they can find to resist having to make a decision for Christ. I call it… “Spiritual ADD”.
Over the years I’ve talked to a lot of unbelievers about their need for God…and without fail, when the truth starts to get a little too close for comfort… they pop the most surprising questions…
• Well, what about all the hypocrites in the world?
• Don’t you think all roads lead to God?
• What about all those aborigines in the jungles of S. America? Is God going to sent them to hell?
Now don’t get me wrong… those are all good questions… but most of the time they’re designed to sidetrack me from the real issue.
Well, Jesus didn’t fall for it! She asked ‘where’ we should worship… but Jesus gently shifted her back to ‘how’ we should worship. He said, John 4:21-24 “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” –Jesus is saying that the “where” of worship really isn’t the issue…it’s not going to a certain place or going though a certain ritual or liturgy. It’s the who and how of worship that really counts! When you have the living water… worship happens in the inner man.
When Jesus told this woman that the Father was seeking true worshippers… it was more than just a statement of fact… it was a personal invitation to her. That’s because it’s impossible to worship God in “spirit and truth” and not be saved. There are a lot of people who go through the motions of worship, but if you don’t know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, it’ll never come from the heart!
The woman was close, but she was still confused… she’d come to the well to get a simple bucket of water… and in a few minutes her sin was exposed and she was being invited to be a true “God worshipper”! Her heart longed for someone who would clear up her tangled emotions and so she told Jesus in vs. “I know the Messiah is coming—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then, Jesus stuns her with these words… in vs. 26…“I Am the Messiah!” The man who had asked her for water was now standing right in front of her…promising to forgive her sin…offering her the water of eternal life. Now, the bible doesn’t specifically say that she became a ‘God-follower’ at that moment… but somewhere between vs.26 & 27… that’s exactly what happened. You say, “How do you know that Pastor?” Because vs. 28 says that…”she left her water pot”. She forgot all about the water she’d come for in the first place, because now she had something much better… the living water of God! In fact, she runs to town to tell everyone she can find to come and meet him!
Would you like to have this “living water” this morning? Jesus is offering it to you. When you have it, you stop looking for something to quench your thirst for meaning and purpose in life.
