Sermon Tone Analysis

I want us to look at the prequel that lead up to the confidence of this Samaritan woman as we look at the events in John, chapter 4…Where Brokenness Met Reconciliation…where a broken life…you know a broken life is not a life that stops living nor a heart that stops beating, but it's a broken life that limps from one experience and one attempt to another.

What it needs, what you may need more than money, relationship, a new job, or anything is reconciliation.

But like the woman you may not realize that, so I hope maybe you see in today's story, in today's Scripture, not a woman at the well, but yourself at the well.

The graphic that's behind our text and our titles today is the view from the bottom of the well.

You know really before the Lord seems to ever use most of us, we have to come to the place in our life where we look up from the bottom of the well, and we realize there is no further digging, there is no other place for us to go than to look up.

That's where this woman found herself, but like the woman at the well you may not realize you're in that well.

You may not realize you have a need for a Savior, and I hope you see that today.

Jesus comes to the city of Sychar, in the land of Samaria.

That event in and of itself shows the purposeful grace of our Lord because the normal route for a Jew to travel to where Jesus was eventually headed was to go around Samaria.

To go through Samaria was to go through land the Jews had culturally declared unclean and the wrong side of the tracks, if you will…the wrong side of the neighborhood.

But it tells us Jesus purposed to go through Samaria.

If you look with me in John, chapter 4, beginning in the first verse it says, /"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."/

Now just to note there before we even go further, it would appear by the reading if you don't study it that Jesus is having to leave town because the Pharisees have found out He's baptizing people or that His disciples are baptizing people.

That's why there is such an important connection between John, chapter 3 and John, chapter 4.

You back up to John, chapter 3, and in verse 35 it says, /"The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand."/

In other words, Jesus never ran from the Pharisees.

The Pharisees couldn't touch Jesus unless Jesus gave them permission to do so.

So it's not that Jesus has to flee the country side.

It is true His time had not yet come, and if there might have been an attempt at an early arrest that was not in the fulfillment of God's plan for Jesus' life, and He had always come to do His Father's will.

But it was not for fear of Himself.

He would tell us later in John 10, I believe verse 18, that "I am in charge of My life.

I lay it down.

I take it up again.

Nobody else does this to Me.

This is My position, My sovereignty to do so."

So our Lord, our Messiah, comes into chapter 4 and purposefully decides to go to Samaria.

No doubt his purpose is to encounter this woman.

So in verse 4 it says, /"But He needed to go through Samaria."/

He needed to go through Samaria.

He must go through Samaria because there is a woman there, there is a village there that by God's sovereign plan He is to encounter.

So 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.

Now Jacob’s well was there.

Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well.

It was about the sixth hour."/

(Or about noon for our time.)

Now just an amazing thing happens here.

Jesus comes to this well outside the city of Sychar, Jacob's well, and He sits there.

He doesn't travel and keep going.

He sits there…a Jew sitting at the watering hole of the Samaritans.

And not only that, but notice this, verse 7, /"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."/

Not only does Jesus purposefully come to Samaria, purposefully come to this well outside the city of Sychar in the middle of the day when people don't come to the well, but He purposefully sits down at this Samaritan well and purposefully sends all of the other disciples away.

Now, you don't have to send 12 people away to go buy food at McDonald's.

You don't have to send 12 disciples away to go buy your food for the evening either, but He intended to be alone.

He purposed to be alone.

Listen, my friends, when Jesus encounters your life it seems coincidental, it seems incidental that that neighbor, that family member, that loved one begins to engage in this conversation, but in God's view and God's plan it is purposeful.

God comes to you on purpose.

He arranges the meeting He wants to have with you, the encounter He wants to have with you and we see it highlighted with this woman of Samaria.

He knew, of course, we know later reading the verses He knew all about her.

One of the things He knows is He knows because of the life she's living she's going to come when she can come by herself.

She's going to come at noon.

So Jesus intends to be there when she comes.

Now, this is a Samaritan woman.

And to be as blunt as I can be, to drink from a Samaritan woman's pot, to drink from the same vessel they would drink from was taboo.

Back in the 50s and in the 60s when I was a little boy there were the fountains that were separated.

Some would say, "Colored only."

And to go…for a white person in the south and in other places…and drink at that fountain was taboo.

My friends, that's exactly what this pot of this Samaritan woman was to the Jew.

I want you to notice very clearly what Jesus says to her in verse 7.

He says, /"Give me a drink."/

He doesn't say, "Let me use your well."

He doesn't want to use the utensils, the rope to get His own water.

He wants to drink from her pot.

Okay.

He is reaching past all the taboos that stop all of us at some point in all the prejudices that as humans block us from engaging the people who need Jesus most.

Jesus breaks through all those taboos.

He tells her, "I want to drink from what you have already drawn into your pot."

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."/

You know in the Greek that literally says, "The Jews do not use with the Samaritans."

In other words, they wouldn't touch this pot.

They're not going to use the same utensil you used.

It would be you drinking from the same plastic water bottle of somebody you would not even want to touch or associate with.

That's what Jesus is asking to do.

She says, "How can this be?

Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans.

This is not something you do."

Of course what she is doing here is she is hearing Jesus at the physical level.

Her story is so similar to the one in the previous chapter of Nicodemus.

Both of whom don't seem to get the imagery Jesus will be presenting them in our story.

With Nicodemus who comes at night, Jesus says, "You know your problem Nicodemus is you need to be born again."

Nicodemus says, "Well, how can I crawl into a woman's womb and be born again?"

To this Samaritan woman He says, /"Give me a drink."/

She says, "You have nothing to draw with.

What are you going to drink with?

And she doesn't see His spiritual application.

In verse 10, Jesus answered her concern and her complaint 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 the same as Him telling Nicodemus, "You need to be born from above."

Now to the Samaritan woman, "If you knew who was asking you, you would turn around and ask Him and He would give you living water."

But she doesn't get it.

She thinks He's talking about water, so the woman said to her, /"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?"/

She senses maybe He's speaking with a sense of superiority here so she challenges that.

Again, she's at the physical level.

"So are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well?

Who dug it to feed the livestock?

Are you greater than him?

You're claiming you can give water that's better than this water.