10 Living Water: The Woman at the Well, Part 1 (John 4)

Welcome back to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is tenth talk in our series on the Gospel of John. And this is the first of two podcasts where we will study John chapter 4. Thanks for listening. For those of you who are just joining us, let me review how we got to this place in the Gospel of John. This is a big picture study. We are tackling entire chapters at a time and we're looking at the big themes and overarching structure of the book. I've argued that John's primary concern in this Gospel is belief. His fundamental thesis statement is those who believe the testimony that Jesus is the Christ will receive eternal life. John has been exploring issues surrounding belief, testimony, and the necessity of being born again. So he's been dealing with questions like these. Why does it matter what we believe about Jesus? What reasons do we have to believe that Jesus is the Messiah? Why should we believe what we haven't seen for ourselves? And why do some people believe this message while others reject it? Author John began his account with the testimony of John the Baptist. God told John the Baptist how he would recognize the Messiah, and John testifies when he baptized Jesus, he saw those signs. Author John then introduced us to the signs Jesus himself performed that testify to the fact that he is the Messiah. He told us how Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, and how Jesus claimed authority to cleanse the temple of the money changers. John explored the nature of belief and unbelief through the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus, and there John introduced the concept of being born from above by the Spirit. Last week, author John gave us a second testimony from John the Baptist. When Prophet John's disciples become jealous of the numbers following Jesus, Prophet John assures them this is not cause for resentment, this is cause for joy. He again testifies that Jesus is the Messiah and that he, Prophet John, is content in the role that God gave him. Today we're going to look at chapter four, and in this chapter we're going to meet two new converts, a Samaritan woman and a Jewish Galilean man. We're going to spend two weeks on this chapter, and we're not going to go through it sequentially verse by verse. I'm going to skip through it, pulling out the themes. So if you're not familiar with the stories in this chapter, you might want to pause the podcast, read through it to familiarize yourself, and then come back and join us. First, John gives us the setting. This is the first four verses of the chapter. 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. If you look at a map of New Testament Israel, Judea is in the south, that's where Jerusalem is, Galilee is in the north, and in between them is this region of Samaria. Both Judea and Galilee were Jewish territory, but Samaria was not. Jews who wanted to travel from Judea to Galilee could either bypass Samaria by crossing the Jordan to the east and then traveling along it up to Galilee, or they could take the more direct straight route through Samaria. Samaria was the region surrounding the city of Samaria, which included the tribal regions of Manasseh and Ephraim. The name Samaria is sometimes synonymous with the entire northern kingdom, you see that in the Old Testament, but by the time of Christ it referred to this region above Judea and below Galilee. After Solomon's death, the nation of Israel split into civil war, ten tribes united around one of Solomon's sons and called themselves Israel, they made Samaria their capital city. Two southern tribes became known as Judah and they kept Jerusalem as their capital. When the Assyrians defeated the Northern Kingdom or Samaria in 722 BC, they deported many of the Jews that were living there to other lands, and at the same time they imported many Gentiles from other lands they conquered, and this mixed race became known as the Samaritans. The Jews and Samaritans did not get along for various religious reasons and racial reasons. By the time of Jesus there was a history of bad blood between them and the Jews considered the Samaritans unclean. Nevertheless, Jesus elected to take the direct route through Samaria. We're going to go on to John four nine. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sikar, 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. 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 had no dealings with Samaritans. Well this is the only place in Scripture that mentions Jacob's well. However, Genesis thirty three records that Jacob bought land in this area and lived there for a long time. He would have required a well, so it's perfectly reasonable that he dug one. Apparently the history of the well was common knowledge at the time, John doesn't remark on it. The sixth hour is noon. Jesus remained at the well while his disciples went into the city to buy food. Customarily travelers carried a goatskin bag to collect water. Jesus didn't appear to have one with him, so it was probably with the disciples. Most women went in groups to draw water from the well in the cooler parts of the day. The fact that this woman is there alone in the heat of the day signifies that she is socially isolated. When the Samaritan woman approaches the well, Jesus starts a conversation with her, which is quite a striking thing to do. There are many reasons he should have ignored her. First, she's a Samaritan and he's a Jew. But second, she's not just a Samaritan, she's a female Samaritan, and third, she's not just a female Samaritan, she is a female Samaritan with a reputation for immorality. A fact he could have guessed because she came alone to the well at midday, but which he reveals he knew anyway. All three of those aspects set her apart as racially different from the official we're going to meet at the other end of the chapter and Nicodemus who we met in the previous chapter. The man we're going to meet later is male, thoroughly Jewish, and most likely morally respectable. This woman is at the other end of the spectrum. In four nine, she remarks on the fact that Jesus speaks to her. She says, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? Thus we don't know, John tells us the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. Jews were not allowed to share eating utensils with Samaritans, particularly glasses or cups, because the Samaritans were considered unclean. Add to the fact that this woman would be especially unclean given her moral status, she is amazed that he would take a drink from any cup that she handed to him. Now that's our setting. As I mentioned earlier, rather than walk through this story verse by verse like we would in a detailed study, I want to focus on the themes. I see three themes in this story and I want to look at them one by one, so I will be skipping through the rest of the chapter to bring out each theme in turn. We're going to cover theme one in this podcast, and then we'll look at the last two themes in the next podcast. The first theme will not be a surprise to you if you've been listening to this series. I have argued John's thesis is only those who believe Jesus is the Messiah will find eternal life. We believe based on testimony and the work of the Spirit, and we have seen that theme a lot in the first three chapters. We're going to see it here again today. This story focuses on how a group of Samaritans come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. And what we're going to see among the Samaritans is exactly what we've been seeing up till now and what we will continue to see as we go through the gospel. There's evidence of a miracle, there is testimony concerning that evidence, then there is belief that Jesus is the Messiah because of the miracle and the testimony. The new twist in this story is the believers involved are the hated Samaritans. As we'll continue to see, John explores the dynamics of belief and unbelief, especially among the Jews. John tells us many Jews refuse to believe in Jesus. He introduced that idea in the opening prologue where he says the Messiah came to his own and his own did not receive him. Last week in chapter three, John said Jesus bears witness to what he has seen and heard, and yet no one receives his testimony. In contrast to the Jewish leadership, we've so far seen Nicodemus, and we will see an official at the end of this story. We have now a story of Samaritans in this town who come to believe that he is the Messiah. And John is introducing the fact here that Jesus came to save the world, not just Jews, but Gentiles as well. And right from the start we see there are Gentiles who believed in him, and this will be very central to John's purpose in this gospel. So let's look at this first theme of testimony and belief. It begins with Jesus starting a conversation with this woman at the well. And as I mentioned, there are good reasons why a Jewish rabbi might choose not to speak to a woman in this situation, but the fact is Jesus is quite willing to speak to her, and she expresses her surprise that a Jewish man would take a drink from the hand of a Samaritan woman. So I'm going to pick up the story in John chapter four, verses ten through fourteen. 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 again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. So Jesus responds to her surprise and he says, Look, if you knew who I am, not only would you not be surprised that I'm asking you for a drink, you would be asking me for a drink of living water. Now for my studies this phrase living water was a common one and it had a very natural understanding. Living water was running water. Water that bubbles up from a spring is living water. It's moving, it runs, it's constantly in motion. It's the kind of water that you most want in an arid climate. It's not a stagnant puddle, it's not an enclosed pond that is still and contained, instead, it's fresh, living, running water. That's the normal meaning, but it had a metaphorical meaning, and we see this metaphorical meaning in the Old Testament. For example, Zechariah said, I think it's in chapter 14, in the last days living water will flow out of Jerusalem. And Jeremiah in chapter 17 describes God as a fountain of living water. And as we'll see, Jesus means it metaphorically here as well. But the phrase was common enough that the woman might easily have understood him to be talking of literal running water. She might be thinking, okay, well, I know what he's talking about, but she's skeptical. She's puzzling it out. She's saying, Sir, you don't have anything to draw water from this well with. How are you going to come up with living fresh water? Our father Jacob had to dig deep to provide us with this well. Who do you think you are? Are you going to do better than Jacob? Jesus answers her and he makes the metaphorical nature of the water he's talking about more explicit. He says, basically true, Jacob gave you a nice well, but the problem is drinking this water doesn't solve the problem, because a little while after you drink the water, you're thirsty again. Now we have to think about the significance of thirst. In modern culture today, we lose sight of the importance of having fresh water, because fresh water is usually typically readily available. I got a little refresher course on the importance of water as I was working on this podcast. We developed a leak in the pipes at our house and had to turn the water off to our house for a long time, and I can attest to firsthand when you don't have fresh water available, it suddenly makes your life miserable. But for most of us, water is just there whenever we want it. But to continue our physical lives, we have to eat, we have to drink. If we don't drink, if we don't eat, we die. Not only that, our body creates in us this desire for food, this desire to drink. We get hungry, we get thirsty. Hunger and thirst are symptoms that we're needy. They are symptoms that we need something to keep us alive, something that we don't have. If we don't get food, if we don't get water, we're going to die. Water then is very satisfying to us. It satisfies our thirst, it calms our cravings, and in short, it sustains us and keeps us alive. But normal water doesn't really solve the problem. It gives a temporary satisfaction. It does postpone dehydration and death, but it doesn't give us life like we're looking for. It doesn't really solve the problem of thirst. We have to keep going back to get more and more water to keep our thirst at bay. But the water Jesus provides solves our problem. If we drink the living water that Jesus provides, it's as if a well of water has sprung up within us. We don't get thirsty anymore because we have this well of living water inside. We don't have to keep going back to the well because we're never thirsty again. Now he's speaking metaphorically here, and he's using this picture of water and thirst to represent eternal life. Jesus is giving this metaphorical picture, believe in me, and I will put a metaphorical spring of water in your soul that will satisfy you with the kind of life you're looking for, eternal life in the kingdom of God. Now she responds in fifteen through nineteen. 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 and 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 have now is not your husband. What you have said is true. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. So the woman has partially understood Jesus. She recognizes that he's claiming to permanently solve the problem of thirst, but doesn't get that it's metaphorical. She says, Great, give me this water so I don't have to come to this well every day. Rather than pursue the metaphor, Jesus changes his approach. He says, Fine, you want some of this living water, go and get your husband. I think he brings up her husband because he's going to show her that even though he has never met her before, he knows all about her. Now you may remember Jesus did the same thing with Nathaniel earlier in the gospel. Once again he's showing a miraculous knowledge. God has shown him what this person is all about. I think Jesus has two purposes in mind. He is setting up this miracle, but he also wants her to repent. To receive eternal life she needs to come to terms with her immoral lifestyle. She needs to confront her sin before she can repent and seek God. Not only is Jesus setting up this miracle, he's raising an issue that she has to confront. He shows her that he knows her whole story about her five husbands, and that captures her attention because he knows something he has no way of knowing. He knows the messy details of her life, which has not been a model of respectability and godliness, and she needs to confront that before God. So she says, You must be a prophet. Now in the next verses, Jesus and the woman are going to have this little conversation about religious differences between the Samaritans and the Jews, and we're going to come back to that. That's another theme we're going to talk about. To stick with our first theme, we're going to skip down to verses twenty five through twenty seven. The woman said to him, I know that the 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 Samaritans only believed in the first five books of the Old Testament, but they did believe in a Messiah. They did believe that a redeemer was coming. And this woman is starting to catch on. She says, I know when the Messiah comes, he's going to explain all this stuff, kind of like what you're doing here. So who exactly am I talking to? I think she's trying to flesh out, you sound like a prophet. Could you be the one we're waiting for? And what really strikes me in this conversation is that Jesus gives one of the very few direct responses to this question that he gives in any of the gospels. Sometimes he hints that he's the Messiah, sometimes he implies it, sometimes he speaks in riddles and parables. The Pharisees say, Who are you? And he says something like, Well, it ought to be obvious who I am. But here the Samaritan woman says the Messiah's coming, and when he comes he's going to tell us things kind of like you're telling now. I think she's hinting to him, Are you the Messiah? And he gives her this direct answer, I who speak to you am He. That's me, I'm the Messiah you've been waiting for. I find it interesting that he wouldn't give this kind of direct answer to the Pharisees in Judea, but he freely and directly answers the Simoral Samaritan woman in Samaria. I suspect the reason he is so free and direct with her is he knew that she was ready to believe in him while the Pharisees in Judea were not. Let's look at twenty eight and twenty nine. So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, Come and see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? And now I want to skip down again to verses thirty nine through forty two. Many Samaritans from the town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days, and many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. These verses should have a kind of familiar ring to you if you've been listening to this series so far. The woman goes back to town and she testifies. Here's that word testify again. She tells them this Jewish man came and he knew all about me. He knew all the stuff I've done about my five husbands. And she asks the question, couldn't this man be the Christ? Like I think this man is the Christ. I think that's the nature of the question she asked. What happens? People hear her testimony and many believe. She tells the story of her experience with Jesus, what she has seen him say and do, and people believe. Then they come out to Jesus, they ask him to stay. He stays for two days and they talk with him directly. Now they're not talking to the woman about what Jesus did, they're talking to Jesus directly, and many more believe because of his teaching, because of what he says and does. And they say to her, now we believe based on our own experience. It isn't just your testimony anymore. Now we believe because we've seen for ourselves. So to stick with our theme, I want to bring in the next story because it relates. In the next podcast, we'll look at the two other themes that involve the woman at the well, but skipping down to verses forty three to forty five, we have a little contrast. We've just seen how readily the Samaritans believe, and now we go back to Galilee. After the two days he departed for Galilee, for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his hometown. So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast, for they too had gone to the feast. So Jesus stays with the Samaritans for two days and then he heads for Capernaum in Galilee, which functioned kind of like his home base during his Galilean ministry. I think John includes this story to contrast it both with Nicodemus, who we saw in chapter three, and the Samaritan woman. All of them are interested in Jesus. They all come to him, but they come to him very differently. The two Jewish men are interested in Jesus because he has performed signs and miracles and they recognize God is up to something. The Samaritan woman apparently knows nothing about Jesus, but she recognizes that he has performed a miracle in her presence and quickly calls him a prophet and then comes to believe that he's the Messiah. As a quick aside, some people point to these verses as an example of an error in the Bible. It's not an error. But the argument goes that Jesus said a prophet has no honor in his hometown, and the very next verse says the Galileans welcomed him, and critics like to point to that and say, see, John made a mistake. If a prophet truly has no honor in his hometown, then why did the Galileans welcome him? Well, it doesn't take much thinking to figure out that this is not a problem. There are at least two explanations that make sense to me. One is Jesus goes to Capernaum, but Nazareth was his hometown. Why didn't he return to Nazareth? Because he had no honor there. Perhaps they mocked him in Nazareth and made it impossible for him to rest or be taken seriously. Another explanation is that John is speaking to the nature of the welcome. A prophet has no honor in his hometown. If you think of his hometown as the entire region of Galilee, then what's this welcome we see in verse 45? Well, John tells us these folks saw signs and miracles. They'd been at the feast in Jerusalem too. They had heard or maybe seen what Jesus did, and now they're excited. So they're welcoming him back, not because they think he's the Messiah. They aren't honoring him as the Son of God. They want to see what else can he do? They're interested in the signs. Maybe he'll heal someone, maybe he'll improve their lives. Unlike the Samaritan woman in her village that just embraced him as the Messiah without seeing a major healing or a major sign, at least as far as we know, these people want a sign. In fact, Jesus comments on how they want a sign in the next conversation. Let's look at forty six through fifty four. So he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had made the water wine, and at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. When the man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. So Jesus said to him, Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe. The official said to him, Sir, come down before my child dies. Jesus said to him, Go, your son will live. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. As he was going down his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, Your son will live, and he himself believed and all of his household. This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee. So the nobleman hears Jesus has returned to Capernaum, his son is ill. This official would have been a man of wealth and status, he has servants, he would have been able to bring in the best physicians to treat his son. Apparently nothing has helped. He grows desperate and he thinks maybe the local healer could be of some service. So he asks Jesus to come to his home, and Jesus seems to recognize that this is all the man wants. He wants Jesus to solve his earthly need. He's not interested in learning from the Messiah, like we just saw the Samaritans. He wants a sign, and Jesus comments on that. He says, You won't believe unless you see a sign. And this is a sharp contrast to the Samaritans who believed first based on the woman's testimony alone before they had any firsthand knowledge of Jesus. The nobleman begs, he says, Please come before my child dies. He doesn't engage in anything Jesus said about the signs and wonders. He doesn't want to get involved in any discussions about theology or belief in salvation. He has an earthly need, and he wants Jesus to solve that earthly need. Jesus has compassion on him and tells him to go home because his son lives. And now we see belief. Now the man believes and heads for home. While he's on his way, his servants meet him with the happy news that his son is recovered. Now, if I had been that father, I think my first reaction might have been jumping for joy, but instead this man starts asking about the timing. Now perhaps he did jump for joy and John just doesn't tell us, because the important point to him is what happens next. Once he confirms that his son recovered at the hour when Jesus spoke, now he really believes he and his whole household. I can't speak definitively, but it seems to me that when the man believed in four hundred fifty, he trusted that what Jesus said was true, but when he believes in four fifty three, now he believes that Jesus is the Messiah that he claims to be. Why does his household believe? John implies it's because of the testimony of the official. The nobleman reported what Jesus said, and on the basis of his testimony, the rest of his household believes. So here again John is exploring the connection between evidence, testimony, and belief. The original disciples believed because of John the Baptist's testimony, and then later their personal experience with Jesus. The Samaritans believe Jesus is the Messiah before they have met him based on the woman's testimony. Then later they believe because of their own personal experience. Then we get this story of the Jewish official in Capernaum, who I think is contrasted with the Samaritan woman. He approached Jesus because he wanted earthly help. He'd seen or maybe heard that Jesus was doing signs and miracles and he wanted a miracle for himself. Jesus comments that he won't believe unless he sees signs and wonders, and then Jesus gives him the sign he seeks and he believes. And I think John means all this to be significant to those of us who come later. John wrote this gospel to people who only had the option of coming to believe by responding to the testimony of those who saw and heard Jesus. And that's our situation today. We have to rely on the testimony of people like Arthur John who were there, who could say, This is what I saw and heard. We don't have the opportunity to see signs firsthand, but we have their testimony. And so we see a number of people in these gospels believing because of the testimony of others when they don't have any firsthand knowledge. And part of what we're to learn is belief based on testimony is appropriate. We have people that we trust, we listen to what they say, and we believe because of it. Then we can be further reassured by the fact that those who were there who then went and talked to him confirmed what the woman said. They came to the same conclusion. We can be comforted that the official questions his servants and confirms that the healing occurred when Jesus spoke. We don't have that opportunity today, but it confirms the veracity of the testimony. And all of this is to help us answer the question, why should I believe that Jesus is the Messiah and expect to find eternal life by believing in him? It's there to remind us that Jesus is the Savior of the world. In this case, we've seen two stories about a miracle, testimony, and belief. But the first story is about a miracle, testimony, and belief among the Samaritans. John knows, I think, that the church is made up of a lot of people who are not Jews at the time he's writing. Many Jews have believed, but many Jews have not believed. He's looking back and confirming this is how it was in the beginning. This is the way belief and unbelief played itself out. There was a greater response among the Samaritans, among the non-Jews than we see among the Jews. We shouldn't be surprised when we see belief coming to fruition among a group of people that the Jews would have looked down on as enemies. Then we see the reluctance of the Jewish people to believe without a sign, which will be contrasted with the way the Jewish leadership rejects Jesus despite all the signs. Now we're going to stop there today. We're going to pick up the story in the next podcast and we'll look at the next two themes. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how to figure it out. The blog version of this episode is on the link below this podcast, or you can go directly to it at wednesdayintheword.com slash john10 or John 10. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please support the show by following it wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you can, please leave a positive rating or review on your favorite podcast platform. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned, and maybe mention where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coast. You can find his music on heartfeltmusic.org. If you want to find out more or hear all the episodes in this series or find other series, please go to wednesdayintheword.com. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.