Filed under: Bible Study
John 4:1-26
Recap of Last Bible Study: Last time, we looked at the end of chapter 3, where John the Baptist is talking about why Jesus is above all. What were the five reasons why Christ is above all? 1) He had a heavenly origin. 2) Christ knows the truth firsthand 3) Christ’s testimony always agreed with God 4) Christ experienced the Holy Spirit in limitless power 5) Christ received all authority from the Father. We closed with John the Baptist’s final invitation and warning: Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Believing in the gospel goes hand in hand with obeying. I challenged us to truly believe and truly obey, because if not, God’s wrath will remain on us.
Tonight we will be looking at the story of when Jesus encountered the woman at the well. There are 3 things that we will be covering as we look at this story are: 1) The Circumstance- What led up to this God-appointed meeting with Christ and this Samaritan woman? 2) The Contact- What happens when they met 3) The Conversion- How God changed this woman into a believer. This will take us longer than tonight, so be patient.
Let’s read from John 4:1-26
The Circumstance:
Verse 1-3: Jesus left was because the Pharisees had heard that Jesus’ disciples were baptizing more disciples than John the Baptist had. Why do you think Jesus did that? There was already some tension growing between John the Baptist’s ministry and Jesus’ ministry; although, John the Baptist was telling his disciples that Jesus must increase, and he must decrease. The Pharisees, weren’t too keen on John the Baptist, were now watching Jesus even closer. Jesus, sensing all of this tension, left Judea and departed again to Galilee.
Verse 4: Interesting to see verse 4 says Jesus NEEDED to go through Samaria. Why do you think he needed to go through Samaria? It was not because it was the shortest route, although it was. The other options which are the road on the coast and the road along the Jordan River but both were longer. However, many Jews disliked the Samaritans very much, so much that they would rather walk a farther route than to have any contact with them at all. But Jesus was thinking about going through Samaria because of a shorter route. The reason why he wanted to go through Samaria was because he had a divine appointment there with a Samaritan woman. John MacArthur mentions that John frequently uses the word dei meaning had to, to speak of Jesus fulfilling the mission given to Him by the Father. So this meeting with the Samaritan woman was another appointment set forth by the Father.
Verse 5-6: Jesus comes into the city of Sychar in Samaria. Now just some background on Samaria. It was actually the capital city of the northern kingdom, called Israel. If you remember, the nation split in two after Solomon’s reign. This whole northern kingdom went into captivity in 722 B.C at the hands of the Assyrians. So the Samaritans were Jewish in their background. We’ll look a little later why there is such hate between the Jews and the Samaritans. It is important to note that John mentions that this was near a plot of land that Jacob gave to Joseph. I think that the mention of that is important because this was an important place in Jewish history, and it is now the place where a Samaritan will hear the Gospel. Jacob, who was a hero to the Jewish people, and they were actually at Jacob’s well, the one that he dug. This will be important later, as we will see. Verse 6 says that Jesus was wearied of tired from His journey. It also says that is the sixth hour. That is about noon time. So imagine, noon, sun over your head in the Middle East. I’d be pretty hot and tired too. How can Jesus be tired? Is he not the Son of God? Is this the same guy we saw turning water into wine? Although Jesus is God, when he was incarnate as a human, he had all the physical limitations of a human. He was fully human and fully divine. One commentator puts it this way, “The strategic doctrine of the incarnation is not merely a theological assertion about the deity of Christ; it is equally a theological assertion about his humanity.” Jesus is in the right place at the right time, ready for this divine appointment with the Samaritan woman.
Verse 7-9: The first question we have to ask is, “Why in the world is this woman coming to draw water at the well at noontime?” Doesn’t she know that this is the hottest time of the day? Customarily, women drew the water in the cool of the evening. This woman was probably coming out at noontime because she wanted to avoid when everyone was drawing water. It is also unusual for this woman to come to such a long distance to draw water when there were closer sources of water to the village. Perhaps this woman is an outcast, and we will see why later on, if you don’t know already. So, the situation for this woman was that she is shamed and would rather walk a long distance, during the hottest part of the day, than to face others and the shame that they put on her.
So Jesus asks this woman for a drink. Why was this unusual? 1) He was a man, and in the Jewish culture, men did not speak to any woman publicly, especially someone who has been made an outcast. But her response to Jesus’ question shows that what shocked her most was that a Jew was speaking to her, a Samaritan. “For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Let’s take a look at the background, why there is so much hatred between the Jews and Samaritans. The rivalry between the Jews and the Samaritans had been going on for centuries. Let’s turn to 2 Kings 17:23-24. So what we have is foreign people who were not Jewish living in Samaria. They intermarried with the population of Jews who were not taken captive, and they formed a mixed race known as the Samaritans. The foreigners brought their idolatrous religion with them and they mixed it with the worship of God, and did things however they wanted, for example, they only accepted the first 5 books of the Bible as Scripture. When the Jews returned to Jerusalem, they wanted to rebuild the temple. The Samaritans who were actually following God wanted to help, the Jews rejected their help. The Samaritans became very angry because of this. They wanted to worship at Jerusalem, but were rejected, so they built their own temple on Mount Gerizm, which we will see later on. The bitterness continued on to the day when Jesus came. There was a lot of hatred there, a lot of bitterness.
Verse 10: What is Jesus offering this woman? He is offering her the gift of God, living water, he is offering her salvation. We don’t have enough time to continue on, but here is what I want you guys to be thinking about. The reason, I think that this story is in the Bible is to show that the Gospel, the good news of God coming to save us from our sins, is for everyone. It is for people we like, and people we don’t like. Jesus was crossing barriers because He wanted to show us that we need to cross barriers. It didn’t matter if there was CENTURIES OF BITTERNESS between your group and their group. You don’t say, “They don’t deserve to be saved,” because NO ONE deserves to be saved. Is there any racism in us? I know that we live in a politically correct time, but is there any racism in us? Anything in us that would make us say that one group of people is better than another? Anything in us that says “That group of people does not deserve to hear the Gospel!” Think back to the devotion I read earlier. Nobody deserves mercy. Feel that everyday. No one deserves it. But God crosses barriers, like Jesus did with the Samaritan, and offers living water to us. Thank God for that, and pray that we will kill any type of prejudice.
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