The Living Water

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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The Living Water

Riverside Indonesian Fellowship
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2020 · 13 September 2020

Much of the story of the woman at the well is familiar to you. It is a simple straight-forward story of Jesus evangelizing an outcast woman, of her coming to salvation and then being used by God to bring many in her village to salvation. The culminating story comes in verse 39, “From that city, many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman.”

Here is a model of our Lord evangelizing a sinner. This makes it a very instructive portion of Scripture, one that we should be very familiar with for the lessons that it teaches us. We’re going to go over those lessons about how we approach the unbelieving world around us and how we bring them to hear the gospel and understand what it offers and what it demands.

His deity is also on display because He meets a woman whom He has never met and He knows her entire history. So we see His humanity and His weariness. And we see His deity and His omniscience. And what makes it unique is that up to now in the gospel of John the Baptist has presented Christ as the Messiah. Now John the apostle is presenting to us Christ as the Son of God.

This is the first time that the proclamation of the messiahship of Jesus comes from His own lips and that we find in verses 25 and 26 where the woman speaks of the Christ, the Messiah who will come, and Jesus said to her in verse 26, “I who speak to you am He.” Up to now it’s the testimony of John the Baptist and the followers of Jesus. But here is the identity of the Messiah from His own lips.

Now this declaration from the lips of Jesus as to His identity is not given to significant religious leaders in Israel. It is given to a woman who is an outcast and a Samaritan. Samaritans were essentially a corrupted form of the Jewish race. When the Assyrians came and took the ten northern tribes of the Jews captive in 722, they remained. Those Jews intermarried with idolatrous nations.

So they had forsaken their Judaism and committed the worst crime, and that was to mingle with idolatrous Gentiles. They were outcasts. So no Jew would mingle with the Samaritans and no one would go into Samaria except Jesus. So this is an outcast woman and also an immoral woman. She is also an indifferent woman. She has no idea of who this Jewish stranger sitting on the well is.

This woman is the opposite of Nicodemus and yet it is to this woman that Jesus first in the gospel of John declares His own identity. And it is a testimony to the apostasy of Israel. But it is more than just a stinging rebuke of Israel, it is a declaration of Jesus that He has come to save people from every tongue and tribe and nation. It is a testimony that salvation is for all who believe.

Now, this isn’t about bringing the story into modern times, it’s about taking all of you back into this event itself, and letting you live the event. And we’re going to learn from Him how to approach people in the world who are indifferent to the gospel. And for the most part of your life, you’re going to be in a conversation with an indifferent person about the gospel they need to hear.

Here is a woman who wasn’t looking for Jesus, didn’t know He existed, had no idea who He was. He is an unknown stranger that she meets sitting on a well who is as far as she is concerned really strange. He is saying strange things, things she can’t understand. But Jesus dismisses her indifference and her ignorance. It’s not a barrier. And He dismisses, this is important, her immorality.

We tend to get very self-righteous when we look at our immoral world. And it’s easy for us to have resentment toward people, to resent homosexuals who are advocating for gay marriage which corrupts our young people. It is very easy for us to resent liberal young people who think America is bad and Islamic terrorists because of the damage they do. But that is our mission field.

That’s not our enemy, all sinners are in the same situation headed for the same hell because of their sin nature, even if they’re not homosexuals or they are not liberal and they’re not Islamic terrorists. They’re alienated from God and it’s our responsibility in this world to go to them. They are the sick who need a physician. They are the unrighteous ones, just like we were before we were born again.

So let’s begin with the setting in John 4:1-3, “Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, 2 although Jesus Himself was not baptizing but His disciples were, 3 He left Judea and went away again into Galilee.” What’s He been doing in Judea? Jesus has been preaching repentance, preaching the kingdom.

“Jesus Himself was not actually baptizing, but His disciples were.” This is to remind you that baptism does not depend on the baptizer. The baptizer adds nothing to the baptism. It is the baptism itself that God instituted to signify that a spiritual change had taken place in that new believer. It is the heart of the one being baptized that is the important part, not the baptizer. God looks at your heart.

Jesus wanted to go to Samaria because there was a sovereign appointment, a spiritual necessity foreordained, that was established for Him with a woman by a well and that had been ordained before the foundation of the world. And it was going to lead to her salvation and the salvation of an entire group of people from a local Samaritan village. Verse 4, “But He needed to go through Samaria.”

Now Samaria originally was the name of the capital city of the northern kingdom. When the kingdoms split after the reign of Solomon, the last king of the unified kingdom (Saul, David, Solomon, and from Solomon’s sons), the kingdom split, ten tribes went north, two stayed south. The south tribes became known as Judah. The north tribes became known as Israel. That’s the history.

Verse 5, “So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.” And Joseph was later buried there after the land was conquered by Joshua. So this is a historical location, which is in the Bible to prove that it is about real people in real places. Verse 6, “Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.”

Jesus was tired and sat by the well. It was about the sixth hour which is high noon; it is the middle of the day. The sun is at its peak and He has walked 20 miles, which is a rigorous walk. The stage is set for this amazing encounter that is about to happen. And there you see the humanity of Jesus. He understands all that we suffer as men and women because He was one of us.

Now we come to the encounter and we look for a model for personal evangelism. Look Jesus takes the initiative and comes into her world. Verse 7, “A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” Now, drawing water was women’s work. That’s supported by all historical data. They did it every day because they needed water every day. Usually they came at dusk when it was cooler.

So how does Jesus begin? He takes the initiative, “Give Me a drink.” In that culture it’s a shocking thing for Him to say because men don’t speak with women in public. Jewish men didn’t talk to women. Do you know that Jewish rabbis were not supposed to talk even to the women of their own family in public? So here Jesus, a rabbi, talks to a woman who is an outcast, a despised woman.

Why doesn’t Jesus have the disciples get Him a drink?” Well, can’t because verse 8 says they had gone away into the city to buy food; so He’s there alone. Why is He there alone? Well, because they needed food. How many disciples does it take to get food? All of them? No, but dismissing them was beneficial to the conversation. He wanted to be alone with the woman.

And Jesus never did a miracle to quench His own thirst, satisfy His own hunger, or provide anything for Himself. He honored work and effort, and He honored care, and He honored sacrifice, and He honored giving and all the things that we do in life to sustain ourselves. This was also part of His commitment to humanity. We get what we need through our own work.

Verse 9, “Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” She’s saying, “I know Your culture, I know what You think about us.” And Jesus has shattered that because that was non-biblical tradition. That kind of hatred toward the Samaritans was wrong, and was illegitimate.

There are these Samaritans and instead of telling them the truth, instead of trying to draw them to the knowledge of the true God through the Scriptures, they treat them with scorn and disdain. How did she know Jesus was a Jew? Probably from His clothing. Jews had tassels on the edges of their garments, according to Numbers 15. And a rabbi most likely would have those.

Jesus sent the disciples into a Samaritan town to buy food out of the hands of Samaritans. He didn’t care at all for tradition, only revealed truth. The Jews were in violation of God’s will and God’s heart. God had to send His Messiah to do what the people and the religious leaders would never do. They weren’t even interested in converting their own people, let alone Samaritans.

Secondly, Jesus offered unsolicited mercy. Verse 10, “Jesus 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.” This is using physical thirst and water as the contact point, but He reverses the situation. He treats her as the thirsty one and He as the source of water.

But here is pure mercy because He says, “If you knew the gift of God,” the free gift of God. This is where evangelism starts. You find your way in at a common point of interest, and then comes the reality that you are offering the sinner without regard to morality. It is mercy with no regard for religion. It is just grace. This is the unique glory of the gospel in opposition to all other religions.

All other religions say, “Do this, do this, and God will give you this.” The gospel says, “In whatever state you’re in religiously, and whatever state you’re in morally, here’s a gift.” It is the grace of God. ‘Dorean’, the word here, is “free gift.” Paul loves that word. Paul uses that word in Romans 5, the free gift. And that’s where our Lord starts where He offers unsolicited mercy.

Regeneration is a work of God. You can’t participate in your own birth. All you can do is ask. That’s a gift from God. I’m here to give it if you only ask, and if you would ask Him, speaking in the third person concerning Himself, He would have given you living water. And with that statement about living water, Jesus takes the conversation in a strongly spiritual direction.

What is the living water? Well, it’s clearly salvation. And everything that’s in salvation, mercy, grace, forgiveness, justification, flowing and flowing. When sinners come before the judgment of God, the Great White Throne, based on what our Lord says here, they will be sent to hell not because of all the lists of sins. But they will be sent to hell because they failed to ask for the gift.

Why is it described as living water? Jeremiah 2:13 says, “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Jeremiah 17:13 says, “All who forsake the Lord will have forsaken the fountain of living waters.” Psalm 36:9 says, “God is the fountain of life.”

God wants to give you the gift of life. This is running water that keeps flowing. In John 7:37-38, “On the last day, the day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” And that’s what Jesus says here. If you would have asked and He would have given you living water.

Once you receive this water, once this water is placed in you, it flows forever and ever. It is a fountain of water, springing up eternally. This is the gospel. Verse 11, “She said to Him, ‘Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water?’” Verse 12, “Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself?”

This is skepticism, mockery. Again, Jesus responds kindly and patiently. Verse 13-14, “Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. 14 But 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 fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” There’s the eternality of salvation.

This is the fountain of youth and eternal life. Now His point is unmistakable. This is permanent, consistent, full, satisfying, everlasting mercy and blessing from God to the sinner who asks. Jesus is offering her eternal life which is a spiritual reality—the gift of mercy, the gift of grace for all who ask. What is it? It’s living water. It’s soul satisfaction forever.

Verse 15, “Sir, give me this water so I will not be thirsty nor come here to draw.” And all I can see in her is incredulity, who is this man and what is He talking about? Is she starting to think in terms of spiritual things and eternal things? Maybe. I don’t know at what point she is, as the Spirit of God works on her heart through the words of the Savior. But it all comes clear next week. Let’s pray.



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