John 4:1-10 (Christ The Living Water)

The Shepherd's Church

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All right. We're going to be in John chapter 4, verses 1 through 10 is where we'll be at today.

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If you want to put a ribbon or a marker in your Bibles, and I don't know if the words are going to be up on the screen or not.

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And they might not exactly correspond, because I know typically you use the NASB, and I am using the

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ESV. And I know they're very close, so we will be able to figure it out. Well, as Kendall asked you to give him grace while doing music,

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I'm going to ask you to give me grace as well when preaching. Because this is the first time in, I think, since March, to be honest with you, that I've preached in a traditional or a typical,

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I should say, a typical manner of being able to actually just stand up in front of a congregation and not have a screen separating me and others as we had been going through our

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COVID days and trying to figure out how to be able to preach and to deliver the word through that.

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So yes, let's get in to the gospel. As I mentioned, the gospel according to John is one of the greatest works of literary mastery in the history of philosophy, theology, ethics, evangelism, missiology, and just straight up historical factual chronicling for that matter.

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Martin Luther was so taken with this gospel and the book of Romans that he said, this is the unique, tender, genuine chief gospel.

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Should a tyrant succeed in destroying the holy scriptures and only a single copy of the epistles of the

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Romans and the gospel according to John escape him, Christianity would be saved.

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Now Luther is making the argument there that all essential theological and doctrinal truth can be discerned from both the gospel of John and the epistle to the

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Romans. Now he may very well be correct here. I'm really not taking him up on the task and actually examining these for detail by detail by detail to see if it actually has the fullness of a systematic theology within just the gospel of John and the epistle to the

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Romans. But I'm just going to take him at his word for that matter. And I do believe that in reading through the epistle to the

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Romans and the gospel of John that it does hit on all the core essential theological truths that we need to be able to live the

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Christian life. And when we consider the way that God's word was written and recorded for the church in the first couple of centuries, that was actually an essential reality.

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Because you see, for the first couple hundred years of the church history, they did not have a nice leather bound work to be able to read through every single thing that was recorded and written in the

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New Testament. They had single letters, or they had single gospels. Some churches had the gospel of Matthew.

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Other churches had the gospel of Luke. Others had John. Some had the epistle to the Romans. Some had the epistle to the

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Corinthians. Some had Ephesians and so on and so forth. And then what happened that brought the word of God together is the churches shared those different gospels and the different letters.

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And they began to bring them together and bind them together into codex form, which is the early form of the

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Bible as sewn together and bound like it is. And so the gospel of John, the epistle of Romans, I would agree that it has all the essential doctrine that we need to be able to understand the

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Christian life and live that out. But I think Luther's on to something else here. When he talks about this gospel being the chief of gospel accounts,

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I think he's also tapping into the beauty of the gospel, the literary brilliance of the gospel, the readability of it.

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Now, why is it, I think, the chief of gospels along with Martin Luther?

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I think there's three reasons. Number one, there's a simplicity to the text. It's very easy to follow.

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It's easy to comprehend and to understand. The narrative flows smoothly over the pages.

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There are these beautiful, long dialogues. There are climactic events. There's an ever -growing tension brewing to a volcanic explosion.

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You get caught up in the story. And John is fantastic at weaving all of these narratives together.

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He's a master worker of transitions in his gospels. You always know where he is taking you.

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He's a fantastic storyteller. That's what he is. The second reason I think this is the chief of the gospels is there's a perfect blending of theology and practice.

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See, when John writes about biblical doctrine, he always, always has at least one episode and typically multiple episodes in the life and the ministry of Jesus that brings the doctrine to life.

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He helps to, sort of in his own words, flesh it out. So we see normal, everyday men and women from every spectrum of the social level engaged by the person of Jesus, hearing, heeding, rejecting, and even hating the instruction he came to give.

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This is one of the central theses John lays out in his opening paragraphs. He talks about the word.

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And I'm sure Kendall went into some depth here when he started off in your study in John chapter 1.

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John opens up talking about the word. And I'm sure Kendall told you that that word, the word, the logos, is so loaded with meaning that there are books upon books written about the word.

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It's loaded with meaning from a biblical perspective and from a Greek and Roman philosophical perspective.

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It is just so heavily loaded with doctrinal, philosophical, theological, biblical meaning.

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But does John just talk about the word in some kind of metaphysical entity, some kind of just spiritual, unseen, unknowable reality?

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No. He talks about the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, among humanity.

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So what John opens up with his gospel saying is that the conceptual becomes tangible.

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The theoretical becomes realized. The unseen becomes seen. The unknowable, as far as our finite minds go, makes himself known.

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This is why the gospel of John is both a wading pool for little infants, and it's also a vast, galactic, unlimited ocean that is always demanding further exploration no matter how mature we grow in our faith.

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The third reason I think this is the chief gospel, and I'm a fan of this one. John's not the only gospel writer to do this, but he does it in such a great way.

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He always brings us back to the main point. He has a mission statement lodged at the end of his gospel.

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He summarizes everything for us in a few short words. Does anybody know what John's ultimate mission statement is and where it's found in his gospel?

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Does anyone know? No? It's in John chapter 20, verses 30 through 31.

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Does that ring any bells? John says here in chapter 20, verse 30 through 31, he says, now

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Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book.

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But these, so he's saying, I select these. These are written so that, here's the purpose and the intention, you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name.

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John summarizes the entire purpose for which he writes everything in his gospel in these couple of verses.

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Really, it's in verse 31, but verse 30 sets up verse 31, so it's important to include that there. He says that he purposely selects what he does.

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He leaves some elements out and includes others. And then his intention is to write meaningful, impactful truths that you, the reader, now

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I know we're millennia later, but we are part of the reading crowd, the reading group.

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So you, the reader, will grasp and, more importantly, believe, experience a cognitive, willful, and emotional transformation of your life.

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And that belief would be in the object, the person of Jesus as the eternal

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Son of God who's the anointed and chosen Savior. And there is no other person, method, religion, or pathway that then leads to the ultimate intended goal and purpose, eternal life.

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So you, believing in Christ, may receive eternal life. That's his purpose.

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Everything that's written in the gospel is written with that intention. You believe in Jesus, leading to eternal life.

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I'm going to take this off, because it's very restrictive on my arms at this point. I feel like I'm limited in my wingspan with it.

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So let's keep this mission verse, this, if you will, this mission statement, this vision, this purpose, this intention of John.

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And whenever we're reading anything in his gospel, that's the lens through which we want to look through so we can understand his meaning.

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So let's keep that in mind as we turn to our passage today in John chapter 4, verses 1 through 10. In this passage,

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Jesus is shifting the geographical focus of his ministry from Jerusalem and Judea, which is in the south, and he's going to move into the north, into Galilee.

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That's about an 80 to a 100 -mile journey, but a three -day journey in the ancient

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Jewish world, depending on where you're going from and where you're going to. It's the region of his upbringing.

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Nazareth was in Galilee, in the north. It's the region where the Sea of Galilee is, which we read about quite extensively in the gospel accounts.

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But before we turn to his actual ministry in the north, John gives us a very long, detailed, intentional snapshot of a unique event in the life and ministry of Jesus.

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And you'll only find that event here in John's gospel. It's not in Matthew, Mark, or Luke.

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Yet this riveting, unique narrative between Jesus and an obscure woman is often one of the most remembered and beloved gospel moments.

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People connect deeply with this story. They find themselves sitting by the well.

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They find themselves in the person of that Samaritan woman. They find themselves as one of the 12 disciples, if all 12 were there with Jesus.

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We don't really know for sure, but anyways, that's an aside that I don't want to run down. It's a little trail rabbit hole.

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We find ourselves with the disciples as they're returning back to the well, and they're bewildered and befuddled. What is

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Jesus doing talking with this woman, this Samaritan woman? And we then find ourselves amongst the crowd of the

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Samaritans, hearing the gospel announced for the first time amongst non -distinctly

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Jewish individuals. It's a narrative that we get caught up in.

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We find ourselves in. It's almost as though we are standing side by side, seeing it take place.

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So let's read verses 1 through 10. Now, when

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Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples, he left

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Judea and departed again for Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called

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Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there.

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So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

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It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

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The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

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

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Heavenly Father, I thank you for your word today. I thank you for this gospel that has been passed down through millennia.

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I thank you, Lord, that we don't just have the gospel of John and the epistle to the Romans, but we have the full counsel of your will.

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We have the full, divine, inspired, inerrant word from Genesis through Revelation, from poetry to history, from songs to tragedies, from heroes to villains, and most importantly, in all of it,

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Lord, your sovereign work of redemption through Christ by the power of your

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Holy Spirit, from death in the early pages to eternal life at the end.

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And Lord, I am so, so grateful that we are recipients of your divine truth.

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May we always humbly approach you with a desire to know more of you, to know more of ourselves, know more of this world, to know more of eternal life, and to be good witnesses and stewards of the time and the resources and the word that you have given to us today, amen.

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So we're setting the table for the rest of this narrative. It continues on to, I think, verse 45, yep, verse 45.

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So it's a long section. If we were to do the whole thing today, it would take a significant portion of time.

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So Kendall is gonna be able to pick up where I leave off. We're gonna stop with a cliffhanger in verse 10, as you can sort of already see, and we're gonna just touch upon the living water at the end of it, and I'm gonna let him pick up on the dialogue and the more fullness of that living water starting next week.

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But what we're going to do today is to set the table to understand what's happening throughout the rest of this narrative.

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Because, as I mentioned, John is not only a fantastic literary writer, he's not just a good storyteller, which he truly, truly is, but he's a fabulous historian as well.

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I mean, Luke gets all the praise for being the historian extraordinaire, and, I mean, believe me, he was. He was the best writer when it came to actually using the

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Greek language in the New Testament, and he probably was the best historian out of all of them. But John, he's no novice himself.

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He understands how to set the historical stage so that we can have a fullness and a richness of understanding the dialogue that takes place and the events that take place between Jesus and the

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Samaritan woman, the disciples, and the rest of the Samaritan people. And so that's my job today.

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And because I was a fabulous third -grade student, I know the four

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Ws of appropriate exegesis. Did I say four? See, apparently I wasn't. The five

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Ws of extraordinary exegesis from third grade. Who can give me the five Ws of extraordinary exegesis?

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I know you know them, come on. Who, what, when, where, why? Yes, who, what, when, where, why, and then there's one

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H, that's right. How? Yes, I mean, I make a joke about that, but in all reality, if you actually ask those questions, you will understand the biblical text more than most preachers who stand up in a pulpit.

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I mean, that's just the reality of it. Those are great questions to ask. So what we're really gonna touch upon today is the why, the where, and the who, and then we're gonna tease the how, or excuse me, the what.

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We're gonna tease the what that Kendall will pick up on next week. So let's start with the why. We find the why in verses one through four.

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Why is there a movement from Jerusalem to Galilee?

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And why is it that Jesus has to move through Samaria? Let's ask that question.

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We're trying to discern the motivations that drove Jesus from his current place of ministry to his next place of ministry in a pass -through in this region that this narrative takes place in.

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So let's look at verses one through four. We see two things. We see two motivations. The first is political, and the second is spiritual.

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The political takes prominent place in verses one through three. In verses one through three, we read about a growing conflict between Jesus and the boogeymen of the

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Gospels, the Pharisees. You just have to say that with like a hushed voice.

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The Pharisees. Everybody knows the Pharisees are bad. Everyone knows the Pharisees are bad, right?

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Do we agree with that? If everyone, yeah, they're the villains of the New Testament. You wanna know how we know the

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Pharisees are bad? There's actually a telltale marker. We know that the Pharisees are bad because whenever you're in a theological dispute with someone or a debate, and you have no response, just call them a

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Pharisee and you win the argument. That's the way it works. Those are the rules of Facebook. That's how it happens.

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You get this argument. You say, wait a minute. You don't hold a pre -trib, half -wrap, part -mill, most -dis interpretation of revelation?

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Pharisee. And then you win. That's what you do. That's how you win your doctrinal battles on Facebook.

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The first person to call the other one a Pharisee, they get the gold medal. No, well, we know that the

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Pharisees are the bad guys. And I use that in quotation marks because it's really unfair. It's not as though all the

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Pharisees were bad guys. We just read about a Pharisee in chapter three whose name was Nicodemus, who eventually became a believer in Jesus Christ.

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And he's actually someone who's shown in a positive light, even though it's darkness, interesting stuff taking place there, right?

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But yes, we have this kind of positive view on some of the Pharisees. But as a group overall, the

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Pharisees, they really are the boogeyman living in the cellar of the gospel. They're the dungeon masters who you're like, we wanna stay away from the

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Pharisees. They're the scary guys. And the reason why they're cast in that light is because the

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Pharisees, they twist the scriptures, that's what they do, to suit their own agendas, to increase their own power, to increase their own following.

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And they end up doing so, heaping up burdens on other people that they don't take upon themselves. They're hypocrites, they're twisters, they're liars.

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And again, they take the beautiful, pure, glorious, holy word of God and make it suit their own agenda, their own legalistic tendencies and agendas.

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And so they don't like John, the baptizer, and they don't like Jesus because John and Jesus both call them out for their twisting of the scriptures.

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We see one of these places in Matthew 3, 7 -10. John the Baptist is sitting back in the

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Jordan River, munching on a locust. His hair's a little disheveled and wild. And he just looks at the

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Pharisees who come, for whatever reason that's motivating them to come see

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John. John looks right through them. He can see to their soul. He sees that they're disingenuous and he yells out some of the greatest words in the opening of Matthew's gospel.

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You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance and do not presume to save yourselves.

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We have Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham.

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And then he says to them, a pronouncement of judgment and woe, even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.

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Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Let me summarize that woe pronouncement of John against the

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Pharisees. You're going to hell. That's the summary. As of right now, without true repentance in your soul, it doesn't matter if you come here and I baptize you or dip you in the water because you don't have true repentance in your soul.

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And John as a prophet is able to see spiritually into their souls. He says, Pharisees, you're false, you're fake, you're liars, you're snakes, and you're going to be judged by God for it.

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So the Pharisees don't like John. They also don't like Jesus. They don't like Jesus because back in chapter two,

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Jesus shows up to Jerusalem and he decides to make a whip. It's always a fun word to say, whip.

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Even as you say the word whip, it hurts. It sounds painful. Jesus made a whip and drove out the money changers who were a part of this

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Pharisaical system, who's part of this Pharisaical elites, mostly the

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Sadducees system, but the Sadducees and the Pharisees who didn't see eye to eye on many things, they ended up seeing eye to eye on Jesus and John the

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Baptist because they were threats against their power, against their religious elitism, against their basically setting themselves as a class above the rest of the

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Jews. So they don't like Jesus, they don't like John the Baptist, and there's a conflict that is brewing as John is decreasing and Jesus is increasing in the amount of people in the crowd that's following him.

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And so what Jesus does here is he knows it's not yet his time to have that conflict with the

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Pharisees brew to a boiling point. And so he being led and prompted by the

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Holy Spirit decides to leave the place of high tension and hostility.

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There might've been other reasons, but I think that's the primary one. He knew that it was not his time to have that conflict with the

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Pharisees come to a full head. The time would come. We know that when we get to the end of the gospel.

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So that's the political reason for Jesus to move from the South to the North. But I said that there was a spiritual reason.

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Where do we see that? It's in verse four. In verse four it says, and he had to pass through Samaria.

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Another way of reading that would be it was necessary for him to pass through Samaria. Now that's an interesting phraseology.

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The reason that's interesting is because as biblical scholars and geographical scholars and even historical scholars have pointed out, he actually didn't have to pass through Samaria.

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There were alternative routes he could have used. Now there was a main road that went from Judea in the

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South to the North in Galilee that went through Samaria. There was a main road system there. And a lot of people used it.

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A lot of trade caravans and military movements and stuff like that. But for pietistic, holy, rabbinical

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Jews, religious leaders, they didn't use that road. They didn't use that route because they didn't like the

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Samaritans. They didn't believe that the Samaritans were, well, very good neighbors.

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They had a lot of hostility and animosity towards the Samaritans. We'll talk about that a little bit in a little bit.

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By the way, Jesus did not necessarily have to go through Samaria. You know, and the interesting part is when we actually read this preceding aspect of the narrative and when we take into consideration the ministry of Jesus Christ, there's another indication that he didn't have to pass through Samaria.

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So if Jesus is baptizing, that's what he's doing. And that's what leads to the political conflict.

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Where was it that he was most likely baptizing? The Jordan River. The Jordan River is where John baptized.

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The Jordan River is where the majority of the baptisms seem to have taken place. And so if Jesus, and I admit that I'm speculating here, the scripture does not tell us that he was baptizing in the

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Jordan. So this is a step, an interpretive step that I'm taking. But if Jesus was, and I think it's likely that he was baptizing in the

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Jordan River and the place of ministry that he typically went to in Galilee was at the

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Sea of Galilee, then the eastern route actually would have been the straightest shot.

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That would have been the straightest route to actually get from Judea to the north. So for him to actually pass through Samaria, if he's at the

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Jordan River, he'd have to go west and then north rather than directly up the eastern border of the

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Jordan River. Now, why do I say this? I say this because it seems to be the case here.

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And this is what Craig Keener concludes in his magnum opus on the Gospel of John. He says that the necessary that compels

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Jesus to take this route is most likely his mission.

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It's not a geographical compulsion. It's not because he has to take the road that goes through Samaria because that's the traveling purpose, but there's an actual internal compulsion by the

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Holy Spirit to lead him in that direction. The Holy Spirit, by the direction of God the

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Father, who is leading Jesus in his earthly ministry, is actually bringing him on that pathway because he has a mission along that route.

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Because there is someone in Samaria who needed to believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, they would have life in his name. Now, don't miss the incredible significance of this.

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Please don't miss the incredible aspect of this in John's Gospel. If Keener and other astute biblical scholars are correct in their analysis, and if I'm interpreting this correctly as well, think about what this tiny little phrase, it was necessary, means.

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It means that out of the hundreds of thousands living in Palestine at that time, tens of thousands of Jews, rabbis,

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Pharisees, politically, materially elite, intellectually astute, biblical scholars who've memorized much of the

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Old Testament in multiple languages. John is saying that it wasn't necessary for Jesus to go to any of them at that time.

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He's saying that the first person who would hear Jesus declaring with his own mouth, I who speak to you,

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I am he, that's what Jesus eventually pronounces to the Samaritan woman. When the Samaritan woman is getting close to understanding the nature of who

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Jesus is because she actually has some biblical training, believe it or not, Jesus ends up pronouncing to her what he has not pronounced to anybody else yet in the

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Gospel of John. Yes, I am the one who's sent by God to save the world.

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I am the anointed one. I am the Messiah. John is saying here that it was necessary for this unknown woman to hear that before anybody else in the region.

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For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.

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Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God shows what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

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God shows what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God shows what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

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Some really smart individual named Paul wrote that in a letter to the Corinthians, chapter one, verses 26 through 29.

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In case any of us would ever become proud, boastful, arrogant because of our salvation, because of our

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Christian identity, because of our historical, theological, doctrinal knowledge, our intellect, these things literally, it's nothing special about us.

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There's nothing special about us. Why would God save us? Why would he be so gracious to guide events in history that brought about our hearing of the gospel, that brings about our hearts being open to receive the gospel?

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It's not anything in us. If someone else were writing this script, and this was all just a made up narrative, there's no way that the first person who would hear

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Jesus essentially say an I am statement in the gospel of John would be this strange, unknown, unnamed

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Samaritan woman. Somehow it would have been Caesar taking a vacation in Palestine, or at least some kind of a general, a

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Lord, someone like that. But the true Lord, the true

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God works in these ways where he brings about salvation in weakness.

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He brings about gospel intelligence in our foolishness because he and his love, grace, and mercy simply deemed it necessary.

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Hallelujah, hallelujah, amen to that. So that's the why question.

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But now we're gonna move to the where. Chapter four, verses four through six. Well, we've already mentioned

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Samaria, and we've spoken a bit about it, but let's dive in a little more at this point.

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First, we notice a couple of other geographical identifying features. Number one, we read about Jacob's well in verse six.

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It just simply states this. Jacob's well was there in Jacob's field.

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I love this statement because if you were to travel to Israel today, you can actually go sit by Jacob's well.

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We know exactly where it is. We know where this conversation took place.

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You can put your hand upon the stones that Jesus himself rested against.

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You can actually drop a bucket in and pull out, well, there's still a lot of water there, and we know that the well is very deep.

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We know that there's a stream that runs under it that feeds it. You can draw water out of it. A lot of people have actually thrown stones into the well because apparently that's just something that we do.

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I don't really know why we throw stuff into wells, but it's what we do. You can go there.

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You can see it. This well is something that is historically rooted all the way back to Genesis 33.

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That's when Jacob purchases the land, and he purchases the well that's there. And then he hands it on to Joseph in Genesis chapter 48.

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It is near this territory that Jacob and Joseph are buried in the land of Shechem. I love that we can actually go to these places where these events took place.

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I've never had the blessed opportunity to go there, but just the idea that I could actually step upon that ground brings so much life and richness to these gospel accounts.

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So in the time of Jesus, where the well was, there was a literal fork in the road. Funny enough, there's a crossroads.

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Well, not a crossroads. There's a fork in the road. And one went northeast towards the Sea of Galilee. One went northwest to the

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Mediterranean Sea, and it would have been a natural spot to stop and rest.

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Furthermore, the town of Sychar, which is modern day village of Askar, is a little bit under a mile to the east of the well's location.

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So we're trying to get an orientation of that there. So let's deal with the greater picture, the region of Samaria.

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What was it, and why was it so important for proper Jews to avoid it at all costs?

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Well, the name Samaria comes from the city that was built by King Omri. Who's heard of King Omri?

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Who knows about King Omri or the Omride Empire? So King Omri recalled that the

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Israelite people separated into a northern and a southern kingdom in the Old Testament.

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The north was called Israel. It was composed of 10 tribes. And the south was called Judah. It was composed of two of the 12 tribes.

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This happened only a few short years after King Solomon's reign. There was

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Walter Kaiser, who wrote a history on Israel, lamentably, he said, what took 80 years to build only took five to 10 years to deteriorate.

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How sad is that? Well, eventually, one of the northern dynasties came from this man named

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Omri. He was a morally corrupt and wicked individual, but he was politically and militarily astute.

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He built a beautiful, strong, defensible capital city, and he called it

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Samaria. I don't know why, but that's what he called it. And then

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Omri had a son. His name was Ahab. Perhaps you've heard of him. Samaria became a den of vile corruption in the days of Ahab.

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Yahweh worship was outlawed. The prophets of Yahweh were massacred, and any who survived had to run into hiding.

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Baal worship became centralized, and child sacrifice became one of the key components of worship.

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Quite literally, in the city of Samaria, people were sacrificing their children to Baal in order to have physical prosperity, and that was their way of worship.

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Furthermore, beyond that, as if it can get any worse, there was constant usury, greed, theft, cult prostitution, murder, and assassination.

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That all became the rule of the land. Well, eventually, of course, the

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Lord promised to destroy Ahab, Samaria, and the rest of the Northern Kingdom for their reprehensible behavior.

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You can read about this in the prophet Amos if you would like to. Well, the Lord carries out his promises.

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In 722 BC, we know the exact year that this took place, the

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Lord raised up a terrifying might of the Assyrian Empire. This empire was cruel, but effective in their conquests.

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They demolished the Northern Kingdom, and the once -glorious city of Samaria crumbled into ashes.

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But besides just their destructive prowess, there was something else that the Assyrians did that was unique in that time, but very effective.

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They had a strategy of repopulating the territories that they conquered. That's what they did.

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So what the Assyrians would do is they would rip families apart from amongst the peoples that they defeated, and they would take some of those individuals and place them into this territory, some would place them into another.

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They would have taken many of the Israelites, grabbed them, pulled them out, and put them into other cities throughout the

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Mesopotamian region. And then they would have taken other conquered people groups and taken them from their

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Mesopotamian cities and brought them into Israel. And they had a justification for this.

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It was smart. It was intelligent, but again, cruel. They wanted people to lose their religious, ethnic, racial, familial identities, and they wanted them to be separated from the land of their birth, because in their thinking, again, it was wise, in their thinking, well, if people don't have that kind of common identity together, then they won't revolt against us.

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And so what ended up happening after 722 BC is the Israelites in the north ended up being dispersed and spread throughout all of the other nations throughout the

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Middle East. And all the other nations of the Middle East were brought to live in the north.

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And some of the Israelites remained and intermarried and were interwoven with these other people groups.

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And what ended up happening is the Samaritans that became known to be the Samaritans were born from that intermixing.

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Believe it or not, there's actually still some Samaritan groups to this day, if you travel to that region. So the interaction between the

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Jews in Judea, which were in the south, and the Samaritans in the north were cool, to say the least, and outright hostile at other points for the next 700 years.

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We read about the Samaritans as adversaries in the reconstruction of the temple and the walls of Jerusalem in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

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Records show constant land and trade disputes between the Samaritans and the Jews during the days of the

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Roman Empire. One of the appeals even went all the way to Caesar in Rome. And he sided with the

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Jews and just had the Samaritan dissenters executed. So Samaritans didn't like Jews.

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Jews did not like Samaritans. So now we fast forward to this day, the day that Jesus is traveling through Samaria.

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The Samaritans are considered to be a half -breed corrupted seed of Abraham by most in Israel. They are always considered to be ceremonially unclean and idolatrous.

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There might be some truth to this, but honestly, it was an unfair and inaccurate way to label all of the

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Samaritans as such. A lot of the Samaritans by the time of Jesus were actually quite strict, believe it or not.

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Many of them were devoted to the worship of Yahweh. They did not accept the whole Old Testament as scripture, but they did accept the first five books.

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They accepted the Pentateuch as scripture, the law of Moses. They observed food laws.

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They observed ceremonial cleanness. They had feast days in accordance with the Pentateuch. They practiced the

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Sabbath, and they often did so with almost as much zeal and tenacity as the Pharisees, believe it or not.

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They did not embrace Jerusalem as the capital because that was not laid out in the first five books of the

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Bible. They had their own temple mount on Mount Gerizim. I'll let Kendall talk about that one.

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But they did believe that a Messiah, one who was greater than Moses, was going to come.

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So they believed in the first five books. They practiced a lot of the ceremonial. We read from Leviticus about slander.

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They would have taken that as authoritative, many of them. I can't say all the Samaritans. It's so hard to lump an entire ethnic group together, but many of the

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Samaritans did, and they believed that Yahweh was going to send a

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Messiah, a greater prophet, probably the way that they would have labeled him at that time.

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That's what sets the background for this discussion between Jesus and the woman.

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Now, in an interesting way, Jesus is actually being sent to a place and to a people who have been prepared to receive him.

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Think about that. Isn't that interesting? See, they may not have a provable genetic claim to be offspring of Abraham, although they probably were to some extent.

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They're not as pure as the Jews are in Judea. They're not as theologically accurate as the Jews are.

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They don't have the full correct canon of Scripture. They don't have the right temple mount location where they worship and offer their sacrifices, but that's not what matters when

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Jesus comes to Samaria, because the where of gospel receptivity can be anywhere amongst any people whom

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God is laying the groundwork for. Any place where hearts, minds, and wills are being prepared to receive the good news of the gospel is the place where the gospel and the good news of Jesus will be received.

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This is, I think, one of the things that Jesus hints at in John 10, verse 16, where he says, I have sheep of another fold.

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Notice the other fold language. And he says, and it is necessary that I bring them in also, and they will listen to my voice.

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Sometimes we can get into our minds that a place is far too removed to be able to receive the gospel, that a people group are far too backwards to receive the gospel.

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And here's the reality. I think we can do that domestically at this time. We can look at Europe and North America and say the culture's way too gone.

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It's become far too secular. It's way too hedonistic. People are way too absorbed in the things of this life.

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They're way too fearful of things that are only temporary. They worship football.

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They worship the movies. They worship, they just worship the cultural idols.

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That's what they do. And there's just no way we're gonna reach the gospel. We're gonna reach them for the gospel. But the reality is we don't know where it is that God is setting up people to receive.

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Our job is simply to go into whatever culture, whatever location, whatever people group the

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Lord is calling us into, just as he's leading Jesus here through the power of the spirit, and just go there and see what he's gonna do through us.

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That's it. There is no one, there is nowhere off limits. So Jesus, led by the spirit into Samaria, he travels about 20 to 25 miles from probably about six in the morning till noontime.

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It's up and down, it's over rocky terrain, and it is the middle of the day by the time he gets to this well.

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Has anybody been in the Middle East for an extended period of time? No one else?

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I have. It's hot. It's really hot. I spent a year in Iraq.

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And from about 10 a .m. to 6 p .m., it can get to about 130, 140 degrees.

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It's warm, it's toasty. And I love when people say, well, it's a dry heat. Okay. It's not a fun, and imagine, 20, 25 miles.

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20, 25 mile walk. I mean, the truth is if we went out and did a 20, 25 mile walk in ideal conditions, we'd probably wanna sit down for a nap and a snooze.

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So John eloquently writes for us just these real examples of Jesus's humanity that he was worn out from his journey.

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He simply plops down next to the well. And then, for some reason, I love this in verse eight.

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It says, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. How many disciples does it take to buy food?

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It's like that, you know, how many people does it take to put on a light bulb or something like that?

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How many disciples does it take to go into a city and buy food? I mean, we don't know exactly how many disciples that are there with Jesus yet.

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Like, was Matthew already called at this point? Were all of the Galilean disciples, had they all come in?

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I mean, was it 12, was it 10? I don't know. It was multiple, we know that. Either way, what's it take, two or three?

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And shouldn't at least one disciple stay back with Jesus at this point? Why are all of them going into the city?

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I can only look at this and say, well, it's because the Holy Spirit just prompted it.

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The Holy Spirit either prompted it in Jesus to tell them all to go in, or it prompted, or he prompted within the disciples just for all of them to go.

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Whenever it was, there was a clearing out of the disciples because if even one of them remained at the well, then this following dialogue would never have taken place.

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Not at least in the way that it does, with the intimacy that it takes place in.

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So all of the disciples go to get food in Samaria, which also was taboo for most

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Jews in that day. But we've already seen Jesus doesn't care about the traditional taboos of the Pharisees. And now in verse seven, we go step back one verse.

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In verse seven, here's where we read the introduction to the other who in the narrative, this woman from Samaria.

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Says point blank, a woman from Samaria came to draw water. Now in the eyes of the ancient

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Jewish and even Roman world, this is setting up to be a scandalous, perhaps even a sensual account, narrative account.

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That's the way that most people in the ancient world would have read that phrase. See men, again, especially in the

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Middle East, were never alone with women, especially men of religious standing, even women of their own family.

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Again, when I was in the Middle East, when I was in Iraq, I got to see some of this take place as they still hold on to this tradition today.

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I would see that a husband and a wife, actually very affectionate, loving, caring, tender, gentle with one another while they were at their homestead.

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As they would walk out and move into the public space, suddenly the wife would have to step back about eight to 10 paces and walk behind her husband.

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Whenever in public. And then if another husband and wife would join them, then the wife of that husband would join the wife and the husband would join the husband and they would step 10 paces aside from each other.

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That's still happening today, at least in Iraq. And I would assume in other places like Iran and Afghanistan and other locations in the

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Middle East. But not only was she a woman, she was a

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Samaritan woman. Again, she was mixed. She was a spoiled seed of Abraham. That's disgusting according to rabbinical accounts.

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One of them says that a Samaritan woman should be treated as though she is always on her menstrual cycle. That's how a

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Samaritan woman should be treated. Constantly unclean. And there's some other things about this woman that throws up some serious red flags reading the narrative.

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Number one, she's alone. Women never went to the wells alone. They always went in groups.

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Why is she alone? Number two, she traveled a mile to go to the well. Again, Sychar was a mile away.

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Now there were other wells closer to Sychar. Why did she go all the way to Jacob's well? It made sense for Jesus to be there.

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It was along the road. Why did she go a mile? To get water. Do you know how heavy those water jugs were?

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Have you ever carried a five -gallon water jug? Imagine carrying two of those, about 10 gallons, a mile.

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Just go out to a high school track, if it's legal to do that nowadays, I don't know. And take two five -gallon jugs and walk around the track four times.

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In 140 degrees. What's that? Yeah, I mean, they were, yeah.

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It was heavy. They had heavy, heavy, heavy water jugs because you couldn't just keep going back to these springs.

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It was a lot of work just to get the water up out of the well. The well was 100 feet deep.

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Just pulling on that rope is gonna get you tired. Remember, I'm walking a mile there, walking a mile back, and again, it's the middle of the day.

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Women didn't collect and gather water in the middle of the day. They went out in the morning or they went out in the evening, when it was cooler out.

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That just makes sense. So why is she alone traveling a mile to get water in the middle of the day when it's 130 degrees, 120, 130 degrees, something like that outside?

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So not only is she a Samaritan woman, but this picture that's painted for us shows that she is also a social pariah, even among her own people.

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She's an outcast. Now, Kendall will touch upon this more based on her conversation with Jesus, but we can very clearly see that her life and relational circumstances, along with her presence at the well, verifies this.

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We don't know yet why she's doing this, why she's a social pariah, but Jesus, as a man of his culture, he would have known that something is not right here.

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In all honesty, as soon as he sees this woman coming to the well, if he was a good, pious Jewish rabbi, he should have picked up the hem of his robes and fled away from the situation, being chased as though he's being chased by a

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Balrog from the depths of Moria. But he doesn't. He doesn't run away from this woman. No, he looks up at her and he says, give me a drink.

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Give me a drink. Those are really simple words. But behind him doing this is a simple step of engaging her as though she's a human being.

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That took her by surprise. She was not prepared to be treated as a human.

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I mean, in her mind, when she's approaching the well, I try to think about these things when

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I read the text. I try to think about what her thought process must have been as she's leaving

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Sychar and she's already thinking in her mind, okay, I'm going now. I don't wanna see the other women. I don't wanna be out there with them.

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It's always a terrible conversation. It's always mocking. It's always ridicule. It's always scorn. I just don't need to be around them.

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So I'm not only gonna go in the middle of the day, but I'm gonna travel a further distance than most of them go because I just don't wanna take any risks.

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I wanna get out there, be by myself, get my water, go back to my house, be done with it.

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So just imagine as she's walking with her water jug, my other water jug or jugs, something like that, probably already tired.

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She gets to the well. Are you kidding me? What is he doing there?

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Who is this guy? Because you would have seen him from a distance. And then the closer that she walks, he probably would have had distinguishing features in his clothing.

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It's a guy, he's a Jew. Are you serious? I'm gonna have to deal with this now?

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I just wanted to get my water, be by myself. And it's gonna take a while to get that water out because you don't put the whole jug down there because that's a heavy thing.

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You have to do a smaller jug and then fill up a larger jug. It's a long process. You're there for 20, 30 minutes. Getting that water out.

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And she's just thinking, oh, what is going on? I don't wanna deal with this right now. I'm sick and tired of the mocking and the scorning and the ostracizing and having those stares.

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And this guy, he's a Jew. He's just gonna look down at me. How do we know that she's already thinking that?

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Because she basically verbally expresses it. Not basically, she does. She verbally expresses it in verse nine.

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She says to him, let me read this again. How is it that you, a

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Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? Why are you even talking to me?

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Do you know who you are and what you are and who I am and what I do? Do you understand this?

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This is the way it works. We hate each other. You despise me. I despise you. You look down at me.

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I get angry at you. You tell me that I'm false in my worship of God and I get all defensive.

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You then find out who I am as a social pariah, even amongst the Samaritans, and you mock and ridicule me even more.

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That's the way this transaction goes, sir. That's what's going on in her mind.

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Jesus just treats her like a human being with this simple statement, give me a drink of water.

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Now, a lot of commentators have looked at this and said, wow, Jesus is taking some radical steps here. He steps over religious boundaries.

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He steps over social boundaries. He steps over gender boundaries. I mean, he's just stepping over boundary upon boundary, moral boundaries.

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What a radical human being Jesus is. You know what's really sad about that statement?

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Is Jesus isn't being radical here. He's just being godly. What's sad is that we think treating someone as a common human being was radical or that it even was radical in those days.

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That's how sad things were. You can find no justification for ostracizing someone based on their religious beliefs if they were not

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Jewish. Let me just put it that way. If you were a Jew and someone came into your land or your territory, even if they were a worshiper of Baal or Chemosh or anything like that, they were from the nations, you were supposed to treat them as a sojourner in the land with some dignity, with some respect, taking care of them.

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Gender? Did we ever read the book of Ruth? You see,

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Boaz and Ruth and the way that they converse with one another and how that was held up as a paradigm of faithfulness and godliness.

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You weren't supposed to just treat someone like trash because of their gender. You didn't treat someone like trash because of their ethnicity.

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Jesus was just simply being a good, decent, godly human being. That's all.

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And we find that to be radical. I mean, it was radical for that day, but the sad part is that that was radical for him to cross those boundaries because they were just man -made traditional boundaries.

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Now her response in verse 10, I mean, her response again in verse nine, how are you doing this to me?

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And Jesus responds in verse 10. And he says, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

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Jesus is a smart and effective communicator. He knows how to use images and metaphors that will elicit appropriate responses.

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Water, of course, is essential to life. Some doctors and scientists say we need about half our body weight to keep up effective water levels in our bodies.

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That for me would be 100 ounces a day. I would need to drink 100 ounces of water a day to keep up the effective levels.

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Even if you are mildly dehydrated, which only takes a few hours, you can start to experience dizziness, fatigue, irritability, heart palpitations, and a reduced immune system.

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Nevermind other illnesses and stuff like that and skin issues and things of that nature.

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Needless to say, clean, life -invigorating water is a precious commodity today and it was an even more precious commodity in the ancient world, especially in desert environments.

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If a well spring dried up, that could mean literal death for a community. Living water was the surest source of sustained water a person could hope for.

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Living water means, in its most literal understanding, its most physical understanding means stream -fed water.

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So when Jesus says to this woman, I would have given you living water, the first thing that would have popped into her mind is an unlimited lifetime supply of water, which makes you think of Willy Wonka and the

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Chocolate Factory, but lifetime supply of chocolate. That's what she would have heard when he first said that.

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She would have heard him say, if you would have asked me, if you knew who you were speaking with, you would have asked me and I would have given you living water.

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She's thinking in her mind, so you're telling me that there's some kind of stream of water that I can constantly go to so I don't have to go to this well anymore?

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Yeah, I'll take that. We're, you know, I mean, that's not how she responds, but it's how you would think someone would respond.

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Oh yeah, the living stream of water, a constantly running stream of water. That sounds like a good thing.

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Of course, she doesn't think he actually has that. And the reality is that Jesus is not talking about a physical stream of living water.

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See, the gift of God is something that's far greater. The gift of God that Jesus is talking about, he's using metaphorical language for, transcends the basic necessities of earthly living.

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The water that Jesus is talking about is something that doesn't just satisfy and quench the palate for a few paltry seconds, it satisfies and quenches the parched, wearied soul for an eternity.

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When Jesus talks about living water with this woman, it is being parallel to the discussion about the new birth that he had with Nicodemus in chapter three.

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And when he was talking about the new birth in chapter three, Jesus, of course, wasn't talking about a physical rebirth.

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Of course, a person can't go back in time. We're not Benjamin Button, we can't go back in time, go into our mother's womb and be reborn again in a physical sense.

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The new birth that Jesus was talking about, he was using, again, physically known language in a metaphorical manner to get to eternal points and principles.

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He's doing the same thing here. When he talks about living water, he's talking about something that she would understand on a physical level, constantly running water, because he has a metaphorical purpose that leads to eternal principles in reality.

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The parallels are very clear. So he has allegorical use of language to delve into eternal truth in a similar way to two different participants.

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I love what James Montgomery Boyce says about this parallel between chapter three and chapter four.

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He says, it is difficult to imagine a greater contrast between two persons than the contrast between the important and sophisticated

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Nicodemus, this ruler of the Jews, and the simple Samaritan woman. He was a

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Jew, she is Samaritan. He was a Pharisee, she belonged to no religious party.

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He was a politician, she had no status whatsoever. He was a scholar, she was uneducated.

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He was highly moral, she was immoral. He had a name, she is nameless.

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He was a man, she was a woman. He came at night to protect his reputation. She who had no reputation came at noon.

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Nicodemus came seeking, the woman was sought by Jesus. Says it's a great contrast.

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Yet the point of the stories is that both the man and the woman needed the gospel and were welcome to it.

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If Nicodemus is an example of the truth that no one can rise so high as to be above salvation, the woman is an example of the truth that no one can sink too low.

01:00:09

So this woman is the first who of the narrative and an unlikely one at that. But there's a second who of the narrative.

01:00:19

It's obvious, it's very clear, it's our kindergarten answer. It's really the answer to any who question of the gospel.

01:00:26

The second who is the gift giver himself, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the source of the living water.

01:00:36

He's the fount from which life flows. And when I say he's the fount from which life flows,

01:00:42

I mean that literally, I mean that very literally. I mean that right now, all of life, all of our life still flows from him.

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He's the creator, he's the sustainer, he's the one who upholds my life right now, my physical life.

01:00:59

He was doing that in this amazing way because we see his human nature where on the one hand he's wearied and he's tired, he's exhausted, he's collapsed at the foot of the well.

01:01:10

But on the other hand, his divine sonship, his eternality never ends and he's the one who's upholding and sustaining her right there.

01:01:19

As he's asking her for physical water, he's the one still in his second person nature upholding her life.

01:01:29

So when I say that life flows from him, I mean that literally and we can never forget that. Any word that you utter out of your mouth, any step that you take, any movement, a little tingle on your fingers, any little blink of your eye, it's upheld and sustained by him.

01:01:48

And we can never, ever, ever, ever, ever forget that. And furthermore, he's also saying here that he is the supplier of eternal, infinite, perfect life as well.

01:02:05

He's the gift giver of that. But she's not ready or willing just yet to embrace and to receive this.

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And the reality is in our natural state, none of us are. Let me read

01:02:19

Jeremiah chapter two, verse 11 through 13 for you. Jeremiah chapter two, verse 11 says this. God is speaking through Jeremiah to the nation of Israel, Judea specifically.

01:02:31

He says, has a nation changed its gods even though they are no gods? Yet my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit.

01:02:40

Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked and utterly desolate, declares the

01:02:46

Lord. Verse 13, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and they've hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

01:03:04

When God pronounces that terrible, terrible statement against the nation of Israel, the reality is he's making that statement against all of his creation, against all of his people.

01:03:19

All of his people, his creation, this woman at the well, you and I standing here or sitting here today are in that same predicament, that same place where the

01:03:29

Lord has so clearly and openly revealed himself to us. We know him just by his creation, and yet in our natural state, we choose to reject him and to create for ourselves, to build for ourselves, to make for ourselves broken cisterns that hold no true water.

01:03:53

And what God is talking about in that pronouncement in Jeremiah is the reality that we all live with, where we chase after fleeting desires and pleasures.

01:04:07

We chase after unproving deities and gods who every so often continue to promise us, this time it'll be different.

01:04:18

This time you'll be satisfied. This time you'll find wholeness. If you can only just reach out and grab for this cistern,

01:04:27

I promise it won't be broken this time. Just a little more money, then you'll be satisfied.

01:04:35

Just a little promotion, you'll be satisfied. Just a little bit better of a vehicle, you'll be satisfied.

01:04:42

Just a slightly better house. Just a little bit more obedience in your children. Just a little bit more tenderness and love in your marriage.

01:04:51

Just keep on clinging and grasping at those things. And look, I am not saying that those things in and of themselves are evil.

01:04:59

Having obedient children is a good thing. Having a love -filled marriage is a good thing. Having a promotion or getting a little bit more wealth and income in your life, having a little bit better of a house or a vehicle, something like that, those can be great, wonderful, good blessings.

01:05:13

The problem becomes when we twist inside of our hearts that the thought and the belief that those things are going to be what satisfies our deepest and longest cravings, our greatest desires, that we really believe that something on this earth and this life amongst our neighbors, our friends, our careers, whatever it might be, that that's going to be the goal that we have to pursue at and put our focus on and our attention in, and that's going to be what satisfies us.

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That's how it becomes a false god and a broken cistern that we keep running after and chasing after, and yet the water just drips out the bottom and we find ourselves thirstier than ever after we've had a little bit of the dregs.

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And see, the reality is that those women at the well, even if Jesus is pronouncing this message of living water, as long as her heart is still craving broken cisterns, she's never going to be able to receive that living water.

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And that's the same for us today. We can hear this announcement by Jesus that he is the fount of living water, and in our minds we might say, yes,

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I want that, but in our hearts and our wills and our desires, unless the broken cisterns are actually broken and shattered forever so that we'll never run to them, then we're never going to actually drink from the fount and the source of living water.

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So how does that change? How does

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Jeremiah 2 .13 get fixed so that we can receive

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John 4 .10? How can we actually go to the fount of living water?

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The answer is in the fount himself. The answer is found in that Jesus himself, the true fount of living in eternal water, ends up drinking the broken cisterns on our behalf.

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Not in a way that he goes after them and chases after them. I should say that we drink the broken cisterns, but he takes the poison.

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We chase after the idol, he takes the consequences. We chase after the path and the road that leads to death, he takes the death himself.

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The fount of living water actually pours himself out so that we might be full and sustained by him when we were never even coming after him to drink in the first place.

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The end of John's gospel in his crucifixion account, he tells us a fact, a scientific fact that has become a fantastic apologetic for the truthfulness and the accuracy of the gospels, where it talks about out of Jesus's side, water and blood flowing out, being mingled together.

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And this is a fantastic apologetic fact, don't get me wrong, but I think that there's also a theological component to this as well.

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There's a theological image that we are meant to grasp, that this fount of living water, who gives sustenance, spiritual nourishment, spiritual wholeness, eternal life, things that Ken will pick up on next week.

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The only way that that can actually flow to us is if his blood was poured out on our behalf as well.

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The broken cisterns need to be smashed by him. The false gods need to be broken by him.

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Those idols that are in our hearts and those desires that are in our lives need to be removed by him, and he does so by taking the consequences for us.

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And the great image of that is that both the fount of living water and his blood were mingled together.

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And when we drink and we live and we have eternal life forever and ever in the kingdom to come, we'll never forget that it was bought at a price.

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The fount emptied himself so that we may be filled, sustained by him. Let's go to him in prayer.

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Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus, holy God, who are we?

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Who was this woman? Who is anyone that they should receive this gift?

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Lord, the amount of broken cisterns that are in the graveyards of our life, my life, everyone here are uncountable.

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We have all tried to drink from the cup of sensuality, of love, of greed, of selfishness, pride, wealth, power.

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We have all built little idols, taken little cisterns, and tried to be satisfied by those things.

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And Lord, if we were to think about that graveyard of broken cisterns, we ask the question, how can one be holy to receive eternal life?

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The answer is there's just nothing. There's no way. I can't clean that graveyard up.

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I can't fix those shattered pots. But you don't call us to do that,

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Lord. You don't call us to fix the broken cisterns of our lives.

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You just call us to believe that Christ will. You don't call us to fix the idolatry in our hearts.

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You call us to run to Jesus who will fix it. You don't call us to make the gift, to form the gift, to work for the gift.

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You call for us to sit there and just receive the gift of living water that Christ so bountifully gives.

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Not only does he graciously give it, but he gives it at the cost of his own blood, at the cost of his own life, at the cost of the torment of his own spirit upon that cross where his body was broken, his blood was shed, his side was pierced, and his spirit mourned and lamented.

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And yet he cried out in triumphant victory and joy, it is finished, it is finished, it is finished.

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And Lord, I pray that we would all believe that it is finished, that the broken cisterns have been emptied, that they are removed, that they hold no power over us, that when they might seem to entice us,

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Lord, that they would be seen for the emptiness that they are and the one true source of eternal life and true life and living water would be the only thing that we see in our souls and our eyes,

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Lord Christ and Christ alone. May we run to him, may we drink from him, may we hope and believe in him.