Jesus answered her, “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.”  John 4:10 

John 4:1–42 – That You May Believe
Reformation Sunday  – October 27, 2024 (am)    

Main Idea: If you come to Jesus and ask him for eternal life, he will give it to you.

Introduction

Have you ever had a conversation that changed your life?

As Pastor Worley mentioned a few weeks ago, we are in a portion of John’s gospel where John focuses our attention on a number of conversations Jesus has with those he encounters in carrying out his ministry. We saw the first of these in John 3, when Jesus talked to Nicodemus and in the weeks to come we’ll see him talk to an official with a dying son and an invalid by the pool of Bethesda – but today, our focus is on his conversation with a Samaritan woman, and it takes place in the heat of the noonday sun, sitting by an ancient watering hole.

This passage has me thinking about and marveling at human conversations.

 On the one hand, conversations are nothing more than words being exchanged between two people. We’ve been having them since we first learned to speak, we have so many of them throughout our lives that it is rare that we remember them, they are so much a part of human experience that they’re like second nature to us, they don’t take much thought or effort: “Hey, how are you? What are you up to this weekend? Nice weather today. How ‘bout them Bears. Did you get the report I sent you?” You might say they come so naturally to us that we could have them in our sleep, and surely some people actually do. (I once had a roommate who was an avid sleep talker and I woke up one night with him standing over me, eyes closed, yelling “Who do you work for!”)

But on the other hand, conversations are far more than mere words being exchanged between two people. This is because behind those words are some really weighty realities. Behind our words are our identities and our beliefs and our deepest desires. Which means that, to every conversation we have, we bring with us these identities, beliefs, and desires – which can summed up as our worldview. It is the way we have made sense of the world around us and it explains to us the why the world is the way it is. And while many things go into the formation of this worldview, it is at the least a mixture of our age and gender and heritage and life experience and religion and mental aptitude and so much more. And because of that, no two worldviews are exactly the same. Surely we share many things in common with those who are most like us, but the further our experiences and cultures are from one another, the more different our worldviews tend to be.

Which is why conversations are such fascinating things.

For whenever we have a conversation, when one person simply talks to another, there is the potential that these worldviews will collide with one another. The potential that the way one person sees and explains the world will run up against another way of seeing and explaining the world. And in those moments our allegiances to our families or our culture or our religion, but mostly our to ourselves, can pressed in uncomfortable ways. And we can become a mixture of conflicting emotions and desires as a conversation presses us either to defend our own view of the world or to open ourselves up to a new and better way of explaining it. And when we do the latter – we realize that our lives will never be the same – because a new and greater truth has entered into our lives, bursting apart the way we used to view the world, and changing the way we live.

Have you ever had a conversation like that?

Well that exactly is the type of conversation we have before us in our passage today – and it begins with the most simple of requests – the request for a drink of water.

1. A (Not So) Simple Request (1-9; 31-38)

As our conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman begins, it would appear at the start that it is destined to be one of the many conversations we have in this life that are unremarkable and easily forgotten. We don’t expect a life altering conversation to follow the simple request for a drink of water.

But we get a clue from the woman’s response to Jesus’ request for water that this request was anything but simple.

When you ask someone for water and their response is essentially “How dare you!” you can be pretty sure there is more going on here than meets the eye. And on this day, at Jacob’s well, there were plenty of complicating factors that made a simple request for water a collision of worldviews. For by making this request, Jesus has knowingly crossed centuries old social barriers that anyone in their right minds, especially the woman across from him, knew were not to be crossed.

First and most obviously, Jesus has crossed a racial barrier – Jesus was a Jew and this woman was a Samaritan and, as John tells us at the end of verse 9, “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Now the reason Jews had no dealings with Samaritans was that Samaritans were the ancestors of those few idolatrous Jews who had been left behind in the land of Samaria when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was deported to Assyria. And these Jews had intermarried with the foreign people that the King of Assyria had brought into the land to repopulate it. So over centuries of intermarriage, the Jewish line had been intermixed with Gentiles from the surrounding nations making this once Jewish region a home to people who were considered unclean in the eyes of the Jews.

But perhaps what was even more polarizing between Jews and Samaritans was their differences in religion, for, over time, the Samaritans had departed from God’s ongoing revelation to the Jews and developed their own form of worship. In doing so, they rejected all the books of the Old Testament except for the first five books of the Law, called the Pentateuch. In rejecting the books following Deuteronomy, they also rejected God’s revelation to David and Solomon about the Temple and where He should be worshipped, and instead, they set up their own temple in Samaria on a mountain called Mount Gerizim. And if that weren’t divisive enough, about 120 years before Jesus was born, a Jewish leader had come to Samaria and destroyed the Samaritan temple, only adding to the animosity between these two people groups.

But even those two categories don’t grasp the full situation at the well that day, for there was another degree of separation between Jesus and this woman – a degree of separation found in the details of verse 6, and confirmed later on – and this is that no socially respectable woman would come to fetch the day’s water from the well in the middle of the day, when the sun was at its hottest and the day already half gone. These are the actions of one who wants to avoid other people, and in the case of this woman, it was likely due to the impurity of her life as evidenced by her 5 husbands later on. And so, as she encounters the spotless lamb of God, we see that this conversation must cross yet another boundary, and this boundary is between one who is perfectly pure and holy and another who is known for her impurity and sin.

So we see that even before this conversation begins, it is anything but simple. According to the social customs of the day, there was absolutely no precident for a Jewish Rabbi to speak to a Samaritan woman for any reason. As Gary Burge writes in his commentary, “The surprising thing is not that Jesus would ask her for . . . a drink; rather, it is that he would ask her anything.”[1]

So given all we know about this situation and how it would have been complicated by diametrically opposed worldviews, not to mention plenty of contempt and animosity, we must ask, “Why does Jesus ask this woman for a drink of water?” and our passage points us to three, grace filled, explanations.

The first reason Jesus asks her for water is that Jesus knows that this encounter at the well is no accident.

Why do I say that? I say that because of verse 4 where John says, “And he had to pass through Samaria.” Now we know from many sources that it was common for Jews to avoid the Samaritans when they traveled from Judea to Galilee and they did so by traveling down into the Jordan valley and then up the Jordan river to the East of Samaria, bypassing it entirely. So we know that passing through Samaria was not the only way, or even the preferred way, of getting to Galilee. Which is why I think John is saying more here than just that it was by chance that Jesus going through Samaria. And our case is strengthened when we look into the Greek wording of verse 4, where we find a word there that some say is used to communicate a “divine necessity.” It is the word “DEI”, and it is means “it is necessary”, and John tends to use it to describe things that are necessary according to God’s plans and purposes. So far in John we have heard it in

• John 3:7 You must be born again

• John 3:14 As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up

• John 3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease

• And now in John 4:4 it is behind the phrase – “He had to pass through Samaria.”

So by using this phrase, John is telling us that Jesus led his disciples to Samaria because he knew God had a purpose for this trip. He was compelled on this occasion to take the less favorable route to Galilee. And so, once they arrive in at Jacob’s well, he sends his twelve disciples off to get food for thirteen guys and sits down and expectantly waits.

And as Jesus waits, John tells us that he experiences both human thirst and divine hunger.

On the one hand, in verse 6 we read that “Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.” This is a picture of Jesus in his humanity. You can imagine how his feet must have hurt and his legs ached and his how is mouth would have been dry after hiking through the Judean hills all morning and now it was the middle of the day and while he knew water was flowing in the well beside him, he had no way of accessing it – so he sits and waits – tired and thirsty.

But as Jesus experiences these human sensations, he is also filled with a divine hunger. And this hunger is for the work that God had sent him to accomplish. For, jumping ahead, that is what he tells his disciples in verses 32 and 34 when they finally return with food, saying both “I have food to eat that you do not know about” and “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” In short, what Jesus is saying is that he has been more satisfied by the conversation he just had with the Samaritan woman than food could ever satisfy him, for through the conversation, as we will soon see, another worshipper of God has been added to the kingdom, and that is the very thing Jesus was hungry for.

So as we picture Jesus sitting by the well in the moments before the woman walks up, we see the God/Man – wearied by his travels but expectantly waiting to see why His Father would lead him along this route, all while hungering to do his Father’s will and bring more worshippers into God’s kingdom. And who should approach but the last person a Jewish man would be seen speaking with, not to mention requesting a drink from. But Jesus is no ordinary Jewish Rabbi, and so he crosses massive, centuries old, barriers and begins a conversation with a Samaritan woman by asking her for a drink, that he might win her to God.

And do you know, Grace Church, that Jesus is still crossing barriers to win people to His Father?

And one of the greatest testimonies to that fact is that you hold the account of this conversation in your hands this morning. Jesus’ barrier crossing conversation was recorded so that you would know, this is who Jesus is. He the God/man – come to add worshippers to God’s kingdom, not just from the Jews, but from every people and tribe and race – and that includes you – whether you presently believe in God or not, whether you were raised religious or not, whether you’ve lived a pure life or not. No matter your race or religion or background – Jesus reaches out to you through this account to say, I want to have a conversation with you, I want you to be part of my Father’s kingdom.

And if you count yourself among the followers of Christ this morning, Jesus’ willingness to look past old divisions in pursuit of new life ought to instruct us. As he hungered to add worshippers to God’s kingdom, so also should we. And as he was willing to go to those who were historically his enemy, with this good news, so should we. Whether that means going across the world or going across the political aisle or going across the lunch room or going across the street or even going across your own home to speak to a family member – we ought to imitate Jesus in not allowing old divisions to keep us from pursuing new worshippers of God.

And as we see here, to cross this divide, we need only to begin a conversation and see where the Lord leads it from there.

Let’s look now at where the Lord leads Jesus conversation with the Samaritan woman.

2. Dialogue with the Divine (10-26)

As the conversation begins, it becomes immediately clear with the woman’s response in verse 9 that there will be no beating around the bush. Long held animosities are not abandoned at the drop of a hat, or at the request for a drink, as the case may be. Her worldview on who is right and who is wrong is firmly fixed and as a result, she begins this conversation with her claws out, perhaps hoping to end the conversation before it truly begins. But Jesus is unphased.

And so he cuts to the chase and delivers his reason for requesting a drink of water. And his reason is that he is not there simply to request something from her, rather, he is there to give something to her. So he says, “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.”

In saying this, Jesus is offering her a perfectly contextualized invitation into God’s kingdom. The woman has taken offense at Jesus’ request for water because of who He is – a Jewish man – and so Jesus turns her prickly words back upon her with grace upon grace when he says, “If you only knew who I really am and what I am offering you, you would be the one asking me for water, and the water I would give you is the water of eternal life.”

One of the problems with the worldviews we devise for ourselves as sinful humans is that they are just too small. Because of the limited scope of our human wisdom and human experiences, we are not able to develop a view of the world that encompasses all that is truly going on. And if that isn’t bad enough, we then defend our too-small worldviews and often with self-justified zeal, which grounds us all the more in our ignorance.

But what God’s Word teaches us here, both in the pages of this book and in the example of the Word made flesh, is that there is more to this world than just our experience of it and our explanation for it. Yet we’re so stuck in our views that only an act of God will free us from them. And that is exactly what we are witnessing as we watch this conversation unfold. And the first approach Jesus takes in leading this woman out of the darkness and into the light is simply to tell her the truth. And given the situation, the truth she most needs to hear is that rather than rejecting him on the basis of his Jewishness, she ought to accept him, on the basis of the gift he wishes to give her.

 But as we all know from experience, our worldviews do not go quietly into the night when challenged. So she presses back against the truths Jesus offers her in the form of two questions.

First, she questions his sanity, for he has offered her water but he has nothing to get water with! She must be thinking, “Who is this idiot? How can he so quickly forget that He is the one who began this whole conversation by asking me for water?” I’m the one with the pot, not him!

And second, she questions his audacity. For to say that he can offer her better water while sitting beside Jacobs well is to suggest he is better than Jacob! Who does this Jewish Rabbi think he is?

And by questioning Jesus, she keeps the gift that Jesus offers her at arms length.

How often do we do the same thing? In our western way of thinking, how we value logic and reason, but too often we use them to defend ourselves from the truth in defense of our limited worldviews.

Yet even in the face of these questions, Jesus lovingly presses on in this conversation, and lovingly works to bring her out of her earthly view of water and into a heavenly one. So he explains to her that this water he is offering her is unlike any water she’s ever had, for it is water that, once received, becomes a bubbling spring within the very heart of those who ask for it, such that it becomes their source of life, and that for all of eternity.

Now as we read this today, we can be sure that what Jesus is describing here is the gift of the Holy Spirit which is given to all who repent and follow Christ. We know this because we are privy to the rest of John’s gospel, and in John 7:38-39 we read, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive . . .”

But this poor woman must have been so confused. Now it is possible that she could have strung together a number of quotes from the Old Testament prophets that her people had rejected and made an educated guess that this water may be tied to God’s Spirit but she really doesn’t seem the sort who would do that.

So when, in her next words, she asks Jesus for this living water – we can almost be sure that her understanding as well as her motives are lacking, to say the least.

But at the same time, we have to give her a little credit, for she has done what Jesus said she should do back in verse 10. She has asked him for this living water! And having asked him for living water, Jesus leads her to the very thing that is keeping her from it.

So he asks her to go call her husband, and by doing so, he brings up what was likely the most obvious expression of sin in her life. We know there is something to that assessment because the woman’s next words expose her. Why lie when there is nothing to hide? If she thought it was totally acceptable to plow through husband after husband and then give up on the institution of marriage and just move in with the next guy, why not just say so? But instead she says, “I have no husband” and can you imagine how she must have felt in saying it? And what role, I wonder, did her experiences with men play in her present view of how the world works.

I’m guessing that at this point in the conversation, any sensible Midwesterner would be able to read her body language, and read between the lines, and quickly infer that this was a “drop it and don’t mention it again” type of scenario. But not Jesus. Why not? Why not just leave this poor woman’s sin alone and let her know how much you love her? 

Well here’s why – Jesus didn’t just come to tell people how much he loves them – he came to win them and make them worshippers of the Father and as he will soon explain to her – true worshippers worship God in spirit and truth.

So while the answer “I have no husband” is partially true, it is not the whole truth, in fact it is a half-truth meant to conceal the whole truth. So Jesus, like a surgeon making a lifesaving incision, exposes her sin and invites her to reckon with the truth of her sinful past.

And this revelation from Jesus about her personal life, while I’m sure it shook her to the core, was also shaking the foundations of her too-small worldview. And it caused her to consider for the first time just who this Jewish man might be. So so she asks him a question worthy of someone with special insight, and though that question may be a total diversion tactic intended to take the spotlight off her sin, it sends the conversation right where Jesus wants to go. And that question is “Where are we supposed to go to properly worship God?”

In his reply, Jesus says something cataclysmic, something earth-shattering, something that would destroy the old ways of worshipping God, ways that had previously received God’s endorsement and been practiced for millenea, and then he opened up a new paradigm for how worship was to be done in the future.

In short, Jesus replied by saying – “Times are changing” – which can be an uncomfortable response regarding any topic, but especially so when it relates to the worship of God.

More fully, Jesus’s response tells the truth about the Samaritan way of worship – and the truth is that it is not in accordance with knowledge. They have abandoned God’s stream of revelation and in doing so they have abandoned the proper worship of God. And while he goes on to affirm that God’s revelation is found in the Jews and in their ways of worship, he then says that times are changing. The way God is to be worshipped is changing.

And this change is tied to an “hour” that is coming – and whenever we hear Jesus mention the “hour that is coming” in John we know he is talking about the hour of his death and resurrection – when this hour came, the earth was literally shaken and old paradigms of worship were ripped in two such that true worshippers of God would no longer worship him on specific mountains or ing specific temples, but they would do so from their hearts which will have been turned into a temple by their reception of God’s Spirit through belief in the one who will go on to call himself the way, the truth, and the life. So right worship will be found in those who worship God “in spirit and truth.”

To these words, the woman redirects the conversation one last time and says, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will tell us all things.” And here we remember that the Samaritan is not like Nicodemus. She is not a religious teacher, here to debate the fine points of proper worship. At the end of the day, she just one of the many people waiting for the One who had been promised to them, one who would come and clear up all the confusion, one who would make things right – between the Jews and the Samaritans, between people and God, and for this woman – possibly even between her and her failed search for a forever husband.

And whether she realizes it or not – by engaging in conversation with a man beside a well – the Samaritan is living into a biblical pattern where women have met their husbands beside wells – women like Rebekah, who would marry Isaac, and Rachel, who would marry Jacob, and Zipporah, who would marry Moses.

And so, as she looks forward to the day when one would come who would explain all things to her – Jesus’ response affirms to her that she needs to look forward no further, for the one she seeks is standing right in front of her. Her forever husband is standing right in front of her.

And as we read her story this morning – we also find that Jesus is standing right in front of us. He stands before us as one who seeks true worshippers of God and who is willing to cross any boundary to find them.  

And where he stands is in the center of the path that leads to our being made right with God. And as we see through this conversation, this path, is fenced in on either side by truth. On the one side, there is the truth about God – and this is the truth about who Jesus is and how God would be worshipped – and on the other side is truth about us – and this is the truth that we are sinners and unworthy of being in relationship with God.

And if we ignore either of these truths – if we jump the fence on one side and reject what God has revealed about himself OR if we jump the fence on the other side and reject what God has revealed about sinful humanity – we leave the path, and we cannot be made right with God.

But if we remain on that path and accept these truths – then we will meet Jesus – as the Samaritan woman has – and his word to us is the same as it was to this woman. He asks us, “Do you want what I have to offer you? Do you want living water? Do you want the gift of eternal life? If you do, all you need to do is ask me for it, and I will give it to you.”

So I ask each of us in this room now – Do you believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life? Do you believe in him as the only way to God? Do you believe the truth that you are a sinner and unable to earn God’s gift of grace? If so, the only thing keeping you from receiving his gift of eternal life is to ask for it. So ask him for it, and you too will find the one you’ve been looking for, the one you’ve been made for, and you will be transformed into a true worshipper of God.

3. From One Conversation to Many Converts (27-30; 39-42)

By the time Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman comes to an end, it is not clear to the reader where she is at. Has she understood Jesus’ answers to her questions? Does she believed what he is telling her? Has she become a true worshipper of God? It is hard from her words to answer definitively. 

But this is one of those instances where someone’s actions speak louder than their words. For while she never says that she believes in Jesus, her actions describe a woman who has found what she was looking for and so precious is it to her that she must go and tell everyone in town about it.

So beginning in verse 28, we see that the woman leaves her water jar and goes into town saying, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

In doing so, this woman took what she had experienced with Jesus and simply brought it before others. I think we can agree that it wasn’t a particularly moving testimony, nor did it express any of the heavenly realities Jesus had just taught her about living water or true worship. Which  is why I believe the real power behind her testimony wasn’t in her words, it was in her person, her uncontained excitement, her transformation. A change had come over her. The woman who went to the well at mid-day to avoid human interaction was now eagerly initiating conversations of her own and inviting people to come and see the one responsible for this change.

So we see in verse 39 that, moved by this testimony, many from that town believed in Jesus – at least they believed enough to go out to him and invite him to stay with them longer. They had heard and seen enough in this woman’s simple testimony to want to know more and dig deeper.

Then after spending two days with Jesus, John tells us that “hearing his word for themselves, they said to the woman “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

As Pastor Kipp observed in our preaching team conversation this past week –the Samaritan townspeople initially followed Jesus based on the testimony of the woman, but here is where they made their faith their own.

And thus ends our passage for today, and so it was that in a town of Samaria, one conversation led to many converts.

Conclusion 

Where are you at in your relationship with Jesus today?

• Perhaps you’re like the woman at the beginning of our story

  o   You have your paradigms and beliefs in place and they have no room for a Jewish Savior.

  o   If that’s you, can I just encourage you to do one thing for me – have a conversation with someone who follows Jesus and let your worldview come up against theirs and just see where it goes.

• Perhaps you’re like the townspeople who came to Jesus after hearing the woman’s testimony.

  o   You’ve heard how Jesus changes lives, and you’ve even seen it in others, but now it is time to make your faith your own.

  o   If that’s you, can I encourage you to give your life to Jesus today and commit to getting to know him personally through his Word and prayer?

  o   So that one day you might come to a place where you can say, it’s no longer because of what others have told me, but because what I’ve seen about Jesus myself that I believe.

• Perhaps you’re like the woman at the end of the story, you’ve believed in Jesus and become a true worshipper of God

  o   If that’s you, can I encourage you to take this belief and live it out before the people God has put in your life.

  o   Like the woman, will you go to them a transformed person and say, come and see the One who changed my life.

  o   Or like Christ, will you commit to reaching out to those who are different from you, looking past the things that divide you as you hunger for God to add true worshippers to his Kingdom?

  o   Will you commit to just starting a conversation – and seeing where the Lord may take it?

Wherever you fall in these categories, don’t leave this morning without deciding to do something in response to the Jesus we meet in this passage.

Works Consulted

Burge, Gary M. The NIV Application Commentary: John. Zondervan Academic: Grand Rapids, 2000.

Carson, D. A. The Gospel According to John. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, 1991.

[1] Burge, 143.

 

NEXT SUNDAY: John 4:43–54