He Fills Our Thirst

John 4:1-42

Welcome! Today we continue our series from the book of John, digging in to Chapter 4. Last week we looked at John Chapter 3. As a reminder, we talked about Jesus’ conversation with the Jewish scholar and leader Nicodemus. Recall that Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again, a statement that bewildered Nicodemus. Jesus went on to tell him that man must be born of water and the Spirit if he wishes to enter the kingdom of God. He also told Nicodemus the heart of the gospel, from John 3:16 and 17: For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

Last week we also saw John the Baptist confronted with the fact that his ministry was waning while Jesus’ was growing. John’s beautiful response began with saying, “A man can only receive what is given him from heaven.” He described himself as the friend of the bridegroom, a specific role in Jewish weddings of that time, and he described himself as full of joy in knowing that Jesus had come, and that his (John’s) role as a forerunner, as preparer, as announcer of Jesus was coming to a close.

Let’s pick up the story in John 4:1.

The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but His disciples. When the Lord learned of this, He left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. – John 4:1-3

So why did Jesus leave? I think it is safe to say that the Pharisees were not happy with this development. They didn’t like John the Baptist; how much more do you think they disliked Jesus? He had already cleared the temple in John 2 and been confronted by the Pharisees in Jerusalem. Was He afraid of them? Certainly not. I think the reason, although not stated explicitly here, is the same as it is elsewhere in Scripture when Jesus moves from place to place: He was simply obeying His Father, who had set a schedule for the things that were to come. In particular, it was too soon for Jesus to have a confrontation with the Jews that would lead to His death; the timing of this had been fore-ordained from before the world began, and there were many prophecies yet to be fulfilled.

Now He had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as He was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. – John 4:4-6

What does it mean that Jesus “had” to go through Samaria? Was there no other path? Well, yes, there was another alternate route, a longer route, that Jews routinely made for this purpose. Jesus could have followed this route, as nearly all Jews did. Jews almost never went into Samaria. But Jesus “had” to go there, because, again, it was part of God’s plan, just as much as it was part of God’s plan for one of the most influential Jewish leaders to be challenged by Jesus (Nicodemus).

Now what is it about Samaria that made the Jews want to avoid it? Well, the animosity between Jews and Samaritans in some ways goes all the way back to the split between Judah and Israel about 1000 years earlier, when Rehoboam, Solomon’s unwise son, placed extremely heavy burdens on the people who then followed their own leader, Jeroboam. Jeroboam made a new capital in Shechem, in Samaria, and set up idols for worshiping false gods. Over the coming centuries, Israel had bad king after bad king, continuing to worship idols and doing other detestable practices, and finally Israel fell to Salmaneser, king of Assyria, who carted off many of those who lived there into captivity. Judah fell later, to the Babylonians. These exiles were not complete; generally, the upper classes, the leaders, the skilled tradesmen were the ones who were forced to leave. Many others stayed behind in Samaria, and their religion was even more jumbled up because of the many foreigners who joined them.

By the time that the exile was over, Jews returning to Jerusalem hardly saw those who still lived there as Jews at all. These “Samaritans” at first stated they wanted to help rebuild the Temple, but they were rejected, and then they actively tried to stop their efforts. This antagonism continued years later when Nehemiah oversaw the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem.

Following their rejection with the Jewish leaders in these incidents, the Samaritans worshiped elsewhere, ending up building a small replica of the temple on Mt. Gerizim. However, the Samaritans had a different view of this history, believing that the divide occurred when the prophet Eli abandoned Mt. Gerizim and erected an altar in Shiloh (Jerusalem). This is not in Scripture, although it is recorded in the beginning of I Samuel that Eli and his sons worshiped at Shiloh. Shiloh actually goes back further, in Joshua, as the location they camped and set up the Tent of Meeting when dividing up the land and as the location for gathering before together going to war. It continued to be here at least part of the time during the many years of the book of Judges.

Mount Gerizim is mentioned in Deuteronomy 11 and 27 as the location to shout out the blessings of God for obeying His commandments. (The neighboring Mount Ebal is where one was to shout out the curses of disobeying Him). It is also mentioned in Joshua, where they actually did this, and in Judges, where Jotham warned them about having/wanting a king. The Samaritans viewed Mount Gerizim as an “older” location (Deuteronomy vs. Joshua) and the only appropriate place for worship.

Thus, fundamentally, the Samaritans viewed the dispute over this one issue, where to worship, whereas the Jews viewed it as over just about everything. So the two sides didn’t even agree about what they didn’t agree about.

So back to our account – Jesus “had” to go there, meaning it was the will of the Father that He do so, and so He and His disciples did so. As we will see later in this narrative, He had sent His disciples on into town, and He was alone at this location apparently with great history, the location of Jacob’s well.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to Him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) – John 4:7-9

The video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B93dVfWSyBs gives you a taste of what it was like to do draw water from a well. Normally, you would need to bring your own tools and supplies with you to do this, and as the disciples had gone into town, Jesus would not have these supplies.

Now a Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus asked her for a drink. This meant that He was asking her if He could use her supplies, to drink from her cup, and so on. This was shocking to the woman and would have been shocking to any Jew or Samaritan. Why? Well, number one, He was talking to a Samaritan, and Jews back then didn’t even talk to Samaritans. Number two, He was talking to a woman, and the Pharisees and other religious Jewish types didn’t do this in public even to their own families. Number three, He was talking to a woman who was a stranger. And number four, He wasn’t just talking to this Samaritan woman stranger; He was asking to drink from her cup!

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” – John 4:10-12

Now Jesus was truly tired and thirsty, but He knew this conversation was an opportunity to reach a lost soul, and so He steered the conversation into spiritual matters. Indeed, He knew that this was the real point of this encounter; the timing, who was meeting Him at the well, none of this was accidental but part of God the Father’s plan. I am challenged by this, and maybe you are as well – when I am tired and hungry or tired and thirsty I am thinking about rest and food or water, not about sharing the gospel. I am reminded of I Peter 3:15, Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

And so Jesus does this – He rapidly turns the conversation around 180 degrees, saying, If you knew who I am, you would be asking Me for water, living water! The woman doesn’t understand, seemingly thinking He uses the phrase “living water”, that is, zao from the root zoe, and hydor, from the root hydra, metaphorically, as a way to describe “fresh water,” that is water from a surface spring. It certainly is a lot easier to get water from a stream than from a deep well.

She compares Him to Jacob, in whom she takes pride, calling him “our father,” emphasizing her belief that they are the true followers of God. Her thought seems to be that since Jacob couldn’t find any such spring, He dug this deep well. Of course she is entirely missing the point. Jesus is offering something far greater than mere H20. And ironically, yes, He is much greater than Jacob, who has far from a stellar record in Genesis.

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” – John 4:13-15

Does she understand yet? It’s not clear. Her answer may have been mocking Him. She may think at this point that He is a few cards shy of a full deck, if you know what I mean. Taken literally, this does sound completely ridiculous.

But what Jesus is talking about is something awesome beyond description. To never be thirsty again – let’s think about what this means. What do we thirst for? For love. For forgiveness. For purpose. For healing. For companionship. For encouragement. All of these things and far more were implied in what Jesus was saying. And if we do come to Him, He does fill us – in us is the Holy Spirit; in us is this spring welling up to eternal life. 

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” – John 4:16-20

You cannot keep any secrets from Jesus. You do know that, don’t you? Jesus reveals that He knows her history. This woman had quite a past and quite a present as well. She was almost certainly almost an outcast – even Samaritans had standards, and she was clearly living a wild life, a life apart from God at least in this one area of life.

Yet Jesus reached out to her, offering her eternal life. I find this tremendously encouraging. No matter what you have done, you are not out of range of God’s forgiveness. You may be rejected by all your friends, even all of your family, you may have made such a mess of your life that you have seen prison, or have no friends at all, but the offer of eternal life, of living water, is still reached out to you. This goes for you personally as well as for anyone you ever meet. Never write someone off, as out of God’s reach, whether because of how they look or because of what they have done. Nobody still living is beyond God’s offer.

This shakes the woman up – she has just witnessed a miracle. There is no natural way this Stranger could have known about her past. She calls Him a prophet, meaning that she sees that God is working through Him. She knows He is a Jew, not a Samaritan, so the fact that He is a true prophet of God crashes into her Samaritan belief system, and she brings up the issue that to Samaritans was the defining issue separating them from Jews, the issue over which they were surely right, right? And so she brings it up to Jesus.

Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” – John 4:21-24

Wow – what a powerful response. What is it? In that first sentence, Jesus doesn’t tell her who is right, but instead says that there are far more important things at hand here. The “you” here is plural; He is talking about the Samaritan people, saying this issue you think is so important is over a temporary thing. Soon people will worship at neither place. Then He does say that they are “not knowing,” ignorant, of these things. There is no blame or accusation in this; it is simply a statement of fact and a confirmation that you should simply take the plain meaning of Scripture and not get taken off track by wild theories, which is what even the modern cults do.

True worshipers worship what? The Father. Not any created thing, or person, or idol of any kind. And worship how? In Spirit and in Truth. We could spend an entire Sunday morning on what this means, but here are just a few words that get across different aspects of this. In Spirit and in Truth: With our hearts and with our minds; with our right brains and with our left brains; using the arts and using the sciences; through the symbolic and through the literal; through devotion and through obedience; in words and in actions; with the soft, warm feeling of love and with the solid, cold, decision of sacrifice. And still I feel these comparisons only scratch the surface of what these words really mean.

Bringing it back to this account – I think for this woman the meaning dealt with how the Samaritans did worship emotionally, but full of wrong thinking, often ignoring the literal meaning of the Bible. In contrast, many of the Jews, especially the Pharisees, were careful to keep much of the outward Law but were closed in their hearts, dead in their emotions to the actual living God. Both the Jews and the Samaritans were completely missing the mark of what God the Father desired worshipers to be and to do.

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am He.” Just then His disciples returned and were surprised to find Him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” – John 4:25-27

Wow! Jesus fully reveals Himself to this person who, again, in that culture is the last person you would ever expect. She’s a woman. She’s Samaritan. And she is living in sin. What a contrast to Nicodemus! And yet Jesus tells her, point blank, “I am He.” I am reminded of God’s response to Moses where He calls Himself “I am.” He is the Messiah, the Moshiach in Hebrew, the Christos in Greek, the promised one, the one written about in the Old Testament again and again, the one called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, and that just in one verse (Isaiah 9:6); there are hundreds more, and the One in whom seemingly every major theme, every major story, every mystery, is fulfilled.

I love how it says, “Just then” the disciples return. Coincidence? No way! The disciples have already come a long way. Look at this whole adventure from their perspective. Number one, what in the world are they even doing in Samaria? Number two, Jesus leaves them on their own to go into town and procure food. I wish the Bible told us that story – I bet there are some pretty humorous parts in it. Number three, they find Jesus talking with a woman. And number four, they just arrive in time to hear Him tell her that He is the Messiah, the Christ. Now John doesn’t tell us why they didn’t ask. Maybe they were simply shocked speechless!

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” They came out of the town and made their way toward Him. – John 4:28-30

So the story is not yet over – far from it. The woman went to the town and told them to come, that it could be the Messiah. She doesn’t mention, apparently, that He isn’t Samaritan, but Jewish. She does say that He knew what she had done. I love this. She is witnessing – telling them simply what He has done, and in so doing it is reminding them of her past, but she doesn’t care. I am challenged by this – we too should be willing to tell what Jesus has done in our lives, areas He has healed us, changed us, even if those areas are embarrassing. And I am reminded that although God would never have us sin so that He can reveal His work in these areas of our lives, He yet uses our former areas of sin to bring glory to Himself. And in so doing this speaks powerfully to others going through similar things, guilty of similar sins, stuck in similar behaviors. And so the town comes.

Meanwhile His disciples urged Him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then His disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work.” – John 4:31-34

Oops. In defense of the disciples, I think sometimes it probably was hard to know when Jesus was speaking literally and when He was speaking figuratively. I wonder if Jesus ever had fun with them over this issue, making a statement that they take figuratively, like later saying “I have food to eat that you know nothing about,” having them say, “Oh, we know, to do God’s will, right?” and hearing reply, “No, I found an apple on the way over here.” Anyway, what about what had just happened in this conversation was His food? I think it was the woman’s response – never forget that Jesus rejoices when people begin to believe in Him. If you have ever had a really good spiritual conversation with someone, even leading them to pray to receive Christ, I think you understand what it means to be so excited at seeing God work through you that hunger is the last thing on your mind.

What did Jesus mean by finishing His work? I think He was referring to the cross; indeed, at the end of His life He did say, “It is finished.” Jesus went on to say,

“Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” – John 4:34-38

What did Jesus mean about four months more? Probably the time of year was such that the crops had just been planted, and by simply looking at them you could tell it was four more months until they would be ready. Jesus draws the contrast, saying “Look now! It’s not four more months! It’s harvest time now!” What is Jesus telling them to look at? The crowd of Samaritans coming up from the town! Here were a group of people open to the idea that He was the Messiah, led by that woman who had had five husbands, eager to meet Him and talk with Him, not just looking for miracles, not looking for a way to exploit Him, not plotting to stop Him or even kill Him, but to honestly meet Him and see if He could really be the Messiah. The fields were ripe for harvest!

And Jesus tells them something I don’t think He has told them before – He says, “I sent you.” He wants to use them! Jesus isn’t going to be the only one answering their questions. And they of course had nothing to do with this crowd coming here – Jesus did that.

And what a picture this is for us. The Holy Spirit is working in people’s hearts all around us, tilling, seeding, sowing, watering, and many times we are sent in to “close.” Again, we need to always be ready, always “tasting the crops,” so to speak, because you never know when they will suddenly be ripe, ready for reaping. And never write anybody off. I cannot tell you how many things my friends back in grad school gently invited me to before I finally came to something. Not that we should nag, or pester, but that we should continue to build into our friends’ lives. We should continue to pray for them, and find new ways to deepen our relationships with them. Remember that the Spirit is working on their insides; we work from the outside. Together, God uses us both to bring the harvest.

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to Him, they urged Him to stay with them, and He stayed two days. And because of His words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” – John 4:39-42

Wow. Don’t those verses just put a smile on your face? This is awesome! Note how at first they already were beginning to believe solely on account of the woman’s testimony. Not the disciples’. Not Jesus. For me that is just so encouraging.

By the way, it is easy to miss this – but it doesn’t say that they asked Him to stay days. This is accurately translated from the Greek – it says there, just like it does here in English, that they asked Him to stay. He stayed two days. I am sure they would have loved Him to stay as long as He would be willing to stay.

And what do they call Him? Savior of the Jews? Well, I guess, of course not. Savior of the Samaritans? No! Savior of the world! In Greek, truly the Christos, savior of the Cosmos, all the peoples of the world, from every race, tribe, and nation. Including us!