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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy
word.
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
noon.
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.)
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 livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be
thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I give them will become in them 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.”
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 ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place
where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe Me, 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 the Spirit and in truth, for they are the
kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”
God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in the
Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is
coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us.”
Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am He.”
John 4:5-26
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be
to God.
In our nation and world at large, the matter of
segregation has reared its ugly head on more than one occasion. We see it most
evident in racial or cultural contexts in the present or not so distant past.
We also see it evident more than 2,000 years ago in biblical times, like in
today’s passage from John, Chapter 4:
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 noon.
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.)
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 livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone
who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I
give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them
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.”
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 ancestors worshiped on this
mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in
Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus
replied, “believe Me, 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 the
Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”
God is spirit, and
His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “I
know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When He comes, He will explain
everything to us.”
Then Jesus
declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am He.”
John 4:5-26
We know from yesterday’s devotion that Jesus had fled
from Judea to Galilee after John the Baptist was arrested and imprisoned by
Herod. The scriptures tell us He “came to a town in Samaria called Sychar”
where Jacob’s well was located. Weary from His travels, Jesus “sat down by the
well” around noon. He was alone because His disciples had gone to get some
food.
Now, let’s look at this picture culturally for a moment.
Jesus was a Jew and if you know anything about the way
the Jewish community looked at outsiders, then you know a Jew wouldn’t want to
be found in the company of anyone who wasn’t a Jew. In fact, the Jews even had
a title for those who weren’t on the team: Gentiles.
Now consider where Jesus was. He had traveled outside of
Judea to Samaria and the people of Samaria were known as the Samaritans.
Samaritans were Gentiles and so despised by the Jews that Jesus used them as a
tool in one of His most famous parables: the parable of the Good Samaritan. You
remember that parable, right? The scene unfolds as a man going to Jericho from
Jerusalem was robbed and beaten, left for dead along the road. Two Jewish
religious leaders, a priest and a Levite, walked by the man on the opposite
side of the road, not wanting to trouble themselves to stop and help the man.
And then a third man came by, a Samaritan who would have been the last person a
Jew would think would do anything decent. And yet, it was the Samaritan who
went to the man, provided first aid, helped him to where he could get care, and
paid for the man to be lodged while he recovered. Jesus made the point that the
Samaritan was the one who was the better neighbor (Luke 10:25-37).
With this background, back to our passage for today where
we find a “Samaritan woman” coming to draw water at the well and Jesus asking
her a simple question:
“Will you give Me
a drink?”
His request stunned and confused the Samaritan woman who
replied:
“You are a Jew and
I am a Samaritan woman. How can You ask me for a drink?”
In other words, she was essentially saying:
“Aren’t you supposed to loathe me and treat me like a
second class citizen? Why would you want me to do anything for you as the Jews
think we’re worthless and unclean?”
I’m pretty sure she didn’t expect the response Jesus
gave. In fact, maybe anyone who reads this scripture passage for the first time
might feel the same way. For Jesus answered her, saying:
“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.”
In other words, Jesus was telling the Samaritan woman
that He was no ordinary Jew. Not by a long shot.
He had asked her to give Him normal water because that
was all she was capable of providing but the drink she could receive from Him
was far from normal for it was a drink that was alive and thus promoted life in
the person partaking of it, not just in the present but eternally.
As we see, the Samaritan woman was still trying to come
to grips with what Jesus was saying as she said to Him:
“Sir, 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 livestock?”
We can’t get too down on the Samaritan woman who was just
trying to figure things out and try to reach a place of understanding. She wasn’t
the first and wouldn’t be the last person who would be unable to grasp what
Jesus was getting at. We read where she was centered on the well as the place
any water would come from including the water Jesus was speaking of. And given
Jesus had nothing with which to draw from the deep well, the woman wondered how
Jesus would be able to access any water, let alone the living water He was
speaking of.
Further, the Samaritan woman also was having difficulty
recognizing Jesus for who He truly was, thinking He might have been on level
playing ground if not a little elevated over Jacob, the esteemed man of the
community who was honored by allowing the well to bear His name. She didn’t see
Him as the Messiah or the Savior of all mankind, the Son God had sent His
people.
Again, Jesus tried to open the eyes of the woman and get
her to comprehend what He had said, answering:
“Everyone who
drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give
them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a
spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Here Jesus was again making it clear that His “living
water” would be markedly different that the typical water everyone was
drinking. For anyone who would drink from Jacob’s well would find themselves
thirsty again but the water Jesus promised would bring a person to where they
would never thirst again. Ever.
These words were welcome to the ears of the Samaritan
woman who simply said to Jesus:
“Sir, give me this
water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus had piqued her interest and she indicated strongly
that she wanted to buy what Jesus was selling. But before they progressed any
further, Jesus wanted to call the woman out on the way she was living as she
had married five men and was currently living with a man out of wedlock. The
woman had to be amazed that Jesus knew so much about her even though they had
just met. She processed it as well as she could and again tried to size up who
Jesus was and what authority he had saying:
“Sir, I can see
that You are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews
claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
The scriptures tell us the Samaritan woman believed Jesus
was just a mere prophet, another man who God had sent to be a messenger. This
was followed by a rather strange discussion over where true worship should
occur. The Samaritans had been worshiping on the mountain near where they were,
a stark contrast to the revered city of Jerusalem where the Jews had been
worshiping since the days of
Solomon when it was concealed, not revealed. The former
statement regarding Jesus’ identity ruffled His feathers a little bit as we see
in His reply:
“Woman, believe Me,
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 the Spirit and in truth,
for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”
“God is spirit,
and His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
Jesus wasted no time to provide clarity and assured the
woman that a time was coming ahead where the worship location would not be
important. What would be important, very important in fact, was that every
believer needed to get to a place of where they worshipped they would worship
the Father in Spirit and truth. In other words, Jesus was ready to tell others
about Himself and would use the Samaritan woman one last time to do so. Look at
what she states here:
“I know that
Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything
to us.”
Here we get a feel for what the Samaritan woman believed.
She knew a Messiah was coming and knew He would make all
things evident upon arrival. She just didn’t know that the Messiah was sitting
right next to her, something Jesus made sure to clear up, saying:
“I, the One
speaking to you—I am He.”
In other words, the Samaritan woman was engaged in conversation
with the man who the prophets had foretold, a man who had come to not only get
His needs met but to meet the salvation needs of the Gentile woman who had not
had hope before the encounter at the well.
Many people today are sitting like the woman at Jacob’s
well, so close to having eternal life but not knowing the one man, Jesus, who
can give it to them. My prayer is that everyone comes to the well of the Savior
to commit themselves, to commit their belief, trust, and hope in Him and Him
alone. For it’s only then that they can partake of the living water He
provides.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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