Message/Devotion
March 15, 2020
John 4:5-42
Living Water
The Reading
5 So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9 Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? 12 Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”
Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”
19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”
26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
The Whitened Harvest
27 And at this point His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?”
28 The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, 29 “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” 30 Then they went out of the city and came to Him.
31 In the meantime His disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”
33 Therefore the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”
34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! 36 And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37 For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”
The Savior of the World
39 And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans had come to Him, they urged Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of His own word.
42 Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed [a]the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
The Message
Have you ever been so thirsty that you would drink almost anything? I have been very, very thirsty a couple of times when and where there was no fresh water available. When we were stranded and isolated in a little town in Vermont due to all roads leading in and out of town being completely washed out. It was several days before the National Guard brought in food and water. We were all on well water but without electricity to run the pump. There was a free flowing artesian well a little way up the mountain road that was accessible. I took every container that we had and filled them with that water. Flushing and washing weren’t an issue. Drinking was, as far as we were concerned. I took the turkey fryer out and boiled water for ten minutes at a time and then strained it through a cloth filter into jars and bottles. It worked!
In the army during survival training, we were issued a small bottle of some kind of agent to purify water for drinking. While traversing through dense jungle with no real provisions, if you drank anything, it was what you were able to find. Most of the water that I came across was almost like coffee in color due to the tannic acid. I did use what they gave me, purified the water (which did little to make it look different) and drank it. I survived survival school.
In today’s reading, our Lord was on one of His long journeys and obviously walking. He came to a place in Samaria and stopped at a well. It was the sixth hour of the day – noon. As he rested, hot, tired and dusty, a Samaritan woman approached the well to draw some water. Jesus spoke to her and said, “Give me a drink”.
She responded by asking Him, how He, being a Jew would speak to her and ask her, a Samaritan woman to serve Him a drink of water. We wouldn’t really understand her response, unless we know that Samaritans were viewed as the lowest class of peoples. Most Jewish people avoided them and looked down on them.
Let’s review why the Samaritans were looked down upon by the Jewish people. The way I understand it is when the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom, they deported or exiled the Israelites. During their time of exile, many of the Israelites married into Samaritan families and became a blending of cultures and to some degree religious followings. Most did remain true to their Jewish faith. BUT, when they began to return to the homeland, they were rejected and because of intermarriage looked down on as inferior. Intermarriage of race, religion and culture has only in recent times become accepted in our country.
Jesus answers her by simply offering her the gift of God (living water) and offering her a clue as to who He was.
Ultimately, Jesus tells her that whoever drinks the living water, will never thirst again and will lead to everlasting life.
At this point, I don’t believe that she totally understood His meaning, but she did want to pursue it, So, she asks Him to give her this water.
True to form, Jesus The Omniscient tells her to go get her husband and bring him here. She answered, “I have no husband.”
Jesus then acknowledges her truthfulness and lets her know that He knows about the five previous husbands in addition to the one that she now has.
POINT: We must always be truthful with God, He knows anyway. Another way to look at this is when we ask God for anything, we should always clear the smog by confessing our faults. Kind of like: “Heavenly Father, forgive us for our sins and shortcomings, help us to overcome them, avoid them and forget them.” Something like that!
The woman viewed Jesus as a prophet. She notes that the Jews say Jerusalem is the place to worship. Again, His response is so truly “Jesus”. He tells her that she worships what she does not know; but we (the Jewish people) worship what we DO know. There is a lot of modern-day truth to be understood in that response. There are people in churches and assemblies everywhere that worship with song and prayer believing that it is a true relationship with God. Jesus says in verse24that those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and truth. Worshipping in the “spirit has absolutely nothing to do with praying in tongues or being “slain in the Spirit”. Worshipping in the spirit means that we cast aside everything from our minds and focus entirely on God.
We sing praises to God, we give thanks to God, we let everything else go and relish being in the presence with God. If we sing off-key, He loves it and He doesn’t care what those around you may think and neither should you. When we pray, it is a conversation with God. He isn’t impressed with fancy words or lengthy prayers; God cares about what is in your heart. We do worship in gatherings; there is power in unified prayer among His righteous. But God hears each individual participant and yearns to hear from the heart even in unified prayer.
The Samaritan woman next says to Jesus that she knows the Messiah (The Christ) is coming in verse 25 and He will “tell us all things”. In verse 26, Jesus says, “I who speak to you am He.”
We all want to hear from God in a like manner, don’t we? The only way that will happen is if we develop an open and honest relationship with Him.
Let’s just pray about that right now, let’s stand, join hands and pray: “Almighty God, we yearn to be in true fellowship with You. We open our hearts and bare our souls to You. There is no other God, there is nothing that we desire more than You. God, we are asking for your forgiveness of all our shortcomings and failures. We are asking for a drink from the flowing well of “living water” and unencumbered time with You.” We ask in the name of Jesus the Christ, AMEN!
Let us now go forth loving and serving God by loving and serving each other – EVERY each other.
I humbly and sincerely ask for your prayers!
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