Living water, in a spiritual desert (4:3-42)

Eavesdropping on Jesus's conversation with the woman is fascinating! His weariness speaks of His humanity, though as we shall see, He was about to reveal His divinity to the Samaritan more directly than He had done to any of the Jews.  This passage fits John’s overall narrative purpose perfectly. He records the Samaritan woman’s conversion, “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that believing you may have life in His Name”

Jesus starts by humbling Himself to ask for the most basic of needs - water. He does this, knowing it will provoke her curiosity.  He has made no attempt to move away and give her space, but rather, crosses all the cultural barriers to engage her.   Jewish rabbis believed that talking to a woman, even your own wife, was a waste of good time   that could have been better spent studying Torah! And a Samaritan woman was even worse!

There are numerous clues in the account, that suggest this woman was not the most respectable.  The disciples were astonished that Jesus was talking with her, and thought she must have an ulterior motive (v27). She was alone at the well in the midday sun, when they obviously hadn’t expected anyone to be around.  When she went back to town, it was the men she spoke to, not the women. It was the possibility of hearing more of her ‘colourful’ backstory that drew them to see for themselves.  Some say that she was maybe just someone who had been extremely unfortunate to have married five men, each of whom then died or divorced her. Maybe her marriages were ‘Levirate’ marriages - marriage to a brother of your previous husband, so that you could have a child to inherit his land (Matt 22:23-28). But in general the rabbis disapproved of more than three marriages under any circumstances.  So this scenario seems unlikely.

When Jesus sent out the Twelve on mission, He told them not to go to the Gentiles or Samaritans (Matt 10:5)..  To the Syro-Phoenician woman (Matt 15:21-28), He says He has only been sent to the lost sheep of the tribe of Israel. But here He seems to apply a different logic   In other words He accepts that this Samaritan woman is a child of Jacob - as she later claims (vs 12).

Having provoked her curiosity, He invites her to think about who He really is.  “If you only knew who is speaking with you, and how generous God is, you would have asked Me, and. I would have given you living water!”   Living water meant flowing water in a stream, or bubbling water from a spring.  Water that wasn’t stagnant and dead. Fresh from the spring, not from a well or cistern.

Like Nicodemus, she fails to see beyond the metaphor.  The Greek word for ‘living’ relates to spiritual life - not just bodily or soul life.  Jacob’s well was known to be able to meet a whole tribe’s needs: but it was very deep and Jesus had nothing to hold the water.  Did He perhaps know of a surface spring nearby? Did He know something Jacob didn’t?  But Jesus is in fact offering her the gift of the Spirit.

Jeremiah prophesied, “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns - broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jer 2:13).  And later, at the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus cried out,  ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ - He was speaking of the Spirit.” (John 8:37-39:). That ceremony celebrated the Presence of God with Israel during the Exodus, when a miracle-rock which gushed water, followed the Israelites wherever they went in the desert. The Samaritans would have been well aware of this scripture.  Paul says that that ‘Rock’ was in fact Christ (1 Cor 10:4).  In Samaritan liturgy, it is said of the Taleb that ‘water shall flow from His buckets' (Num 24:7, Balaam’s third prophecy).

Jesus tells her that the water He gives, becomes a spring within the individual: they will never ever need to drink again - in fact, there will be an outflow of living water to others too.  One can sense the beginnings of faith, the woman’s incredulity gradually being overtaken by hope.  She will never need to come and fetch water again! She will never be thirsty again!  Jesus had said that all she needed to do was to ask! So she asked …  This would have been, to her, the ultimate prosperity gospel.  But Jesus is about to pop the balloon!

‘Go, bring your husband and come back.’ Jesus’'s requirement for giving the Spirit, was that she fetch her husband.  He required that she walk in the light. And he would not give her the living water unless she brought her man.  Her heart must have sunk, as she glumly stated, “I have no husband”. She did have a man, but not a husband.  The price of this free gift, is confession and repentance.  Jesus, as He often does, goes straight to the heart of the matter.

The woman’s reply is the truth - but not the whole truth!  Jesus, with utter graciousness, compliments her on her truthfulness - before uncovering the unconfessed sin.  He will not countenance Pharisaic hypocrisy.  He gives her what we would call a ‘word of knowledge’ - in His case, the fruit of His omniscience.  Here is another proof of His divinity.

Seen in the light of omniscience, hypocrisy is sheer folly.  Jesus can see every dark secret of our hearts, and what we whisper in private will one day be shouted from the housetops.  If we don’t walk in the light, or pretend we don’t sin and have never sinned, we deceive only ourselves  - and maybe, some of the people, some of the time (1John 1:5-10).   But not God.  We cannot have fellowship with Him without walking in the light.

What does it mean to you, to know that Jesus knows you inside out?  If her past was as we suppose, she would have spent enormous mental energy hiding the truth about herself.
Hiding why her husbands divorced her. Hiding her relationships with other men. Hiding from stigma from other women. Hiding even from herself, from realising her own sinfulness.  Knowing that she was fully known and yet accepted - and by a Jewish rabbi at that - would have powerfully conveyed acceptance in place of rejection, welcome instead of exclusion.

Tim Keller writes, “To be loved but not known is comforting, but superficial.  To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.  It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense,  humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us".

The Samaritan doesn’t seem to have been fazed or frightened, but rather, she focusses on what Jesus’s knowledge of her past says about Him. The secrets of her heart being disclosed, she is forced to acknowledge the presence of a prophet (1Cor 14:24,25).  But she is not yet ready to acknowledge Jesus as The Prophet, the Taleb of Samaritan hopes.

Her subsequent question about where one should worship, is telling:  ‘our fathers’ refers back about 150 years to when the Gerizim Temple was destroyed by John Hyrcanus.  The whole debate between Jews & Samaritans about where the Temple should be sited, turned on a single verse and whether it says God has chosen, or will choose, somewhere as the Temple site (Deut 12:5)!  Abram’s first altar was in Shechem (Gen 12:6-7) and Mt Gerizim was where blessings were shouted over Israel, on entering the Promised Land.
So there were reasons to believe the Samaritan Pentateuch, which specified Gerizim as the site.  A charitable view is that she was genuinely asking Jesus how she should worship God.  But more likely, she was trying to divert the conversation off her personal life,  thinking that a rabbi would not pass up the opportunity to engage in theological controversy.

Once again, Jesus will not be deflected. He challenges her about true worship.

The hour of His death is only three years away; and forty years later, the Jews’ Temple will be destroyed too.  He Himself will become the new Temple - the way into the Presence of God.  Worship cannot be limited to a single, central sanctuary, or to certain ‘portals’. ‘The earth will be full of the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh as the waters cover the sea' (Hab 2:14).  The new Jerusalem will have no temple, ‘because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple’ (Rev 21:22).

Jesus characterises God as ‘the Father’, thereby underlining the need for a relationship with Him.  The Samaritans put great emphasis on God being spirit: their alterations to the Torah seem to be focussed on removing anthropomorphisms.  And as Jesus has just taught Nicodemus, one cannot see the Spirit, only observe His effects.  So the Samaritans’ knowledge of God was limited to the numinous, as it is for many today.  And yet, they seem to have been in eager expectation of Messiah just as Israel was.   Although they held only to the Torah, they also believed in the resurrection.

The Jewish knowledge of God was far greater, containing all the prophecies of Messiah, and all the prophetic writings.  Far from ducking the issue of religious jealousy, Jesus asserts that ‘salvation is of the Jews’.  This may not have been as ‘in your face’ as it sounds. The Samaritan Pentateuch, like the Jewish Torah, acknowledged that Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah (Gen 49:10).  (And yet, Jesus repeatedly tells the Jews that they do not know God (5:42, 8:19, 8:54-55). The stream of revelation flows through Judaea not Samaria; but is not exclusively to Jews.)

In sending His Son to be the sacrifice for our sins, and to be the antitype of the Temple, the Father is looking for a new kind of worshipper - who will worship Him in spirit and truth, for He is Spirit.  God is Spirit, just as He is Light, and He is Love.  This means not just that He is incorporeal, invisible - but also that He is omnipresent, and life-giving; and unknowable except through our spirit (3:8, 1Cor 2:9-11).  We must know Him through our spirits, not just through our souls and bodies.

What does this mean for our worship today?

Hymns, ritual, vestments, posture - all can help, if handled rightly.  Actions are as much part of our worship, as anything we do in church.  But ultimately we must not rely on anything we do or say or sing, as being true worship.  “We are the (true) circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ, Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” Phil 3:3.  What type of service is best for a particular congregation, should be decided by how effective it is in turning the worshipper’s attention away from the service itself, to God.  Not by whether it is happy-clappy or silent, liturgical or congregational, emotional or intellectual, etc.

C S Lewis wrote, “As long as you notice, and have to count the steps, you are not yet dancing, but only learning to dance.  A good shoe is a shoe you don't notice.  Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one, we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.”

While we understand with our reason, we know truth through our spirit.  For example, when I first came to faith I could not understand what it meant, that God was Spirit. But once the Holy Spirit had revealed it to me, my intellectual struggling ceased.  Spirit and truth go hand in hand: Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth.   So worship in spirit will always be worship in truth.

Jesus is The Truth. By His Spirit the Father has uttered His Last Word; Jesus is the ultimate and complete revelation of God’s father-heart.  In the Tabernacle, after offering a lamb on the altar, the priests had to wash in the laver before entering the Holy Place.  There they would pray at the altar of incense, with the light of the menorah and beside the ‘bread of the Presence’, before stepping through the veil into the Holy of Holies.  Every aspect speaks of how we should come into God's Presence to worship, and every aspect speaks of Christ.  He is the Lamb, the Laver, the Bread, the Light, the Incense, the Veil, and the ‘Mercy Seat’, where the Law is covered over with His blood and ‘hides all our transgressions from view’.

True worship must be truthful. We must come without pretence - with hearts open to God, knowing that He already knows us inside out: not trying to hide from Him, because of unconfessed sin.

We must worship on the basis of biblical truth, not church traditions.  Jesus said of the Pharisees, with their focus on ritual washing, and on the oral Law rather than the written Torah, “These people draw near to me with their mouths, and honour me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.  And in vain, they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” (Matt 15:8-9, Isa 29:13ff).

So the worshippers God seeks, will worship Him out of the fullness of the supernatural life they enjoy; and on the basis of God’s incarnate self-expression (Jesus), through whom God’s Person and will are finally and ultimately disclosed.

The woman tries to postpone a commitment and end the conversation tactfully. by pleading ignorance.  She states the Samaritan expectation that the Taleb, being primarily a prophet, would also be a teacher  who could explain everything in a way she could understand.  Jesus sidesteps this fob-off with a stunning assertion that He is the Messiah!  This tired, dusty, hungry, thirsty traveller standing before her, claims to be her long-hoped-for Taleb.  Although most modern translations quote Jesus as saying, 'I am He', or, 'I am the Messiah’, in fact the Greek just says, ‘I am’.

What's the significance of Jesus saying, 'I AM'?

‘I AM’ in Hebrew is the word ‘Yahweh’ (often pronounced as Jehovah).  This was the name by which Almighty God had revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush - His personal Name for all eternity (Ex 3:13-15).  I AM’, or its fuller version, ‘I AM I AM’, expresses the self-existence and eternity of God. He is not named by anyone else, but names Himself. He is not dependent on time or space, or contained by them.  He was in the beginning, is, and will be, beyond all ages. He is the eternal one, the Alpha and the Omega.

The Jews held this Name in such awe, that they would never say it, for fear of ‘taking it in vain’. Instead they referred to Him as HaShem, the Name; or Adonai, Lord or Master.  For any human being to say ‘I AM’ was held to be utter blasphemy, likely to lead to annihilation by God (Ex 20:7).  That was why, in the Garden of Gethsemane, the soldiers fell on their faces when Jesus said, ‘I AM’.

It is hard for us, in egalitarian Western cultures, to relate to this awe of a name.  (In the Harry Potter books, the evil Lord Voldemort is spoken of as ‘He who must not be named’.
And as Dumbledore explains to Harry, the fear of the name engenders fear of the person.).  Old Testament writers remind us regularly that ‘the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom’ (Prov 1:7, 9:10, Ps 19:9)

The very fact that we still today don’t know how to pronounce God’s personal Name properly, is part of the mystery.  In Hebrew thought, one’s name expressed one’s character, the essence of one’s being that was knowable by others:   Knowing a god’s name gave a person power and authority to speak ‘in their name’.

In Philippians, Paul tells us that Jesus has been given ‘the name which is above every name’, that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord.   His Hebrew name, Yeshua, an updated version of the name Joshua, means ‘Yahweh is salvation’. And it is the authority of that Name that we use, every time we pray in the Name of Jesus.

Jesus is recorded as saying ‘I am’, fourteen times in John’s Gospel: Seven of them are purely 'I AM': direct claims to being Yahweh (See 4:26; 6:20; 8:24,28,58; 13:19; 18:5,6).  But seven others combine the divine name with an aspect of who He is, to us.

- the Bread of Life (6:35)
- the Light of the world (8:12;9:5)
- the Door of the sheepfold (10:7,9)
- the Good Shepherd (10:11,14)
- the Resurrection and the Life (11:25)
- the Way, the Truth, and the Life (14:6)
- the True Vine (15:1,5)

We will look at each of these names in more detail, when we get to them.  But for now, let it sink in: Jesus is God Incarnate, God with you, God for you.

It is curious that the disciples, on arriving back, don’t ask any questions - though they are very surprised.  Perhaps they saw the look on the woman’s face as she takes in the implication of what she has just heard.  The woman hurries off to tell her friends, so stunned by what Jesus has said that she forgets her water jar! Her testimony is that Jesus knows all about her 'colourful' past, and yet offered her eternal life.

But Jesus too is energised by what has just transpired. His disciples arrive back with lunch, and urge Him to eat. instead, He starts to teach them about His relationship with the Father, and the joy He finds in doing His Father's will.  This is the first of many teachings John records, about His relationship to the Father (5:19-20; 5:36; 6:38; 9:4; 10:25).

As a boy, his earthly father would hold one end of the saw, and he the other, as they together cut through beams. Or Joseph would show Him how to do something, then watch as his son finished it off. In a similar way, His heavenly Father showed Him what to do, and gave Him works to finish. Just as Jesus had watched Joseph his earthly father in his carpentry workshop, and learnt from him exactly how to form a mortice-and-tenon joint, so too He watched His heavenly Father, copying Him exactly in every detail.

Jesus says that His secret superfuel is to do the will of His Father, and to complete His work. ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God’ (Deut 8:3). Moses’s saying was more true in Jesus’s life, than it ever had been before. Jesus was nourished, not just by reading the word of God, but by obeying it completely. In Gethsemane He prayed, “I have glorified You on earth. I have finished the work which you gave Me to do” (John 17:4). And on the Cross, He could cry out, “It is finished!”

There is a challenge here for thus of us who are flagging, to fulfil the ministries the Lord has given us (Col 4:17). We may make the excuse that the time isn’t yet right to harvest, and certainly most Judaeans would have held that witnessing in Samaria was a waste of time. But no sooner had the woman gone back to town with her breathtaking question “Could this be the Christ?”, than the local men began flocking down the hill towards the well. The hillside was white with their robes. We need spiritual vision, to see the harvest ready for reaping however hard the place we live in.

Whilst it may be true that we often do not see the harvest that comes from our sowing, but another person leads that individual to Christ, ultimately there will be joy in heaven which both sower and reaper will share. And whilst one may plant and another water, it is always God who gives the increase (1Cor 3:6-9).

When Jesus set His disciples baptising (4:1,2), John the Baptist had laboured beforehand to bring the message of repentance. He had done the hard work, and they had reaped what they had not sown (v38). Now Jesus has been at work before them: He has planted the seed through the woman’s testimony, and they are about to reap. Jesus trained His disciples to look for the 'people of peace', wherever they went (Lk 10:1-10). We could paraphrase this as, "Look for the people in whom God is already at work'. We may plant, water, or reap - but it's always God who 'gives the increase'. This frees us from thinking it's all down to us, whether someone goes to heaven or hell. which can sometimes lead to high-pressure salesmanship!

Samaritans would often give Jewish travellers a hard time (Lk 9:51-56). But now, through the woman’s testimony, they pressed Jesus to stay. No doubt whoever hosted them would have experienced Jesus’s shalom peace (Matt 10:11-13). There would have been deep, meaningful conversations late into the night. Many came to personal faith that Jesus was indeed the Anointed One, Messiah or Taleb; and that His teachings were not just for Jews and Galileans, but for Samaritans too. He was the Saviour of the whole world. His own (the Judaeans) had ‘received Him not (1:11), but now anyone who would receive Him, was given the right to become children of God (1:12).

Though the other gospels record Jesus's parable about a good Samaritan, John is the only one who records His ministry in Samaria. Having initially told His disciples not to go to any city of the Samaritans, but only to Jews, Jesus later tells them to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, and unto the ends of the earth (Matt 28:19,20).

His stay there, laid the groundwork for revival to break out a few years later, when Philip preached there (Acts 8:4-8). Jesus’s Name and its power, eclipsed a famous local sorcerer, such that even he believed (Acts 8:9-13). Peter and John were sent to release the baptism of the Spirit there, and on their way home, preached the gospel in many Samaritan villages (Acts 8:25).

Lessons in evangelism, from this story and Jesus's dealings with Nicodemus

How do you respond, when someone asks you about Jesus?

The way Jesus talks to Nicodemus, suggests we should:-

● Recognise the unvoiced question the enquirer is really asking
● Adapt our approach to their worldview, but without flattering or seeking to please them
● Emphasise the need to be born again, a radical new beginning
● Don’t be put off by ridicule or skepticism
● Use your own experience, your ‘eye-witness’ testimony: it carries weight
● Explain that faith is more than simple belief: it means coming under Jesus’s Lordship
● Focus on Jesus’ uniqueness, not as man become god, but God become Man:
● And therefore, He is the only eye-witness we have, about heaven and the afterlife
● Explain that we needn’t hide from God’s holiness, or be put off by others’ hypocrisy

Ultimately the biggest question Jesus asks of us, is, “Who do you say that I am?” Our answer decides our eternal destiny: the wrath of God, or eternal life. We don’t have to be perfect, just to be honest with God about our sins. The blood of Jesus is ‘a life for a life’, and cleanses us completely. Jesus took all our shame on Himself, at the Cross

From John the Baptist, we can learn:-

● Always make it about Jesus, never about ourselves
● Find joy and fulfilment in bringing others to Jesus, then getting out of their way
● Assert Jesus’s divinity, and His intimate knowledge of God
● Seek a specific commitment to believe

In Jesus's encounter with the woman at the well, we see that:-

● He takes a seemingly-random opportunity, to engage her
● He is not blinded to her need, by the prejudices of the time
● He uses His own need, to provoke her curiosity
● He confronts her sinfulness, but with grace and gentleness
● He re-purposes her sidetracking into religious issues, to teach her about true worship
● He won’t be fobbed off, but by saying ‘I AM’, pushes for a decision from her