Be the Sheep-Thirsty
If "I thirst" means for something more than water, what bubbles up out of our well?
Let me post the scripture right away.
4And He had to pass through Samaria.
5So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph;
6and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.”
8For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
10Jesus 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.”
11She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water?
12“You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?”
13Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again;
14but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.”
John 4:4–15 (NASB95)
Sychar is mentioned in verse 5. If you’re interested in seeing where that is on a map, you can follow this link to Biblehub.com HERE. Verse 6 says it was “…about the sixth hour.” There is some controversy about what time this means because there were essentially two different ways of looking at time, and it depended on whether you were a Jew or a Roman as to which way you used it. If we take the Jewish method, the sixth hour is around noon, but if we look at it from the Roman perspective the sixth hour is 6 PM (or 4PM By Halley’s Bible Handbook’s reckoning). In either case, the woman comes to the well to avoid other women and people in general. Finding Jesus here surprises her even more because He talks to her.
Why were Samarians shunned? If you follow Halley’s Bible Handbook’s explanation, the people of this region were the ancestors of the Jews who were left behind when Assyria shipped all the craftspeople and skilled laborers off. That would mean anyone left behind had no skills of value, the dregs of Jewish society. Non-Jews would have flooded into the region, so these people became a combination of people viewed as worthless and non-Jews. It is easy to see why the Jews of Jesus’ time looked down on the Samaritans.
Verse 10 has “the gift of God” in it. The Greek word for gift simply means “gratuity,” which I find interesting. I think of “gratuity” as a tip given to someone who serves you. Let’s look at Dictionary.com’s definition.
gratuity
gruh-too-i-tee, -tyoo-
noun, plural gra·tu·i·ties.
A gift of money, over and above payment due for service, as to a waiter or bellhop; tip.
Something given without claim or demand.
British.
A bonus granted to war veterans by the government.
A bonus given military personnel on discharge or retirement.
“Something given without claim or demand.” That puts a much more Christian and biblical spin on it. That brings the word Grace to mind.
15But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.
16The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification.
17For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
Romans 5:15–17 (NASB95)
The free gift we do not deserve of salvation, redemption from death by the forgiveness of sins. Not because we did something to deserve it or are righteous in any fashion. It is the free gift that God gave anyone who wants it through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus.
Verses 10 to 14 put a very interesting picture on what Jesus offers through faith in Him if we view it through the lens of a well of that time. Wells were public water sources that kept villages, towns, and cities alive. Liquid water is one of the most vital requirements for life we know of (I had to refill my water cup right here, in fact.) People die without water in about three days. At the time of this event, drawing water from a well, bringing it home, and making it safe to use was a labor-intensive process. Rich people had wells inside the walls of their homes, while poor people had to walk great distances to get their water. Jesus’ suggestion that the woman would never have to do this chore again if she got some of the water He offered is akin to us winning the lottery in modern times. She doesn’t understand what He is talking about.
If we take Jesus’ suggestion from verse 14 that if we accept His water, it will become in us “a well of water” within us, that means we become rich people having water within the walls of our homes. It also means poor people would work very hard to come to us to get some of that water. The implication that someone would approach me, seeking what Jesus has given me, is an enormous responsibility. It should be viewed as something to be curated and cared for with the utmost diligence so that others might take it and live as I have. That’s a huge responsibility I don’t feel qualified for.
For those of us as Christians, we need to keep that responsibility in mind. We are keepers of the well from which the waters of everlasting life flow. Jesus entrusted that to us for all the world, not just a few. How we exercise stewardship over that responsibility looks different from person to person. Still, we have one unifying concept at the center of it all that should guide us: Jesus’ example.
Before we move into the sermon discussion, I want to extend the scripture reading from where Pastor Kristen stopped. I understand why she stopped at verse 15. This passage used for the sermon is larger than usual and needs to rightly be curtailed to focus on the sermon message. However, in our studies after the fact, I want to encapsulate Jesus's entire conversation at the well. Here is the rest of the discussion.
16He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.”
17The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’;
18for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.”
19The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.
20“Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
23“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.
24“God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.”
26Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
John 4:16–26 (NASB95)
I encourage you to read all of John 4:4-26 in the translation of your choice. What I want to point out with this second passage is Jesus' claim to be the Messiah in verse 26, which is why the Jewish authorities condemned Him because it is a claim to be God. The other important thing to note in this passage is Jesus’ indication worship is to be aimed at the Father, but also that it will be far and wide outside where the Jews believe it should be Jerusalem. We, today, worship in our churches, at home, in our cars, or any other place we offer up a prayer of intercession or thanks. Worship is a daily, hourly, and moment-to-moment activity for Christians after the crucifixion of Christ.
Today's sermon was shorter than usual, given we are working through missions activities during the service. I was ushering Sunday, so I missed the very beginning, but I did catch that Matthew 25 is the basis for the series. If you haven’t read that chapter in a while, you should. It is all about those whom Jesus accepts and those who get left behind. The modern church likes to paint a rosy picture that everyone will be saved if they just “love one another.” That’s not the picture Jesus gives us. I won’t post the entire chapter here, just the last two verses. These two verses are red letters meaning Jesus said this to His disciples Himself.
45“Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’
46“These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Matthew 25:45–46 (NASB95)
Verse 46 has some serious consequences associated with it. I don’t want to be in the eternal punishment category. That makes the other forty-four verses, all in red letters too, supremely important for us to understand. I encourage everyone to take some time this week to read Matthew 25 in its entirety.
Pastor Kristen opened up by telling us that the conversation at the well is the longest recorded in scripture that Jesus has with anyone. All the rest is preaching or relating parables to His disciples. She focused on who the Samaritan woman was based solely on what is in the text. By that, we can deduce a few things. The problem I had with that in church Sunday was that she focused only on the verses she gave us in the service and ignored those that followed. Scholars have suggested the Samaritan woman was not a good woman. If we do as Pastor Lee requests and only look at what we have in scripture, we can figure out a few things. First, she had five husbands, as Jesus relates (verse 18). Second, Jesus says she is living in sin with a man who is not her husband (also verse 18). We know this is true because the woman doesn’t deny it and uses His ability to know her life without knowing her as evidence that He is a prophet of God. She ascribes authority to Jesus, though limits it to a simple mouthpiece of God on earth rather than His Son, the Messiah. Jesus is about to explain that to her, and she believes him, abandoning her vessel that provides the life-giving water of the well to her household.
28The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men,
29Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?
John 4:28–29 (KJV 1900)
Pastor Lee used a Greek word here to encompass “Living Water,” but I didn’t hear it well and can’t find it in the text. All the words used for water I can find simply list it as water. The words around it describe it differently, but it is still just the word for water, so I have nothing more. I do agree that Jesus is the source of never-ending, living water. I can’t find a unique Greek word for that.
Pastor Lee’s point is more in line with how a spring flows out of the ground as how this “living water” flows from us. Christ evokes the same imagery at the well when He says His water would become a well of living water within us. A spring bubbles up and flows out of the ground from an unseen source. It brings life to the area it is in and moves away from that source. The Word of God in us becomes a spring of hope that bubbles up within us from an unseen source, the scripture we have read, the hope the Holy Spirit imparts through our prayers, and the connection we find with God through daily living. This source that those around us cannot see flows out of us through our actions and affects the area in which we live.
Pastor Lee asked, “How would it be to never be thirsty again?” She asked that about water, but what if we took it into the spiritual realm out of the fleshly world? How would it be if we never doubted the Word of God we read in scripture again? Pastor Lee broke it into both the worldly and spiritual elements, too. How would it be if our bodies never craved to drink water again but also, how would it be to never feel like there was something we were missing, or as she put it, “There must be something more.” How would that change our lives?
She mentioned Jesus on the cross near the end. He was thirsty and asked for something to drink. It is the last thing He said before He died. She didn’t read the scripture, just mentioned it. Here it is.
28After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, “I am thirsty.”
29A jar full of sour wine was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth.
30Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.
John 19:28–30 (NASB95)
I’ve often wondered why it was vinegar on the stick? Regardless, Pastor Kristen transitioned into the mission group Mother Theresa founded, the Missionaries of Charity, which you can find out more about HERE. Pastor Lee used this to suggest that we are the ones lifting the water to Jesus’ lips when we bring our efforts to aid those in need. Now, she said, He thirsts for our love and sacrifice, so how do we answer His cry in our lives?