Behold The Messiah

The Hope of Christmas and the First Gospel

The closer that we get to Christmas, the more that we hear the word hope around us. For some, this hope is of a brighter future, a better life, a desire for more. For others, it's the hope of finding out exactly what's in the box under the tree, seeing if it is that thing that we have been desiring all year long.

For others, that hope is something that eludes them, something that brings them to a dark place in their life. But in reality, the true hope that Christmas brings far exceeds every expectation. This morning, as we continue our series looking at encounters with Christ, thinking about how the encounters that we see with the incarnate word affect our lives, we are introduced to a person who encounters the true source of hope.

Before we step into the text, we need to lay a little bit of foundation. When I say a little bit of foundation, I am referring all the way back to Genesis chapter 3 in the 15th verse, where we are exposed for the first time to what is known as the Proto-Evanglion, or the first gospel.

As a result of the sin of Adam and Eve, God ultimately banishes them from Eden, but before doing so, he implements or pronounces judgment on both Adam, Eve, and the serpent, which tempted Eve. This particular verse, verse 15 of chapter 3, is a portion of the judgment that he pronounces on the serpent.

And at the end of that verse, the last clause, he says, he shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. Now, it's obviously a very simplistic form of the gospel, but as we move through the Old Testament, God unfolds this picture of his ultimate plan of redemption, a plan, mind you, that has been in effect since before the foundation of the world, a plan that points to the reality of this coming Messiah, to the ultimate deliverer, the true hope of the people of Israel.

As we move into the gospels coming out of the Old Testament and into Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we begin to see through the birth and life of Christ, the prophecies that are revealed to us in the Old Testament become realities to be fulfilled in the Word.

The Word is self-made flesh. He comes and he is called Emmanuel, meaning God with us, and it is born, and true hope is no longer a thing to be hoped for, to be longed for, but it is a thing now to be grasped because it has become a reality.

The interesting thing here is that this is a reality that the Jewish people of that day should have immediately recognized. It is in full light of their Word, the Word that was given to them that the Messiah is brought forth and proclaimed, and in this truth, in this understanding, they should have seen, but the reality is John 11 teaches us that he came to what was his own, and those who were his own did not receive him, and the problem is not that they didn't know, not that they didn't know the words of the text, not that they didn't have knowledge of the Scripture.

The problem ultimately becomes not even their interpretation of the Scripture. The problem goes to the very root of who we are as mankind and the reality that we have been forever marked by sin. Genesis chapter 6 verse 5 says,.

Then Yahweh saw that the evil of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. I want you to think about the implications of that verse. If you're not familiar with that passage, that is the leading into the destruction of this world by the flood.

Later in Jeremiah's prophecies, in Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9, Jeremiah makes this statement or this charge, lays this charge on the people, and he says this, the heart, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.

Who can know it? Later on, Paul writing in the book of Ephesians wants to clarify a little bit, and he doesn't call us just sick. He literally tells us that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. This is the condition of humanity.

The challenge for us is that while we sit here 2 ,000 years after the birth of Christ, 2 ,000 years after hope became a reality, we sit here and we Monday morning quarterback and say, okay, well, we are quick to criticize those in the Old Testament or those in the Gospels.

We want to talk about the Pharisees, but the reality is that we would be just as they are apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in our life. Last week, our journey took us through the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, and one of the things that becomes abundantly clear in the truth of these powerful words of Christ that we find in John 3, 3, and then in verse 5, that apart from being born again, apart from this work of the Spirit, we cannot see, let alone enter the kingdom of God.

Now, we must understand the truth that this kingdom does not refer as we would typically think to a far distant thing or far distant reality, but that it is a thing that is already at hand, that it is the kingdom that is present right here, right now in the lives of the believers, in the lives of the true church of the living God.

The Journey Through Samaria and the Setting of Jacob’s Well

So this morning, we actually don't go very far in scripture, just one chapter over where we get to witness an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman that occurs at the well of Jacob. Now, again, this is a familiar passage.

Many, if you've grown up in any type of Sunday school or you've heard any messages, occasionally you'll hear a message on it, but it's definitely taught in Sunday schools. If you grew up a good Baptist, you heard it once every three years in the rotation, without fail, guaranteed.

But the thing is, is I want us to this morning, as we come to this encounter, let us view it with fresh eyes. Let us hear it with fresh ears. So our text will become coming from the Gospel of John, the fourth chapter.

We will work in verses four through 26, but in preparation, we need to talk about verses one through three a little bit, just to kind of make sure we understand the context in which we find ourselves.

So coming into the fourth chapter of John, John opens up with this comment or this understanding that Jesus has regarding what's going on in the surrounding area. So John and his disciples have been baptizing.

The people are coming by droves to be baptized. Now Jesus is teaching. People are coming by droves to see him. Jesus' disciples are baptizing. So we have these two big groups of people, both working in and around the area of Jerusalem, baptizing, and this movement is growing rapidly.

Now the problem is not that the movement's growing rapidly. That would be what we would want, but the Pharisees and the leaders of the day saw this as a threat to their way of life, their leadership, their ability, their reality.

And so in order to avoid a confrontation, now I want you to hear me clear on this for just a minute. Jesus is not afraid of the confrontation. It's just not the right time for the confrontation. So in order to produce the work that God has laid before him, verse 3 tells us that Jesus leaves Judea and heads to Galilee.

Now in between, if you look at a map, in between the region of Judea and the region of Galilee lies the dreaded region of the Samaritans. And to truly understand the backdrop of this story, we need to recognize that the history involved, and we're not going to go into long detail, drawn out explanation of this, but Samaritans originated, go all the way back to the splitting of the kingdom after Solomon's reign.

And so if you remember, under David and under Solomon, the kingdom, the 12 tribes of Israel were united into one kingdom, and then David reigned, and then Solomon reigned, and he built the beautiful temple, and then Solomon sinned, and God pronounces a judgment on Solomon's sin that he would split apart the kingdom.

And ultimately, the kingdom splits into the 10 tribes that became the northern kingdom, or Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judea, which was made up of only the tribe of Judah. And so the kingdom in the north, according to 1 Kings 16, 24, they went north, and they bought the hill Samaria from Shemar for two talents of silver, and he built on the hill and named the city which he built Samaria after the name of Shemar, the owner of the hill.

Now ultimately, the whole region would become known as Samaria, but in the midst of the region of Samaria was a place called Mount Gerizim, and we'll get to that in a little bit. In 722 BC, so some 300 or 700 years-ish before the birth of Christ, the Assyrians come in and decimate the northern kingdom.

They utterly wipe out the people of Israel, and in doing so, and then in repopulating, the area became a melting pot. We're all familiar, we're from America, we're familiar with this term melting pot.

So it became this mixture of races and ethnicities and religious beliefs, and so ultimately what happened was the Israelites that were there, those who were of the original bloodline of Israel, became syncristic in their beliefs.

In other words, they began to adopt the beliefs of the pagans around them and implement them into their worship, and so they became unclean. Now ultimately, well as they move forward, by the time the intertestamental period arrived, which is the period between the close of the Old Testament and the open of the New Testament, in that period of time, by the time we get to this, these two groups absolutely hate each other to the point where they literally go to war multiple times.

And as a result of this mutual dislike and the current Jewish approach to the law, their pharisaical rigidity, if you will, it was not uncommon for a Jew in Jesus's time who was traveling from Judea to Galilee or to any area north, would literally take one of two routes other than going straight through Samaria.

They would either cross the Jordan and travel up the bank of the Jordan River and then cross back over after they passed Samaria, or they would go out to the coast and do the same thing and come around to the top, although it was a much shorter journey to simply go through the midst of Samaria.

Verse 3 tells us that he left Judea, headed north to Galilee, which brings us to our text. And so I would ask that you stand as we read together the word of the living God. In John's gospel, the fourth chapter, beginning in the fourth verse, the word of God says, and he had to pass through Samaria.

So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph, and Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from his journey, was sitting thus by the well, and it was about the sixth hour.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Therefore the Samaritan woman said to him, how do you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, being a Samaritan woman?

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

She said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave to us this well and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?

Jesus answered and said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst ever, but the water that I give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.

The woman said to him, sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come back here to draw. He said to her, go and call your husband and come back here. The woman answered and said, I have no husband.

Jesus said to her, you have correctly said I have no husband, for you had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly. The woman said to him, sir, I see that you are a prophet.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the father.

You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews, but an hour is coming, and now is when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth. For such people, the father seeks to be his worshipers.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he comes, he will declare all things to us.

And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your holy word. We thank you for its principles. We thank you for its promises. We thank you for its direction. We thank you for its light.

Father, as we come to your word this morning, may we learn more of Christ. May we be reminded of how dear Christ is to us. We are one with him according to your word. We ask that our hearts be formed according to your word into the image of thy son.

We pray that your words are written on our hearts and inscribed upon our lips. We ask that you take full possession of our hearts, that you would reign supreme within us, granting us the strength to be attentive to our condition and character.

Father, let our speech be edifying. Our hearts be diligent. Let us flee from temptation. Let us mortify our sins. Let us be concerned about the salvation of others. All of this for your name's sake and your glory, asking them in the name of the blessed son, Jesus Christ.

Amen. You may be seated. The third paragraph of the second chapter of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith provides us with a summary teaching of the Trinity. Now, to be sure, the Trinity is a complicated topic, yet this concise paragraph is helpful to us.

It reads in this way, this divine and infinite being, God, consists of three real persons, the Father, the Word or Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three have the same substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence without this essence being divided.

The Father is not derived from anyone, neither begotten nor proceeding. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. All three are infinite and without beginning and are therefore only one God, who is not to be divided in nature and being.

Yet these three are distinguished by several distinctive characteristics and personal relations. This truth of the Trinity is a foundation of all of our fellowship with God and our comforting dependence on Him.

Christ’s Divine Appointment in Samaria

Now, in your normal everyday conversations, this paragraph may not be one of those things that you instantaneously recall to thought to give you a word of wisdom. However, when we come across passages like we have here before us this morning, we are able to better understand, to see that the work of Christ has been eternally decreed and to reconcile that within our minds.

If you'll notice in the first verse here, in verse 4, the first statement that John makes to us is that, and he had to pass through Samaria. Now, the verb that is translated here is a verb that John uses often in his writing, specifically when he is talking about the progression of the plan of God by Christ.

And so this is another time and another situation where this verb is being used in the same manner. Now, to be sure, it could be argued that this statement simply means that to get from point A to point B, Jesus had to pass through C or Samaria.

But as we've already discussed, as we've already talked about, there are alternate routes and routes that were typically used that makes this an unlikely interpretation. There's a different reason behind John's writing this word.

And the fact is, is that Jesus had a divine appointment in Samaria that must be kept. So anytime that we are provided with a reminder in scripture of the willful submission of the Son to the will of the Father, it should serve as a reminder to us, similar to that that Paul writes for us in Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 8, have this way of thinking in yourselves, which also, which was also in Christ Jesus, who although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as men, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

And so as we move forward in that obedience, and we understand Jesus moved in that same obedience, we're told in the narrative that Jesus comes to this place in Samaria. Specifically, we are told that he comes to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

Now, this reference goes all the way back to Genesis in the 48th chapter, verses 21 and 22, Israel said to Joseph, Behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you back to the land of your fathers.

And I give you one more portion than your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow. And that one more portion is this particular spot in Samaria that Jesus now finds himself.

And so there was significant historical significance for both groups of people, both the Jews and the Samaritans, around this particular place. Now, the Samaritans held that Mount Gerizim, which is Sychar, sits in the shadow of Mount Gerizim.

And so the Samaritans held that this was the place that God had commanded them to worship. In fact, we'll talk more about that as we get to verse 20. But the overall journey straight through the region of Samaria to Galilee would have taken about three days.

Now, I don't know how many of you have ever traveled on foot for three days through a dry, dusty, arid desert, but it is a daunting task for any person. And so we see, because Christ is fully man, he is nonetheless affected by this journey.

Verse 6, Jacob's whale was there. So Jesus being wearied from his journey. It's important that we recognize that this humanity, this picture of the humanity of Christ in Scripture, this is a beautiful truth that we have to hold, especially as we understand the price that Christ paid on Calvary's cross for our sin that could not have happened if he was not fully man.

Gilbert Burkert notes the following regarding this and other statements throughout the Gospels, reminding us of the fact that Jesus was fully or wholly man. He said it is absolutely crucial to recognize that all the Gospel writers were fully aware of the humanity of Jesus.

The strategic Christian doctrine of the Incarnation is not merely a theological assertion about the deity of Jesus. It is also a theological assertion about his humanity. In fact, the fact that he was wholly or fully man and wholly or fully God.

Heretical tendencies result when either element is omitted or submerged. Jesus was really a mortal who experienced the bodily weakness of being human, even though he did not suffer the human curse of sin.

That he became tired, that he became thirsty is an affirmation of Scripture. It was perfectly legitimate for him to experience both. But we need to be reminded in these times and in this and in the temptation stories that we find that we, like the disciples of this present story, must learn from Christ not to allow personal mortality and its need to dominate our concerns.

And so tired and thirsty, Jesus rests at the well. Now we see a little bit further down in verse 8, even though we haven't quite got there, that Jesus is by himself and he's by himself because the disciples have gone ahead and for the purpose of purchasing food.

Now, to some, this seems to be, well, you know, Jesus thinks awful highly of himself, sending his people ahead to do his work for him. But you need to understand in the society that they lived in, in the culture they lived in, Jesus being the teacher, being the rabbi, this would have been a method or a part of their learning, would be not only to learn from the master, not only to learn from the rabbi, but also to take care of his needs.

And so it would have been perfectly normal for this to have occurred. In fact, they would have likely not have even had been told to do so. But as he's sitting there resting, we see a Samaritan woman enter the picture.

Now he is resting at a period of time that is approximately 12 noon, the hottest part of the day. And at the hottest part of the day, what we would not typically find at a well would be someone coming to gather water.

The women of the day would have either gathered early in the morning and come to the well, or later in the evening and come to the well. But they wouldn't have done it in the middle of the day, and they typically would not have done it alone.

What this says to us is that there is an issue here regarding this woman. Now, we don't typically grasp these concepts. Most of us, as far as I'm aware, live in a house that we can walk to pretty much any one of those things that stick out of the wall called a faucet, turn it on, and we have water.

We don't live in a society where it is necessary for us to travel a distance to have clean, fresh water daily. One of the things that we learn and know without scripture, even though it's clear through scripture that water is essential for life, is by our very own experience.

We are literally made. 80 of who we are is made up of water. And without daily water intake, we become dehydrated. And as we become dehydrated, our body begins to break down and to malfunction. Our brain doesn't think it's clear.

Our efforts aren't as clear. And so just like it is necessary for us to have clean water, a life to have water itself, clean water is also just as important. In the climate that Jesus is in, the temperatures can rapidly soar.

It is dry. And so moisture rapidly removes from the body. We're here in the good old south and we understand a thing or two about humidity. And we know that when it's humid outside, the moisture on our bodies has nowhere to go.

So it literally just pours off of us and sweat and covers our clothing and we're drenched in a matter of moments. The danger in a desert climate is that that water is evaporated off quickly. And so you become, you don't realize how fast you become dehydrated.

And so it was important to have access to clean, fresh water. Literally, a well in the desert is the difference between life and death. Now, as we have noted here, as this encounter begins, we already know that there is this mutual dislike between the Samaritans and the Jews.

The Samaritans were considered by the Jews to be outcast. And this woman, who was a Samaritan woman, who we will find out a little bit more about her moral life a little later, is an outcast among outcasts.

She is a situation that it would be the worst of the worst. To give you an idea of the general dislike of Samaritans, if you'll think back for just a moment, Jesus telling the story of the good Samaritan, the lawyer responds, he can't even admit that the guy that was in the right was a Samaritan.

He just wants to say the one that did good. So as this outcast of outcast approaches, Jesus asks her for some water. And her reply gives us a picture of the depth of this issue. Now, specifically speaking, there are three traditions that are broken by Jesus in this encounter.

Now, I have heard quote unquote pastors stand before pulpits and say, well, Jesus broke the law. No, he broke man's traditions. And so there are three specific male traditions or men's traditions that he broke here.

The first is that in Jewish society, men did not speak to women in public, including their own wives. Now, you have to understand this would be referring to devout men. There were some other things going on that didn't mean that they would talk to women in public.

But for a devout Jew, he would not have a conversation with a woman in public, even his own wife. Secondly, rabbis certainly did not speak to women who were morally not right. If you follow along later, we learned this lady is on live in number six, not husband, she didn't give up on the whole husband thing.

Now she's on shacking up with the sixth guy. And the third thing, the third tradition that he broke was the absolute disdain that any Jew had for a Samaritan. And in light of the first and second comment, especially a woman, and even more so this particular Samaritan woman.

Now, I want you to understand, we need to grasp this for just a minute. First of all, she was a Samaritan, that's strike one. Secondly, she was a woman, that's strike two. Strike three was the fact that she was an immoral Samaritan.

And so it is no wonder that she replies, how do you, a Jew, ask for water for me, a Samaritan? Now to further emphasize the depth of this, the Jewish Mishnah or their oral tradition describes a Samaritan woman as being in a state of continual ritual uncleanness.

John adds a note here in verse nine, he says in parentheses, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Now, the interesting thing is that's not actually what it says in the original language. That's the intent of the comment, but the actual language here talks about utensils and dishes.

Now I'm being a little broad with my terminology, but the concept here was that they were not to share used vessels between each other. So the fact that Jesus would ask for water, which he would have to take from the jar of a Samaritan woman is a big, big issue.

One that literally conveys a greater issue of not staying clean. And so the woman is taken aback. But what I find interesting here is that Jesus never truly responds to her pushback. Her pushback is, how are you a Jew asking me, a Samaritan woman, for water?

And very similar to what he did in the case of Nicodemus, Jesus literally bypasses this primary conversation that seems to be going on regarding his physical need of water and gets straight to the heart of the matter.

Now, his original request, again, being is this water, he now moves them into a gospel conversation. Now I want to make a quick side note here. We struggle with ways to bring conversations with people to a place where we feel comfortable enough to share the gospel.

The problem is, just as we will see here, the gospel is never going to be a comfortable conversation. Listen, if the gospel is a comfortable conversation, you're not having it right. You're not doing it right.

Look, normally we tend to throw out excuses and our excuses generally fit into one of three categories. And I want to do this very quickly just because this is a side note, but we need to address it. One, the first excuse, I don't know enough.

To present the gospel. Well, if this is a true state, if this is you, if you're saying that you don't know enough to present the gospel, then you need to start right there. If you don't know enough to share the gospel, how do you know enough to believe the gospel?

Second excuse, I'm not allowed to share the gospel in this situation or that situation. As we just talked about, that just by speaking to this woman, Jesus is breaking no less than three man-made rules.

And so the real issue here is, do you care enough about the salvation of others that you are willing to share the gospel regardless of what consequences it may bring? It took Jesus to the cross. Are you willing to obey his command to take up your cross daily and follow him?

Third, and this kind of ties into verse one a little bit, or the first one a little bit, they may ask me questions. Or it could be worded, they may get mad at me. Or it could be, they no longer will like me.

First of all, if this is your concern, if the concern is they may ask you questions that you don't understand and you don't comprehend, I understand that will happen. People ask me questions that I don't understand and don't comprehend.

That's a part of life. Accept it and be willing to acknowledge it and move forward. But if you don't witness because you're scared they're going to ask you questions you don't know the answer to, then the problem is not necessarily your fear.

It's more of a deeper problem regarding you and the gospel. Secondly, if the second or the third thing that I mentioned, getting mad at you or no longer liking you, if that's your concern, I would ask you the same thing that the apostles asked the Pharisees in Acts chapter five, verse 29, when they were challenged regarding their disobedience to demand that they not continue teaching the truth of Christ.

And they said, Peter, and the apostles answered and said, we must obey God rather than men. But I digress. And so back to the matter at hand of Jesus dealing with his physical need and her spiritual need.

The truth is that it points to another great truth of scripture, and that is the great need or the depth of the need of our soul. Listen, it should take no more than a moment of observation in the culture around you to know very quickly that people are desperately searching for something that will provide them with joy, with hope, with peace, with love.

Now, we know sitting here today, these things can only be truly satisfied by God. And the sad reality is this is the one place that no one is looking. Scripture is clear. Chapter three, verse 11 of Romans, there is none who understand, there is none who seeks for God.

People aren't running around with a God-shaped hole in their heart, looking for God. They're looking for something to fill a hole in their life, but they have no idea why the hole's there. They are blind to the truth of scripture.

They are blind to the truth, the reality of what the word teaches. And what we do is we seek satisfaction in every other place except where it can truly be found. And this is a result of the depth of the depravity of who we are.

Living Water, Human Need, and the Gospel Conversation

But Jesus's response to her, it's an interesting response. Again, not really addressing her questioning why he would ask, Jesus says the following to her in verse 10. If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

So now there's a couple of things we need to address in this passage. First and foremost, we need to address the very first clause. It says, if you knew the gift of God. Now the word gift here can be used to mean a couple of different things.

One, it could be referring to the word of God or the Holy Spirit. Each of these has its own definite ties back to this specific conversation. So it's one of these questions where if we look at the context, it's not an immediate response that we understand it.

And so if he's referring to the Holy Spirit, that hearkens us back to the conversation with Nicodemus that we had last week, where it is necessary that we are born again before seeing or entering the kingdom of God.

And certainly this is a plausible explanation. However, if he is here referring to the word of God, then we need to understand a little bit more about the history of the Samaritan people. When the Samaritan people underwent that cleansing that removed the other faiths, you remember I told you they had become a syncristic society.

When they went through the cleansing that removed those other faiths to leave them back to worshiping the one true God, one of the things that they did was that they refused to accept the Jewish Torah as scripture.

What they actually sought was the Samaritan version. And the Samaritan version of the Torah is different from the Jewish version. For one thing, the Jewish by this point had grown to include not only the first five books of the law, but also the prophets and also the Psalms.

None of these were accepted by the Samaritans except the first five books. But there is multiple differences, some 6 ,000 differences between the Samaritan Torah and the Jewish Torah. And so the fact is that they don't have the word the same as the Jews did, which also makes the gift being the word of God an entirely plausible interpretation.

However, I would posit a third. I would posit that gift here truly refers to both the spirit and the word. Scripture clearly teaches to us that the spirit works in conjunction with the word, so why would we expect to hear anything different from the lips of Christ?

In essence, his response to her is this, if the spirit and the word were known to you, if you understood my word by the power of the Holy Spirit and you knew who I was, then you would have sought true living water.

But it is obvious that she doesn't understand this. In fact, she finds his response quite ridiculous. Note the two statements she specifically makes. First of all, she responds to him and says, sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.

How are you going to get this water that you're telling me about if you can't reach down and grasp it? You have no way to draw it up and you have no way to go down to it. How, from where will this water, now this is a great question of scripture, isn't it?

From where does this come? She didn't know it, but she stumbled on a truth, a reality. Now, what's interesting to know about this specific water and her statement is that this well, as you may have noticed in verse six, was Jacob's well.

Specifically speaking, Jacob dug this well, he watered his sons from it, he watered his cattle from it, and for 2 ,000 years, it had been providing water to the people in this region. It may interest you to know that for 2 ,000 more years, it still continues to provide water for the people of that region.

You can go today to this area in the Holy Land to the spot where Jacob's well sits and water still flows. And so she asked him, one, first of all, how in the world are you going to get this water? Two, are you greater than Jacob?