Two strangers meet beside a well on a hot afternoon in Samaria. One was a woman. The other was a man. We don’t know the woman’s name, we’re not told. It could be any woman but we do know the man was Jesus. Their brief conversation changed her life. You can read the story in John 4:1-4:42 Have you ever felt like you’re a bit of an outsider? Like you didn’t belong? That maybe you’re being looked down upon by others, whether fairly or unfairly. Have you ever felt like you were always on the outside looking in? I have most of life. Have you ever felt rejection and shunned or thrown to the curb by someone who you thought loved you? Well honey, I have good news for you. Just bear with me for a little while and let me tell you a story….. My story begins with Jesus on His way to Galilee. It was a hot day and the sun beat down on the man’s head. The sweat poured off His brow and ran down His back as He walked along the dusty road. To make matters worse, He had been traveling with His friends since sunrise. Now the sun was directly overhead. It was noon, the hottest part of the day. He was tired, hot, dusty and thirsty! Our Lord was tired, the Creator of the universe was tired, hot and thirsty and probably hungry since He has sent the disciples into town for food. It just reminds us again of His humanity, and how in Jesus, God has felt all our human aches and pains. God truly understands us, for He’s walked in our shoes. Hebrews 4:15 tells us “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities;” What a statement! When we reverse it and put it in the positive it reads, “For we have a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” And this same priest, the Lord Jesus, is touched, not just by our infirmities, but by the very feeling of them! He feels our pain, when we hurt, He hurts. When we cry, He cries, when we laugh with joy, He laughs with us. But when we have those “dark nights of the soul” when our pillows are wet with tears cried not just from our eyes but from the deepest part of our soul...where can we go? Not to our ‘fair weather’ friends nor do we post it on Facebook for all to see. My momma always told me, never hang your dirty laundry in public. The answer is, we have a friend, a real friend who understands us and sympathizes with us in every sorrow and trial that life throws at us and He won’t blab it to anyone who’ll listen either. Jesus is not a gossip nor a tattletale.
But I digress….Anyway; Jesus comes to a town called Sychar (pronounced see car) and decides to stop for a rest. He’s alone because He sent the disciples into the village to buy food. He comes to a well and sits down. He was tired from His journey, and so He “sat down by the well” (John 4:6). He sat. The Son of God, the Savior of the world, was limited by His humanness, just as we are. This is a Savior who says, “I’ve been there. I get it. I’m with you.” He understands exhaustion, tired aching feet, stress, muscle aches. He knows what it means to feel weary, thirsty, hungry. He sat on the edge of the wall around the well and thought to Himself, “Oh, if only I could have a drink of water.” At precisely that moment a woman appears to get water. It wasn’t the normal time, and it was unusual for a woman to come to a well alone. But this woman was different because we are told that she arrived at the well at “the sixth hour”. The sixth hour was noon. Women usually came in groups to collect water, either earlier in the cool of the morning or later in the day to avoid the extreme heat of the sun. But this woman came alone at noon. Why? Perhaps her public shame caused her to be shunned by the other women. Or maybe she didn’t want to be part of a gossip fest (hen party). Or… was it a God planned encounter. How many of you know you’re not here at this minute by accident?
The Bible says Jesus “had to go through Samaria” Why? The answer is, He didn’t. There was another route He could have taken. Some pious, ‘holier than thou’ Jews would have gone east, across the Jordan River, enter the region of Perea (pronounced Pa ree a), then go north, re-cross the Jordan River, and they would be in Galilee. This was out of the way but it meant they wouldn’t have to go through Samaritan territory. The Jews looked down on the Samaritans as religious and racial half-breed heretics. It’s hard for us to understand the animosity that existed between these two groups but if you’ll just think about the Palestinians and the Israelis, you’ll get the right idea. But back to why He chose this route…why did Jesus “have to” go through Samaria when the Jews either didn’t go there at all or passed through as quickly as possible? The answer is simple and profound: Jesus went because He intended to meet this woman. He was on a mission! He knew she would be coming to the well at precisely the moment He was sitting there weary from His journey. Although she doesn’t know it, this woman has a “divine appointment” with the Living God. The woman isn’t looking for Jesus, the last thing on her mind was a man. She’d had one too many as it was. She’d been so hurt before she didn’t even trust the last man enough to marry him. All she wants is water but Jesus came looking for her. From this, we can get a very important lesson for evangelism. Reaching people for Christ is not always comfortable and may at times be difficult. But you have to go where the people are if you want to reach them at all. You may have to go into the drug dens, crack houses, back alleys, under the bridges where the untouchables live, or on the street corners where ‘ladies of the night’ hang out. Our comfort is not the issue. To be useful to God, you have to be willing to touch the untouchable and love the unlovable. You have to be willing to get down in the mud and the filth.
The firefighter goes into the burning house to rescue those inside. He can’t stand outside and say, “Come on out before the house burns down.” "Doodlebug, Doodlebug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your kids are all gone". Jesus intended to save this woman so He went where she was. How many of you know when you can’t go to where He is, He’ll come to you? There’s a song I love by John Starnes, “He Came To Me”. The bible tells us if He had 100 sheep and one strayed, He’d leave the 99 and come looking for that one. How awesome is that. He was thirsty and knew it. She was thirsty and didn’t know it. The woman didn’t come to the well looking to meet Christ, but He came to the well to meet her. In His approach, we see the great heart of our Lord Jesus is without prejudice. It matters not to Him that others would not go to Samaria and others would not speak to this woman. Your opinion of someone means nothing to Him! He didn’t die to save skin but to save souls. He welcomes all and shuns none. “ALL who are thirsty come…” From His point of view, “there is neither Jew nor Greek (Gentile), neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)
As the woman and Jesus face each other, four invisible walls stand between them. There is a religious wall, a gender wall, a racial wall, and a moral wall. Yet our Lord found a way through all of them. It never ceases to amaze me how He can and will always make a way to a thirsty and seeking heart. I have found Him to be the Waymaker, making a way where there seemed to be no way. He found her and then she found Him! Hallelujah! So what does He do? He starts up a conversation, ‘Will you give me a drink?’ The Samaritan woman said to Him, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’ He asks her for a drink of water and then offers her a well! Hallelujah! “Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water. The Samaritan woman thought Jesus was talking about flowing water, the kind that comes from a river or stream. “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? (Oh doesn’t she know she’s talking to God and He doesn’t need a bucket; He can just say the word and the water would come to Him.) She continues..are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water” (John 4:9-15).
When I was just starting out in my Christian journey there was a song that became very famous called “Fill My Cup, Lord.” One verse, in particular, was written about this story: ♪♫ Like the woman at the well I was seeking for things that could not satisfy And then I heard my Savior speaking, “Draw from the well that never shall run dry.”♪♫ And the chorus was very simple: ♪♫ Fill my cup, Lord I lift it up, Lord. Come and quench this thirsting of my soul Bread of Heaven, feed me till I want no more. Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole. ♪♫
Jesus takes an ordinary situation, an ordinary conversation and He turns it around to a conversation about eternal life. And the conversation is with a very ordinary woman, someone you would never pick as a potential convert, let alone an evangelist herself. Yet that’s what she becomes. Jesus begins the conversation with a request for a drink of water, but He quickly moves on from His material needs to her spiritual needs. He asks her for a drink but offers her living water. We’re reminded of the words of the Prophet Isaiah, “Listen, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come; buy wine and milk without money and without price. … Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.” (Isaiah 55:1-7) So it was a natural connection for Jesus to make between this well of still water and the living water that God provides to those who ask. Well, surprise, surprise, the woman hears and responds. Far from being a lost cause, she wants what Jesus is offering. Hallelujah! She may not quite understand it but she knows this is something important that she needs. She sees something in Him she wants! She gave him a drink of water and Praise God He gave her a well! “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” John 4:14
But it isn’t quite that simple is it? The gospel is a message of grace, of free salvation, but it’s never cheap grace. It always involves recognition of our true state before God. So Jesus tells the woman to go and call her husband and come back. He knows what her answer will be before she answers. She didn’t have one, she replied. ‘You’ve had five husbands, said Jesus, but the man you are living with now is not your husband.’ By asking about her husband, He exposes this woman’s lifelong pursuit of happiness. Evidently, she has entered one failed relationship after another. And each time she said, “This is the one. This time I’ll be happy.” “This time somebody will love me.” And each time she was disappointed....again. Now she won’t even risk marriage. She’d been hurt and kicked to the curb too many times. But the words of Jesus reveal a deep-seated loneliness, a hole in her heart that no man could fill. Far from being irrelevant, these words of Jesus go to the core of her problem…and ours. We’ve been raised to believe that if you only find the right man or the right woman, you’ll be happy. So we jump from one relationship to another, or we take a quick trip to Temptation Island, desperately hoping against hope that this time things will be different, this time we’ll make it, this time we’ll be happy. This time I won’t be rejected! Some of us play musical beds, hopping from one bed to the other. Yet no human relationship can satisfy our needs. We are spiritual beings made for a relationship with God. There is a “God-shaped hole” inside the human heart that no man or woman can ever fill. We were made to know God, and until we know Him through Jesus Christ, we are doomed to restlessness and heartbreak, to running from bed to bed searching but never finding. And when I say ‘know’ I mean a personal relationship; not some fly by night doctrine that the winds blow in. Jesus told her that she has had five ‘others’. (John 4:17-18). The number “five” corresponds to the number of false gods (five false gods) worshiped by the Samaritans (2 Kings 17:30-34). Imagine that! Could it be there is a much deeper message here than that of an adulteress? It seems that Jesus, or at least John the writer, wished to indicate that this woman and the Samaritans had been whoring after false gods. Is that not the way it is with us? Are we not often whoring after our false gods, be it money, success, self-indulgence, whatever? Maybe we’ve put someone on a pedestal and have made an idol of them. I know some who have put their pastors on pedestals. They think whatever he/she says is gospel without ever checking it out themselves. Some of God’s people are still mixing religious traditions in their worship of Him…there are still remnants, fragments, traces, residue, signs, marks, echoes, and indications that they’ve not fully accepted the message that Christ preached. When He said, It is finished, He meant it. Nothing you or I can do to add to what He has already done. Too many people try to finish what He has already finished. Lord help us.
Often times that’s because they don’t know what the message of Christ is, and that includes some clergy, movements, and denominations. Many are like king Agrippa when Paul stood before him and gave testimony of the saving grace of Jesus. He said, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”…Almost persuaded to be a Christian…so close, yet so far. Close to the cross but far from the blood! Oh, how that breaks my heart!
Let me ask a question. Does Jesus love this woman? You bet your sweet bootie He does. He knows the truth about her, every stinking detail, every secret and He still loves her; He still offers her eternal life. Here lies the wonder of God’s grace. Only someone who loves you can look at your past without shrinking back. Real love means knowing the truth about someone else and reaching out to them anyway. He’s not ashamed of her past but He cannot help her until she gets beyond her shame and admits the truth. When we do that we can move on into our future but we can’t move forward until we face our past and put it behind us. You can’t go where God wants to take you as long as you’re trying to hold on to the junk from your past.
She’s almost but not quite saved. She is near the kingdom but not in the door yet. Like so many today, they sit in their comfortable pews, raise their hands and sing their worship songs and listen to some poor old pastor preaching his heart out yet remain unchanged. Never experiencing the touch of His hand or His presence. Never really knowing His love.
Jesus lay bare what she thought she could keep hidden. That always makes sinners uncomfortable. She was uncomfortable so she wants to change the subject, which is what she does. Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us.” And then we have the wonderful moment when you could hear a pin drop. Like the men on the Emmaus road, her eyes have been opened. She realizes that this man is someone special. In fact, she says He reminds her of the one who was promised, the Messiah. “Yes,” says Jesus, “You guessed it. I am He.” “That’s me!” I’m the One you’ve been looking for all your life. I’m the one man who’ll never hurt you, never reject you. In Me, you’ll find the love you’ve been looking all your life for, real love, agape love, unconditional love. Isn’t it amazing how God can take someone who’s obviously lived a fairly disreputable life and completely turn them around? I know a man who was like that. A drug dealer, an outcast, a criminal. Yet in prison he discovered the gospel, he met the real Jesus! He became a Spirit filled Christian and then, like this woman he couldn’t help but tell others about Jesus. He keeps going back into prisons, not as a prisoner this time but to preach the gospel. To set free those who are in chains. “The Holy Spirit is in me because the LORD has anointed me to declare the good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and to show them the way out of darkness and He is ever with me, guiding me as I go.” Isaiah 61 (EPV) Elizabeth Parker Version
So this woman races off to the village, so excited that she not only forgets her bucket, she forgets that she’s a social outcast and begins to tell everyone about what’s happened. I can close my eyes and almost hear her crying out, “Come! Come! Come see this man named Jesus who told me all about myself!” And the whole village follows her out to where Jesus is waiting with His disciples. (Who have returned by now with lunch.) And the result: “Many Samaritans from that city believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony, ’He told me everything I have ever done.’” The woman told everyone about Jesus, suggesting that He might be the Messiah. Here is a wonderful lesson in the power of the gospel. One woman with little knowledge and just a mustard seed of faith brings her whole town to Jesus. Wow! Talk about Evangelism Explosion! Listen to me, by sharing your testimony, by telling what God has done for you...you have absolutely no idea how many lives could be changed and may never know on this side of Jordon. Another song comes to mind, Thank You For Giving To The Lord by Ray Boltz.
After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the male disciples went and told people about Jesus because they were TOLD to do so "Go and tell." This woman did the same thing but by her own choice. She saw what should be done, and did it. Can someone say amen? Jesus hears the cries of the weary. He calls us to do the same. He wants us to hear what He says and what people are really saying. He wants to open our ears and our minds to what is ‘really’ happening instead of what ‘seems’ to be happening. Someone with time, someone who will listen and hear…that’s what the people want today. Let me encourage you to keep your eyes open for opportunities in your everyday life to share the gospel with someone, to offer them living water, so they too can worship God in spirit and in truth. But not always preaching! You can bring more people to Christ by your living than you can by your preaching. I’ve always said I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day.
I know the townspeople saw a change in this woman; perhaps she had that ‘glow’; perhaps she held her head up this time and not down in shame. I would even bet she was hugging everybody she met. You can’t come in contact with the Living God and not be changed! You can’t be touched by the One who is Love and not love! The word tells us if you say you love God but hate your brother you’re a liar and the truth is not in you. Although over 2000 years have passed since Jesus walked the earth, His words remain incredibly relevant. Same story, different scene. Times change but the human heart remains the same. We have the same hopes and fears and dreams and doubts. And we struggle with the same problems: uncontrolled anger, foolish choices, misplaced priorities, pride, hypocrisy, guilt, indifference, frivolous curiosity, misguided ambition, limited faith, convenient excuses, nagging doubt, compulsive busyness, broken dreams, and personal failure.
The Bible is full of wonderful stories; some are love stories and some are filled with beautiful poetry. Read it for what it is….a book of stories and they’ll come alive for you and in you.
My prayer today is..“ Lord, allow me to see the unseen and hear the unheard. Break my heart with the things that break Yours. Make Your desires my desires. Open the eyes of my heart to see the things you desire me to see and open my ears to hear the things you want me to hear.” I pray that this be your prayer too and know that someone in Texas loves ya!
In His love, Elizabeth
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