I have always loved the biblical account of Jesus and the woman at the well from the gospel of John, chapter 4.
The first thing that has always intrigued me is in v. 4 where it says, “Now Jesus HAD to go through Samaria.” That strikes me funny every time because no pious Jew would ever think of himself as HAVING to go through Samaria. No, he preferably avoided it like the plague!
Why? Well, because it was populated by Samaritans, of course! Jews of Jesus’ day considered the Samaritans to be half-breeds, part Jewish and well, part something else. The footnote in my Life Application Bibles says this:
“After the northern kingdom (made up of 10 of the original 12 Jewish tribes), with its capital at Samaria, fell to the Assyrians, many Jews were deported to Assyria, and foreigners were brought in to settle the land and help keep the peace (2 Kings 17:24).
The intermarriage between those foreigners and the remaining Jews resulted in a mixed race, impure in the opinion of Jews who lived in the southern kingdom. (The southern kingdom was made up of the remaining two tribes - Judah and Benjamin)
Thus the pure Jews hated this mixed race called Samaritans because they felt that their fellow Jews, who had intermarried, had betrayed their people and nation. . . the Jews did everything they could to avoid traveling through Samaria”. . . even though the route through Samaria was shorter.
Jesus, however, was on a mission, and hobnobbing with Samaritans was exactly what He had in mind!
So, tired and thirsty, He sat down by the well outside the town of Sychar in Samaria. Sending His disciples into the town for food, He waited for the one with whom He had a divine appointment. It wasn’t long before she came, a lone woman, coming at an atypical time of day (to avoid those finger pointing, gossipy neighbors?), to fill her water jar.
When she approached, Jesus did a radical thing – He asked a woman, a Samaritan woman at that, for a drink! Surprised, she said: “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” If she only knew!
Jesus, speaking of spiritual things, replied: “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.”
Thinking only of earthly water, the woman speaks of His having nothing to draw it with, and wondering whether this man, who promises living water, is greater than their ancestor Jacob who dug the well.
Jesus, still speaking of spiritual, not physical water, answers: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.”
The woman has no idea of the kind of water of which Jesus speaks, but she knows about drawing water and this offer seems too good to be true. So she says: “Sir, GIVE ME THIS WATER so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Interestingly, Jesus abruptly drops the subject of water altogether. He suddenly shifts His attention to the woman herself. He says: “Go, call your husband and come back.”
Uh, oh. This line of inquiry is not a welcome one.
Reminds me a little of opening the door to find a young, well dressed, smiling young man or woman outside, exuding interest in you and your well being. At first you’re wondering whether they’ve lost their way, or have the wrong house - until they go into their sales pitch. You know how your face changes, right? In a split second it goes from curious and welcoming to your wary, “what are you selling”, face.
That’s how I picture the woman’s face. One minute it’s filled with eagerness and a burning desire for this living water, and the next, it’s replaced by a mask of wariness, that “uh, oh, where is he going with this?”, face.
She decides to fudge. After all, this man isn’t from Sychar, so what does He know about her? So she replies: “I have no husband”. Not exactly the truth, but close enough. This man will never know the difference, right?
Ah, but Jesus isn’t an ordinary man, nor is this a chance encounter at a well. This is a divine appointment, and she is the object of Jesus' mission, the one privileged to hear an amazing revelation that will change her life. So Jesus probes further.
He says: “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is quite true.”
Okay, so what would YOU do when the person to whom you’re speaking sees right through you - through the subterfuge, and right down into your heart - and you know you've been caught in an untruth? You do what comes naturally. You change the subject!
The woman recognizes that Jesus cannot possibly be just an ordinary man, he must be a prophet. I can imagine her pattern of thinking: "Better move on before He zeros in on other personal things I’d rather not talk about!"
I’m thinking, if the woman’s friends had ever warned her (as our friends do today) never to discuss religion or politics unless you want to provoke an argument, she chose to ignore them! Apparently even a religious argument was preferable to too personal, spiritual matters of the heart, because that is exactly the subject she chooses in her attempt to divert Jesus!
She introduces the subject of where the true center of worship is – in Jerusalem where the Jews worship, or at Mt. Horeb, where the Samaritans worship. But Jesus isn’t easily diverted. He replies that true worship isn’t about a place, it’s about worshiping God in spirit and in truth, which is the kind of worship God loves.
To which the woman replies: “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
And then Jesus makes it - the most amazing revelation – to a woman, to a Samaritan, to a sinner – a revelation this woman didn’t see coming!
He declared: “I who speak to you am He.”
Until now, the woman just didn’t seem to get it. She knew Jesus was something special, a prophet obviously, but now He says He’s MORE than that! He’s Messiah! Wouldn’t you have loved to see her face? How long does it take for it to transform from puzzled, to incredulous, to amazed, to believing?
I love this account for a number of reasons. But one of the things I love the most is that even with all the discussion about spiritual and physical water and places of worship, that’s not what moved the woman’s heart to believe in Jesus.
No, it was the very thing the woman didn’t want to talk about – that shady past that Jesus focused on - that really stuck with her. How do we know? Read on. . . .
v. 28-29 “Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”
Apparently, the face and body language, as well as the words of this woman with a known shady past, caught the attention of the townspeople because they didn’t hesitate to take her advice to “come and see”.
v. 30 “They came out of the town and made their way toward Him.”
I’m a firm believer that we must share the truth of the good news about Jesus with words. So many today don’t know what the Bible says about Him and what it says is critical to knowing who Jesus is, why the Father sent Him, and what His death and resurrection accomplished for us.
However, the truth and the faith that has responded to it, needs to be accompanied by a life in which Jesus is SEEN.
The woman spoke about Jesus’ ability to know all about her and God used her words and her transformed life to reach her neighbors.
v. 39 “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told them everything I ever did’. So when the Samaritans came to Him, they urged Him to stay with them, and He stayed two days.”
But it wasn’t just the woman’s words and life that convinced them, they also responded to the truth spoken by Jesus Himself. It’s wonderful when we can tell someone else about how Jesus has changed our lives and they can SEE it, but at some point everyone needs to know from God’s own words, in the Bible, about Jesus for him or herself.
v. 41 – 42 “And because of His words many more became believers. 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.”
Do you know the simple, yet amazingly wonderful thing about Jesus that this woman’s story brings out? Jesus loves us.
He loves us enough to go a long way - from heaven, to earth, to the cross – to show us.
He loves us enough to offer real, living, spiritually thirst quenching water – even when He knows all about us and what He knows isn’t pretty.
He loves us enough to know the hidden things in our hearts and lives and decide that we were still worth dying for.
He loves us enough not to be diverted by our half truths, our sinful past, or our irrelevant discussions in His effort to seek and save us.
He loves us enough to entrust us with the task of sharing what He has done in our lives with others and then watching Him work in their lives to bring them to Himself.
He loves us whether we're a pure bred religious person, or a half breed mix, or a woman, a man, or a child, or someone with a shady past. In fact He seeks us in spite of us because He wants to reveal Himself to us as Savior too.
If you’re not sure if this is true, do what the Samaritans did – come and see for yourself. Go to a church were the Bible is taught and meet those who have been transformed by the life giving, life changing power of Jesus, who forgives and loves you.
Open a Bible and read the gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and see what Jesus Himself says about who He is.
You never know, perhaps a divine encounter with the “Savior of the world”, awaits you.
It awaited the woman at the well. She never saw it coming, and she was never the same after!
