Jesus is seeking true worshippers, that worship him in spirit and truth and he promises to any who come living water.
The Most Unlikely Convert
Jesus is in Judea and he decides to go back to Galilee. Samaria is right on the way. But Samaria is an area the Jewish people would avoid.
Samaria is an area in Northern Israel. In 722, when the northern kingdom was conquered by Assyria, they deported a number of Israelites to other conquered lands and then imported a number of people from other nations into Samaria. These other people intermarried, blending their cultural identities with the Israelites and thus the people of Samaria were created. Many of these maintained their Jewish faith but they were not true Israelites. They were half breeds. Since the Jewish people didn’t accept the Samaritans, the Samaritans created their own separative policies, and even created a place of worship on nearby Mt. Gerizim and a Samaritan pentateuch.
Samaritans were viewed as half breeds, not real Jews–mistaken, and problematic. True Israelites would not associate with them. This is partly why the woman is surprised Jesus asks her for a drink.
Verse 9: The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Jews would go out of their way to avoid Samaria and Samaritans.
When Jews would travel to Jerusalem for the great feasts, they would not go through Samaria. They would almost triple the time and distance just to avoid these people.
Another reason she is an unlikely convert is because she is a woman.
In this time period women did not go to school and rabbis would not teach them. They certainly would not discuss theological issues.
And this is an immoral woman.
This woman is frowned upon by her own people. They do not approve of her relationships. She is coming in the heat of the day. String of bad relationships.
Verses 6 and 7: Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water.
All the other women would have gone to the well in the early morning when it is nice and cool. The sixth hour is the sixth hour from sunrise. She is here at noon. She wants to encounter no one on the way to the well.
Verse 4: He had to pass through Samaria.
“Had to”: It was necessary. Had to do it, often is used of logical and moral necessity. It would have been wrong for him to not go through Samaria. It would have been wrong for him to propagate the cultural patterns.
Jesus seems to have come to Samaria for her. He is not concerned with maintaining social prejudice or taboos.
The Universal Human Thirst
Jesus speaks to the woman on a powerful topic. In his dialogue with this woman, she is being treated like a person. There is respect and engagement.
The disciples have gone for food. Their focus is on food and their own appetite. Jesus is focused on serving God and doing the will of his Father. His food is to do the will of God. By contrast the primary focus of Jesus was hardly on food; it was the search for people. Jesus sent the disciples for food and then did not eat when they returned. It may very well be that for this conversation to happen, his disciples would need to be somewhere else. If Jesus needed to reach people today would he need you to be absent for it to happen?
People come to wells for water. In desert areas wells are vital. Jesus speaks of living water.
Verse 10: 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.”
Jesus takes a basic human need– water and relates it to spiritual needs. He meets this woman where she is at and begins to reveal her greatest needs and how they may be fulfilled.
This is not the only time “living water is mentioned.” The topic comes up later in the book of John.
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 this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (John 7:37–39)
Another notable passage on the hope of what Jesus is talking about is in Revelation.
Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (Rev. 22:1-2)
Water is symbolic of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus says he is going to give it without limit. This is significant and speaks to the hope of the people, but there are other places that speak on this theme and the failure of the people.
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. (Jeremiah 2:13)
God is a fountain of water that we need, but we seek after broken cisterns. Cisterns were holes dug in the ground to hold water after a rain. A tank. The water is stagnant so cisterns often contain non potable water. You can't drink it. They have traded the true fountain for broken cisterns, cisterns that leak and let you down. A broken cistern will cost you your life. You are banking on it to take care of your needs and you realize it is void and empty. It leads to destruction.
We have spiritual longings that are not fulfilled by the things of this world.
What are you hoping will fill you? For this lady it seems a dependence on men and relationships. Yet, what she is looking for is not in them. If it were certainly one of them would have worked. It doesn’t so it is just a string. What is the string of your life? Relationships, people, places, what do you keep looking for that you are not finding? What are you disappointed in now? It's easier to find another man than deal with your emptiness.
Are you taking in the thoughts of men? The approval of people. If so, you are going to be very thirsty. You will cling to each compliment as your life depended on it. You will suffocate them and the compliments will dry up. Are you looking at riches? Status, houses, cars, etc. They will leave you thirsty. The only thing that satisfies is what God says of you and what he fills you with.
Her thirst is revealed in her relationships. He talks about living water, and he tells her to go call her husband. She has no husband. She has had five husbands and who she is with is not her husband. She is living in adultery. She is not honoring the Lord.
Sexual immorality. Broken relationships. Chain of brokenness. Jesus makes a connection to your life and sexuality with fulfillment.
All vain attempts to find empty containers to fill your life with.
The things we thirst for: acceptance, security, peace and wholeness, love and presence. Wholeness. We think that a relationship will give status and security. How many times do people mourn a broken relationship not because of the relationship but because of what the relationship gave them. Use people to get significance. It's an empty vessel trying to be filled by an empty vessel.
All the isms. Alcoholism, workaholism, racism, sexism.
When something is rare it becomes highly desirable, and when people cannot find it then they will seek to steal it, they will seek it out and do crazy things to acquire even a little of it. They will plot and destroy just to get a glimpse of it. Jesus offers freely what they are searching for.
Nine times out of ten, the story behind the misbehavior won’t make you angry; it will break your heart.” – Annette Breaux
When we turn to God we get a taste of the real fountain rather than the illusion of the lies.
What is at stake in this. Jesus promises something nothing else can.
Verse 14: 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.”
Living water welling up to eternal life. It begins now, but it does not consummate until later.
He is offering to her fullness of life, permanent refreshment, satisfaction, and life that is eternal. He is offering it to her! Of all people. Scandalous.
She is thirsty. What was the real thing she was fleeing from? The men, the relationships are just a cover. A temporary fix. After four or five you know it is not them that is broken but something inside of you. Easier to change relationships, change location, change circumstances than deal with your stuff. People get mad at the behavior, but it is more about what is going on underneath.
Verse 15: The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
She asks for a drink of this, observing he has no bucket to draw with. It’s not clear if she really believes him or if she is humoring him. But his next response gets her attention. Go call your husband. I have no husband. True, you have had five and now live with a man who is not your husband.
Let me say this. Being all knowing is a significant advantage in ministry. Jesus is greater than us all. There are things we cannot do. But are you willing to engage those that others write off. Are you willing to move toward the unlikely converts? We want to help people. We want them to know the grace of God and the transforming power of the gospel. We cannot force it into anyone's heart, but what we can do is lay the gospel out so when their heart breaks it falls in.
Jesus went to those who had nothing else. He was confident the power of the gospel was greater than the sin in her life.
True Worshipper
What is Jesus seeking after? He is seeking after true worshippers. This is what the Father is seeking after. What does he want of your life? That you would worship him.
You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (Verses 22-24)
Jesus clarifies a couple things. There is truth. Salvation is from the Jews–this is how God has revealed himself in the past. Don’t come up with some alternative religion or book. It does not conform to the truth. Jesus shows grace to people but a true response to his grace is to conform to his truth. You can’t just keep going your own way. He affirms this even though the Jewish people are doing wrong things.
He also clears up an issue of the Spirit. The Jewish people had the law but not the spirit of God. They used God’s word to preserve their own way rather than God’s way. You can have truth and not have the spirit. Have truth but no desire for it.
True worshippers know what God is doing and put their heart into it. Not ambivalent. This is what God is seeking after. This is why Jesus is in
He clarifies her confusion and heart. What she has experienced, the division and hate, are not in line with God’s will. Sometimes to reach people you have to help them see that maybe some of what they have been through with religion is not what God desires. But you also have to help them see that you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Common in the Bible belt. A gospel that is better than any of us.
He also shows her who he is. She does not go away thinking Jesus is a nice guy. An upstanding gentleman. Or even a godly man.
Jesus knows all she has ever done. He did not rehearse every detail of her life, but he communicated enough for her to realize that he is a prophet, he is greater than our father Jacob, and he fits the bill for the prophet who all are waiting for. Jesus is the messiah.
Look at some of the things Jesus offers in this conversation:
- Living water.
- The promise of eternal life.
- Truth. Jesus affirms what has been said and done in the past. There is truth and it is binding. One should conform their lives to it.Jesus invitation comes despite her present situation. And it comes to you now despite your present situation, but it does not mean you can live however you want.
- A rebuke to the half hearted pursuit of truth. People often want to push aside truth because those espousing truth do not adhere to it. Those are two separate issues. The gospel is always going to be better than the people who believe it. But it does demand a sincere belief.
- A fulfillment of what has been promised in the past and hoped for.
- Salvation
- The messiah who will tell us everything.
- Greater than Jacob. He offers water that is a whole lot better.
This woman is fundamentally changed.She forgets her water jar. The whole purpose of the trip. The single greatest necessity for her life, and she forgot it. Not important and doesnt need it. When you find Jesus the greatness of what he provides makes other things unnecessary.
She goes back to her people stating she has met a man who told her everything she ever did. That is odd to announce. People knew what she did and was doing. She was hiding from it. She now goes back to the people that were avoiding her and that she was avoiding. Encountering something of this magnitude changes everything.
She is born again. She is regenerated. She comes alive to God. Sometimes people don't know what is going on when they hear the gospel. They want to know more, they push things off that they were comfortable doing.
She calls others to Jesus. No Water but a Message. These people who were judgmental, half hearted truth seekers entrenched in lies and anti biblical theology.
Jesus prodded on her relationships, did not condemn but didn't evade, and offered her hope. The hard conversation pricked her heart.
Born again. She has come alive to the things of God. She is not indifferent and apathetic.
She was hiding from what she had done before. But knowing Jesus, his offer, his truth, his empowerment, it all freed her. She no longer cares what others think.
There is a bondage that shame holds over people making them hide and run. When you can talk about our failures and faults and bring them into the open is when healing begins. And when you know the one who knows everything you have ever done offers you forgiveness and healing if you come to him, then what
This is why I'm trying to get our groups to talk about how we might share what we learned with others. It helps us process, and it helps us to live in victory.
There is a healing that has happened. When you have a wound and it heals, the key to healing is that that part of the body can now withstand the pressure, the contact, the friction that it was designed to hold. If you scrape yourself, that wound is extremely tender. You favor it. You protect it. You won't let anything go there. But when it heals you can then let people touch it. You can fall again and know it will protect you.
When we heal we can open up about the things that have hurt us. We can talk about how God brings healing. We can talk about how we find acceptance.
We can even voluntarily share those things with others. We are not ashamed. She is a worshipper. She is a witness. She is unashamed.
This broken woman, with broken relationships, from a broken people, broken theology, who has traded the living God for broken cistern and found truth from the true Savior and living water that is welling up inside her and she has become a true worshipper who can't contain what she has found in Jesus. Shame, isolation, condemnation have been replaced with proclamation, community, and freedom.
God is not seeking after perfect people. He is seeking after true worshippers. Those who will believe his word and follow him.
She is an example of repentance and faith. She abandons her way to follow after Jesus.
Discussion Questions
- Why was this woman such an unlikely convert? What does this show you about the grace of God?
- What did Jesus offer to the woman? Why are these so significant?
- What is a true worshipper? How does this woman demonstrate a spiritual rebirth? Have you experienced a spiritual rebirth?
