Grace Christian Fellowship: Christian Teachings from John

John 4 "Living Water"

Therefore , when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. But He needed to go through Samaria. So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 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. 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." The woman said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?" Jesus answered and said to her, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life." The woman said to Him, "Sir give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw." (John 4:1-15)

What is it that makes this story that was written thousands of years ago move us so powerfully? Why can we read books from times and authors long past and still find our hearts burning within us? Although the names of the places are unfamiliar to us, and the controversial issues of their times are meaningless to modern ears, they still share something with us that will never change. We are all human. We are connected by the same needs, the same faults, the same divine image that we all were created in. It is vital for us to read these stories because our world is rapidly pushing us apart from one another. Everyone talks of peace and tolerance and diversity but we must be careful of the meanings that are put behind the words that sound so good. Somehow keeping "peace" seems to include dropping bombs, "tolerance" means that anyone who says that there is absolute truth or right or wrong is a bigot, and "diversity" simply means that we don’t dare say anything about anybody else because it might be taken the wrong way. Our world is flying apart in the name of unity, as each ethnic, political and religious group retreats into its own fortress determined not to be pushed around by anyone else. Sin separates us from God, it also separates us from each other. Jesus is the best example we have of God’s love pulling us all together again.
Between Jerusalem and Jesus’ home town of Nazareth was an area called Samaria. The Samaritans and the Jews had a longstanding argument over where to worship God. Over hundreds of years this argument had become a feud and both sides had nothing to do with the other. To the Jews, the Samaritans were dirty and defiled, and of course the Samaritans looked at the Jews as self-righteous prigs. Most Rabbis would not even enter Samaria but take the long way around just to avoid contact with them. Jesus could have and indeed was expected to take the long way around. But the text says that He "needed" to go through it. We often go a long way to avoid things that make us feel uncomfortable. Love needs to go through it. Society expects us to simply go with the status quo. We must choose to love, rather than let the world decide for us. Back in the 1960’s in the American South social custom mandated that all public events have separate seating for blacks and whites. From the very beginning Billy Graham insisted that wherever he preached the seating would be mixed. In some places Graham had to take down the ropes himself minutes before the crusade began. Of course Graham had not put those ropes up himself. He could of just blamed it on society and said, "That’s just the way it is." But instead he chose love and tore the ropes down.
When Jesus and His disciples reached a well around noon they needed a rest. The disciples went into the town to buy food and Jesus sat down by the well. Imagine with me the tired group of travelers. In those days the roads were of course dusty and they were probably all very glad to find a well. However, Jesus must have been so frustrated to discover that there was no way to actually get the water out. He did not have anything to draw it out with! What a perfect time for a miracle. Nobody was looking, why not just call the water up to the top of the well where it would be easy to drink? But Jesus did not. I have wondered in the past about Jesus. How can He truly understand my suffering, my weakness when all He had to do was call down a miracle whenever He needed one? Surely, He could have. But as we look through the Bible, He never did. Not when Satan tempted Him to turn stones into bread. Not this time thirsty at the well. Not when He was put on the cross and could have called for a legion of angels to save Him at any time. Jesus understands our suffering better than anyone because He went through it all willingly.
The woman must have been surprised to see this Jewish man at the well. She probably thought to herself, "He is uncomfortable and I am uncomfortable, so I will just go about my business and get away from here as quick as possible." She was much more surprised when He said to her, "Give me a drink". "How is it," she asked, "that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" A Jew would not ask for a drink for to drink from a unclean cup would defile him. A Jew would not talk to a woman because a woman would defile him and a Jew would surely not talk to a Samaritan for the same reason. It is hard to imagine two people with less in common. They were separated by race, religion and gender. And yet Jesus bypasses all of these. What had brought these two together in the first place? Water. They both needed water. If you look around, it is the same today. We are brought into contact with people every day. Most of these people we would rather not have anything to do with at all. We ride the train with them to work, stand in line with them at the bank and buy our bentos from them at lunchtime. We put on our headphones or bury our heads in a book and do our best to shut them out. We speak as little as possible, better yet we use mechanical phrases that we don’t even have to think about, or even better still we create automatic machines so that we won’t have to deal with a real person at all. The ultimate is the internet of course, through it we can do our shopping without even going outside. And yet no matter how different we all are, we are all still connected. The reason why all those people are on that train with you in the morning is because they all have to go to work too. They are all worried about much the same things that you are. The reason why your favorite restaurant is crowded at lunchtime is because just like you the rest of those people are hungry too. We are all human. We all have the same needs. Everyone of us needs water, needs food, needs shelter and clothing and every one of us needs God.
Jesus answered the woman, "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 starts with what they have in common, their thirst for water, but He moves the conversation swiftly to her need for God. I have heard it said that any two people on the planet are only separated by six others. We used to play a word association game where we would try to go from one thing to something totally unrelated in as few steps as possible. What I have learned as a pastor is that absolutely everything is related in some way to God. As I have written sermons explaining who God is and how He loves us, I have used everything from my children’s toys to quantum physics as an illustration. The more you look, the more that everything points to Him. We are no exception. In fact, because we are created in His image, we are perhaps the most obvious of all. Everything about us points to God, or shows us how desperately we need Him. The woman questions Jesus, "Where then do You get that living water?" What makes Jesus (and those who know Him) different from everyone else who must come back to the well again and again? "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life." The difference between us and them is real. We have a source of peace and love and joy that they do not have. They might find pockets of these things, a small oasis of happiness surrounded by dry deserts. They search and search but we have found a well in God that won’t run dry. We don’t have to spend time looking for Him, He is with us, satisfying our deepest need. When people know this difference, they will respond to the gospel. They will say with the woman, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."

Jesus said to her, "Go call your husband, and come here." The woman answered and said, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly." The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to Him, "I know that the Messiah is coming" (who is called the Christ). "When He comes, He will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." (John 4:16-26)

The two greatest problems in our world today are probably not what you think. I am not thinking about the diseased nucleus of a cell or the cancer of nuclear proliferation in newly developed countries. It is not global warming or global terrorism. The two greatest problems of our world today both stem from the isolation of the individual, the systematic separation of human beings from each other. These problems are loneliness and confusion.
Jesus told the woman, "Go call your husband, and come here." It turns out there was a reason why the woman came to the well in the middle of the day when other women would not be around. There was a reason why she was by herself in this lonely place. She had had five husbands and the man that she was living with was not even her husband at all. She had a reputation and of course none of the women would have anything to do with her. Sin separates us from other people, and the loneliness that results leads us to more sin. The leading industry on the internet is pornography. Lonely people search for something to satisfy their longing for human companionship, not realizing that the reason why they don’t have any real friends is because they spend so much time online.
By this time the woman realized that she was not talking to just an ordinary man. She knew that He was different, she wanted what He had to offer. But when He brought up the issue of her sin, she made a hasty retreat into the controversy of the day. This is the second major problem of our time. We are so very confused. We have so much information, but no way of knowing which information is true. We have so much communication but very little conversation. There used to be a time when people found out about things through their friends and relations. News was passed along from person to person and those things that were not that important were simply forgotten. The things that truly were important were things that nobody could forget. Now we get our news through print, television, radio and online. There is so much information that no one could possibly understand it all. Who is to say if one report is more reliable than another? Jesus told the woman, "You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews." The only true way to stop confusion is to go to the source.
One of the problems of the internet is that people pass along e-mails to each other. It starts out very innocently, but soon grows into something that is far bigger than anyone who started it. One such e-mail was asking for prayer for a girl who was dying of cancer. This e-mail traveled around the world countless times being passed along from sincere Christian to sincere Christian. However, there was no date on the original message and no way to contact the family involved and no way to tell every single person who had prayed what the end result turned out to be. For all we know the girl is already out of danger and living a healthy life, or she might of gone on to a better place. But who knows as there is no way to go to the source. I am convinced that this is how religions start as well. Things are passed along and passed along and because there is no way to check out its validity after a while it takes on a life of its own. For the internet someone came up with a great way to stop this kind of self-perpetuating e-mail. Never pass along anything unless it has a verifiable origin, a verifiable purpose, and a verifiable conclusion. The woman at the well was confused about worship, Jesus told her that salvation is of the Jews, this is the origin. You can look it up and find that Christianity did not just come out of one man’s imagination. It is the fulfillment of everything that God was doing from the very beginning. Jesus then told her the purpose of worship. How and where are not important, true worshipers worship the Father in Spirit and truth. After struggling in vain with Jesus, as He patiently listened to her excuses, all she had left was to admit that one day they would know. When the Messiah came He would explain everything, the conclusion would be reached and there would be no more confusion. Jesus told her, and He tells us today, "I who speak to you am He."

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