EPISODE 4 John Chapter 4 ”The Forgotten Water Jar”

Hi, and welcome to Share the Word, the best way to learn your way through the New Testament one chapter at a time. We know there are a lot of devotionals and encouraging thoughts for the day from the Bible available online, but our goal is a little more to honestly and systematically present the whole story of the New Testament. So let's listen in to today's lesson and go a little deeper. The Forgotten Water Jar, John chapter 4. As we come to chapter 4, we're going to see through John's eyes a pretty surprising encounter Jesus had. But before we explore it, we need to get our geographical bearings for a moment.

Jesus was, if you remember, from Galilee. That's the northern part of Israel. In the early part of John's Gospel, he had been visiting with Jesus the southern part of Israel called Judea, the nation's spiritual and cultural capital, Jerusalem. He had already made enemies there of powerful men by chasing vendors and money changers from the temple. Some of the spiritually open leaders of Israel, like Nicodemus that we met in chapter 3, were impressed and intrigued by Jesus, but most on the high council, called the Sanhedrin, felt embarrassed and were angered by things Jesus had said and done. Something about him made them very nervous, feel threatened.

As for Jesus, he understood his whole ministry was on a divinely appointed timetable, and he knew it wasn't time yet to clash with these men. And so chapter 4 begins by telling us that after those events in the south, Jesus left, and the word there means abandoned Judea, and headed back north to his native Galilee. Interestingly, at verse 4, John writes that Jesus had to go through Samaria. Had to. It's a term John uses several times in this book to describe Jesus' sense of mission. There were certain things he had to do, felt compelled to do, were divinely necessary.

So when it says he had to go through Samaria, that doesn't mean there wasn't any other way to get from where they were to where they were going. In fact, this region of Samaria, right in the heartland of Israel, was routinely avoided by Jews. The people who lived there, they considered unclean. Maybe you can understand the relationship between the Jews of Jesus' day and these Samaritan people if I tell you it's not very different to the relationship between the Jews and Palestinians in our day. It's very similar. Two people trying to occupy the same land who deeply dislike and distrust one another.

These people, called the Samaritans, had been imported to the land of Israel several hundred years earlier by the rulers of the Assyrian Empire. When the Assyrians conquered Israel in the seventh century BC, they deported most of the Jews, scattered them all over the place in their empire, and then moved other subjugated peoples, nations that they had uprooted from their homelands, into the land of Israel. This forced relocation was a systematic policy of the Assyrians to weaken nation states and lessen the likelihood of rebellion in their territories. So these people, known as Samaritans, had been resettled right in Israel's heartland. Some of them intermarried with Jews of the lower classes that had been left in the land, and from these intermarriages grew this tribe of people the Jews did not like. Believe it or not, a small community of Samaritans live in Israel to this very day.

When Jews finally started returning to their homeland from captivities, there was naturally a rivalry between these two groups trying to occupy the same country. There was a lot of bad blood. The Jews, who wrongly often looked down on anyone who was not a Jew anyway, particularly looked down on the Samaritans, so much so that, as I said, they considered them unclean. And when traveling between their areas in the south of Judea and in the north of Galilee, they avoided this area if they could help it. They'd swing wide around it just so they wouldn't have to contact any of these Samaritans. But don't miss what John writes when he says Jesus had to go there.

So Jesus and his band of disciples, including John, took the direct route north from Judea toward Galilee, a Roman-built road that went right through the heart of Samaritans' district. It was late May, and the plains of Samaria were, as they are today, the breadbasket of Israel. So the road they were traveling was bounded by waving wheat fields. They'd been traveling since early morning, and around noon they arrived at a crossroads near an ancient landmark. John remembers a well dug by the patriarch Jacob 2,000 years earlier. About a half mile down one crossroad was a little Samaritan village called Sychar.

Maybe there was a sign there with an arrow that said, One half mile to, and a list of stores and restaurants, like signs near our highway exits. Okay, probably not. But in any event, Jesus asked some of the men who were with him, Take this little side road to that village and find some food. He, and probably John as well, would wait for them there at the well. So Nathanael and Peter and James, or whoever else was with him at this point, set off on this errand while Jesus rested on the rocks around this ancient well. By the way, if you visit Israel today, you can still visit this exact site.

The well was cleaned out and restored in the 1860s. It was dug through mostly limestone and is almost 140 feet deep. As Jesus sat resting there in the midday heat, presently a woman appears, coming from the direction of Sychar. She must have just passed the disciples, and she's carrying a large water jar on her shoulder. She's coming to get her household's daily supply of fresh water. It's odd that she would be doing this chore in the heat of the day, but as we find out more about her, there's a likely explanation for that.

On the other hand, she probably thought it odd to see these two strange men there by the well at midday. When she reached the well, avoiding eye contact without saying a word, she let down her water jar down into the deep well, into the cold water. Splash. Then as she was drawing it back up, Jesus spoke first. Will you give me a drink? She had thought so before by his dress and now knew because of his accent, these men were Jews, and she didn't know quite what to make of that.

First of all, she was a woman, and men wouldn't normally interact with a woman they didn't know in that culture. Second, she was a Samaritan, and she knew very well how Jews looked down on her people, unclean. Third, she was a woman with a past, which suggests the reason she probably came to the well in the heat of the day, to avoid other people. It's a time no one else would normally be there. I think she was a person, we might say today, who had low self-esteem, someone who had grown kind of a hard shell of protection around herself. Perhaps her immediate thought when she was approached by this stranger, who according to the conventions of the time would not normally have spoken to her, was, Hey, is this guy going to come on to me?

I say that understanding where this woman's come from, because she's someone who had been used by a lot of men. And there was probably a definite edge to her voice when she replied to Jesus' request, How is it that you, being a Jew, would ask me for a drink? Can you hear the defensiveness in her voice? Jesus had a wonderful way of disarming people and drawing them toward himself. He didn't react to her defensiveness. He responded to her in a way that probably seemed curious at the least.

When she said, Why would you, a Jew, be asking me for a drink? he responded, If you understood what God wants to give you and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you'd be asking me, and I would give you living water. That must have puzzled her for a moment. What I think she wanted to say was, Wait a minute. You're the one sitting here sweaty, thirsty by the well asking me for a drink, and now you're suggesting I should be asking you? Get a grip, buddy.

But what she does say is, This is a very deep well, sir, and you have nothing even to draw water with. How do you think you're going to get this living water? Do you think you're greater than our forefather Jacob, who dug this well here? Jesus must have thought, Well, actually, yes, but he didn't say that. He continues with her using this engaging analogy. Everyone who drinks the water will get thirsty again, but one who drinks the water I'm talking about will not get thirsty again.

They'll have a spring of water inside of them welling up to eternal life. I can see the smile cross her face as she says, Okay, give me some of your magic water so I don't get thirsty anymore, so I don't need to keep coming out here day after day to draw from this well. He's sounding a little crazy to her now, maybe in the same way Nicodemus smiled when Jesus replied to him, You have to be born again. And he thought, I'm 80 years old. How am I going to be born again? But the smile disappeared after what Jesus said next.

He looked into the woman's eyes and said, Madam, go get your husband and bring him back here. Ouch. When Jesus asked her to go get her husband, the dynamic of this conversation quickly changed. She'd been enjoying the back and forth. It was a little unusual, but she was being treated with respect by a stranger and a Jew at that. And now the conversation had to take this turn.

What am I supposed to say? she must have been thinking. She had momentarily escaped it because she was interacting with someone who didn't know her past. But then that sick feeling of shame and inferiority that she was so familiar with was back. The truth of this woman's situation was that she had been married five times already in her life, and the man she was currently living with, she was not even married to. But she simply said, I have no husband.

I can see her turning away as she said that, with her body language clearly communicating, It's been nice chatting with you, but I really need to be about my business now. But Jesus wouldn't let her go so easily. He continued, You've honestly answered me that you don't have a husband. The fact is, you've had five, and the man you're living with right now is not your husband. Whoa. How did he know that?

she must have thought. He didn't have any way of knowing that. I've never seen this man before. He couldn't know these private details of my life. I think at this point her head was spinning. He'd been talking to her, apparently, about spiritual things and using terms like eternal life, and now he's telling her things that he had no way of knowing.

She's definitely sensing something extraordinary about this stranger she's encountered. Let me interject for a moment a little religious background about Samaritans. These people worshipped, they believed, the same God as the Jews, but had some of their own peculiar doctrines. They didn't accept any of the Jewish scripture except the books of Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament. They had their own temple built on Mount Gerizim, about seven miles north of the place where this conversation took place. It had been burned and destroyed by the Jews, which was one cause of the bad blood between them.

But importantly, like the Jews, the Samaritans were also looking for a Messiah, another great teacher, another great prophet, a deliverer like Moses that God had promised to send. When Jesus demonstrated this supernatural knowledge about her, the woman said, more respectfully now, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Then pointing north toward Mount Gerizim, she said, Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but the Jews claim there's only one place to worship, and that's Jerusalem. Maybe this was an honest attempt to get an answer to that question, but it sounds more like a diversion to me. She didn't want to talk about her personal life, so she tried to move that conversation to a different topic. We have this dispute with the Jews, she's saying, about where to worship.

What's your take? Jesus' answer was, The time is coming, in fact it's already here, when that question is irrelevant. Worship is not about a place. God is looking for people to worship Him in spirit and truth. The woman said, I know that the Messiah is coming, and when He comes, He'll be able to explain all these things to us. Then Jesus looked her straight in the eye, unblinkingly, and said, I who speak to you, I am he.

Don't miss this. John is letting us in on a time when Jesus claimed, in completely unequivocal terms, I am that Messiah God promised to send. And it's fascinating to me that the clearest declaration Jesus had yet made identifying himself as the promised Messiah came to this unlikely Samaritan woman. Just as they were at this point in their conversation, the disciples reappeared back from their food run to Sychar. They were more than surprised, probably shocked, to see their teacher, their rabbi, in conversation with such a person. They looked at each other as they began unwrapping their food, like, What's he doing talking to her?

The woman, completely forgetting why she had come out there in the first place, left her water jar sitting beside the well and hurried back to her village. I love that eyewitness detail that stuck in John's mind. She was so taken with this whole conversation she had forgotten her water jar. Once back at the village, she began telling everyone in Sychar, Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. You have to see him. You need to meet him.

I never laid eyes on this man before, and he knows everything about me. Could this possibly be the Messiah? Meanwhile, back at the well, the disciples are beginning to eat whatever they had brought from the village, and they urge Jesus to eat something too. You have to be hungry, teacher. Eat something. Here.

But he replied to them, I have food to eat that you don't know anything about. What do you think Jesus meant by that? I think I know. I think he's referring to a kind of high you get when you're sharing spiritual truth with someone who has a thirsty soul, who has a receptive heart. Jesus was spiritually high from this whole interaction with this needy woman. A sandwich was the last thing on his mind.

This is why he was here. This is why he came. He'd come to seek and save those who were lost. Just then, talking with her about that most important thing in life, how a real, living relationship with God could heal her shame and satisfy her deepest needs, this was the perfect nourishment for his soul. A sandwich? Not right now.

In my mind's eye, one of the most incredible visuals in the Bible occurs next. There, standing by the well of Sychar, surrounded by the wheat fields, Jesus told his disciples, My food is to do the will of one who sent me, to finish his work. That's what I'm all about. Don't say there are four months till harvest time. I tell you, open your eyes. Look at the fields.

They are ripe and ready to harvest. Because already at that moment, the town folks with the Samaritan woman in the lead were streaming out of that village up the road to meet Jesus. Look, Jesus said, these curious and spiritually hungry people. Look, the fields are ripe for harvesting. And there was a real harvest that day. John writes that many of these Samaritans believed in Jesus based on the woman's testimony.

In John's Gospel, that always means they bought into him. They accepted his claims. They put their faith in him. And John remembers they stayed on two more days sharing spiritual truth with the people of the village of Sychar. You know, when the Bible says Jesus had to go to Samaria, I believe he had to go there specifically to meet this woman and the others she brought to him. That his meeting with her at Jacob's well was no accidental encounter.

He wanted this one woman to know that no matter who she was, he would treat her with respect. No matter where she'd been, he would forgive and accept her. No matter what anyone else thought, she was valuable in God's eyes. Regardless of her past, he was able and willing to restore in her a life of dignity and meaning as a daughter of God. He didn't ask her to get her act together and come back to him later. He offered her unconditional love and grace if she would open herself up to who he really was and believe into him right then.

And she did. I always ask myself, why did John include this interesting encounter in his gospel? Well, there was that clear messianic claim by Jesus. That's big. But also, I think this Samaritan woman is representational. She represents so many people we encounter every day that we don't even try and engage.

Jesus' disciples would have never paid her any mind. After all, they'd just been in that village and brought back no one to meet Jesus. But she represents all the broken, disappointed, hurting people who struggle to cope with loneliness, emptiness, and rejection. People who've been looking for love in all the wrong places, who've been hurt by life time and again. Maybe they've grown hard on the outside. Maybe they joke to cover the pain.

But inside, they're thirsty. They're needy. More than anything, they want to feel accepted. They want to feel loved, valued, forgiven, and have a hope for their future. Listen, the same invitation Jesus extended to the Samaritan woman, God has extended to all of us. We are all called to extend it to those who don't know Him yet.

The invitation is this: if you're thirsty inside, spiritually thirsty, only Christ can ultimately satisfy that. It doesn't matter who you are or where you've been. Christ will accept you, forgive you, and give you a future. If you're willing to open your heart in life and invite Him to come in as your Savior and Leader, He'll put a satisfying spring of living water inside of you that wells up to eternal life. That's the truth, and that's what we learn from this unusual encounter with a woman from Samaria. Hey, if you're enjoying these commentaries on the Gospel of John, please help us share the Word by passing along the podcast to your friends and family.

There's no better way to learn the content of the New Testament chapter by chapter. So until next time, this is Paul for Share the Word. If you're enjoying these commentaries on the Gospel of John, please help us share the Word by passing along the podcast to your friends and family. There's no better way to learn the content of the New Testament than chapter by chapter. For more information, visit us at sharetheword.org. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.