The Woman at the Well, Part 2
John 4:27–42 NKJV
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?”
The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” Then they went out of the city and came to Him.
In the meantime His disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
But He said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”
Therefore the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. 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! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”
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.” So when the Samaritans had come to Him, they urged Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. And many more believed because of His own word.
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 the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
This morning we covered the first of two interleaved narratives. As the sermon ran long, I chose to cut the sermon off at verse 26 of a very long passage. Tonight, I want to cover the other narrative. so turn your bibles to John 4:27 and we will continue.
After Jesus had revealed Himself to the Samaritan woman, the disciples arrived. They had gone to a Samaritan village to buy food. Jesus was in a very bad way, so the desperate disciples forgot about the animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans and went to what was probably the same village of Sychar which the Samaritan woman was from. did they pass each other on the way to and from the well. did they take notice of each other. And if they did, what would each have thought, If it was the same, then all the residents would have seen the very odd spectacle of Jewish strangers going to their Samaritan village. Their dress would have identified them as Jews and not visitors from another Samaritan village. The news must have been spread throughout the village, Something strange was going on. They did not know just how strange the events of the day would be. These disciples returned with the intention of saving Jesus’ life.
Things were about to get even more strange. As they approached they saw that He was talking with someone. Getting closer, they noticed that it was a Samaritan woman. As we noticed, they might have passed this woman on the way to town. Many Jewish men would not talk publicly with a woman, no less a Samaritan one! The text tells us that they took special notice of this.
Another strange thing they noticed. Jesus appeared to have recovered in their absence. It is possible that the woman drew water for Him and He drank and revived. However, there is no mention of this detail if it happened. It is at this point that the Samaritan woman returns to her village to tell the men. “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Certainly this man is the Christ.” The Greek text forms this assertion in the form of a negative question “Is not HE the Christ?” However, this is a question in Greek which grammatically expects the positive response that He is indeed the Christ. We might think that what the woman says is ambiguous and could be answered either way. The emphatic use of “HE” which is not necessary to make grammatical sense amplifies this positive response. The woman says that the proof that He told her everything she ever did led to the inescapable conclusion that Jesus is the Christ.
We should notice that the Samaritan woman uses the Samaritan word Taheeb or the Jewish term Messiah, but the universal Greek “Christ.” This is not to say that the woman understood Greek (she may have), but John here conveys the meaning of what she said. Jesus Christ is greater than the Jews and the Samaritan beliefs. Neither of the terms are comprehensive enough. Christ came to redeem a people unto Himself from all nations and tongues.
The text tells us that she convinced the men to follow her. We should realize that the men of the village knew a lot about her. In fact, some of them may have known her intimately. It may well have been an idea expressed in Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” where the men cast public dispersions against such woman during the day but came to visit under cover of darkness, One wonders in Luke where the woman of low morals came to Jesus who was a guest at Simon the Pharisee’s house and anointed His feet with tears and wiped them with her hair. Simon said in his mind that if Jesus knew of her low moral character, He would have rebuked her. How did he know that this woman was of such low moral character? And how is it that she felt she could come into Simon the Pharisee’s house? Did the men in Simon’s company know her.
What I have said about this is informed speculation. What we do know is that the followed her. They had seen change in the woman they thought they all knew and were curious. Her witness was not elegant, but determined. She was no theological genius, but shared what she did know enough to convince the men to come out and see for themselves. Perhaps this might serve us as well when we share our faith. If we can convince others enough to come and see for themselves, we have done our part. Of course, we still must learn more of Him that we might give a more informed witness of our faith.
While the men from the village were coming, the disciples urged Jesus to eat. They had taken great effort and perhaps faced shame for having to go to a Samaritan village to get food. when they had left, Jesus was in bad condition. But now, Jesus is looking quite a bit better. Jesus tells them that He already had other food they did not know about. This prompted the thought “Surely, no one has given Him anything to eat? This time, the question is framed to expect a negative answer. They know the woman had left her bucket behind. No one would have come to the well with food.
Jesus answers their thought: “My food is to do the will of the One who sent me.” This is in line to the answer Jesus gives Satan in the Wilderness temptation which He recently endured. when tempted to turn the stones into bread, He quoted the Book of Deuteronomy and told Satan than man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. This idea of everlasting spiritual bread which satisfies man’s greatest hunger is elaborated in chapter 6 of John.
This bread of doing the will of the Father and finishing His work is at the heart of what motivated Jesus. Jesus is fully human. the hunger and thirst He felt was real. In the accomplishment of this Divine mandate, His earthly body would be wasted. When Jesu had followed the Divine imperative to the cross, He utters the words “It is Finished!” One should see the statement He made as a reference to His suffering death, where He would cry out in agony “I thirst.”
Jesus now makes another unusual statement. He tells them of an earthly proverb which people said that there was yet four months unto the harvest. It may well be likely that there were actually four months until the barley harvest at this time. This means that the wheat or barley was early in development. It would be four months before the grain would tassel and appear white unto harvest. The men of Samaria would already have planted, but it was not time to reap the grain. But Jesus contravenes worldly wisdom and says that it was now the time to harvest the grain. Jesus saw the harvest in the coming of the men in their flowing white garments.
Jesus told the disciples that He had called upon them to reap the harvest for which they had done no work. Others had labored. Here we have the same word for labor in Greek which occurred earlier in the chapter and in the same tense when Jesus was exhausted at the well and at the point of death. who were these planters of the harvest. One can look at the prophets of the Old Testament, many of whom suffered greatly even unto death. The last of them, John the Baptist was probably languishing in prison for his witness and would soon be executed. But I think there is even a greater laborer, which is Jesus Himself. It is He whose sacrificial death made salvation possible.
The men of the village heard Jesus and believed on Him, not that they believed the woman, but rather because they had heard and seen Him for themselves. But this is not to say that the testimony of the woman was not important. It was her witness and insistence that caused the men to come in the first place. She was a new believer and had the energy of a new convent. She wasn’t versed enough to have given more content for the faith. But what she had, she willingly shared. If God could use a new convert like that, then certainly the disciples who spent three years at His side could offer even a greater witness.
We must add, that reaping the harvest was laborious. These same disciples, save Judas, would pour out their lives for the gospel. They would be drained in this life so that the Gospel might spread to others. We have a long list of witnesses (The word in Greek is “martyrs” who have witnessed for christ over the centuries. Like them, Jesus calls us to go out and make disciples and if necessary to lay down our lives as a witness.
Let us sum up some points from the story of the Woman at the Well. We talked about Jesus’ divine appointment to meet this Samaritan woman at the well. This Jesus who had come from heaven and became flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. He met a woman who would never be allowed to worship in Jerusalem because she was a Samaritan. She could not worship at the Temple in Mt. Gerizim because their Temple had been destroyed by the Jews. But this did not matter. Instead of going somewhere to meet God and worship, the Lord came to her. Likewise, it is Jesus who comes to us.
We also learn that God often meets us in the ordinary things of life. Drawing water was an everyday and laborious task. Perhaps we should look in our lives for the Lord rather than to seek some religious ecstasy. This can even happen in doing the Lord’s work. Hebrews reminds us that in doing these works of service that we might actually be ministering to angels. Remember Abraham’s hospitality to the three men, one of whom was actually the LORD.
We learn that we are called to witness and thereby reap the harvest which the Lord had planted in His own blood. We should do this from a lively faith like the Samaritan woman had. she testified of what she knew and believed, not with sophistication, but in simplicity and sincerity. This does not mean that we should not add content to our faith. At first, the new believer might bring people to their minister or elder who has been trained to share the Christian faith. But by growing in the faith one might be able to share the truth of the faith directly.
We learn that there is no partiality in God. The gospel is for the respectable Pharisee, Nicodemus as much as to the people of ill or low reputation. The need is equal. Both need to receive Jesus. For all his education and status as a teacher, Nicodemus was as ignorant as this woman of what really matters. He was essentially, a fraud. But Nicodemus would learn, and by the time Jesus was crucified, he demonstrated he had come to faith by coming into a Gentile judgment hall on the Passover to request the bloody corpse of a cursed man who had hung on a cross, He and Joseph publicly became unclean and personally buried Jesus. Is this not a proof of faith. It took a while for Nicodemus to learn, but he learned. It did not take as long for the woman, but she, to learned.
We learn that Jesus used different techniques to evangelize the woman than for Nicodemus. Evangelism is personal. Jesus started with these two people from something which they knew or should have known. We must be careful to not thing there is a one size fits all approach such as the “Romans Road.”
We must remember that everyone will have at least one appointment with God, If nothing less, they have an appointment before His judgment throne on the Day of Judgment. then it will be too late to learn about Him. Let us pray that God might use us that they might come to an appointment with Him in this life, believe, and be saved.
Finally, let us remember that there is a cost to discipleship. It is hard labor and can be dangerous as well. We might want to think as Bonhoeffer noted the invitation is not “Come and Dine.” This will come later after the labor is done. Instead we think of the cost of discipleship that the invitation is to “Come and Die.”
