Sermon Transcript
The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here again 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 you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where our 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. And when he comes, he will tell us of all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. So the woman left her water jar and went away into the town and said to the people, Come, see the man who told me all that I ever did.
Can this be the Christ? And so they went out of the town and were coming to him. We’ve been in a series in the book of John looking at Jesus’ miracles. And specifically, we’ve investigated how Jesus’ miracles helped to put the world back together. His miracles were more than simply a display of power, and they were more than only evidence that he was divine. His miraculous works always helped to repair something that is broken, which tells us something about the nature of God and how he cares for
us. Because some of us may ask the question, with everything that’s wrong in the world, does God care? Will he do anything about all the problems? Maybe he’s that kind of God who just got the world spinning and left the scene. Maybe we don’t matter to him. But what we see with Jesus stepping into the world’s brokenness and repairing it is a God who will do something about it. A God who does care.
He hasn’t abandoned us. So whenever this doubt arises in our hearts, you know, we ask, does does our plight, does our struggle, does any of that matter to God? The answer is yes. We see that in the miracles and the ministry of Jesus. God has set right what has gone wrong. And it’s not just for the few people here and there who happen to be near Jesus 2,000 years ago.
The the big picture, the the whole biblical story is one day God will set every wrong right. Every single one. Every injustice, every pain, every heartbreak, everything lost will be found. God will even redeem the earth itself. Like the physical damage to creation, he’s going to put all of that back together.
That’s the conclusion of the big biblical story. All God’s people living in harmony with him, with each other, with creation, with everything. That’s our future in Christ. Miracles are a small window into what God will eventually do everywhere. That’s our series. That’s what we’ve been studying. So today we’re looking at a familiar account.
If you grew up in church, this is a very familiar account. It’s usually referred to as the woman at the well or the Samaritan woman, because the setting is that Jesus and his disciples were traveling from Judea to Galilee, and smack in the middle of those was Samaria. So going through the Samaria was the easiest, most common route between Judea and Galilee, or Judea.
However, sometimes Jewish people would take a longer route around just to avoid Samaria. Not not always, maybe not even often, but sometimes they would go way out of their way so they didn’t have to go there because there was so much disdain between Jewish people and Samaritans. And so we read that today and we’re like, well, why?
You know, if people hate each other, there must be a reason. Well, generations before Jesus’ time, the Jewish people in Samaria had mixed their faith with the pagan practices of the surrounding nations. They had even constructed their own temple, which they said was the real temple. And that temple in Samaria was such a scandal that a group of Jewish people went there to destroy it about 100, 150 years before Jesus’ time.
But the mountain where that temple was, it was still considered sacred by the Samaritans, and that’s what the woman in our text brings up. We worship on this mountain. But the point is, the Jewish people in Jerusalem, Judea, they not only looked down on the Samaritans, not only considered them excluded from the promises of God, they hated them.
Jews hated the Samaritans. And the feeling was mutual. Samaritans had just as much animosity toward the people in Jerusalem. I mean, these were the two kind of groups who would really rather never see each other ever again. So if you were reading John for the first time and you get to this chapter where Jesus and his disciples walk through Samaria as Jewish men, you might kind of wonder what’s about to happen.
I mean, imagine reading this for the first time in 90 AD, and the only things you know about Jesus are what John has written in the first couple chapters of his biography, but you were very aware of Jewish and Samaritan tensions, and now Jesus and his Jewish disciples have entered Samaria. I mean, is this a rival gang coming for a fight?
Who knows what’s about to happen? Well, here’s what happens. Jesus and his crew arrive in the heat of the day, the sixth hour, which is about noon. Jesus sits down by a well, at which point a woman approaches. This woman and Jesus, they have never met. He would have no way of knowing anything specific about her life, but it is obvious she’s a Samaritan.
And then Jesus asked her for a drink out of the well, which surprises her. She replies, you’re Jewish. I’m a Samaritan. In case you haven’t heard, we don’t have anything to do with each other. Why would you ask me for a drink? Maybe even aren’t you afraid that I would poison it? Tensions between Jews and Samaritans are that hot.
But Jesus begins a dialogue with her, one that we need for him to begin with us. So we’re going to study their interchange today, which includes a miracle, of course. And as we look at this passage, we will see her situation, Jesus’ offer, and then her restoration. Her situation, Jesus’ offer, her restoration.
So first, her situation is she’s an outcast. She’s an outcast from her community. Pretty much all commentators agree the only reason she would go up to the well in the heat of the day is because she didn’t want to see anyone there. The typical pattern would be for people to go up to the well in the morning or the evening.
That’s when they would water their animals, get water for themselves for the day or for the night. People didn’t go in the middle of the day. In the middle of the day, they’d lay low until it was cooler. So it’s already odd that she’s there. But it’s even more odd that she’s alone. Because women didn’t typically go to the well by themselves.
They would almost always go as a group. It made them less vulnerable for one thing, you know, safety in numbers. But drawing water was also a fair amount of labor. So the women would team up, share the load. But this woman comes to the well at the hottest point in the day alone. The very strong presumption is she didn’t want to face other people from her community.
She didn’t want to be part of the group of women who went to the well in the morning or the evening. It seems like an intentional choice on her part to avoid people. She seems to have chosen isolation. It’s a fair assumption. And Jesus could have probably assumed the same thing. He could have known some basics about this woman just from the fact she was there, it was she was alone, and it was hot.
However, there would be no way for him to know the specifics of why she was isolating herself. Why go to the well in the middle of the day? Why avoid people? There’d be no way to know that as just a stranger in town. But Jesus knows. He knows particular details about her life that could have only come through miraculous divine kind of knowledge.
Jesus knows she has had five husbands and the man she is now living with is not her husband. He couldn’t have known that just by walking through town. And this woman says so. When Jesus tells her the details about her life, she says, oh, you must be a prophet. She realizes Jesus must have access to some kind of supernatural capabilities. And that’s the miracle in this passage.
It’s his omniscience. She was unprepared that some stranger at the well would know all about her. Even though everybody in town probably knew all about her. That’s why she’s avoiding them. There’s no way this stranger could know. But Jesus brings it up. He brings up what is most sensitive about her life.
It was probably a source of shame for her. She’s probably gone, she’s probably going to the well alone because she has experienced so much rejection, or there was so much gossip about her, or she didn’t want to answer any more questions. She didn’t want people to look at her how they always look at her.
The five husbands and now the new man, probably the reason she was isolating herself. Even though we don’t know the specific circumstances of why she’d been connected to so many men, I mean, how how do you end up with five husbands? Maybe they all died. Maybe she was unfaithful to all of them. Who knows?
We don’t know. But kind of regardless of the circumstances, if she’s had five husbands, she’s been through a lot. No one envisions getting married five times. Everyone assumes on their wedding day, this is like, this is for life. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have tied the knot in the first place. I mean, we assume this is our happily ever after when we get married.
But that assumed story was not this woman’s story. Hers was one of at least heartache, probably unfaithfulness. Be very uncommon for a woman to live with a man in that time if they weren’t married, but it’s certainly of being with guy after guy after guy. And it has led to her being isolated from her community.
Apparently, she’d rather be alone and lonely than with her town. Probably because of how she feels about herself when she’s around those people. That is her story. It’s sensitive. It’s personal. Jesus brings it up to her, miraculously. Do you know that Jesus knows your story? Whatever you don’t like talking about, he already knows.
Whatever would cause you to be rejected by everyone else, he knows. The decision you wish you could undo, the family situation you hope nobody asks about, that relationship that fell apart. How you look confident on the outside, but you feel so insecure on the inside. The reason you stay so busy is because you feel so empty.
You know, can’t slow down or you’ll just feel your unworthiness. Got to stay busy all the time. Maybe you have fear that people will find out who they think you are isn’t who you actually are. All your failures, all your coverups, Jesus knows it. And with this woman, Jesus tells her that he knows all of that.
The most sensitive part of her life that she would rather keep in the dark, he brings it into the light. He doesn’t dance around it. He accentuates it. He probes into this painful part of her heart that I’m sure she’d rather ignore. Jesus says, you’ve had five husbands and the new guy isn’t a husband, is he?
He doesn’t sugarcoat it. He rips the band-aid off. How does she respond to that? How would you respond to that? Does she did she appreciate this knowledge? She could say, oh, I see you’re a prophet. Tell me more about my life. I could use some counseling. She tries to change the subject. She says, I see you’re a prophet.
You Jews say we need to worship in Jerusalem, but Samaritans say we should worship on our mountain, you know, where our temple was before you guys destroyed it. Remember that? Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about anything except my life. She wants to sidestep this probing. Do you ever feel yourself doing that?
Is there something Jesus keeps bringing up to you, but you keep avoiding him? Is there a still small voice in your heart that you try to push away, silence, change the subject? Or where do you feel yourself being extra defensive if somebody asks you about it? Is it with your relationships, like this woman?
Is it your anger, drinking, amount of time you spend at work, amount of time you spend on your phone? Maybe you’re unwilling to apologize for someone or to someone that you know that you’ve hurt. You know you’re wrong, you just can’t bring yourself to go apologize and own it. Or maybe you’re the other side, you’re unwilling to forgive. And then whenever the topic of forgiveness comes up, you feel yourself tightening up because you know you should forgive, but you don’t want to deal with that right
now. What could Jesus or anyone bring up to you that you would quickly try to change the subject? Is there something you avoid praying about because you already know what the answer is? There will come a day, like Jesus did with this woman, where he will not let it stay in the dark. He will not let you avoid the subject.
He will press the issue. But unlike some people who may bring up the same thing to you, when Jesus brings it up, he does so without a shred of condemnation. Not a drop of shame in how he brings it up with this woman. Which brings us to our second point. Jesus’ offer is himself, which is living water.
For this woman, when the subject of her men came up, she must have been accustomed to snide comments, guilt trips, lectures, shame. If people knew her, they rejected her. But Jesus, unlike, you know, anyone else who might have pushed her away, Jesus brings it up and invites her in. He invites her to himself. And he does so using a metaphor about the well and water.
So here’s the here’s the setup for the metaphor. As we know, it seems she’s been thirsting for something her entire life. And what and, you know, looking for something in the arms of various men. Acceptance, security, something. But she’s never found it. In fact, it seems like the more she went down the road with these various men, the worse life got.
At some point in her past, she would have been part of the group of the women who went to the well. She hadn’t always been estranged from her community. It didn’t start off that way, but somewhere along the line, she started avoiding others. And now she’s at the point where she’s getting water alone in the middle of the day.
Her life has disintegrated. So not only did these, you know, men not quench her thirst, they actually made it worse. Every step down the road, she became more and more isolated. She’s parched spiritually, relationally, emotionally. So Jesus looks at the well and he says, whoever gets water from this well will thirst again.
Just like she’s gone from man to man to man trying to fill her soul and it didn’t work. They weren’t the answer. He says, you need a well that isn’t going to leave you more empty. You need real water. I’m the real water. That’s the metaphor. Now, the metaphor can only go so far because drinking from this literal well wasn’t hurting her.
It wasn’t diminishing her life, whereas being with all these men somehow had diminished her life. So the metaphor, you know, has limits, but that’s the image. And Jesus tells her that. He says, I know your life is empty, basically. And then he invites her to himself, to the true well, to living water.
He’s basically saying, underneath all your searching, underneath clinging to this guy and that guy, underneath all of that was actually a search for me. He tells her, I’m the Messiah. I’m your savior. I’m the well that never runs dry. I’m the end of your search. He’s very straightforward with her about who he is. And he is rarely that straightforward with others.
When people ask Jesus, you know, are you the Messiah? He would turn the question around on them. He says, what do you think? Who do you say I am? John the Baptist’s disciples asked him, are you the one that we’ve been waiting for? And Jesus says, well, look at what I’m doing. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, good news preached to the poor.
What do you think? Who do you think I am? He often doesn’t come right out and say, I’m the guy. But he does with her. He opens the door to himself for her. And then he goes even further. He says, not only do you have access to me, not only am I, you know, not going to shun you, you are the very kind of person that God is seeking.
He says, starting in verse 21, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You, probably meaning Samaritans, worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
The implication, if you track who is worshiping through this passage, Jesus says one, she will worship the Father, not in Samaria or in Jerusalem. So implication then two, she is who will worship in spirit and in truth. And then finally, therefore, she is who the Father’s looking for. This is way better than, you know, having access to God if she happened to make it up to the mountain to get to him.
Jesus says, God himself is seeking her, chasing after her. Quite literally in her case. Jesus came to the well to see her. He is seeking her. God came to her, to her town, to her well. God’s after her to bring her in. Even though she’s not in with anyone else, she could be in with God. Even though she was an outcast to everyone else, she could be included with God.
That sounds nice, but we may want to ask why. Why her? What makes her special? It’s not explained in this passage, but Jesus answers that question quite clearly elsewhere. Jesus says his people are the ones who know that they are needy, who are desperate and admit it, who know they are messed up. That’s his people.
It’s not the holy people, it’s the humble people. The people who know they have need. He says, this is Mark 2:17 for instance, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, the holy people, the saints, but the sinners. I’ve come for them. This woman has the only thing anyone needs in order to become a Christian, which is need.
All you need for Jesus to receive you is need. All you need is to be empty. But the second that we claim that we have any, we’ll say spiritual self-sufficiency, whenever we say, Well, God should answer my prayer because, you know, look at all I’ve done for him. Or, God, don’t I deserve to be blessed?
Whenever we go to God and try to show him him our resume, you know, so maybe he can quid pro quo, do something for us. Any spiritual self-sufficiency we have excludes us from Jesus. We have to come with need, offering nothing, to be healed, to find him, to be included. It’s it’s imagine it’s a little like, if you have some kind of illness that is curable, like we have the medicine, we know to how to handle whatever’s going wrong. But then when you go to the doctor and you see the test results that
indicate something is wrong in your body, then you spend the whole appointment trying to explain to the doctor how healthy you are. You justify the pain you’ve experienced. You disagree with the test results. You do everything you can to convince the doctor you’re healthy. And then you leave the appointment feeling pretty good about yourself.
That doctor can do nothing for you. You will not be healed. But the person who comes to the doctor and says, Doctor, I need I need whatever you’re offering. I’m desperate. I have this pain. I see the results. I know I’m not healthy. Help. That person will be healed. But the other person won’t. Our biggest spiritual problem is not that we have too much brokenness for Jesus.
Our problem is that we are not, you know, too broken to be forgiven or restored. Too broken for God to care about us. Brokenness is not our problem. Our biggest spiritual problem is when we try to prove that we’re not broken. We refuse to admit that we’re sick. We try to make a case that we can earn something with God or we deserve something from him.
But as long as we do that, we’ll never belong to him. We either come empty, desperate, bankrupt, or we may as well not come. It’d be like going to the doctor refusing to admit that you’re sick. I mean, that’s pointless. Just don’t go to the doctor. Save yourself a minute. This woman knows she’s sick.
She knows she’s empty. She knows going from man to man to man hasn’t worked. She knows there’s no life there. She’s desperate, so she was well-primed for Jesus. And when she hears Jesus say, I know all about you, and I’m inviting you in. In fact, the Father is looking for people just like you. He’s looking for the empty.
He’s looking for the desperate. You know, rather than her past being a barrier between her and God, her past has formed her into the kind of person that God will embrace. And when she heard that, it’s living water. Her thirst was quenched. Symbolically, she leaves her water her her water jar there, because she doesn’t need that anymore, and she runs into the city, right?
Brings us to our last point, her restoration. And she was made whole. She runs toward the very people she’d been trying to avoid, toward them. And she says, I’ve met someone who told me everything I’ve ever done. And the town might have replied, Everyone knows everything you’ve ever done. Like, that’s at least in our town they know.
Like, everyone knows your story. That’s like the reason that we don’t hang out. And she would have said, No, you don’t understand. I found acceptance. I found love. I’m cherished. Really and truly, I’m full. I’m no longer empty or desperate. And they would have instantly known something was very different about her. Because she wasn’t hiding.
She wasn’t justifying. She wasn’t trying to spin her story. She she basically freely admits everything she’s ever done. But probably unlike before, now when she’s talking about her story, she seems whole. Talking about her story wasn’t emptying her anymore. It didn’t she wasn’t, you know, trying to elude shame or, you know, living in denial.
She was talking about her story with confidence, knowing even with her story, she is loved. And the town would have thought, How’s that possible? To which the woman responds basically, Well, come and see. I’ve found the Messiah. Jesus put her back together. His omniscience and acceptance led to her healing. Internal brokenness repaired, and she’s reconnected to community.
She wasn’t hiding. She wasn’t isolating. She was made whole. If you want Jesus to do that in your life, he will likely start in the sensitive, hidden places of your soul. The things you don’t want to talk about, the things you hope no one knows. Jesus will start there. It’ll be uncomfortable. But he’ll tell you the same thing he told this woman.
I know your story. I know what you’ve done. I know what’s been done to you. I know the things you hide from everybody else, and I’m inviting you to come to me. I’m offering you living water. He won’t gloss over your past. He won’t act like your failings are no big deal. He won’t call wrongs right. He didn’t do that with this woman.
He’ll say something better. He’ll say that he paid for all your wrongs. That on the cross, he took the judgment, the exclusion, the rejection that our sin deserves. He was he was cut off from his community, cut off from God so that we could be brought near. He bore our shame so that we could be welcomed.
He was treated as an outcast so outcasts like us could come home. He paid for our failings. Which should make it a whole lot easier to admit our failings. I mean, if somebody came to you today and said, I’ll pay for all your financial debts, no matter how big, you would suddenly remember all your debts. And you would put them on the table.
You wouldn’t try to hide any of it if it’s going to be paid for. Or you don’t hide your illness if you know there’s a cure. This woman came to the well carrying a story she probably wanted to forget. But she left that well knowing even with her troubled history, she was accepted, because Jesus had accepted her.
She didn’t need to hide from her story anymore. She could own it, but own it knowing she’s accepted. That’s living water. He is the well that never runs dry. Don’t hide your mess from him. Let him speak to you about it, and you will find this healing. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for your goodness.
Thank you for your acceptance of us. Even when we deserve to be outcasts, Lord, you come seeking us. May we lay down our pride, admit that we need you, admit that anywhere else we’ve looked for living water has turned out to let us down. But you never will. Let us receive you, Lord. Pray those things in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
