Living Water (John 4:1–19) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

5:08 Let us pray. Our Father and our God, we thank You for this record of this meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. We thank You for the riches of those things that He discussed on that occasion with her. And as we look briefly at them this morning, we pray that You would give us understanding in our minds and in our hearts, for we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. In this account we read of Jesus having another meeting with another person. One of the reasons I love the gospel of John so much is that it is filled with these narratives of encounters that Jesus had with various types of people from all walks of life.

6:13 We've already seen the extended conversation that He had with Nicodemus, who not only was a Jew, but he was a ruler of the Jews, a member of the Sanhedrin. And now we get to eavesdrop on a conversation that Jesus has with a Samaritan, with a woman who was a Samaritan. And not only was she a female Samaritan, but she was a woman who obviously had a reputation for sexual immorality. And you have to understand that there were three things that didn't bode well for Jewish people. One was Samaritans. They didn't like Samaritans. Two, she was a woman.

7:06 That's strike two. And third, she was a woman who had a reputation for sexual sin. So all three of these things set her in a category radically different from that of Nicodemus whom we've already seen. So we're told here that Jesus left the area of Judea and was going to Galilee. And you remember that Galilee is in the north, Judea is in the south, and in between Galilee and Judea was Samaria. And also a quick reminder of the past history of these people was that when David became king of the Jewish people, he moved his headquarters to Jerusalem. And it was in Jerusalem that Solomon built the temple, and after it was destroyed and the Jews were carried off captive and they returned, Herod rebuilt the magnificent temple there in Jerusalem.

8:15 So the central sanctuary, the central headquarters of the Jewish people was there in Jerusalem. But when the kingdom was divided between the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, Those who were in the northern kingdom constructed their headquarters, their capital city in Samaria. And not only was their capital of the northern kingdom located in Samaria, but they saw their place of worship in Mount Gerizim. And the Samaritans only accepted the first five books of the Old Testament, so they ignored the teaching of the prophets. They ignored the Psalms and the Messianic predictions therein and all of that which spoke of Jerusalem. So their central place of worship was in Samaria, not in Judea, not in Jerusalem. And it was also customary that on many occasions the Jews who had such hostility towards the Samaritans, for various reasons I'll mention in a moment, would often when they made the journey from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north, instead of taking a direct path which would take them through Samaria, they would cross the Jordan River to the east and travel the Transjordan Highway to the north, which was quite a way out of the way in order to make that journey.

9:47 But obviously Jesus was in a hurry, and so He decides to go directly through Samaria to Galilee. And so we're told that He came to this city called Sychar, near that piece of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. When Jacob gave his patriarchal blessing to all of the sons, it is mentioned at the end of the book of Genesis that this parcel of real estate was given to Joseph. And this was a very important piece of land because it contained this ancient site, this well that had been dug by Jacob so many years before. Now keep in mind that when Jesus meets this woman now by Jacob's well, almost 2,000 years have transpired from the time that that well was dug by Jacob, and now this woman is there at that same well still drinking from it 2,000 years later.

10:51 If that's not exciting, if you've ever been over there to Israel, maybe you've gone to that same site as I have that is right at the base of Mount Gerizim, and that same well is still there today, and the water still flows freely in it. So that well has been meeting the needs of people for 4,000 years. And so after the first 2,000 of those 4,000 years, it was considered something of a sacred site by people who trace their roots back to the Old Testament patriarchs. So in any case, we're told that Jesus, being wearied from His travel, came to the well and sat down, and it was the sixth hour.

11:45 That means it's high noon. The hours start at 6 a.m., so the sixth hour means it's twelve o'clock. It's in the middle of the hottest time of the day in this desert region, and Jesus, in His humanity, and this is one of these marvelous texts that explore something of the reality of the human nature of Christ, he was tired. Not only was he tired, he was hungry, and now especially he's parched with thirst, and so he comes to the well. And we are told the disciples had been sent away to the city to buy food, which you may thing that Jesus is acting a little bit officious here by making His disciples go fetch the groceries, and you wonder why He didn't go Himself.

12:39 And that's because He was their rabbi, and it was part of the rules of the school, part of the academic world. But the students were not just those who were committed to learning what the professor would teach, but they also were responsible to serve the Master, to serve their teacher, their rabbi, to take care of His requirements, where He would lodge, where the food would come from. And so Jesus, being a good rabbi and had good students, He sent them back into the city to get lunch, to bring it to Him. And so, Jesus is alone, and He speaks to this This woman who came to draw water. Now just a word on that. Ordinarily, the women of the village would draw the water either early in the morning or after sunset, not in the heat of the day.

13:36 And they would get a day's supply of water for drinking, for bathing, and also for cleaning their utensils and their clothes and whatever. And normally the women would come in a group to the public well to get their needed water for the day. That this woman comes at noon and that she comes alone tells us volumes about her social status in the community. She's obviously ostracized from the rest of the women and is something of a pariah that she has to come by herself in the heat of the day to get her water. And much to her surprise, this stranger comes to her and says, give me a drink.

14:40 She recognized that He's a Jew, and she said, how is it that you're a Jew, that you ask a drink from Me, a Samaritan woman, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans? I don't know what your translation reads. It's a bad one there, unfortunately, because it's not true that the Jews didn't have any dealings with the Samaritan. They had all kinds of dealings with the Samaritans. In fact, Jesus had sent the disciples into town for a business transaction, a commercial involvement there to buy foodstuffs from them. What they wouldn't do and what they were not allowed to do was to share eating utensils and particularly glasses or cups with the Samaritans because they were considered to be unclean.

15:33 And this business of their having no dealings is a cue of the lengthy hostility that had gone on with the Samaritans and the Jews, and it had its roots deep in history 400 years before this, this hostility was going on. After the Samaritans had been carried away in captivity in 722 by the Assyrians, and when they returned, they brought with them wives that they had married from the pagans. And so the Samaritans became, as it were, religious half-breeds. They entered into religious syncretism, intermixing the pagan rites of their neighbors with their historic religion. And they had violated the terms of the covenant of Moses. Now they offered to help the people from the southern kingdom.

16:30 You know, they were carried off in 586 by the Babylonians, and when they came back from the Babylonian captivity and wanted to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, some of the Samaritans offered to help, and the Jews said, thank you very much, we don't want your help. Also, in the past, the Jews had destroyed some of the religious centers of the Samaritans, and in retaliation now, Samaritans come and throw the carcass of a pig in the construction site of the new temple. Why would they do that? Because the pig was unclean, and now before the construction work could resume, they'd have to go through seven days or so of purification rites, and the work would stop while this purification took place. And so the Jews had this deep-rooted hostility towards the Samaritans, and the feelings were mutual.

17:29 But Jesus goes and speaks to her and asks her for a drink, and Jesus answered her when she said that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. He said, if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked Him. If you knew who I was when I asked you for a drink of water, You wouldn't give me the history of the social problems between the Jews and the Samaritans. You would have dropped everything and you would have said to me, no, please give me the drink. She said, if you know who it was who said give me a drink, you would ask Him for a drink and He would have given you living water.

18:26 She's puzzled by this. She says, Sarah, wait a minute, you don't even have anything to draw with. How are you going to give me a drink? You don't even have a bucket. And again, it was the custom of travelers in the ancient world when they would go on journeys that would take them several miles, they would take like a goatskin canteen or something to carry or a goatskin bucket to retrieve water from wells or from wherever And obviously Jesus didn't have His, that was with the disciples in town.

19:00 And she's looking at Him, you don't have any bucket, you don't have anything to draw with. How are you going to give me water? Not only that, this well is deep, it's about 100 feet. Where are you going to get this living water? Now listen to this question. Are you greater than our father Jacob? Yes. She can't believe that anybody would come along and talk to her who was greater than Jacob. Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this will, drank from it Himself as well as His sons and His livestock? And how does Jesus answer the question, are you greater than Jacob? And He answers it this way, He says, well, I grant that Jacob was a great man and He's He's done a wonderful thing, given you this well.

19:58 It stood the test of time for 2,000 years. People come here every day, get their water. It's a terrific gift that Jacob gave. But if you noticed, this isn't the first time you've been here to get water. And if you drink from Jacob's well, you're going to have to come back tomorrow. Because He said, whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. And the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. that the language fails us a little bit too, because this living water of which Jesus speaks that will swell up or spring up means leaping up, that it's so alive, so dynamic, so energetic, so powerful that not only will ensuage the thirst for the moment, but it will begin to pour up out of the soul of the person something that continues to nurture day after day, year after year. And obviously, when Jesus is engaged in this conversation with this woman,

21:23 He's using the common element of water as a metaphor to describe a spiritual reality, and he also, in this symbolic manner of speaking, speaks about thirst. This whole thing started because he was thirsty, and he met a woman who was thirsty. Now, if you can just let our imaginations go with us for a moment. How thirsty was this woman? How empty was her life. How empty was her soul. I don't mean that she was passionately pursuing the things of God, hungering and thirsting after righteousness.

22:22 He obviously wasn't hungering after righteousness. You hear the statement all the time from people who are Christians, they talk about their friends who aren't Christians, and they'll say, my friend isn't a Christian, but my friend is seeking God, or my friend is searching for God. All the while the Scriptures tell us that in our natural fallen condition none of us ever seeks God. The quest for God doesn't begin until your conversion. Prior to your conversion, you're running as fast as you can and as relentlessly as you can away from God. So why is it that we see our friends and neighbors who aren't Christians and we say, oh, they're not Christians, but boy, they're seeking.

23:18 They're hungry. thirsty The best answer for that, I think, came from Thomas Aquinas. Where Aquinas was asked that very question, he said, the Bible says no one seeks after God and yet it seems to us that people all over the place are seeking after God. And Aquinas said, here's the difference. He said, we see people all around us desperately seeking for peace, desperately seeking for relief from their guilt, desperately seeking for something to fill the emptiness of their souls and of their lives. And we look at them and we say, from our perspective, we know that the only thing that's going to satisfy that hunger and that thirst within their souls is the living Christ. And so since they're seeking to have their thirst dissuaged and their hunger satisfied, They must be seeking for God.

24:18 Quanta said, no, no, no. People desperately search for the things that only God can give them, while at the same time they are fleeing from Him. Jesus knew all about this woman. He knew that the woman's life was bankrupt. She didn't stop trying to find happiness. Five times she had been married, and every time she entered into marriage she thought, this is the one that will make me happy. This is the one that will last.

25:12 But she was 0 for 5, and now she's living with somebody who's not her husband. Why is she doing that? Because she wants to be a bad girl? No. She's desperately trying to find happiness. She's so lonely, she's so empty, she's got nothing, no love, and she'll grab at anything that can satisfy her thirst. Jesus said, if you knew who you were talking to... You'd ask Him and He'd give you water that's alive, water that will satisfy your thirst forever.

26:11 Sir, give me this water. that I may not thirst, and I have to come here to draw. I hate it every time I come here. I feel like I have a scarlet A sewn to my chest. I have to sneak past the eyes of every woman in the village. When I come out here and sit at this place to get my water, I feel so ashamed, so embarrassed, so alone. Thank you. If you have water like this, give it to me, and I'll never have to come back to this well again. So, you said, and go and call your husband and come. She said, I have no husband.

27:05 She said, that's right, you don't have any husband. You've had five. The one you now have is not your husband. In that you spoke truly. So the woman said, Sir. I perceive that you are a prophet." Brilliant deduction. But why did she have this perception? Because she just met a man that knew her entire life, went right through the facade, and penetrated right to her heart and exposed her sin right then and there. You must be some kind of holy man. You must have access to knowledge that normal people don't have. I think she's scared to death.

28:04 So the best defense she has at this point is to ask a theological question and kind of detour around her sin. Now I told you it was best to read this passage up to verse 26, and I gave it my best shot to finish those 26 verses. That was my plan when I started. I didn't complete the plan. I didn't make it. So once again, like Tom Mix, we're going to have to wait until next Sunday for the next installment because there's more to this story and more to this discussion that's very, very important. But before I close this morning, just a word of application. In any group of people that numbers this many people that come on a Sunday morning, it's almost inevitable that there are people here this morning who have not yet tasted the sweetness of the living water of Christ Himself.

29:20 There are people here whose souls are so thirsty, so empty. And what we're hearing this morning is about the one and indeed, beloved, the only one who can fill that void in your soul. And I pray to you that you would hear the words of Christ to this woman, and that before you put your head on your pillow tonight that you will say to Him, give me to drink, and He will. Let us pray. Our Father and our God.

30:17 We who are hungry have come to Thee to eat. We who are thirsty have come to Thee to drink. And we have had bread without any price that we have paid, and water that has been freely given to us. our souls.