Jesus Gets the Woman's Attention
John 4:8-19
John Lesson #034
January 17, 1999
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John 4:5 NASB "So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph."
1) After Jacob bought the land from the Amorites they failed to honour the business transaction. They reclaimed the land as their own and Jacob had to amass an army and take back what was rightfully his by force of arms. The point is that violence is sometimes necessary to claim and to preserve what is our. This is a principle that is found throughout Scripture: freedom through military victory. The Bible is not a book of pacifism, and Christianity is not a religion that espouses pacifism.
2) Having reclaimed this land it became his personal property. That is the second principle we see here, this emphasis on personal ownership of property. We don't see an emphasis in the Bible on communal sharing, communism or socialism, but we see principles that are at the very core of a capitalist concept of economics.
3) What we learn from the example of Jacob is that he owned property. That was the basis for the accumulation of wealth and it was to be passed on to his heirs. This was called the inheritance of Jacob. This well was a capital asset that was transferred within the family from father to son for generations.
John 4:6 NASB "and Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour." The statement that Jacob's well was there uses the Greek word tege [thgh]. There is another word that is also used in this passage to describe a well, the word phrear [frear]. This is going to be important for understanding what Jesus says here. A tege is a kind of well that is fed by an underground spring, so it is continuously-moving water. This is why this well continues to provide water for flocks even to this day. The second word, phrear, should be translated a "cistern." A cistern is just a rocky depression where water is collected. Sometimes there will be water there and in serious droughts there will be no water there. This word is used for this well in verses 11 & 12. So apparently Jacob's well was both. It has an underground stream, and also because of the rocky nature, it was a cistern where water would collect. It is said that water is there through most of the year. The well itself is about 135 feet deep and about seven and a half feet in diameter, with a neck at the top about four feet deep and three feet in diameter. In ancient time there was no cover on the well but today there is to keep debris out.
It was the sixth hour, which means it was noon. John 4:7 NASB "There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, 'Give Me a drink'." As we look at this episode when Jesus carries on this conversation with the woman at the well we want to compare and contrast this with Nicodemus. Notice this is the process of day-to-day living in Jesus' life. He is not going out of His way to have some kind of evangelistic crusade, He is doing this as part of His everyday life. He has been walking all morning, He is hungry, He is tired. He had sent the disciples off a) to get food b) they like many immature believers are full of enthusiasm and short on knowledge and were infected with the prejudice of Judea and would certainly not have Him to talk to this Samaritan women. First of all she was a woman and secondly she was a Samaritan.
Jesus doesn't have anything to get the water from the well with, so He has to use here receptacle. She knows that she is going to have to drop it in and this is what she has been drinking out of and he is willing to drink after here. That was unheard of. At this time under the legalistic rule of the Pharisees a Jew could buy food from a Samaritan but a Jew could not eat after a Samaritan or drink after a Samaritan because if their lips touched the plate, fork or glass then that would render that utensil ceremonially unclean, and then if you ate or drank after them then you would be rendered ceremonially unclean and you couldn't go to the temple. They were very legalistic. So no Jew would talk to a woman, talk to a Samaritan, and they certainly wouldn't ask a Samaritan to give them something to drink.
What we learn here is the principle that Jesus is exhibiting of grace orientation. He is not violating anything in the Old Testament, He is violating the legalistic rules and regulations of the Pharisees. That is the problem with religion. Religion says that man does something and then God is supposed to bless. Religion always emphasizes ritual, but it is ritual without reality. Christianity, on the other hand, talks about a relationship with God, where God does all the work and man simply accepts it. This is the problem Jesus had with Nicodemus. Nicodemus had a religious background and he is all confused by his religiosity.
As we get ready to sit down and talk to somebody about the gospel there are a couple of things we need to point out. First of all, we need to be as prepared as we can be. That is, we need to understand the basic elements of the gospel. These include an understanding of why people are condemned. Then we focus on what the solution. God provided the solution through Jesus Christ. Secondly, we need to understand that it is not our job to convince people of the veracity of Scripture, because you cannot do it. The issues aren't intellectual, they are not historical; the issues are spiritual. Romans 1:19, 20 make it clear that negative unbelievers are actively suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, and that every human being comes to a knowledge of God; it is called God-consciousness. It is our job to make it clear and it is the job of God the Holy Spirit who is the sovereign executive of evangelism to make the issues understandable and clear to the individual. Then that person has to make a decision to accept or reject the gospel.
John 4:10 NASB "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'." Jesus is going to move from physical water now to living water. The interesting thing here is that this is a tege, a spring-fed well. He is going to start using this as the basis of His analogy. She still doesn't get the point. He is trying to arouse her interest in spiritual things and she is just dead set on keeping her focus on day-to-day events, living life in the physical realm, and never facing spiritual reality. That is like so many people who have anaesthetized themselves to God and don't want to have anything to do with Him. So Jesus is trying to raise her whole concept of spiritual need.
The point here is that we aren't supposed to talk prematurely about solutions until the people realise they have a problem. Jesus isn't going to jump in an tell her that He is the Messiah until she begins to recognize that she has some kind of a problem.
John 4:11 NASB "She said to Him, 'Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water?'" It is just right over her head. She is focused on the physical reality and she has no clue what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is trying to get this woman to think and she just wants to operate on this superficial level.
John 4:12 NASB "'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?' [13] John 4:13 Jesus answered and said to her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again'." This brings out the point that in most religious systems they just try to cover over the need. You just have to continue to go back and get more, you never are sure of your salvation. So many religious systems and denominations today teach that you will never know whether or not you are saved. Yet that is not what the Gospel of John says. Cf. John 20:31.
John 4:14 NASB "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 well [tege] of water springing up to eternal life." This is not a process. So many people think salvation is a process. This is a well. Once you receive this water, the living water that Jesus offers, and it goes into you, i.e. receiving Christ as your Saviour, then it immediately springs forth to eternal life. It is a one-time action; it is your forever.
Now the woman gets a hint that Jesus is talking about something a little more than what she has been talking about, but she is still fuzzy. John 4:15 NASB "The woman said to Him, 'Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw'." She is still on the physical plane. She is not getting the point yet that He is talking about spiritual issues with her. No Jesus shifts gears. He is going to point out what that need is, He is going to confront her with the sin issue, the morality issue. He does this, not to embarrass her, but He wants her to understand reality, to get her out of this state of denial that she has been in. John 4:16 NASB "He said to her, 'Go, call your husband and come here'."
What happens with every unbeliever is involvement is arrogance. In arrogance we think that we can interpret reality on our own. Arrogance starts off with the first arrogance skill which is self-absorption. We are just so focused on ourselves and our own life that we just don't want to think about anything else and the world revolves around us. Self-absorption, then, always leads to self-justification. We want to justify our self-absorption. So the unbeliever seeks to justify every belief he has, everything he is doing, God is going to understand; He knows I am worthy, that I really tried, all He cares about is sincerity. Well God is a righteous judge, and the issue is not the love of God it is His righteousness. How can a righteous God let sinful creatures come into heaven? Sincerity doesn't matter and we can't justify ourselves and rely upon sincerity and religion and all these other options. We can only rely on the work of Jesus Christ. And this always leads to the third arrogance skill which is self-deception where we are in denial about ultimate reality and we really don't need top be concerned about spiritual things, somehow it is all going to work out in the end. Jesus just breaks this whole façade of self-absorption here when He asks about her husband. Notice how this impacts her.
John 4:17 The woman answered and said, 'I have no husband'." In the Greek that is only three words. But this woman is not a woman known for brevity. In her statements in verses 11 & 12 here statements had 42 words in the original Greek; in v. 15, 13 words. This is a rather talkative woman. But as soon as Jesus mentions her husband, 3 words! (Don't mention that, I don't want to talk about it) She is now beginning to realize that there is something going on here more than just the desire for water, and He is simply pointing out to her that she is a sinner. She has been in moral failure because and she knows, and this is probably a very painful subject. "Jesus said to her, 'You have correctly said, "I have no husband"; [18] for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly'."
A side point: We live in an era when there are a lot of failed marriages and there is a lot of legalism about the subject of marriage and divorce and remarriage. Some people teach that when you are married you are married for life and for eternity, and that what God has put together at X point in time no man can come along an recognize any sort of divorce; and therefore no matter what happens in the legislative realm God never recognizes divorce. That is what is taught by so many people today.
Jesus uses an aorist tense verb here from echo [e)xw], which means to have. If it was a perfect tense, which is the way it is translated—you have had—it would emphasize the present result of a past action. That would indicate that these five men were still her husbands. The underlying assumption here is that when somebody divorces and remarries the reason God doesn't recognize it is that they are still married, and this is why it is adultery now. The assumption is that once you get married, no matter what a court of law may say, that divorce is never recognized by God. But this passage shows that God does recognize the finality of divorce, because Jesus uses an aorist tense verb indicating that this is over and done with: "You have had five husbands." Jesus recognizes that she has had five previous marriages and that they are over and done with and that is not the issue. He is saying that there are some spiritual issues that she needs to pay attention to, and she does.
John 4:19 NASB "The woman said to Him, 'Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet'." This is an important word. Back in Deuteronomy Moses said that there would be a prophet greater than he who would come. This term for prophet is a technical term. She is not just saying you are just some guy who is able to tell the future, she is beginning to recognize that He is not just a prophet but that He might be the prophet. This is a term that was used to refer to the Messiah. So by pointing out the fact that she is not living alone, that she is living with somebody, He is pointing out the moral issue, and He finally has her attention and she is beginning to focus on some spiritual things.
In witnessing we need to begin on a common ground of creaturehood, not on a common ground of ideas. It is not up to us to prove Christianity, to prove the inadequacy of the other person in their thinking, but perhaps what we can do is show the other person that their system is something they can't consistently live with, so it is inadequate. It doesn't provide any sure and certain answers.
Jesus focused on the woman's dependency as a finite creature by saying, You and I both need water, give me something to drink. Then He began to focus on grace: If you knew the gift of God you would have asked me and I would have given it.
He provides the solution, explains the solution, that this is infinitely satisfying, it is better than all other options because in Jesus Christ you have eternal life.