Ordering Chaos – Pt 1

come into a perhaps familiar
section to most people. The story of Jesus and his interaction
with the woman at the well. This passage actually provokes the thought of really
how very parallel the situation, Jesus came into in His day, a
world really in chaos. A world in chaos in so many different
ways because of their views and attitudes towards God. And it
really reminds us of our own day where there is the same kind
of chaos for the same reason. There’s social chaos. hatred
at every turn, there’s racial chaos, chaos between the nations
that ultimately issues forth in war, chaos in the home that
breeds division and strife of every manner. There’s chaos in
the moral realm and such as almost seems unprecedented unless we
open our scriptures and turn back even to the early pages
of Genesis where we see those things even in the earliest days
of creation. There’s chaos everywhere, and
it’s all brought about by a faulty view of God. And that’s essentially
the scene that Jesus Christ comes into, a world in chaos. And this interaction with the
woman at the well is a microcosm of that confrontation, where
Jesus Christ comes to set the world right. Jesus Christ comes
to confront the world in its chaos. If you would, I want to take
us through these first 26 verses of John chapter 4. And in these
verses, we will see not only the introduction to this scene,
but also the study that flows out from it of his interaction
with the woman herself. Beginning in verse 1. Therefore,
when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making
and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself
was not baptizing, but his disciples were, He left Judea and went
away again into Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria.
So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel
of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph. 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. There came a woman of Samaria
to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a
drink. For his disciples had gone away
into the city to buy food. Therefore, the Samaritan woman
said to him, how is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink
since I am 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. She said to him, sir, you have
nothing to draw with. Then the well is deep. Where
then do you get that living water? You are not greater than our
father Jacob, are you, who gave us this well and drank of it
himself and his sons and his cattle? Jesus answered and said
to her, everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again.
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 of water springing up to eternal
life. The woman said to him, sir, give
me this water so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way
here to draw. He 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 answered
correctly. You have correctly said, I have
no husband. For you have had five husbands,
and the one you now have is not your husband. This you have said
truly. The woman said to him, sir, I
believe that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this
mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place
where men ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe
me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem
will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for
salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now
is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and truth. For such people, the Father seeks
to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who
worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to
Him, I know that Messiah is coming, He who is called Christ, When
that one comes, he will declare all things to us. Jesus said
to her, I who speak to you am he. If you would bear with me,
I want to continue reading so that we can have the entire context
of this conversation. Verse 27, at this point his disciples
came and they were amazed that he had been speaking with a woman. Yet no one said, what do you
seek or why do you speak with her? So the woman left her water
pot and went into the city and said to the men, come, see a
man who told me all the things that I have done. This is not
the Christ, is it? They went out of the city and
were coming to him. Meanwhile, the disciples were
urging him, saying, Rabbi, eat. But he said to them, I have food
to eat that you do not know about. So the disciples were saying
to one another, no one brought him anything to eat, did he?
Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent
me and to accomplish his work. Do not say, there are yet four
months and then comes the harvest. Behold, I say to you, lift up
your eyes and look on the fields that they are white for harvest.
Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit
for the for life eternal, so that he who sows and he who reaps
may rejoice together. For in this case, the saying
is true. One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap for that which
you have not labored, and you have entered into their labor.
From that city, many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the
word the woman who testified. He told me all the things I have
done. So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking
Him to stay with them. And He stayed there two days.
Many more believed because of His word. And they were saying
to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that
we believe, but we have heard for ourselves and know that this
one is indeed the Savior of the world. After the two days, He
went forth from there into Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that
a prophet has no honor in his own country. So when he came
to Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things
that he did in Jerusalem at the feast. For they themselves also
went to the feast.” I wanted to set the greater context, because
we’ll deal not only with the Samaritan woman, but we’ll deal
with the disciples and their reaction to the Samaritans and
also the Samaritans themselves, a great harvest. We’ll get there. Jesus came into the chaos of
this world. And if you would, I wanna set
the scene of this chaos. And in order to do that, I want
you to turn back to the book of 2 Kings chapter 17. I used to call this the clean
part of my Bible. Probably one of the most severe
rebukes that the Lord ever gave me. I was in a conversation with
someone and they mentioned something in Kings or Chronicles and I
very unwisely made a wisecrack. Oh, that’s the clean part of
my Bible. Well, the Lord scolded me for that, humbled me, and
gave me the opportunity, the privilege to go back and study
Kings and Chronicles and it became one of the richest, deepest studies
that I’ve ever engaged in as a Bible student. We’ll touch
just upon that one chapter, Second Kings. We’ll do so in just a
moment. The history of the Samaritans
is an old And it’s a very painful story. It’s a sordid story of
really beginning with the nation of Israel. And it goes all the
way back to the division of Israel’s kingdom following Solomon’s death. You remember the scene. Solomon
died. Rehoboam and Jeroboam both became
king. Rehoboam became king over two
tribes of Judah and Jeroboam became king over the 10 tribes
of Israel. Judah, you might remember, had
this mixture of good kings and bad kings. It’s a fascinating
study. The interesting thing is that
Judah’s kings tended to live lives of, or their reigns and
their lives tended to be much, much longer than the kings of
Israel. You might recall that of Israel,
there wasn’t even one good king. They were all evil to the core.
They all did evil, and they brought evil, and they brought Israel
down. Judah, as I said, had this mixture
of good and bad kings, but from the very beginning, starting
with Jeroboam down to the very bitter end, Israel never had
a single good king. Never. They sinned against the
Lord. in every conceivable way and
in plenty of ways that were absolutely unconceivable, unthinkable, unimaginable
sin. They tested the Lord’s patience
until it could no longer be tried and it was all coming to an end. Look, if you would, at verse
1. In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, Hosea The son
of Elah became king over Israel and Samaria and reigned nine
years. He did evil in the sight of the
Lord. No real news there. They all did evil, only not as
the kings of Israel who were before him. That’s a creative
way of saying this guy was worse than any who had preceded him.
Shaman Esser, king of Assyria, came up against him. and Hosea
became his servant and paid him tribute. Now if you can imagine,
this is God’s kingdom on earth and allegedly God’s king becoming
the servant of a heathen king. But the king of Assyria found
conspiracy in Hosea who had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt,
and had offered no tribute to the king of Assyria as he had
done year by year so the king of Assyria shut him up and bound
him in prison. I’ll come back to that in a moment.
So Hosea becomes king of Israel. And in addition to leading his
people into the sin of idolatry, he practiced this cunning and
treachery, but he did it against the wrong heathen king. And so
King Shalmaneser caught him in his treachery, trying to go behind
his back to the king of Egypt and tell the king of Egypt, stop
giving money to this guy, essentially is what happens. And so Shalmaneser
comes and invades Israel, taking the land and ultimately taking
the people away and into exile, into captivity. Pick it up in
verse five. Then the king of Israel invaded
the whole land and went up to Samaria and besieged it for years.
In the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria
and carried away Israel into exile into Assyria and settled
them in Hela and Hebor on the river Gozan and in the cities
of the Medes. And so that is the end of Israel. That is their plight. That is,
that’s what they get for these centuries of evil that they had
practiced, idolatry of every sorts. And God allowed this because
of the centuries of sin and idolatry. This was judgment. And that’s
exactly what we see in the verses that follow. Look at verse 7.
Now this came about because the sons of Israel had sinned against
the Lord their God. who had brought them up from
the land of Egypt under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and
they had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the
nations whom the Lord had driven out before the sons of Israel.”
Do you get the irony of this? Here comes Israel, God going
before them, the nations literally flee before them, wiped out in
many cases because of their own sinful practices. And now, Israel
is adopting the very practices of the nations they drove out? Verse 9, the sons of Israel did
things secretly, or so they thought, which were not right against
the Lord their God. Moreover, they built for themselves
high places in all their towns. from watchtower to fortified
cities. These are not just tall buildings.
These are tall places of idolatry. They wanted all to be able to
see. They were proud of their sin. They were proud of their so-called
gods. Verse 10, they set for themselves
sacred pillars, an ashram. That’s what an ashram is, is
a tall pillar. It’s a totem, if you will. a
idol to be worshipped. They set for themselves sacred
pillars and ashram on every high hill and under every green tree
and there they burned incense on all the high places and did
as the nations which the Lord had carried away into exile.
They’re so utterly stupid that they can’t even see that the
very sin that caused the demise of these other nations they were
imbibing. They were practicing. Verse 12,
they served idols concerning them which the Lord had said
to them, you shall not do this thing. This wasn’t an accident.
This wasn’t a misstep. This was high-handed idolatry
in the face of God who had told them specifically not to do this
thing. Yet the Lord warned Israel and
Judah through His prophets and every seer saying, turn from
your evil ways and keep my commandments, my statutes according to all
the law which I commanded your fathers and which I sent you
through my servants, the prophets.” In other words, you take all
of those minor prophets, all of those major prophets, all
of them preaching against the sins of these nations, Judah
and Israel, God, in His mercy, giving them opportunity after
opportunity to repent of their sin. And it didn’t happen. However, they did not listen,
verse 14, but stiffened their neck like their fathers who did
not believe the Lord their God. They rejected His statutes and
His covenant, which He made with their fathers, and His warnings,
which He warned them. And they followed vanity and
became vain, and went after the nations which surrounded them,
concerning which the Lord had commanded them, Do not do like
them.” They knew They knew that what these heathen nations were
doing was sin. They knew that they weren’t supposed
to emulate them, and still they proceeded on. Look at verse 16.
They forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made
for themselves molten images, even two calves, and made an
Asherah, and worshipped all the host of heaven and served Baal. The host of heaven being all
these various demon gods. Then they made their sons and
their daughters pass through the fire. In other words, they
practiced the worst kind of idolatry in these sacrifices. They practiced
divination, fortune telling, and enchantments, and sold themselves
to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him. So the Lord
was… This is such an understatement.
I mean, after all that. So the Lord was very angry with
Israel. and removed them from his sight.
None was left except the tribe of Judah. This is Israel’s demise. And
so all these Jewish people are carted off. Their nation is invaded
by a foreign king, himself an idolater. And all that is left
behind are the weak and the poor and the aged And here is this
nation, vapid, this wasteland, now totally void of people, and
it leaves a vacuum. They need people. And so this
Assyrian king imports a few. Pick it up in verse 24. The king
of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Kuthah, and from Ava,
and from Hamath, and Sepharvaim, settled them in the cities of
Samaria in a place of the sons of Israel. So they possessed
Samaria and lived in its cities. If you’re not able to put that
together in your mind, what he does is he sees this land that’s
empty now because all the Jews have been carted off, and he
fills it with foreigners, heathens from all of the surrounding areas. And they possessed Samaria. At
the beginning of their living there, they did not fear the
Lord. Therefore, the Lord God sent lions among them, which
killed some of them.” Now, this is a fascinating scene. Here
you have all these heathens that come into the land, and they’re
doing their heathen thing. And the next thing you know,
they’re lion food. Watch what happens. So they spoke
to the king of Assyria, saying, the nations whom you’ve carried
away into exile in the cities of Samaria do not know the custom
of the god of the land. They recognize that this is not
their territory. And they don’t know how to function
here in order to please this god who they cannot name. So
he has sent lions among them. And now, behold, they kill them
because they do not know the customs of the god of this land.
That’s the equation in their mind. They’re trying to figure
it out. Why are the lions eating us? Then the king of Assyria commanded,
saying, take there one of the priests whom you carried away
into exile, and let him go and live there, and let him teach
the custom of the god of the land. Well, this is genius. So they think. What we really
need is one of those Jewish priests to come here and teach us their
stuff so that we can appease the gods and so that we can stop
being lion food. Verse 28. That’s how the Hebrew
renders it. I’m kidding. So one of the priests,
whom they had carried away into exile from Samaria, came and
lived at Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord.
This sounds great. But every nation still made gods
of its own and put them in the houses of the high places which
the people of Samaria had made, every nation in their cities
in which they lived. In other words, what they did
is they began to blend all a little of this, a little of that, a
little Judaism. Sounds good to me. Let’s do Judaism
and the Asherim. Look at verse 30. The men of
Babylon made Sukkoth-benoth. The men of Kuth made Nergal. The men of Hamath made Ashma. And the Avites made Nibhaz and
Tartak. And the Seraphites burned their
children in the fire to Adramalek. And Anamalek, the gods of Sephariam,
They feared the Lord God and appointed them from themselves
priests in the high places who acted for them in the houses
of these high places. So you have all these nations,
five of them, bringing in all their so-called gods and all
their so-called idolatry and they’re blending it all the while
with a little Judaism. And this is supposed to appease
the light. And so it says in verse 32, they
feared the Lord, appointed from themselves priests of the high
places who acted for them in the houses of the high places.
They feared the Lord, so to speak, and served their own gods according
to the custom of the nations from whom they had been carried
away into exile.” You’ve been very patient with me. There’s
a reason for all this. We need the background. We’re
trying to figure out where Samaria came from, where this Samaritan
woman, what did she know, what did she believe? What was this
acrimony between the two nations? And so what came out of this
social experiment from the king of Assyria, this blending of
a variety of heathen nations with the leftovers of the nation
of Israel, the result was a half-breed race. And not only a half-breed
race, but a half-breed religion. They created their new religion
and That came about when they began to settle. The lion attacks
you saw, they presumed that these attacks were punishment from
the God of Israel. So they asked their king, send
us a priest. He comes in, he brings, and the
king did it. And they blended the worship
of their gods with the true God. Israel truly, rather this land
truly became worshiped by the lowest common denominator. What
can we all agree on, what little tidbit can we find? Eventually,
they believed only in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. They
set aside everything else, the prophets, the Psalms, Proverbs,
all the traditional Jewish scriptures. The nation never really flourished,
Samaria. It endured. And long after Israel
was established, The nation was a constant embarrassment to Israel,
and it was an ever-present reminder of their own sin and its consequences. However, instead of that humbling
them, instead of that humbling Israel, who had now returned
to its land, they were prompted, instead of hating their own sin,
they turned their hatred instead against the Samaritans themselves.
And so this seemingly insignificant region brought about by their
own sin was a constant and sickening reminder of their own past. But
it gets worse. Eventually, as I mentioned, the
Jews returned from exile and they immediately set about to
rebuild their temple. The Samaritans heard about it.
And as good neighbors, they sought to assist the Jews with this
building project. You would think that that’s just
neighborly and might have been welcome. But the Jews at least
did the right thing in avoiding any more syncretism and they
rejected this offer. This is what the Book of Ezra
is about, recorded in that book. But no sooner was the offer made
by Samaria, it was rejected by Israel. And that made an uncomfortable
situation even worse. Now this bitter hatred filled
the void. The Samaritans, even if they
had been allowed, refused worship in Jerusalem. Instead, they would
build their own temple. They would do religion their
way, just as they had always done. The temple project was
conducted on Mount Gerizim in Samaria in about 400 BC. And so literally, to fan the
flames of hatred, the Jews burned that temple to the ground. And
so what flows out from that is nothing but hatred and acrimony
and enmity between these two nations, Samaria and Israel. And that carries down all the
way to Jesus’ day. these half-breeds who had syncretized
religions. They were utterly hated by the
Jews. The Jews called them worshippers
of the pigeon. And as one said, a race which
was accused of misleading the Jews by false fire signals. What they do is go up on the
hills and they create a fire in order to send Israel into
panic, thinking the hillsides were on fire. They defiled the
temple with human bones. They would bring dead man’s bones
into the temple. If they were called to testify
in a court of law, no one would listen to the testimony of a
Samaritan. Jews wouldn’t even sit down to
eat with one of these people. In the rabbinical writings, they
had a law that said, let no Israelite eat one mouthful of anything
that is a Samaritan’s. In other words, if a Samaritan
comes to the potluck, everybody avoids it. It was as if he ate
swine’s flesh, which we know for the Jews was odious. So over
and over, they create new names for these people. The hatred
against one another is just fomented. As one said, the Jews treated
the Samaritans with every mark of contempt and accused them
of falsehood, folly, and irreligion. The Samaritans had sold the Jews
into slavery when they had them in their power, and they ambushed
and killed them on the road to Jerusalem. These were a hateful,
heathen people. Another described them as fanatical,
rude, rebellious, and we catch a glimpse of that really in Jesus
own day. In Luke chapter 9 Jesus is on
the way. He’s ministering. He’s going
through various cities and they’re traveling and they send a group
to get groceries into a Samaritan village. Listen to what happens
when the days were approaching for his ascension. He was determined
to go to Jerusalem. His face was literally set towards
Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead
of him, but they went and entered a village of the Samaritans to
make arrangements for him, but they did not receive him. They
closed shop. They said, no shoes, no service.
Right? They wouldn’t let him in. They did not receive him because
he was traveling towards Jerusalem when His disciples, James and
John, saw this. They said, Lord, do you want
us to command fire? Is it time to wipe out the Samaritans for
good? Well, you know the merciful heart
of our Savior. Not only did He not want to wipe
them out then, His whole approach was one of mercy. His whole approach
towards these people that the Jews considered subhuman was
one of mercy, one of outreach. one of bringing the gospel. And so it’s in that. It’s in
that great setting that we have chaos, just utter chaos in that
nation. Socially, with regards to gender
relations there was chaos. Men didn’t speak. to women. They didn’t treat them as, certainly
not as equals. There was economic chaos. There
was almost a caste system. There was racial chaos, as we’ve
already pointed out. There was spiritual chaos. They
didn’t know who to worship or what or where or how. There was
moral chaos. Even chaos when it came to worship. And it reminds us of Romans 1,
doesn’t it? Listen. Actually, go ahead and
turn. We have time. Turn to Romans
1. This is the story of the heathen world. And it is nothing short of chaos. It’s the exact chaos that Jesus
Christ came into, into this city of Samaria. Look at verse 18,
the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness
because that which is known about God is evident within them. They
knew. They knew who God was and they, in order to press down
that information, they had to live fast and loose. For God
had made it evident to them, for since the creation of the
world is invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine
nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what
has been made, so that they are without excuse. The heathen world
knows. The heathen world knows, and
they are guilty in that knowledge. For even though they knew God,
they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became
futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
professing to be wise, they became fools and they exchanged the
glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible
man and of birds and of four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
They made statues as gods. Therefore God gave them over
in the lust of their hearts to impurity that their bodies might
be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth
of God for a lie and worshipped and served a creature rather
than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. We will see that
in the Samaritan’s woman’s life where she had given herself not
just to one man but to many plentifully. For this reason God gave them
over to degrading passions. For their women exchanged the
natural function for that which is unnatural. And in the same
way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman
and burned in their desire to one another. Men with men committing
indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty
of their error. There is nothing new. Our society
is just mirroring the chaos that godlessness brings. Verse 28,
and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer,
God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which
are not proper. being filled with all unrighteousness,
wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit,
malice. They are gossips, slanderers,
haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil,
disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy,
unloving, unmerciful, and although they know the ordinance of God,
that those who practice such things are worthy of death. They
not only do the same, but give hearty approval to those who
practice them. It is utter and absolute chaos. This world in
which we live, it’s no surprise. If you have a low view of God,
an inaccurate view of God, that’s exactly what you’ll get. And
the chaos will get worse. Not by degrees. the chaos would
just become utterly rampant. But Jesus Christ has come. Jesus Christ has come to reassert
divine standards. And Jesus Christ in microcosm,
in dealing with this woman at the well, essentially begins
to do just that. Jesus Christ has come to reassert
God’s standards. Back, if you would, to John’s
Gospel, chapter 4, and let’s begin back in verse 1. John chapter
4 and verse 1. John chapter 4 verse 1, it says,
Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard
that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although
Jesus himself was not baptizing but his disciples were, that
takes us back to last Lord’s Day’s passage. Remember, John’s
disciples, they get all nervous that Jesus’ church is growing
and John’s is shrinking. John does the wise thing in exalting
Christ, and he tells of the supremacy of Christ. There was no competition
in John’s heart. John, in multiple ways, as we
saw last week, pointed up the supremacy of Christ. In his contrast
with the forerunner, Christ was greater. In his divine testimony,
Christ was supreme. In his sovereignty and grace,
Jesus Christ is absolutely supreme. But Jesus hears this debate. At least he hears of it. He knew
that the Pharisees were stirring things up. He knew that this
was now on the Pharisees’ radar. And perhaps he just intended
to withdraw because he didn’t want to create a controversy.
He didn’t want to cultivate a rivalry with John in other people’s minds. His ministry was becoming increasingly
popular. It was beginning to awaken the
attention of the Pharisees. And it’s not that Jesus is afraid
of them, because ultimately He will walk right in to the trap
that they believed was set for Christ. Jesus would willfully
lay down His life for our sin. But at this moment, He is unwilling
to do so. At this moment, he is aware of
this argument, this debate that’s taking place. And all it says
is that being aware of that, he withdrew. He’s not willing
to engage in this premature collision with the Pharisees. And that
would hold true for a long period of time, almost three years.
John 17.1 says essentially the same thing. After these things
Jesus was walking in Galilee for he was unwilling to walk
in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him. It wasn’t
his time. It’s not that he was afraid. He knew that eventually
he would be killed. John chapter 10 verse 39, they
were seeking again to seize him and he eluded their grasp. He
didn’t run away. He went away again beyond the
Jordan to a place where John was first baptizing. He was staying
there. Many would come to him. So his
ministry continued. Jesus didn’t want this appearance
of rivalry. And when he sensed that his increased
popularity was now on the Jews’ radar, that he was being discussed
and compared, he knew that it was time for him to withdraw. Verse three, he went away again
into Galilee. First he is withdrawn from the
temple, then he withdraws from Jerusalem, and now essentially
Judea itself has to be abandoned. First a place, then a city, then
a region. And the word that is used here,
that he went away is a very funny word to put in this sentence. It was an interesting word for
John to use. Very strange. It means to send
away or to dismiss. And it was often used of letting
something alone. So its use here is strange, noteworthy. It literally has the sense of
to abandon. Jesus threw his hands up and
he bailed. on Judea. He forsook Judea. Not forever. One pointed out that the general
idea that this Word conveys seems to be that of leaving something
to itself. That’s what Jesus did. And it
says in verse 4 that He had to pass through Samaria. Now, there
were a multiple number of paths for, I believe, that would depart
from Jerusalem and go through Samaria, there was one route that was
particularly direct. And to go to Galilee, Galileans
frequently used that road. The problem is that many Jewish
travelers, if they were going to Galilee and they were really hateful towards the Samaritans,
they would avoid that road altogether. They would go completely around,
adding miles and miles to their journey and hours. There was
so much animosity with some that they would never use this road
between Judea and Galilee. And so in
what sense was it necessary that he had to pass through Samaria?
He didn’t have to use this road. It wasn’t a geographical necessity. If he was in a hurry, this was
the fastest road, but there’s no indication that that’s the
case. Was there another reason? And
I believe that there was. I believe that even what Jesus
points to at the end of this passage, he must be about his
father’s work. He must be about his father’s
business. It was his very food. It was
spiritual food to him to be in his father’s will, to be doing
what God had called him to do. And so the necessity then really
lies at the core of what Christ came to do, which was to preach
the gospel. Over and over again in John’s
gospel, he’ll use that word must. There was a necessity. There
was a divine urgency to what Jesus was doing. And the fact
that he must go through Samaria really is best understood in
spiritual terms. Jesus Christ had a calling. Jesus
Christ had a purpose and now He must settle in. As one said
it, in view of the fact that our Lord’s consciousness of fulfilling
the divine plan is constantly stressed in this gospel. He had
to go through in Samaria in agreement with the orders of His heavenly
Father. This was God’s plan and Jesus Christ was submitting to
it. And so Jesus comes to confront
chaos. And he comes across the Samaritan
woman. Look at verse five. He came into
the city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that
Jacob gave to his son Joseph. And Joseph’s well was there.
This was a historical place. This was a place rich in Israel’s
history. But this little name, Sychar,
this is another little trick that the Jews often employed.
The Jews changed the name which was originally Shechem to Sychar
because Sychar was derived from a word that meant a lie or it,
depending on the mispronunciation because of the subtleties of
it, it could be from the word Shechor which meant drunken.
Either way, it was an epithet to this town. There seems to
have been ample room for name calling and the purpose of the
Jews in that. So Jesus is passing through,
and He’s already passed through amazing historical ground on
this route. He passed through Gibeah, which
was the ancient kingdom of Saul. He passed through Bethel, where
Jacob had his dream of the ladder. He passed through Shiloh, the
first dwelling place of the tabernacle of the ark. And now He comes
to Jacob’s well, Joseph’s tomb, the ancient city of Shechem. Abraham had originally bought
this land. Jacob gave it to Joseph, and
Joseph ultimately is buried there, rich in history. And Jesus just
settles down by this well. This is not happenstance. This
is a divine appointment. Look at the passage. So Jesus,
being wearied from his journey, was sitting thus by the well,
it was about the sixth hour. Now there were a lot of, there’s
a lot of ink spilled in what the sixth hour refers to. Does
it refer, it can’t be 6 a.m. Does it refer according to Jewish
calculations, does it refer to noon or does it refer according
to Roman calculations to 6 p.m.? Well based on all that happens
subsequently, I would suggest that the woman came to the well
at noon, high noon. Jesus is there resting in the
heat of the day. The woman comes to draw. Perhaps
she was looking for a quiet time to go to the well. Most women
would come to the well in the evening after the evening meal.
It was a perfect time. Perfect time for Jesus. It was
preordained by God Himself that in this quiet portion of the
day Jesus would begin making some adjustments to a chaos,
a culture rather in chaos. First of all, Jesus reasserts
God’s standards when he rearranges social standards. Look at what
happens in verse seven. And this whole scene is an astounding
contrast with the earlier conversation with Nicodemus. With Nicodemus,
you have a man. Here in this situation, it’s
a woman. Nicodemus was a scholar. This woman is just a commoner. Nicodemus was a Jew. This woman
is a Samaritan, a cultist, if you will. Nicodemus was religious,
a devout man. This was an abject sinner. Nicodemus
came at night. This is in the full light of
day. Nicodemus sought out the Lord
Jesus Christ. But it’s Jesus Christ who seeks
out this woman. There came a woman of Samaria
to draw water. And Jesus said to her, give me
a drink. There were three strikes. against
this individual. As I’ve already said, socially
speaking, she was a woman, and especially a foreigner, especially
a man of renown, would not have involved himself, would not have
spoken to a woman, much less asked of her a favor. But on
top of that, she was a Samaritan, the hated race, and a poor one
at that. Only a poor woman would have
I have the task of going to the well and lugging the water all
the way back home. Jesus changes the social order
by essentially submitting Himself to her and asking of her a favor. Give me a drink. We see Christ’s humanity in that. We see the reality of His human
frame. that he was weary, that he got
tired, and on this particular occasion, he gets thirsty. Only
the Gospel of John points out that when Jesus was on the cross,
the same sentiment, I thirst. So by asking a favor of this
woman, Jesus confronts the social chaos. Jesus confronts this gender
chaos where men wouldn’t stooped to speaking to a woman. Jesus
confronts the racial chaos that was so prevalent. And Jesus confronts
the economic chaos that was present where a wealthy person wouldn’t
think of speaking to a poor, certainly not a poor woman and
absolutely not a poor Samaritan. But Jesus begins by adjusting his social order
by asking a favor. And it really was a masterful
approach to gain someone’s respect by asking them a favor. One person
described it this way, our Lord’s approach to the woman was a natural
one, designed to lead easily into the subject. It provided
further discussion, the thought that a Jewish man would condescend
to speak with a Samaritan and a woman at that was surprising.
So he makes a request. that essentially this whole,
not only this whole scene plays itself out, but scores come to
Christ. Verse 8 just tells us that the
disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. We don’t
know who the disciples were that were with Him, how many there
were, only that they were not there with Him. In verse 9 we
see the Samaritan woman’s reply. She is utterly stunned. The Samaritan woman said to him,
how is it that you, being a Jew, ask for me a drink, since I am
a Samaritan woman? And then John, the Apostle John’s
clarifying remark there at the end, a parenthetical thought,
for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. He’s just driving
home the point that this is absolutely unthinkable. in most people’s
minds that a Jew would have anything to do with a Samaritan and a
Samaritan woman at that and a poor one. And so we’re not even sure
exactly how to take the woman’s comment, whether she’s amused
by this or she feels somewhat vindicated, smug. Some people think that she kind
of takes a jab at Christ, half in jest, half serious. bringing
up this whole feud that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans. You know what’s interesting about
this passage? It never really tells us. It never really tells
us whether she acquiesced, whether she performed this kindness. This woman would likely have
known the admonition of God’s Word. If your enemy is thirsty,
give him a drink of water. And we believe that she likely
did that. Still there’s some feeling of glorification, gratification
rather. There’s some sense here that,
oh aren’t you, aren’t you in need now and don’t you need my
help? Asking a favor of a Samaritan
woman. Jesus Christ has come to reassert
God’s standards. And he does so first by rearranging
social standards, but he follows that up with addressing the priority
of spiritual needs. And this is where it gets so
rich. Look at 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. Now, He’s not closing the door
forever. He’s just saying that if you
only knew who I am when I walked up, you would have fallen on
your knees and pleaded for a completely different kind of spiritual water. The gift of God was that spiritual
water. The gift of God that Jesus alludes
to is spiritual water, which essentially is the gift of salvation. That water would refresh not
the tongue and the palate, but it would refresh the soul in
bringing eternal life. As one said, by referring to
living water, Jesus was deliberately using an expression that could
be interpreted several ways. Living water could have just
as soon spoken to a babbling brook pouring down the mountainside. They often would refer to a river
or a brook as living water. But Jesus has a different kind
of water in mind. The woman still stymied, no doubt,
at the suddenness of this request, at the strangeness of it. She
said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is
deep. Where do you get this living water? She doesn’t connect. This
well was not a living water well. This was not fed by a spring.
This was essentially a cistern, a large vessel. It was fed by
rain and perhaps by groundwater, but it wasn’t fed. It wasn’t
a living spring. She says, 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? She’s totally
baffled by the illustration. She’s totally baffled by the
confrontation that Jesus brings. Jesus Christ is coming to restore
the priority of spiritual needs. All she’s concerned about in
her whole life is the physical realm. Who will be her next companion? Where will be her next meal? How can she get the next drink
of water? That’s where her whole life is
wrapped up. It’s a life of chaos. And Jesus Christ comes to confront
it. And He does it again in verse 13, reminding her, calling her
to the truth of spiritual needs. Jesus answered and said to her,
everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. You’re going
to have to come here several times this week, perhaps even a daily
chore. The only truth about water is
that you’re gonna need more of it by day’s end. Whoever drinks
of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water
that I will give him shall never thirst. And what he was pointing
the woman to so gently and graciously was salvation. That if this woman would ultimately
acknowledge her sin and place her faith in Christ, there was
a spiritual water that would Never leave her thirsty. The water that I will give Him
will become a well of water, a true living spring, springing
up to eternal life. What Jesus Christ did in the
answer to the woman’s question was to point out that He wasn’t
talking about literal physical water at all. What Jesus was
talking about in this spring was a source that would come
within. Water that would touch the soul. Water that would become a perpetual
source of refreshment. It was this water that was the
gift of God. It was this water that would
become to this woman faith and eternal life. We’ll take up as
Christ continues to confront the chaos that this godless nation
had cultivated. But Jesus Christ first and foremost
comes to address the social chaos that was so prevalent, social
chaos that’s prevalent in our day. There are races that do
not talk to one another. There is gender chaos in our
day and age. There is moral chaos in our day
and age. And there is the greatest chaos
of all. The chaos of really focusing
more on spiritual or physical needs than spiritual. From time
to time I have occasion to go in to this health food store
that charges too much for its food. And it’s amazing to me
to watch the kind of people that go in there so concerned, so
enamored with their physical health, so careless about their
souls. Let’s examine our own heart in
this chaotic world in which we live. Our merciful God We humble ourselves
in your glorious presence. Lord God, we see in a microcosm
this world in which this woman lived, a world of chaos, a world
of disorder, a world where everything is not as it should be. Lord,
we see our own world in that. Lord God, we were reminded even
as we read the psalm that you have rescued us from the pit. There was nothing in us. We were
no different. In fact, we were the same, if
not worse, than many of the people that we see and know. People
that are caught up in this chaos, that because of their godlessness,
they must squash down and keep down any thoughts of God, Merciful God, first and foremost,
we thank you. We thank you for the same mercy
that reached out to the Samaritan woman that trust that reached
out to us that brought us to faith and to repentance. Lord
God, we thank you and we praise you for the salvation that you
have bestowed upon us. But now we see order. We see
divine standards. We see life as it should be.
And we yearn for heaven because of that. Because in the meantime
now, there is utter chaos in our land. We see others who are
caught up in all kinds of this tumultuous thought and deed. And Lord, we pray We pray for
any who are in our midst that are part of this chaos. They
know there’s a God, and they’ve heard of Christ, but they’ve
never submitted themselves to Him in faith. They’ve never come
to Christ in repentance. Because of that, their whole
life is chaos. Everything they do, everything
they touch. Lord, we come before You on their behalf. We pray
that that same merciful approach to a sinful, heathen woman would
be sensed by every heart that does not know you, even this
very morning. May they know that you are calling
them to repentance. May they know that you stand
ready to forgive them. Lord God, if there is any in
our midst, who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ as their
Savior. Lord God, let today be the day. Open their blinded eyes, open
their sin-plugged ears, and bring them to repentance. In Jesus’
name that we pray.