TWO DRINKS OF WATER
#798 TWO DRINKS OF WATER
Scripture John 4:1-30, 39-42 Date 12/7/1989
Passage: Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a]) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 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?” 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.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” 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.” 21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” 25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
Many Samaritans Believe
39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
Purpose: To see Jesus change the focus of His ministry, and along the way offer encouraging words to a woman steeped in sin.
Keywords: Bible Study Encouragement Compassion of Christ Sin
Timeline/Series: John
Introduction
We live in a mobile society. I have read statistical charts reporting as high as 50% of all of us relocate every year. We move into a new town, or neighborhood, or take a new job every other year.
Jesus is making a career change in this text. He began a ministry similar in every way to that of John, and the obvious begins to happen. Those ministries are compared, and one begins to receive preferential treatment.
Obviously, John’s star is on the wane. He has already (3:23) relocated his work. He is being directly confronted (1:19) about the nature of his work, and the confrontation will worsen until he is jailed about the time this Galilean ministry begins (Mark 1:14). The religious leaders are making things difficult for John’s disciples, and they are seeking answers to questions relative to the compared popularity of Jesus and John, and Jesus seems to be winning.
Jesus decides that it is time to make a change. The religious leaders in Judea are obviously as little interested in His work as they have been in John’s work. Beckoning us home. Galilee! And a change in style of ministry is ahead also. Where it has been a riverside prophetic, declare-the-gospel kind of approach; now, He will touch people with the power-of-the-gospel-to-change-peoples’-lives approach. He will find people through the countryside, village by village. Luke 4:14 “A fame went out concerning Him through all the region round about.”
I. Jesus Uses the Direct Approach to Galilee. V4 “He must needs go through Samaria.”
There were two routes of travel. One wound its way down into the valley of the Jordan and followed circuitously. The other was quicker, easier, but required travel among Samaritans.
Remember the sting of invective between these hostile people. A mixed bloodline, settled in Samaria during Israel’s period of captivity. They had worked to oppose the resettlement. There was no love lost either way. Jesus did not reject business dealings, but refused personal contact, thought of them as unclean. While Jesus was comfortable with this route, His disciples were not.
Jesus has come this way of purpose. We listened in as Jesus dealt with a Jew (Pharisee) of distinction—Nicodemus. Summary relative to the new birth. Now, in Samaria, He has come upon a woman without distinction—forthrightness, worship, two drinks of water.
II. Now, We Discover the Object of His Samaritan Exploit. V7 “There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water.” There is the anguish of hopelessness, at the well in the middle of the day, to avoid unkindnesses; to quench her first thirst. This well doesn’t contain the second drink. It is her hope and her hopelessness: water for her household. She knows she is what the other women whisper about.
Wanda Beeson opened up from a hospital bed to receive Christ, when the reluctant one had been myself.
There is the acknowledgement of guilt. As winsomely as Jesus deals with this woman, she must nonetheless face up to her sin. Remember, Jesus knew “all men.” 2:24. He knew Nicodemus; He knows her—He knows her sin, her struggle. We may know people’s sins, but do we know their struggles? Habakkuk: “O Lord, how long shall I cry, and Thou wilt not hear! . . . cry . . . and Thou wilt not save?”
III. That Brings Us to Jesus as a Model for Witnessing. There is no harder thing for us to do than to open up about one’s soul welfare. (Story about barber wanting to learn how to share his faith. Stranger: struggled. Barber: shaved, wiped cream from edge, walked to front: “Mister, are you ready to die?”)
So, clearly, all of us need help. He recognizes the opportunity. “He must needs go through Samaria.” He may have had foreknowledge. All we need is sensitivity.
He treats the opportunity graciously. Even though weary of traveling. Herbert Lockyer (1): “Often weary in His mission, Christ was never weary of it.” There were reasons not to confront this woman: Samaritan, woman, sinner, reputation. One reason to: it was the right thing to do. He allowed her to meet His need so that He might then meet hers. V7.
He optimizes her need. The first drink of water has brought her to the well. The well will symbolize another, a “second” drink of water, not from a cistern, but from a source. Two words for source of water. Two words for source of water: pégé—fountain (v6,14), phaer—cistern (v11). She came to draw standing water, Jesus offers her living water. The core around which missions works is physical needs, but we must offer more, Jesus.
He presents a message. He offered her truth, Himself. Not a plan to memorize, a person to follow. He respects the woman’s personhood. Coercion is never the step to witness. He shares of himself, and gives her the word of belief rather than doubt. He encourages her to be a witness.
IV. Having Left This Woman in the Anguish of Hopelessness and Guilt, We Must Return to Her. V13 “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.”
This is the reason of note that Jesus has chosen to journey through Samaria. A woman’s needs are to be met beside a quiet well. The disciples will know the attitude of our Lord toward outsiders, and toward prejudice. You see, the second drink of water is one of measure. She responded to His unexpected request. He gives a measure of her own need by these regular forays to the well of Jacob. Is it the rebuke of the women? Is it the Sychar well is closed? Is it a spirituality meditative thing?
The other men in her life were interested for their own sakes. Jesus for her sake. Jesus cares for people. We often use people for ourselves. We win people to Jesus when we communicate this caring spirit of Jesus.
The second drink of water reaches inward. Psalm 42:1 “As a hind longs for the water brooks, so do I long for Thee, O God.” Isaiah 55:1 “Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” She is one of these, she longs for God.
Jesus will help her in discovery. He must reveal herself to her. “Go call thy husband.” V16. He must reveal Himself to her. “Prophet,” v19, is not enough; “worship” v20 shows that tradition is not enough. Jesus points out to her that worship apart from soul-rest won’t fly, in either Gerizim or Zion. She has been quenching physical thirst. Spiritually, she has been drying up. How many people, like this woman, hope for someone like Jesus, but the truth is so slow-dawning?
Conclusion
Max Cadenhead lay in a hospital room, a broken and dying man. Cancer had him in its power. His church was at the point of a split. His daughter struggling with a drug problem. “I’ve got you with your war boots off. If you had your boots on, you’d be out there trying to stomp out all those fires.”
Anonymous reflection, added at a later date, source p16, HE SPAKE TO THEM IN PARABLES
Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village. He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty, and then he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office.
He never owned a home. He never set foot inside a big city. He never travelled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He had no credentials but himself.
He had nothing to do with this world except the named power of his divine manhood. While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves.
His executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth while he was dying—and that was his coat. When he was dead, he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone and today he is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that ever were built, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as that one solitary life.
(1) Lockyer, H. (1988). All the Women of the Bible. Zondervan.