By Sinclair Ferguson
Text: John 4:1-30
OPENING PRAYER:
Gracious God and Father, we rejoice in your presence with us today. And in the blessing of being together and praising you with one heart and mind — with one song. We pray as we listen to your word today, that by your Holy Spirit, you will make it live to us. Live into our hearts. We pray, that by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, we might find that you are speaking to us, and that you mean to do us good. And this we pray together, for Jesus our Savior’s sake. Amen.
Please be seated.
SCRIPTURE READING:
Our scripture reading today is from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John. And you'll find that reading on page 888 and 889 of the pew Bible. We are studying our way through this wonderful gospel of John, at something of an accelerated pace. And we come to this long but very great chapter that begins with the encounter that Jesus has with the woman at Jacob's well. That leads to what looks like a city wide awakening. And then ends with Jesus again and Cana and healing the official's son. We've time this morning only for the first part of this chapter as we go through John's gospel. Perhaps in the providence of God, we'll return some other days to the great revival in Samaria. I hope so.
But let us read from the beginning of John chapter four. And today especially important and helpful, I think, for you, to have your Bible open before you.
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.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.
(Since they reckoned the hours from six o’clock in the morning, it was around noon.)
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 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.) 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will 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 will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “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 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.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people,“Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They went out of the town and were coming to him.
SERMON:
I wonder if you've ever thought how marvelous it would be, just once in your life, you would only need it once in your life, to have half an hour with Jesus Christ, and nobody else present. And that's what this woman was privileged to have. Indeed, in John's gospel, I think, actually, in all of the Gospels, these 20 verses or so that describe the conversation between Jesus and this woman at the well of Sycar in Samaria, is the single longest conversation with an individual that the Lord Jesus ever had.
The disciples, as we have told, in verse eight, had left Jesus as they’ve come walking through the morning, perhaps they've been walking for five or six hours. They had eventually reached this town of Sycar. They had come to the well, that was famous because it was the well that Jacob had given to his son, Joseph. And Jesus had sent His disciples off into the city to get some food so that they could lunch together. And while they were gone, he sits beside the well.
You can't help wondering what he thought about in those minutes. Did he simply, because this was Jacob’s well, think about the Jacob story, after all, Jacob was one of his ancestors. And did he think because I suppose he might well have done, because he too had word associations, just as we often have word associations. Did sitting at Jacobs Well, reminds him of that well to which Jacob, you remember, had heard from his father, that Abraham servant, Eliezer, had gone to and found him a wife. And with words that were so similar to the words with which Jesus opened the conversation with this woman of Samaria when she arrived, “I'm thirsty, would you give me something to drink?” And you remember how Rebecca manfully, if that's not politically and uncorrect thing to say, had not only given the servant water, but had given the service camel's water as well. And humanly speaking, humanly speaking, that was Jesus’ ancestry. Humanly speaking in a very limited and narrow way, if that encounter hadn't taken place, if she hadn't given Eliezer water, then there never would have been the marriage between Rebecca and Isaac. And there would have been no Jacob and, and humanly speaking, humanly speaking, there would have been no Jesus. And so it wouldn't surprise us at all that those things were on his mind. Perhaps he was remembering even the words that were used when Rebecca was faced with the great decision. The question she was asked, “Will you go with this man?
And then as he lifts his eyes up, and perhaps begins to focus, he's been looking out daydreaming about the past, and he begins to focus. And he sees this figure making its way out of the city and coming towards the well. And as the figure gets nearer, the gate indicates to him that that this is a woman and she's coming out at the noon time when the sun is beating down. And in the minutes that takes her to arrive at the well it rather looks as though Jesus has perhaps been meditating on that question all over again, because, in essence, this is what he wants to say to her. Woman, will you go with this man?
And so this conversation opens as she arrives and finds this stranger sitting at the well. And he offers the opening gambit of the conversation from which we can learn so much. Learn so much, about our own spiritual need. Learn something about the Jesus style of doing evangelism. Learn so much about the riches of the gospel. But this woman learns it obviously, with an intense reluctance. And as we work our way, through this dialogue, this conversation, you can see it at every stage right to the end, she seeks to resist the overtures of Jesus. She has no intention whatsoever spiritually, of going with this man.
And I have very little doubt that in the kind of responses that she makes to Jesus, you, you recognize people to whom you have spoken about Jesus Christ. You may even recognize your own responses to Jesus in the past, or perhaps even your own response to Jesus in the present.
As he opens with his request, “Would you get me a drink of water?” She responds, you’ll notice, in verses nine and 10, in a way that indicates that she doesn't really want to have anything to do with him. He is, after all, a man and she is a woman. He is obviously by his accent, a Jew, and she is a Samaritan. And John tells us that the Jews have nothing to do with the Samaritans. And there is nothing apparently particularly pre-possessing about Jesus.
Isn't that interesting? That you could pass Jesus in the street. That what Isaiah prophesied about him that there would be that would be no, that would be nothing special about him, that in a sense, would kind of naturally make you sit up and take notice. And there's nothing about this stranger that makes this woman feel that she wants to sit up and take notice. She doesn't need him, and she doesn't want him. And she has no idea whatsoever of what the stranger could do for her. So as she rebuffs him. “Why are you a Jewish man asking for a drink of water from me a Samaritan woman?"
Now, it looks as though this is a woman who is at great ease in dealing with men. Who has known singular attractions in dealing with men. So, so there is something very stand-offish, very put-offish. This is a woman of all women, who is sure of one thing, whatever is going on in her life, she does not need this man who stands before her. And so he says, in this intriguing way, My dear, he says, “If you only knew to whom you were speaking, you would ask of him, and he would give you living water.”
Of course, the marvelous thing about reading through John's Gospel is that we know far more about Jesus already than this woman. We know that this is the word who has come from God, in whom there is life. We know that this is the one who turned water into wine and brought blessing where there was potential tragedy. We know this is the one who promised to Nicodemus that he was able to give new birth, new life, a new start, a new heart. And now he offers to this woman new and living water. And he wants to persist where she wants him to back off. Thankfully, in her case, thankfully in your case the Lord Jesus is not prepared to back off. And so he persists. Oh, he says, “you should be asking me for living water.”
And so you'll notice the second round and the dialogue begins in verses 11 to 15. And it's here now that a little like Nicodemus in the previous chapter, she really has no idea what on earth he is talking about. In her first response, she's really saying that she doesn't want to have anything to do with him. Now she's saying, I have no idea what you're talking about what you are talking about (Dr. Ferguson makes a spitting sound) is nonsense. And she begins to discuss with him this matter of the living water, “How can you get living water out of the swell?” And of course, because we've been reading through the John's gospel until this point, at least John, the author of the gospel expects that we will have been doing that. You see this is exactly the same kind of response as Nicodemus. Jesus said to Nicodemus, he was, he was really sending Nicodemus the same message, but using different language. He was using language from the Bible. Here Jesus is using language from the situation. And Jesus had said to Nicodemus, “You need to be born again.” And Nicodemus had said, “Can a man enter into his mother's womb and be born again?” He he didn't understand. And here's a woman with presumably no theological education, probably no education whatsoever to speak up. And she too is as blind as Nicodemus has been.
And Jesus is so patient. My Christian friends remember that. That as you get irritated with those who are not Christians because of their response to your witness. Jesus is so patient. And you notice what he does in verses 13 and 14. He says, My Dear “everyone who drinks of this water gets thirsty again.” Isn't that true? “But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be firstly forever, because the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.” And you see his speaking to her, isn’t he, about the water of his grace, the water of his love that quenches our dehydrated souls. The water of the Holy Spirit that would be within her like a string of water that would well up to eternal life.
And you notice that now she responds again. First of all, she doesn't really want to have anything to do with him. Second, she doesn't really understand what he's talking about. She doesn't realize that he's wanting to touch her at her deepest need. But isn't it interesting the language Jesus uses. If you were in Jesus place, I think what you would say to this woman, certainly what I would try to say to this woman, would be this: Listen, the water that I will give her will become in her a spring of water, welling up to eternal life. Wouldn't you do that if you were speaking to a woman? Wouldn't you say her and not him? You see what Jesus is beginning to do? Why is she there getting this water? She's getting this water as we know, because we've read the passage, because there is a man in the house. And the man in the house is not her husband. And she's gone to the well at midday because although the sun will scorch her then, there is no hour of the day when socially, apparently, she can go to the well. She doesn't go to the well in the evening with the other women, she goes to the well in the blaze of the noonday sun because of her relationship with this man. And because of the fact that she has had five husbands and she's going to the well not only to get water for herself, but to get water for him. And Jesus by the language he uses, just gives her a little hint, you see. He’s prying open her resistance to what he's doing. And he speaks about the man who might drink from the water. The man who drinks from the water that you take back to the city of Samaria will be thirsty again. And you will come here to get some water again. And he will drink it and be thirsty again. And so the whole sorry process is going to go on for the rest of your life. And you can see by her response, that now, as the dialogue moves on, she does not want to talk to him about her personal life.
She, first of all, doesn't really want to have anything to do with him. And then she doesn't really understand what he's talking about. But once she begins to get a hint that he knows what he is talking about, she doesn't want to talk about her personal life. He says to her, “Go and call your husband, and come here.” And he's found her out.
And she does — you sense, don't you in the narrative here. Her response is far too quick. It's far too quick. You've seen that responses? No, I'm not. Not the calmness of the conscience that is free. You don't really think that about me. But the guilty conscience — the the self defensiveness, the self justification. “I have no husband.” And then you see Jesus is at work changes from being the spiritual physician, as he's been moving towards the source of this woman's spiritual sickness. And now he becomes a spiritual surgeon. And he puts in his spiritual surgical knife into her soul having probed her, and he says to her, “Yes, that's for sure. You have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the man with whom you are now living is no longer your husband.”
Now of course, it is altogether possible. It's just possible that this woman had five legitimate husbands. Lived in harmony with them, and they had all pre deceased her. But it looks very much here doesn't fit as though her present lifestyle is the end result of our pattern of failed relationships. And Jesus is putting his finger on this — that her failed relationships are a clear mark to him of her spiritual sickness and her spiritual dehydration.
And you see, I think it's clear, isn't it, that he's not, he's not just exposing the sinfulness of her lifestyle because he has a malicious pleasure in exposing people's sinfulness. But because he has an overwhelming sense of compassion because of the sadness of their situation. That, incidentally, is something that we as Christian people need to learn. Sometimes we treat sinners as though they were our enemies. And see no sadness in our spiritual dereliction. But Jesus sees great sadness in this woman's spiritual need — her spiritual bondage. The fact that she's been through husband after husband, and as yet has found no lasting satisfaction. Because she's done what you remember Jeremiah, the prophet had lamented people in his day had done: “Forsaken the fountain of living waters, and dug wells, from which they would never find any satisfaction.”
And so the woman who begins with not really wanting to have anything to do with Jesus, and then doesn't really understand what Jesus is saying. And then as she realizes that he knows her through and through — doesn’t want Jesus to talk about her personal life… Listen my friends, that is one of the clearest signs in our lives of a spiritual sickness. The one thing we do not want Jesus to talk to us about is our personal life.
And so, as Jesus responds to her, she follows up with one last desperate, desperate effort not to yield to Jesus. He says, “You are right in saying, ‘I've no husband.’ You’ve had five husbands, the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” And now in verses 19 through 25, she definitely is not going to give into Jesus without a fight.
Now listen, if you're a Christian believer, don't be dismayed when you see somebody who's not a Christian fighting against Jesus. It may well be their last fight against Him. And so she says, and you've met this woman haven't you, you've heard this woman in many different forms: from somebody in your school to somebody in college, to somebody in the neighborhood, to somebody with whom you — there are so many religions. It's all just a matter of your opinion, against my opinion, near you are the Jews and there we are, the Samaritan. And Jesus with an almost infinite patience explains to her the purposes of God and how the day is coming when these pictures of his purpose in the past are going to be brought to a consumption when people learn to worship Him “in spirit and in truth.” And, and she could easily, Ah yes, that's the kind of thing I believe in. It’s really spiritual worship I believe in. And anyway, she says, it'll all become clear one day. Only she says it in the language of the time, “when the Messiah come.” It wasn't that she was looking for the Messiah, just the language of the time: One day, we'll know when the Messiah comes, we'll know. So I can put it off, can’t I?, stranger. Until the Messiah comes?
And then he looks into her eyes and says, “I am the Messiah. I am here.” Will you go with this man? And it looks as though she did. It looks as though she yielded. And she goes back to the town and she tells the villagers, presumably. Meaning that she to openly speak about those things they all knew, but she would never dream of speaking to them about: her lifestyle, her past. She says, I've met this one — can he be the Messiah. “I've met one who told me absolutely everything I ever did.”
Now you see, my friends, that's one of the, that's one of the hallmarks that God has done something new and real and lasting in your life when he knows everything you have ever done. And you know, he knows it. And you're so delivered from the shame and the guilt of it that in your, in your witness to others you’re, you're able to say, I discovered in Jesus Christ, somebody who knew everything I had ever done, but treated me like no one has ever done —with such tenderness and grace and relentless love. And, and there, out at the well, that I've been going to — you've watched me leave town when you've been going for your siesta — And out at that well on my own I've been there day after day, year after year. None of you has come with me. But I'm back here to tell you that the Savior is there. And he's promised me, and he's given me, living water that has begun to quench the deep thirst of my soul.
And isn't it interesting? Because unnecessary details in Bible stories are almost always there as little signals of something. But John just slips into this narrative that in this whole process, she left her water pot at the well. As a kind of symbol that she knew she would never thirst again. Now you know, as you look at this story, as you think about the wonderful way in which John weaves the story of Jesus into his gospel, you, you ought to ask the question: How is it that Jesus could take this woman's thirst away? Let me end with this question.
How did Jesus take this woman's thirst away? There is I think, one other occasion and the Gospel of John when we are told “It was about the noon hour”. And John tells us that about the noon hour as darkness covered the face of the earth, there came a cry that pierced the silence of Golgotha as Jesus cried out on the cross, bearing our need, carrying our sin. I thirst! And it's almost as though you've got to get to the end of the gospel to understand how Jesus was able to say to this woman, Are you thirsty? Because I will take your thirst away and give you rivers of living water so that you will never thirst again.
"I heard the voice of Jesus say, Behold, I freely give the living water, thirsty ones 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.”
Let’s come to him, and drink from him as we sing him number 304 as our closing phrase, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.
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