Here is this woman. She shows up at the village well at the sixth hour. That’s noon, the hottest part of the day. The other women came that morning, when it was cooler. But she couldn’t come then. She didn’t want to see them. Really, she didn’t want them to see her. It would be too painful. Why? Because she’s living with some guy who’s not her husband, and the whole village knows it. She’s not proud of it. No, she’s ashamed. But she doesn’t move out because…what? This guy’s her meal ticket. He’s her insurance policy. He’s her security. And she comes to the well at noon…why? Better the heat of the sun than the blistering stares of the other women. She’s looking for safetby. But, the truth is, she doesn’t feel safe. And she isn’t really secure. The dude she’s living with could kick her out at any time. But what is she to do? This is the well from which she must now draw, empty as it is. She has a deep longing, a nagging thirst of the soul, and this is the only way she knows to try to satisfy it.
People you know are like that. Like this woman, what they really need is Jesus. They have a deep thirst for Him. They do not know it—at least, not yet—but they have a need that only He can fill. Sure, they turn to other sources, but the sources they turn to run dry. It may be achievement or power or security. It may be pleasure or comfort. It may be recognition or any number of other yearnings they long to fill. People look everywhere to find what they think will satisfy them. They thirst, but the thirst they have can be satisfied only by Jesus.
So, they need to hear about Jesus. And we need to tell them. We must tell them. Why? John gives us three reasons: We must tell them because of the great need. We must tell them because of the high calling. And we must tell them because of the gracious result.
I We Must Tell Them Because of the Great Need (John 4:5-29)
First, we must tell them because of the great need. We see this in verses 5 through 29. And we’ll notice in these verses three truths: (1) people need to meet Jesus; (2) people need to know Jesus; and (3) people need the change Jesus brings.
1. Like the woman in this passage, people need to meet Jesus. The woman comes to meet Jesus in verses 5 through 15, and in meeting Him, she begins to discover how He can meet the deepest need she has. She thinks that it is a felt need, the need for water. That’s why she has come to the well. But, in truth, it is a deeper need, one that tugs at her—that tugs at us all. It is the need for ‘living water’ (v. 10), by which Jesus means eternal life. Notice verses 13 and 14, where Jesus says to the woman, “Everyone who drinks of this water”—that is, the water she has come to draw—“will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him 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.”
This is what we all long for. This is the only thing that will satisfy us. If people are to get their real needs met, they must meet Jesus.
2. And once they meet Him, they need to know Him. That’s what happens for this woman, and we see it happening in verses 16 through 26.
As we look at these verses, we see Jesus addressing three issues with the woman: (1) the matter of sin, (2) the matter of salvation, and (3) the matter of the Savior.
The first thing Jesus does is: He exposes the woman’s sinful lifestyle. He asks her to summon her husband. When she says she has no husband, Jesus concurs. He tells her she has had five husbands and the man she is now living with is not her husband. This seems to cause some discomfort for the woman—maybe even conviction of sin—and so she changes the subject to something not quite so personal. She raises the topic of worship. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship” (v. 20).
Jesus, the master evangelist, weaves the woman’s distraction into a brief discourse on salvation. And He does it by accommodating this apparent interest in worship. Salvation, after all, is a matter not of where we worship but of whom we worship. Isn’t it? And Jesus says to the woman, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation”—you see, there’s the word—“salvation is from the Jews” (v. 22). “We worship what we know,” Jesus says. Knowing the Father, ‘the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [He has] sent’ (17:3) is at the heart of salvation. This woman does not yet know the true God or His Son Jesus Christ, but she is about to.
“God is spirit,” Jesus tells her, “and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (4:24). And what is it to worship ‘in spirit and truth’? It is—isn’t it?—to worship Him whom we know through Jesus Christ, as He is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. To believe in anything other than the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is to believe in a false god. But to come to the Father through Christ—that is salvation.
And then there is the matter of the Savior, who accomplishes our salvation. And that is the direction to which the conversation now turns. The woman speaks of Christ (the Messiah), and Jesus tells her, “I who speak to you am he” (v. 26). She has now come to know Jesus. How does the woman respond?
3. She drops everything (literally) and bears witness to the villagers, the very people she wanted to avoid at the beginning of the passage. But now that she has come to meet and know Jesus, a change has come over her. She leaves her water jar and goes into town, calling out to the villagers, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (v. 29). What a transformation! And it comes about because of her encounter with Jesus. This is the change people need. They need the change Jesus brings.
II We Must Tell Them Because of the High Calling (John 4:31-38)
So, we must tell people about Jesus because of the great need, but as we read further, we see that we must tell people about Jesus because of the high calling. We find this in the next portion of our passage, verses 31 through 38. Notice, if you will, two things: (1) this calling is one for which we must develop an appetite; and (2) it is one at which we must labor.
1. First, it is a calling for which we must develop an appetite. When Jesus speaks to the woman at the well, He uses the analogy of water to lead her to life (John 4:10, 13-14). It is a perfect analogy. So essential is water to the life of the body that one cannot survive long without it. The soul, too, needs ‘water,’ ‘living water,’ water that ‘will become in [a person] a spring of water welling up to eternal life’ (v. 14).
But now, in His conversation with the disciples, Jesus uses another analogy, the analogy of food. It is the disciples who introduce the topic, ‘urging him’ to eat (v. 21). Of course, they are thinking of Jesus’ physical hunger, but Jesus raises the level of the conversation to one of spiritual truth: “I have food to eat that you do not know about,” He says (v. 32). The disciples, of course, do not understand this shift from the physical to the spiritual, so they are puzzled by what Jesus is saying. They ‘said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” (v. 33). But Jesus makes it plain to them. He tells them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (v. 34). In other words, Jesus had rather do the work of God than eat! He is fueled by accomplishing the Father’s will! Food nourishes us and gives us energy, and Jesus is saying that what energizes Him is to “bear witness to the truth” (cf. chap. 18:37).
Now, you’ve got to admit: This analogy, comparing the satisfaction food gives to the satisfaction that “accomplish[ing God’s] work” gives (chap. 4:34) is masterful. But, according to Jesus, this is something the disciples do not yet “know about” (v. 32). It’s easy to see that Jesus is right (as always) by looking back at v. 27, where the disciples find Jesus ‘talking to [the] woman.’ They marvel at this, John says, but they do not ask, ‘“What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”’
Why is Jesus talking with her? What does He seek? He seeks to save her soul! He is talking to her because He has what she is looking for deep down—what all of us are looking for deep down: the water of life, eternal life, the life that comes to a person when he or she is brought into the divine life of the Triune God. This is Jesus’ very food. This is what His appetite craves, if I may put it that way. And we need to develop an appetite for this very thing.
2. In verse 35, the image changes. Jesus takes us to the field where the food is harvested. There are in our day what we call ‘farm to table’ restaurants, where the food prepared and served comes directly from the field. In verses 35 through 38, we see the reverse movement. The disciples attempt to get Jesus to come to the table, so to speak, to eat. But He directs their gaze to the fields from which food comes.
It may be yet four months until harvest, but there is a spiritual harvest that is ready now. The Samaritan woman’s transformation is evidence of that. There are others just like her, who long for ‘living water.’ So, Jesus says to His disciples, “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes.” What is it that He wants His disciples to see? He wants them to see that “the fields are white for harvest” (v. 35). Will they “look”? Will they see? Will they join in the effort to gather the harvest? Will we? It’s a high calling, and it is one at which we must labor.
Jesus says there are already laborers in the field. That’s the word He uses. Already. “Already,” He says, “the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life” (v. 36). Who is He talking about? Himself, for one! But also, perhaps, the woman. What’s the first thing she did when ‘the Lord opened her heart’ (cf. Acts 16:14)? She went running ‘into town’ and told the people about Jesus (v. 28). “Others have labored,” Jesus says. And the disciples are sent to the field as well—to enter “into their labor” (v. 38).
So, what do you think? What is it we need to do? It’s simple, isn’t it? We need to get into the field and join other laborers in reaping the harvest. How can we do that? We can begin by praying that we will see it as the high calling that it is. We can ask God to give us a heart for it. And once we’ve prayed, we can begin to “look”—just what Jesus told His first disciples to do—to “lift up [our] eyes, and see that the fields are [ripe] for harvest.” We need to see the people around us and their need for Christ.
III We Must Tell Them Because of the Gracious Result (John 4:39-42)
We have seen that we must tell others about Jesus because of the great need people have for Him and because of the high calling He has for us. There is a third reason. We find it in verses 38 through 42. We must tell them because of the gracious result.
And what is the result? ‘Many’ believe, and ‘many more’ believe. Do you see that? In verse 39 we read, ‘Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.’ And then in verse 41 we read, ‘And many more believed because of his word.’ That’s the gracious result for which we hope. That is the yield for which we pray. That is the harvest for which we labor.
But don’t misunderstand. The response we seek is not guaranteed in every case. God is sovereign, and He has chosen those who will respond. But we don’t know who they are. So we have to sow the seed of the Word! Jesus Himself has sent us into the field, and we must enter into His labor and that of the woman and of the many, many others who have gone before us—some planting, some watering, but all looking to God for the increase (cf. 1 Cor. 3:5-9).
It will not always be easy. It is ‘labor’ after all. Isn’t that what Jesus calls it? But we read in Psalm 126, ‘Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him’ (vv. 5-6).
We have news to spread. We have a word to speak. We have a testimony to give. In the words of the Samaritan villagers, “We believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this indeed is the Savior of the world” (John 4:42). Oh, how we long to hear those for whom Jesus died say those words! But ‘how…will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”‘ (Rom. 10:14, 15). Friends, let’s make our feet beautiful. Let’s make our testimony heard. Let’s ‘recount all [the] wonderful deeds’ of the Lord (Ps. 9:1). Let’s tell others. The way Jesus did. The way the woman did. Let’s tell them about Christ.
