FROM HIDDEN NIGHTS TO OPEN DAYLIGHT TESTIMONY – THE SAMARITAN WOMAN – CHARACTERS OF JOHN’S GOSPEL
Message - The Woman of Samaria – John Chapter 4
John 4 v 1 Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptising more disciples than John John 4:2 (although Jesus Himself was not baptising, but His disciples were), John 4:3 He left Judea, and departed again into Galilee. John 4:4 He had to pass through Samaria John 4:5 so He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph, John 4:6 and Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, was sitting by the well. It was about the sixth hour. John 4:7 A woman of Samaria came there to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink,” John 4:8 for His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
This event in the life of the Samaritan woman reads like a story, a novel some author might write, that contains coincidences. That is what the essence of stories is composed of. However, this account given by John has nothing to do with coincidences. Scholars say that the Lord went there at that particular time knowing that the woman was to come at that particular time, and that all this was ordained by God, and we must remember that Jesus was the omniscient One. He WAS God manifest in flesh. It would be a denial of the divinity of the Lord to suggest that He was unaware that the woman was to come to the well. Once you take away His divinity, Jesus can not be God and would fit the Jehovah Witness teaching that He was merely a created being.
I think we need to look at verse 1 more carefully. It says, “Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard . . .”. This fact would suggest, on face value, that there came a point when the Lord found out that information, but did not know it beforehand. When He heard it, then He departed from that place for Galilee. To accept that notion, would be to deny His divinity again. John is the gospel that is full of the divinity of Christ, so it would not be found in this book that Christ is not divine, that is, does not have omniscience. Therefore, how do we understand verse 1? Simply, the Lord understood all that was to happen, but He waited in that place until He heard that news which He was already well aware of. The One who saw Nathaniel sitting under his fig tree, and knew all about Him, not having met him before, is the same divine Lord.
The most wonderful thing about this account so far is that Jesus knew the woman’s need and had come here to meet her need. It was no accident that He had to pass through Samaria, and that He went by the route that took Him to Sychar, and that there was a well there, and that He was weary and thirsty, and that food had run out so the disciples went off to buy food which would leave Jesus at the well alone. All of those things were not accidental. It was as the Lord designed. When you came to accept the Lord as your Saviour, and received Him into your life, it was no accident. It was not just some collision with time and place. It was all ordained by God before the foundation of the world. As He sought the woman of Samaria, so the Lord also sought you.
John tends to use Roman time whereas the other three gospels use Jewish time. John says it was the 6th hour, but here he uses Jewish time. That is noon, the hot part of the day, especially if this was in summer. Nothing in God’s word is superfluous, and repetition must be especially noted, but the mention of the sixth hour here is highly significant. No one, if he or she could possibly help it, would walk that distance to the well in the middle of the day. Naturally, we wonder why that woman was at the well at that hour, and in the details which follow, it becomes clear why she was there at that time. When she arrived, Jesus asked for a drink. The request seems almost too abrupt. People these days would want you to say “please” or “may I” or “could I trouble you for a drink?” The Lord’s demand, I think, was really designed to catch her attention, and to focus it on the Lord Jesus Himself.
John 4 v 9 The Samaritan woman therefore said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
The response from the woman was amazement for she knew Jews and Samaritans do not communicate. There is probably more dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians today, than between Jews and Samaritans in the past. John adds an aside to this account – Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. The Samaritans were considered a mongrel race, but who were they? Just bear with me for a while and we will take a look at history. (Then tell the story of the Samaritans) –
1. The united kingdom of Israel under David and Solomon.
2. Solomon died – Rehoboam and Jeroboam.
3. The kingdom split into 2 – Northern (Samaria, Israel 10 tribes) and Southern – (Judah, plus Benjamin).
4. Jeroboam was the first king of Samaria but every one of its kings was evil in the sight of the Lord. It produced Ahab and Jezebel. Known also as Israel and the northern kingdom.
5. Judah had a mixture of good and bad kings. Among the good ones were Hezekiah, Uzziah, Josiah and others.
6. Israel was defeated by Assyria and taken into captivity. Around B.C. 722.
7. Judah was defeated by Babylon and deported into Babylon. B.C. 597.
8. Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zerubbabel, later on reestablished Jerusalem, the temple and the walls, and Judah continued on until A.D. 70 and its destruction.
9. Samaria continued separately right from their start and intermarried with Gentiles, etc, and was a mixture of paganism and Jewish religion. The Jews despised them.
John 4:10 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.”
John 4:11 She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?
John 4:12 “You are not greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, and his sons, and his cattle, are You?”
You will note here in verse 10 that Jesus ignored the question of verse 9, but moved straight to the woman’s need, and that was – she needed living water. Jesus is great at getting to the point, even if it meant ignoring the question asked. He did it with Nicodemus; He does it here, and He will do it with the woman in chapter 8 we look at another time. This is a remarkable verse. There were two things the woman needed to know, and she knew neither of them. The first was - what this gift was, and the second was - who Jesus was. Had the woman known those two things she would have desired this living water. We now have a world in the post-Christian era. We can no longer presume that people have the basics of Christianity. Britain might still have some residual knowledge, as may the USA, but not my country. We are more pagan than most of the western world. In approaching people, the methods need to be different from what they were when some of us were young. You will notice that in all these encounters in John, Jesus met the people where they were, and immediately addressed their need, even though they did not realise what their need was, and that must be our approach – focusing on the awareness of need, people’s need.
Like Nicodemus, this woman could only reason in natural terms, so her thoughts were of special water and the means of raising it from a well, and to complicate things, that well was deep. There is the natural and there is the spiritual. Water that falls from clouds and runs in rivers and obtained from wells, is natural, but the water that sustains eternal life is spiritual. In verse 12, the woman tries to reason in her mind about the Person of the Lord and asks Him if was greater than the well builder, Jacob. If only she knew!
We need to understand what this living water is. In verse 10, it is a gift given by the Son. Later on the Lord clarified what the living water was at the last day of a Passover feast in Jerusalem - John 7 v 37 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. John 7:38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water,’” John 7:39 but this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. In this self-explanatory passage, the “living waters” means the Holy Spirit who is a gift of the Son as promised in 15 v 26 and 16 v 7. All believers are sealed with the Holy Spirit of Promise, and it is He who makes spiritual realities come alive in us, flowing as life-giving and life-refreshing rivers in us, and then through us.
John 4 v 13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again,
John 4:14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” Jacob’s well = life giving water, animals, woman.
John 4:15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water so I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw.”
We see the progression of understanding with the woman. Now comes the division of water (verses 13 and 14). Back in the reordering of creation in Genesis 1 we see God put a division in the expanse dividing water from water. Here is the passage - Genesis 1 v 6 [Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” Gen 1:7 God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse, from the waters that were above the expanse, and it was so.] There was water below and water above. What the Lord is saying to the woman is that there is water below, which is the natural water, but there is spiritual water coming from heaven. Actually, in verse 4 of Genesis 1 He separated light from darkness, and the water and light are both wonderful symbols of the spiritual change in a converted person.
Jesus makes the comparison between the natural and the spiritual in verses 13 and 14. The natural man only understands the natural until the Holy Spirit enlightens him. The water that Jesus gives is the well of eternal life, spiritual life, but verse 15 shows the woman did not understand His words. Jacob’s well provided life giving water, but God’s well provides the eternal water of life. The woman certainly wanted the water that would allow her not to come to the well each day, but she did nor understand the water of spiritual life.
John 4:16 He said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
John 4:17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband’,
John 4:18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
John 4:19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.
Time for the Reckoning. The Holy Spirit starts to work with a person when that person comes under conviction as God brings reality to the person’s understanding. Reality was about to come to the woman. She was invited to bring her husband, and as she presumed this Jew sitting on the well did not know her circumstances, she was quite happy to answer, “I don’t have a husband”, and that should have been the end of the matter. Imagine her shock and horror when the Lord told her what her heart had hidden away, that she had had five men and the current one was not her husband. When we are exposed for what we are, then, we can take our first steps to God. Natural man does not seek God, but God’s grace seeks natural men. It is a horrible thing to say people seek God of their own free will. They don’t. The Holy Spirit must draw them. Romans 3:10 as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one. Rom 3:11 There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God.” This woman was being drawn towards God. Now she realises the Lord is a prophet. Nebuchadnezzar came to realise the Lord was a revealer of mysteries or secrets (Daniel 4 v 7) and so now, was the woman is having a revelation of her own. Her path to God was gradual.
John 4:23 but an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such people the Father seeks to be His worshippers.
John 4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
There was a brief exchange about the place to worship which went back 900 years to the splitting up into the two kingdoms, but I am passing over that. A great and marvellous truth is being given to this woman now about true worship, as Jesus speaks of true worshippers and worshipping in spirit and truth. Let us consider this. The fact that “true worshippers” was used means there is false worship and misguided worship. I can not move into a deep consideration of this – no time right now - but I’ll say that “worship” is one of the most misunderstood words today, and a lot that passes for worship, is not worship at all, but those who do worship truly, do so in spirit and truth. Worship is led by the Holy Spirit, not by the clanging of the world’s instruments and repetition. Note, the Father seeks for worshippers, and we worship the Father and the Son. This is the only place in the bible where it is said the Father seeks.
What follows now is a revelation for the woman, another one. Jesus does what all good soul winners must do. He guides the woman along step by step.
John 4:25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ). When that One comes, He will declare all things to us.”
John 4:26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
Even the Samaritans in their confused doctrine and worship knew that a Messiah was to come. It might seem strange why she ventured down this track as Jesus had not mentioned it. My thoughts are that the woman concluded ONLY a man of exceptional character could know about her and lay her soul bare. Is this maybe that Messiah? After all He had declared to her a lot of unworldly things. Jesus quite deliberately confirmed to the woman that He was the Messiah. What a disclosure that was! That realisation changed the woman. Any man or woman will be changed when each one enters the true realisation of the Lord and their own worthlessness.
John 4:27 At this point His disciples came and they marvelled that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why do You speak with her?”
John 4:28 The woman left her waterpot, and went into the city, and said to the men,
John 4:29 “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done. This is not the Christ, is it?”
John 4:30 They went out of the city and were coming to Him.
The disciples’ appearance seems to have concluded the conversation, but though the disciples marvelled at such an unexpected event, no one inquired after it.
The most amazing thing in this account is that the men believed the woman and went to see Jesus. Now she went to the men, not the women. I dare say she was very well known among the men and they knew what sort of character she was. Normally they would have dismissed her without question but why did they not do that? The reason was that there was something strikingly different about the woman that captivated the men and brought them to Jesus. God creates anew and changes people’s lives.
John 4:39 From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.”
John 4:40 When the Samaritans came to Him, they were asking Him to stay with them and He stayed there two days,
John 4:41 and many more believed because of His word.
John 4:42 They were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Saviour of the world.”
This is a most encouraging account, full of delight, and example. What can we take from this –
1. A believer was prepared to testify and witness.
2. Quite a number were won to the Lord through the Saviour’s word and the testimony of the woman.
3. The Lord stayed there for fellowship and ministry. Fellowship always goes with ministry. It was a delightful time.
4. It was a powerful change that recognised Jesus as the Saviour of the world. No man ever spoke like that Man!
After Pentecost the gospel message was taken to Samaria but they would have found believers there saved by the visit of the Lord Jesus Christ at the noon encounter at Jacob’s well.
ronaldf@aapt.net.au
