"Appointment at Jacob’s Well"

I’ve said before that John’s gospel is different than the others. It is not chronological, it is theological. John puts events in Jesus’ life together in such a way as to show us truth about him. I think the story of the woman at the well is placed here as a contrast to the story of Nicodemus in chapter 3. Nicodemus is a Jew, a member of the strictest, most conservative and well-regarded group within Judaism, the Pharisees. He is influential and well-known. The woman, by contrast, is a Samaritan, an unknown (no name) and, perhaps immoral. I said last week that people who knew Nicodemus would think of him as “Mr. Religion.” Any Jew that knew of the Samaritan woman, if they regarded her at all, would consider her “Mrs. Irreligion.” So, these two stories represent the extremes and every human being stands between these two. Putting these stories in contrast is John’s way of saying, “It doesn’t matter who you are—how religious you are or aren’t—you need an encounter with Jesus Christ

Verses 1-9 – Breaking Down Barriers

Vss. 1-3 give the reason that Jesus leaves Judea. “the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John” – This early in his ministry was not the time to begin a conflict with the Pharisees and so Jesus takes his disciples and goes back to Galilee until the situation cooled down.

“Now he had to go through Samaria”  

In the time of Jesus Palestine was divided into three regions. Galilee was in the extreme north, Judea in the south, and between them lay Samaria. There was a long-standing feud between the Jews and the Samaritans, the causes of which we will see in a minute.  The shortest route from Judea to Galilee passed through Samaria. There was an alternate route: Travel east from Jerusalem, cross the Jordan river and go up the east side of the river to avoid Samaria, then re-cross the river to the north of Samaria and enter Galilee. It took twice as long, but many Jews, especially the strict religionists, would go that way—simply to avoid being “defiled” by contact with Samaritans.

If Jesus wanted to take the shorter route he “had to go through Samaria”. But, there is more here than just a choice of routes. The Greek translated “had to” implies a strong, almost moral imperative. Jesus chose to go through Samaria not because it was the shortest way and he was in a hurry, but because he had a divine appointment with a woman who was thirsty, not only for water, but for water that gives eternal life.

Along the way they come to the town of Sychar. Just outside of Sychar, where the road forks, stood the well known as Jacob’s well. It is still there today, I am told.  Nearby was the parcel of ground that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor (Genesis 33:18, 19). On his deathbed he bequeathed it to his son Joseph (Genesis 48:22). And later, when the Israelites had returned to Canaan after the Exodus, the bones of Joseph were buried there (Joshua 24:32). So, this area was rich with the shared history of the Jews and Samaritans.

Jesus and his disciples come to the crossroads and Jesus sits down by the well, because he is tired from the journey, while the disciples go on into the town to buy food. John tells us that it was noon. Literally “the sixth hour”—the Jewish day runs from 6 am to 6 pm so the sixth hour was noon. It the hottest part of the day and Jesus is tired and thirsty.

It is significant that John’s Gospel, which presents the clearest view of the Deity of Christ also clearly displays his true humanity. Historically, false teachings have fallen into two equal and opposite errors: They either overemphasize his deity to the exclusion of his humanity or they emphasize his humanity over his deity. But John, who declares “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”, is not afraid to report that he became tired. Jesus was a real person. He didn’t float through the world untouched and untroubled. He knew what it was to be tired and thirsty. It stops the mind to think it, but the Eternal Word of God, who existed with God, who WAS God before the beginning of time, became a human being and exposed himself to the pain and danger of human life—to bring us to God.

As he sits there a Samaritan woman approaches to draw water from the well. There have been endless discussions about why this woman came to this particular well at this particular time of day. The usual suggestion is that she is trying to avoid the other women of the town because she is a social outcast due to an immoral lifestyle. I’m not so sure about that. More about that later. Maybe she just got a late start. Maybe there’s something else.

Throughout the Gospel of John darkness is symbolic of unbelief and light is symbolic of faith. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night; the Samaritan woman comes in the light of day. Nicodemus, despite all his religious advantages, doesn’t get it (at least not yet); the Samaritan woman gradually comes to understand and, ultimately, to put her faith in Jesus.

Jesus begins by admitting a need, “Will you give me a drink?” This is powerful. We usually want to be the ones on the serving side. Think about it. Isn’t it easier to do something for someone else than to allow someone to do something for us? Maybe it has something to do with loss of control. As long as we’re the one doing the serving, we’re in the driver’s seat; but to admit we have a need and allow another to serve us is to give up control. Jesus wasn’t afraid to let someone else serve him.

Again, and again in this story we will see Jesus breaking down the man-made barriers of custom and taboo which separate people from one another.

The feud between the Jews and Samaritans was a long one. It began when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC. The Assyrians deported all the upper and middle-class people to other lands, leaving only the poorest of the Israelites in the land. Then they relocated people from other conquered places into Israel. The theory was that such mixed people would be less likely to start a revolution. The new population intermarried with the native Israelites producing a mixed-race people called Samaritans (after the capital city of the Northern Kingdom). They soon developed a culture and traditions of their own.

A century later, the Southern Kingdom of Judah was invaded and conquered by the Babylonians. Many of those people were taken as exiles to Babylon, but, unlike the northerners, they managed to maintain their cultural and ethnic identity. Seventy years later some were allowed to return to their homeland by the Persian king, Cyrus. When they returned, they found the land occupied by this mixed race of people. They had some beliefs and traditions in common, but they also had some different beliefs.

The Samaritans asked to be involved in the rebuilding of the temple and the city but were refused. This set off generations of conflict between these two related, but different people. The Samaritans built a rival temple on Mt. Gerizim, where they continued to worship the Lord—with a little idolatry thrown in. Down through the centuries the fight had continued, sometimes erupting into actual warfare. About 200 years before Jesus’ day the Jewish king, John Hyrcanus, had destroyed the Samaritan temple, exacerbating the hatred. So, you had these two related, but divided people locked in hatred and conflict. This had been the situation for centuries and it is why the woman is so shocked that he, a Jew, would address her, a Samaritan.

The woman responds in shock. “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” She acknowledges the rocky history between these two peoples. “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan”. John explains that the Jews do not associate with the Samaritans. This can also be translated “the Jews use nothing in common with the Samaritans”, meaning they do not eat or drink from the same containers. To the self-righteous Jew the Samaritans were ceremonially unclean. Just to share the same utensils was to contract religious impurity. She is saying, “You don’t have a bucket and, as a Jew, you can’t share mine.”

Further, she was a woman. The Jews had a notoriously low view of women. The Rabbis said that it was better to burn the law than to offer it to a woman. A Jewish rabbi was not supposed to speak to a woman in public—not even his wife or sister. For Jesus to speak to this woman was a major cultural taboo—yet he spoke to her. Here was a thirsting woman who needed living water and he wasn’t going to let some little thing like centuries of religious/ethnic tension or Jewish religious custom deter him.

Verses 10-15 – Living Water

The Lord Jesus was a master teacher. He had the ability to ask a question or make a statement that could turn a conversation in an entirely new direction. There’s a play on words here with the idea of living water. Living water refers to flowing water, like in a fountain or a stream. The word used for well in verse 6 refers to a cistern—a well not fed by flowing water but where still water collects.  Jesus is saying, “You will get still water from this well, but I will give you flowing water.” And anybody knows flowing water is better than still water. But, of course, John loves double meanings, living water—flowing water, but also, water that gives life.

When Jesus told Nicodemus, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” Nicodemus replies, “I’m too big—I can’t re-enter my mother’s womb and be reborn.” The woman does a similar thing. When Jesus speaks of living water she’s thinking physical water—H₂O.

 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?

Do you know something I don’t? Is there a stream or artesian well around here that I don’t know about? And, anyway, who do you think you are?

  ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

The Samaritans traced their descent from Jacob through his grandsons Manasseh and Ephraim. The Jews talk about Abraham, but the Samaritans talked about Jacob. There is an unspoken claim here, “Are you greater than our father Jacob?” Yes! A greater one than Jacob was here, as the woman would see in a few more verses. Later, when the Jews were bragging about Abraham being their father, Jesus would tell them, “Before Abraham was born, I am! (8:58)” That word “I am” is the word that is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to render the covenant name of God. Jesus is claiming to be none other than Yahweh, the true and living God.

But the woman is not there yet. She is thinking about physical water, Jesus is talking about spiritual water. Jesus follows the same pattern in this conversation that he followed in his conversation with Nicodemus. He says something which is misunderstood, then he responds with something even harder to understand. In this way he forces people to think for themselves.

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

We think of John 7:37-38:

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

And John goes on to explain,

By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive (vs. 39).

Jesus is talking about the Spirit, which the Father gives to everyone who comes to him and who is the source of eternal life, but the woman is still thinking about water. We who live in developed countries forget, or never knew, how much work was involved for ancient people just to get water daily. Backpackers get it. Did you know that the heaviest single thing that you carry in your backpack is your water supply? And not only that, there is the daily task of finding and collecting enough water for your needs. Every day, maybe several times a day, you must schlep yourself down to the lake or creek and pump enough water to prepare your dinner or to have enough to carry you to the next water supply. So, the woman is thinking, “Gee, that would be great! If I had some magic water like that I wouldn’t have to keep coming to this well every day.”

Verses 16-21 – Facing the Truth

She still is misunderstanding. There is something that is holding her back. Jesus addresses it now. “Go, call your husband and come back.” Before she can understand living water, she must first see her need for it. Jesus forces her to look at the central shame of her life. Jesus has just put his finger on her sore spot—and pressed down! I can see her stiffen in shock and then quietly admit, “I have no husband.”

The usual view is that she is an immoral woman—a serial adulteress, perhaps even a prostitute. But I want to give you another way to think about the Samaritan woman at the well. Note, she has had five HUSBANDS. She was married to them. In that culture, in that time the only way a marriage could end was either by death or divorce. A woman could not divorce her husband, but a man could divorce his wife—for almost any reason—she was a bad cook, she didn’t bare him any children, or he simply found another woman more pleasing. So, it may be that far from her being an unfaithful wife, she may have been a woman with the misfortune to have several husbands die or have been abandoned and cast aside.

But you say,  what about the last man—the one that was not her husband? We simply assume that there is a sexual component. There may not have been. This may simply be a person on whom she depended for support—perhaps the brother of her dead husband who, under the custom of levirate marriage would be expected to take his brother’s wife.

I don’t know if all that is true. I think it is worthy of consideration, but the traditional interpretation may be correct. One thing we can say for sure, this was a hurting woman, whether the source of her pain was her own bad choices or what others had done to her, Jesus lets her know that he knows and understands her pain.

It is often the case the physician may have to hurt you before he can heal you. So, Jesus forces the woman to take a hard look at the heartbreak that is central to her life, in order to help her see her need of new life.

That understanding is beginning to dawn on her is seen by what happens next.

Verses 22-26 – True Worship

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

She acknowledges him as a prophet. That is not a complete understanding of who Jesus is yet, but it is a step in the right direction. Next, she asks him a question about the correct place to worship. Now, the traditional understanding here is that she is attempting an evasion here. She doesn’t like his focus on her personal life and is trying to turn the discussion into a safer direction. But, again, I am not so sure.

Perhaps her question is sincere. Perhaps she is saying, “I know I need new life. I know I need an encounter with God. But where do I go to get it? You Jews say that you must go to Jerusalem to meet God, but my people say Mt. Gerizim. Where can I go? Where can I find God?”

Jesus’ answer must have given her a burst of hope, “a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. . . a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth.” Now, he is careful to say that “salvation is from the Jews”. This is not anything goes as far as worship is concerned. But he is saying that the time has come when true worship is not a matter of place but of spirit.

This is really the genius of Christian worship. It is not tied to temples and places and holy sites.

“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20).

That can take place anywhere in the world. It is not bounded by race or real estate. The old rivalries and hatreds are overthrown and those who truly seek God will find him anywhere.

This is more than she can grasp. All that she can say is, “When Messiah comes he’ll explain all this.” Isn’t it interesting that the Samaritans were look to the coming of a Messiah, just as the Jews were?  Now their understanding of the Messiah was a bit different than the Jewish one, but they had their Samaritan Pentateuch and from it had learned of the coming of an Anointed One who would be a redeemer.

Now Jesus would totally blow the woman’s mind with the declaration, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” This is about as clear a statement by Jesus of who he was as you can find in the Scriptures and it is given to an unnamed woman from a despised race.

Christianity is the greatest liberating force in the world. The brotherhood of all believers is the death-knell to any sort of racism, or ethno-centrism, or sexism. It is Christianity which has uplifted women. Never forget that the first to witness to the resurrection of Jesus were the women.

Verses 27-30 – Sharing the Wonder

At this point, the disciples return from their shopping trip. They are evidentially shocked to see Jesus taking to a woman. They want to ask him why he is talking to her, but they are afraid to.

The woman, meanwhile, runs back to the town to tell her neighbors all about this man who “told me everything I ever did”. Notice that she leaves her water jar behind. This may just mean that she was in a hurry and didn’t want to be burdened by her heavy jar, but it could also signify that this woman who had come to the well seeking water for her thirst, now finds her thirst satisfied by living water.

At any rate, she does what the Andrew and Philip had done. She says, “Come and see!” Evangelism is sometimes seen as something difficult and scary. But here it’s simply inviting people to see the goodness of God for themselves.

She shares with the townspeople her experience with Jesus, “he told me everything I ever did” and ends with a question, “Could this be the Christ?” This shows us that you don’t need to have perfect knowledge to witness for Christ. Just tell what you know—what Jesus has done for you—and if you don’t have all the theological facts straight, don’t worry about it.

Verses 31-38 contain a conversation between Jesus and the disciples. It is very rich and would reward us greatly to study it, but I’m going to skip over it today and focus on the story of the woman.

Verses 39-42 – The Savior of the World

The townspeople come out to see this remarkable man the woman had told them about and the text tells us “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” They became believers. They placed their faith in him. Not only did they believe things about him—they believed “in him” –Greek “into him.”

And, get this, Jesus stayed (mēno) with them for two days. A Jew, a rabbi, stayed in a Samaritan village for two whole days! We can presume he stayed in their homes and ate at their tables. We see here a foreshadowing of what was to occur later in the Book of Acts when the church slowly, reluctantly, realized that the gospel was for all people, not just the Jews.

The people say, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know this man really is the Savior of the world” (vs. 42). Our witness can only take people so far. They can come to Jesus because of our testimony, but, in the end, they must receive him for themselves. The old saying, “There are no grandchildren in the family of God” is true. Each person must come on his own.

They call Jesus “Savior of the world.” This whole passage is a living illustration of John 3:16, “For God so loved THE WORLD, that he gave his one and only Son, that WHOEVER believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  God so loved THE WORLD – not the white race, not the rich or the poor, not conservatives or liberals—THE WORLD. That WHOEVER believes shall not perish but have eternal life. This is both open-ended and exclusive. The offer is made to all, but gift is limited to whoever believes. This is the most offensive part of the Gospel to today’s ears. “How can you be so narrow-minded as to say that only those who believe in Christ will go to heaven?” But it is part of the Gospel too.

Are there divine appointments for you? Are there people and circumstance where God wants you to tell what you have experienced in Christ. It doesn’t matter you are. It doesn’t matter who they are. Everyone who has met Jesus can be his witness and everyone who believes because of our witness can have eternal life.