We’re in the third talk in our series on ‘Encounters with Jesus in John’s gospel.’
Last week, we looked at a passage in John 3. A man called Nicodemus met Jesus. He was a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council. In short, he was a very respectable man. Jesus told him that he needed to be born again! That didn’t make much sense to Nicodemus!
In our passage today, Jesus meets a very different person. She’s a woman, but she isn’t given a name. She’s a Samaritan – a people who lived to the north of Israel. Whereas Nicodemus was very respectable, this woman was not very respectable. She had had five husbands and was now living with someone who was not her husband. Jesus asked her for some water. And then Jesus told her that HE could offer HER some amazingly good water – living water! Why would Jesus ask her for water if he already had some?! It didn’t make much sense to the Samaritan woman.
The story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well has lots to teach us. I’m sure different people will draw different lessons. I’m going to pick out three things that really impressed me.
JESUS CROSSED BARRIERS
One thing that really impressed me in this story is the fact that Jesus completely ignored social custom to reach out to the Samaritan woman. At multiple levels, she was A Woman Who Should Not Be Spoken To.
Jesus was travelling through Samaria on his way north. Many Jews would have taken a longer route specifically to avoid going through Samaria. Jews and Samaritans had a long history – and they weren’t friends.
So on the grounds that the woman was a Samaritan and Jesus was a Jew, he shouldn’t have spoken to her. In addition, the fact that she was a woman and he was a man meant that he shouldn’t have spoken to her. And if – as it seemed – she wasn’t the most moral of people, then he, as a rabbi, should have kept his distance. So there were three good reasons for Jesus NOT to speak to her.
But Jesus blithely ignored all the social conventions that said he shouldn’t speak to her. He was NOT P.C. Quite the opposite. HE didn’t discriminate on the grounds of race or gender. HE didn’t turn away from the Samaritan woman because she looked disreputable.
Jesus spoke to her. He spoke to her A LOT. This is the longest documented conversation Jesus had with anyone!
JESUS DID WHAT OTHER PEOPLE DIDN’T DO. No wonder his disciples were surprised when they returned with the shopping!
Jesus’ willingness to cross cultural barriers is a wonderful example to us. We think of missionaries as people who cross geographical barriers and go to faraway places. But there are barriers right where we are. At work or at school there are people who are picked on, put down, pushed away. If we see someone with special needs, we think, ‘I don’t want to talk to him or her.’ We see an Afghan refugee? We think, ‘I don’t want to talk to him.’ The Samaritan woman was A Woman Who Should Not Be Spoken To. But Jesus spoke to her. If we want to be like Jesus, we need to do the same.
I’d like to show you a video about a 17-year-old American girl called Rachel Scott. This is told by her elder sister, Dana.
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Rachel Scott was the first of 11 people to die in the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999. She said that kids generally want to fit in. But that doesn’t work for Christians. As Christians, Jesus’ radical character needs to shine through. We need to reach out to people who others are rejecting. We need to cross barriers. From what I’ve read of Rachel Scott, she was doing that.
JESUS WAS LED BY SCRIPTURE
Jesus’ disciples were surprised to find him speaking to a woman. That was pretty radical! But in another area, Jesus was 100% conservative. He was very much led by scripture.
I think we can see that in three ways.
A. LIVING WATER IS AN OLD TESTAMENT IDEA
Jesus told the Samaritan woman that he could offer her living water. That idea fits entirely with a theme in the Old Testament. There are a number of passages where this comes up. Let me quote just one. This is Jeremiah 2:13:
‘for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
THE FOUNTAIN OF LIVING WATERS,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.’
Here, God describes himself as the fountain of living waters. So when Jesus says he can offer living water, he is completely in line with this Old Testament idea.
Am I imagining too much here? Is it reasonable to suppose that Jesus saw himself as fulfilling Old Testament scripture? Let’s have a cross-reference. This is John 7:37-38:
‘On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, AS THE SCRIPTURE HAS SAID, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
Note that Jesus said, ‘as the Scripture has said.’ Actually, there is nowhere in the Old Testament which says, word for word, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ So scholars think that Jesus is summarising this Old Testament idea. But the point is, this is an Old Testament theme which Jesus knows. So it IS reasonable to think that Jesus is talking about living water because he’s read about it in the Old Testament.
B. GOD WANTS TO REACH OUT TO THE SAMARITANS
In 2018 a BBC reporter called Judith Fein did a short article about a trip she had made to Israel. The article had the title ‘The last of the good Samaritans.’
In the article Fein described her visit to a village where Samaritans still live today. In the village she visited there was a museum. In the museum there was a priest who was also the guardian of the museum. There were pictures on the wall. The priest pointed to one of them and said, ‘That was my father, the kohen gadol, or high priest of the Samaritans. The priestly lineage goes back to Aaron, the brother of Moses.’
Fein asked, ‘Moses of the Ten Commandments?’
The priest nodded.
Fein wrote, ‘And that’s when I lost it. I began to cry, and the tears never stopped until I left the mountaintop. I felt I had encountered something that was very ancient, powerful and true.’
Where had these Samaritans come from? Hundreds of years before Jesus, the Kingdom of Israel had split into two parts. There was a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. The northern kingdom was invaded by Assyria. After that, in broad terms, the tribes that formed the northern kingdom were dispersed and the northern kingdom ceased to exist. But that wasn’t the whole story. Some of those Israelites remained in their historic land. Their descendants were the Samaritans of Jesus’ day and are the Samaritans of our day.
What has that got to do with the Old Testament? In the Old Testament the prophets foretold a time when God would bring the southern kingdom and the northern kingdom back together. A clear example of this is in Ezekiel 37. I’ll read verses 15 to 19. When it says ‘Ephraim’ it means the northern kingdom.
‘The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the people of Israel associated with him’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him.’ And join them one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, ‘Will you not tell us what you mean by these?’ say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph (that is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand.’
I’m sure Jesus knew this passage and this Old Testament idea. Jesus knew that God’s plan is to bring the two kingdoms together. So, knowing that, perhaps he thought to himself, ‘Maybe I should go through Samaria on my way north, through the remnant of the northern kingdom, and see if some opportunity presents itself.’
C. WELLS RING BELLS
There’s one more way in which Jesus fulfilled Old Testament scripture. By bells, I mean, wedding bells.
In Genesis 24, Abraham sends his servant to a city a long way away, where his relatives lived, to find a wife for his son Isaac. The servant comes to a well. He sits down. He’s thirsty, but he doesn’t have a jar to lower down the well to get a drink. A woman comes along. He asks her for a drink.
Abraham’s servant had previously prayed to God about the situation. He asked God, ‘If I ask a young woman for a drink and she says, “Yes, and I’ll water your camels too”, then let her be the one you have chosen for Isaac.’ That is exactly what happened and the servant returned to Canaan with Rebekah.
In John 4, Jesus comes to a well. He sits down. He’s thirsty, but he doesn’t have a jar to lower down the well to get a drink.
I wonder what goes through Jesus’ mind. Does he think of a time when Abraham’s servant sat at a well, wondering who would come?
A woman comes along. Jesus asks her for a drink.
Why? I don’t know! But I don’t think it’s impossible that Jesus saw the story in Genesis 24 as giving him a little hint as to what he should do. After all, he is the bridegroom!
I hope we’ve seen in these examples that Jesus was led by scripture. We too should long to have scripture deeply engrained in us. When that happens then we’ll be really sensitive to God’s purposes and God’s leading.
If we combine that with the confidence to cross barriers then we’ll take routes other people don’t take. We’ll speak to people other people don’t speak to. And when we do that, then we, like Jesus, will see some remarkable results.
JESUS GIVES LIVING WATER
What kind of results? The specific result Jesus wanted in this case was for the Samaritan woman to have living water.
What is this living water? We previously looked at John 7:37-38. Let’s go back to it, but this time I’ll read verse 39 too:
‘On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, AS THE SCRIPTURE HAS SAID, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
Now verse 39:
NOW THIS HE SAID ABOUT THE SPIRIT, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given…’
John tells us absolutely plainly what the living water is. ‘Now this he said about the Spirit.’ The living water is the Holy Spirit.
So … is that good? Let’s hear one person’s opinion.
I imagine most of us have heard of Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge died about 30 years ago. He’d had a remarkable life. He was a soldier and a spy and later became a journalist and writer. For most of his life he was an agnostic. But when he was in his sixties, he became a Christian. He wrote this about the living water which Jesus offers. He started talking about the fame, success, pleasure and fulfilment he had enjoyed. Then he wrote:
‘Yet I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing – less than nothing, a positive impediment – measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.’
Muggeridge considered that no amount of fame or success or pleasure or worldly fulfilment comes even close to the value of the living water which Christ offers.
What do you have to do to get this living water? Jesus told the woman:
‘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.’
Jesus said simply, ‘You would have asked him.’ He didn’t lay down any conditions. So the Samaritan woman asked:
‘Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.’
Jesus then told her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come here.’ Many commentators think that Jesus did this because he wanted the Samaritan woman to admit the sinful relationship that she was in. But I don’t think that’s the reason. Do we need to repent? Yes, we do. But Jesus didn’t lay down any conditions when he told the woman to ask. I think Jesus told the woman to call her husband because if she was about to commit her life to Jesus, her spouse should be involved.
In Isaiah, God says much the same:
‘Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price’ [Isaiah 55:1].
Like Jesus, God didn’t place any conditions on it. Jesus says, ‘Ask!’ God says, ‘Come!’ What do we need to do? Ask Jesus for living water. Come to God.
Let’s conclude. I’ve talked about three things in this passage which made a big impression on me. And they lead to three things we can do.
Jesus crossed barriers. He wasn’t bound by social norms. He did what shouldn’t be done. We should try do the same.
Jesus had a deep knowledge of scripture and was led by it. We should try do the same.
Jesus offered living water. That living water is more valuable than anything this world can offer. We need it. And it’s free!
If you haven’t yet committed our lives to Jesus, know that Jesus is reaching out to you just as he reached out to the Samaritan woman. The apostle Peter preached, ‘Repent … be baptized … and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’ Perhaps now is the time for you to do that.
And if we HAVE committed our lives to Jesus, let’s ask God to fill us with the Holy Spirit even more.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Boscombe, Bournemouth, UK, 29th January 2023
