John 4:1-30: Living Water for a Thirsty Soul

INTRODUCTION

In my hometown in Kansas, one of our nursing homes is called “Samaritan Lodge.”

“Samaritans” is an organization for helping people in distress. The Samaritans maintain hotlines for would-be suicides. They work in prisons. They serve in many countries around the world. Their advertisements say they are not a religious organization, but they are doing God’s work.

Our church donates to Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian organization that does charitable work around the world in the name of Jesus.

“Samaritan” seems to be a favorite way of identifying an organization that seeks to serve people.

The name, of course, comes from Jesus’s parable of The Good Samaritan, the story of the man who fell among robbers who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.

After two Jewish religious leaders passed him by, a Samaritan came and bandaged his wounds, took him to an innkeeper and paid for his care. The self-sacrificing compassion of this unnamed man in Jesus’s story has inspired countless works of kindness during the past 2000 years since Jesus told the story.

The story I want to talk about today also involves a Samaritan. It is the story about the woman Jesus met at a well in Samaria. It comes from John, chapter 4.

I. Jesus was on his way from Judea to Galilee.

A. His route from Judea to Galilee led him through the province of Samaria.

Jesus and his disciples came to a city called Sychar.

While Jesus’s disciples went into the city to buy food, Jesus, wearied by his journey, sat down beside a well outside the city.

The well is still there. It is a tourist attraction.

B. While Jesus was resting, a Samaritan woman came with her water jar, and Jesus asked her for a drink.

The woman was surprised. She asked him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

She was taken aback because it was so inappropriate for a Jewish man to address a Samaritan woman in this way. Maybe she was teasing or taunting him. “You must really be thirsty to ask me for a drink!"

Proper Jewish men weren’t supposed to talk to women in public. I have read that Jewish men even refrained from talking to their wives in public. It just wasn’t good taste.

And especially, they didn’t address women they didn’t know in public.

And especially, especially, they didn’t talk to Samaritan women in public—and ask them for favors!

By entering into conversation with her, Jesus was showing unusual respect for her. It was not beneath him to ask her for a favor.

Do you know that it is often a kindness to ask someone for a favor?

To ask a small favor of someone—something you really need—allows that other person the pleasure of being helpful.

This story shows us how truly human Jesus was. He was tired; he was thirsty. He was sympathetic. He liked people, especially people who were looked down upon by other people.

And Samaritans were despised by Jews. The Jews considered them half-breed heretics. They weren’t as bad as heathen Gentiles, but they weren’t full-blooded Jews either.

Because of history that I won’t explain now, there was bad blood between the Jews and Samaritans—hatred and grudges and often violence. That is why the parable of the Good Samaritan is such a powerful illustration of self-giving compassion.

II. Now we come to the important part of the story.

A. When the woman said, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” Jesus answered, “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.”

This aroused the woman’s curiosity. She replied, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water?”

(“Living water” is running water—from a spring—as contrasted with stagnant water from a cistern.)

B. Jesus said, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (vv13-14).

The woman was really wondering now, but this living water seemed like a good deal. She said, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, or come here to draw” (v15).

Then Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here” (v16).

Some people think Jesus was trying to confront this woman with her sinful life, but I think Jesus just wanted to have her husband there to share the good news he was going to tell her.

But she said, “I have no husband” (v17).

Then Jesus, calling on his prophetic powers, said, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly” (vv17-18).

Jesus has put his finger on great sorrow in this woman’s life. She had had a tragic past. Perhaps some of these husbands had died. Perhaps some of them had dumped her. Whatever, she had experienced tragedy. Jesus’s heart went out to her.

And she sensed his compassion: “Sir, I perceive you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship” (vv19-20).

Some preachers will tell you that the woman was embarrassed by the revelation of her failed marriages and was trying to change the subject. I don’t think so. What more would we want her to add about her unfortunate past?

The issue of where worship should be offered was a big question that divided the Jews from the Samaritans. She realized that Jesus was a prophet; here is the opportunity to find out the truth about something she had wondered about for a long time.

Jesus really loved this woman, and he sensed that she was hungering for God. She knew her need, and she, on her part, saw this kind, caring prophet as someone who knew her heart. She was ready to learn from him.

Have you ever noticed as you read the gospels how often Jesus sidestepped questions to talk about what was really important?

Jesus didn’t want to talk about where was the proper place for worship.

He said, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (vv21-24).

The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things.”

And Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he” (vv25-26).

C. The saying about worship in spirit and in truth is one of Jesus’s deepest teachings.

Let’s consider what Jesus is saying. When Jesus says that God is to be worshiped in spirit and truth, he doesn’t mean that we don’t need to go to church—that true worship is something we do only inside our heads.

In spirit means that real worship is worship with heart and will. Worship is not an activity we engage in periodically. True worship is the giving of oneself to God in faith, love, and obedience.

In truth means with sincerity, according to the truth of who God is—our heavenly Father who loves us and gives himself to us in his love. True worship for Christians is molded by all that the Father has done for us in Jesus Christ who died for us and rose again.

We worship God in spirit and truth in our daily life when we pray and meditate on God’s Word and open our lives to God.

We worship God in spirit and truth at church with our fellow-believers, when we praise God, listen to his word, pray, and receive the Lord’s Supper together.

We worship God in spirit and in truth when we serve God as we go about our daily tasks with God always in mind.

And we worship God in spirit and truth when we serve God by serving others in humble, self-giving ways.

The conversation between Jesus and the woman must have gone on for some time to let these truths sink into her heart and excite her faith and love and a desire to share her good news. Always remember when you read the gospels that they provide only a sketch of what went on. We have to use our imaginations to fill in the details.

III. The woman was so fired up by what Jesus told her that she became a missionary, an apostle to the people of her town of Sychar.

A. She left her water jar at the well and ran back to the city to tell everyone the good news. “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” This tells me that the conversation at the well was a long conversation.

She had opened her heart to Jesus, and he had opened his heart to her. And it thrilled her to know that Jesus knew all about her—her craving for wholeness—and her broken past—and yet he loved her. And she felt that “living water” bubbling up inside her and peace and joy filled her heart.

She was a credible witness to her friends in town, and they streamed out of the town to meet Jesus. And Jesus stayed in that town for two days, and many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world” (vv39-42).

B. That is all scripture tells us about the woman at the well. But tradition finishes the story.

The Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate the feast day of St. Photini on March 20. According to this tradition, Photini is the name the apostles gave her when they baptized her. She is the woman who left her water jar at the well to go tell her townspeople about Jesus.

Photini means “the enlightened one.”

She led her five sisters and two sons to faith in Jesus, and they all became tireless evangelists.

Many years later she died a martyr in Rome. The emperor Nero ordered her to renounce her faith. When she refused, she was tortured and thrown down a dry well, where she died for her faith in Jesus.

According to the story told in the Orthodox churches, her witness is said to have brought so many to the faith that she was called “equal to the apostles.”

CONCLUSION

Jesus told the woman, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but those who drink of the water that I will give will give never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (v14).

Water cleanses.

Water refreshes.

Water is necessary for life. A person can live for only about three days without water. A year ago Charlotte fell and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. What had happened is that she had become dehydrated. It is important to drink plenty of water.

Water is often used as a metaphor in the Bible.

The prophet Jeremiah, speaking for God, laments:

“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).

In Psalm 36 we read these words:

How precious is thy steadfast love, O God!

The children of men take refuge in the shadow of they wings.

They feast on the abundance of thy house,

and thou givest them drink from the river of thy delights.

We used to sing this hymn:

I heard the voice of Jesus say,

“Behold I freely give

The living water; thirsty one,

Stoop down and drink and live.”

I came to Jesus and I drank

Of that life-giving stream;

My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,

And now I live in him.

Are you thirsty for God?

Have you found the water of life that is in Jesus?

Do you have in your life that well of water that bubbles up to eternal life?

Tell Jesus about it. Ask him to come into your life—to forgive you, cleanse you, and cheer you with salvation—the assurance that he will be your Savior and Friend for ever.