John 4:1-42
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
1 The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 When the Lord learned of this, 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 the sixth hour.
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.)
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 flocks and herds?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.”
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 fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, 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 spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in 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 who speak to you 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 Christ?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
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.”
There are days when I feel down and oppressed...The Samaritan woman felt this way...The Jews looked at Samaritans as lower class society, so they looked down on them...Plus, she was a woman...Teachers and rabbis would not speak to women, let alone Samaritans...The woman felt she she needed to get her water in the sixth hour of the day, when it was very hot, not to draw attention of other Jewish women and men, to avoid being called names and being shamed...Jews tried to avoid the Samaritan people and the Samaritan people tried to avoid the Jews...The Jewish women would get their water in early morning to avoid the heat, while the Samaritan women waited their turn...
Jesus has this open conversation with the Samaritan woman...In this conversation, He knows and tells her, she has had five husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband...Jesus talking to a woman and a Samaritan, would be something very unusual for their times and their culture...Jesus, a teacher and rabbi, was not supposed to talk to "these kind of people."...Jesus does not follow the rules and norms of society...He follows the will of His Father...
The Samaritan woman no doubt was repressed and oppressed...She seems to look at God in a very non-personal way...She saw God through Jacob, the Third Patriarch...She saw God through the well that Jacob had dug years and years ago...God is this well, that Jacob had built, and that was her tie to the LORD...You can almost feel that God is impersonal to her until she meets Jesus...She gets to meet the Son of the Living God, something as personal (and as great) as it can get...
This would be a day she would never forget...The Samaritan woman's life was changed that day at noon...She had met the Messiah, that she thought and hoped was coming...She had experienced a new spiritual rebirth...She was moved spiritual from the impersonal thinking of God at the well, to a Person, the actual Son of the Living God...God's own Son was talking to her, a Samaritan woman...She had went to the well that day to quench her thirst, and what she got was her soul's thirst was completely satisfied with the Living Water for the rest of her life...The Living Water is completely full of the things we need to live -love, hope, faith, humility and (very much) His Grace...