These Waters are ALIVE!

Just another day! Or is it!?

So, here was this woman, a Samaritan, who was having just another day. She came to the well to draw her everyday water. It may seem she just happened to meet Jesus who was resting there from being on a journey. He was on the way and she was on the way. That day her way crossed His – or He crossed her way with His own – ‘needing to go through Samaria’ [John: 4-4].

Was it a chance, an accident? It looks like it, initially, but by the time Jesus is done there, [John 4:41-42], full-fledged plan of God was being revealed, executed, and put into action for many people and generations.

Let’s look at the conversation that our Savior stopped to have with a Samaritan woman – a conversation that changed her life and through her, of many others in her village.

Jesus initiates the conversation

John 4: 7: Jesus asked her for a drink.

This, in itself, is wonderful. Jesus initiated the conversation. There are a few examples in the gospels about Jesus’ miracles/actions, where no one asked Him to, at the time, but He initiated the event:

• Widow’s dead son: Jesus had compassion and raised him from the dead
• Cripple at Bethsaida: Jesus went, asked, and healed him
• Lazarus: No one asked or dared to believe (though they rolled away the stone) – He knew it was for Father’s glory
• Saul: on the way to Damascus

The woman at the well is one of them.

John 4:9-14: The woman questioned Him – He, a Jew, ask her, a Samaritan for water!

Jesus hinted at His identity in response and, in a way, offers her Living Water.

The woman still not hearing Him properly, focused first on the part about Living Water and not His identity. She reasoned that He had no vessel to draw the Living Water out of the well. She asked Him if he was greater than Jacob, whose well it was.

She’d been drawing water from Jacob’s well. Jesus and the woman talk about the Living Water-the woman arguing about His mechanism to draw water without a vessel and His identity, and Jesus telling her more about the Living Water. It seems Jesus was letting her know more and more about the value of the Living Water, to get her interested enough to ask for it, without worrying about how He could do it.

By John 4:15, the woman finally asks for the Living Water, when she hears that once someone’s had it, they’d never thirst again. Her focus is still on the fact that she would not have to daily come out of her village to draw out water from a well. But, she asks for it.

Predictably Unpredictable Jesus

However, at John 4:16, Jesus does the predictably unpredictable. He asks her to get her husband and to come back. He changes the subject, seemingly.

Jesus had spent the last few minutes explaining to her the precious details about Living Water. The woman had no clue what Living Water was. He had got her interested enough that she asked for it. But now that she asks for it, He tells her to go back and to get her husband.

When the woman responds that she has no husband, He proceeds to tell her, her life story! By now, she perceives that He is a prophet to know all that about her, having not known her before. But she too changes subject, like Jesus did. She has a new query. She asks Him about proper place of worship. What a twist in the tale!

What comes next is even more thrilling. Jesus shares with her more and more and more about the coming time, the proper worshipping, the truth of God’s will for men and proper worship.

Jesus, isn’t that too much to share with a Samaritan woman – a Gentile! But He doesn’t stop there. When she tells Him that she knows about the anticipated coming of the Anointed One, Jesus reveals to her that He is Him!

But why Jesus, why her? Why not the Jews? Why didn’t You didn’t share this with Jews, or the Sanhedrin, or the Pharisees, or the other groups constantly after You? Why an unnamed, unknown Samaritan woman? And one with no repute!

But He didn’t stop there. Jesus told her that He was that Messiah. Outrageous!

My cup runneth over …

The scripture does not say that the woman responded to this revelation. She didn’t get startled; she didn’t scream and faint; she didn’t fall at His feet in worship; she didn’t even declare that He was blaspheming, unlike Pharisees. But she did do something. She did something far more marvelous and wonderful, even unthinkable.

John 4: 28 states – ‘Then the woman left her water jar and went away to the town. And she began telling the people,’

Wait! What just happened? All the while Jesus was trying to get her to draw her to the Living Water, and she was focused on her everyday chore of drawing water. The moment she heard that He was the Messiah – she left her water jar!

She found the Living Water. She, who was questioning Him, about the vessel He would use to draw water out, probably didn’t realize herself that she was it. Jesus was drawing her to the Living Water and filling her with it. She became the vessel – a vessel full of Living Water – so full that she was overflowing. We see it in John 4:29.

‘Come, see a Man Who has told me everything that I ever did! Can this be (is not this) the Christ? [Must not this be the Messiah, the Anointed One?]’

The overflow of this new living vessel of Living Water was so strong, that it drew a whole town to Jesus. And not just a whole town – a whole town of Samaritans!

John 4:30 states – ‘So the people left the town and set out to go to Him.’

Isn’t that amazing! Jesus was born, lived, and preached among the Jews. He seems to have made one of the biggest impacts on Gentiles. It is interesting to see that though the Jews were promised the Savior, the Messiah, the whole world, in some form or another, had been waiting for Him to arrive. And when He did, this woman recognized Him.

What thirst! How thirsty they were! Even being Gentiles to see, know and accept the Savior (even though He was a Jew). More than Israel from whom Jesus came, these thirsty people sought the Living Water and they got it – And how Jesus gave them – even to the overflowing!

Now, it doesn’t seem too much like an incidental event, does it! It looks planned. That Jesus chose to wait by that well alone (while His disciples went to buy food John 4: 8), and the woman turned up, was no accident or chance. Jesus needed to be alone over there to talk to her.  It may not have been as fruitful with His disciples around, or Jesus would have chosen to be with them when talking to her. Jesus never does anything without the purpose that Father God set for Him, and that the Holy Spirit wasn’t leading Him to. We need to trust the wisdom of God.

Changed For Ever – Life Renewed!

She must have had quite a reputation with five husbands and sixth man who was not her husband. Here she found another Man! But what a turnaround! I have a very strong feeling that people had a very different view of her from that time on! She became a blessed woman – a vessel full of Living Water! Her life was healed.

She was a woman in desperate need of love. She was searching all over for it. Five husbands and a sixth man could not do it. There is a thirst for love and acceptance that only Jesus can fulfill. Jesus accepted her, and this resulted in the whole town accepting her – believing Jesus to be the Savior because of her word. No more judgments, pain or humiliation.

When she asked Jesus for the Living Water, her focus was on her walk to the well everyday to draw water for herself. Her prayer was focused on a true need, but limited motive. But Jesus sees the real need, the real thirst. He knows! He sees the real need, the real thirst. He asked her for water, but He was the Living Water that she needed. Jesus knows the exact need. He made her aware of her real need, and then He fulfilled it.  The Living Water came and it came in a flood, changing everything about her.

The All-seeing, All-knowing, Almighty Living God

Jesus always knew her need. He asks her for water in a curious paradox – He was about to provide her the lifetime eternal supply of Living Water. He chooses to slowly get her around to talking about the Living Water, constantly sharing with her more and more.

When she asked Him for the Living Water (John 4:15), Jesus told her to bring her husband. It seems like Jesus is changing the subject. But, Jesus knows the exact need. He hits it straight. He makes her aware of her real need – of love and acceptance.

Then, when she comes clean with truth, He provides the Living Water. Before she knows it, she is being drawn deeper and deeper into the living well. Until, she has had so much that she is face to face with the very Source of the Living Water, the everlasting Spring of Living Water.

And she drinks in, to the overflowing, and there is such a flood – one woman believed and multiplied into a whole town of believers in Christ!

It is true! Jesus is abundant life!

Gathering the Harvest

Let’s not forget the disciples. Something else happens here. Just as Jesus tells her that He is the Messiah, His disciples come in on the scene with the food. He doesn’t eat the food right away, but tells them that His food is doing the will of God. That is just so precious! All along we think … ‘once upon a time, as Jesus rested by a well, a Samaritan woman came to draw water’. And then, Jesus says in His cryptic way – He has food to eat that His disciples know nothing about, and it is doing the will of God. So, here we have it. It was no accident; it was not incidental. It was the planned will of God!

The Holy Spirit would have been hovering there, preparing the way for the coming of His Son. And when He came, He did not disappoint the plan. He accomplished and completely finished it.

There are a few more wonderful treasures that we find. Thereafter Jesus begins to tell His disciples about the harvest being ready for reaping. He says that they would be reaping what they have not sown or worked for. This is so that the sower and the reaper both can rejoice together.

It is interesting to see that just as Jesus was telling His disciples about ready harvest waiting to be gathered, the town-full of Samaritans come in. Here is the harvest that disciples did not prepare for. The Scriptures say that –

‘Now numerous Samaritans from that town believed in and trusted in Him because of what the woman said when she declared and testified’ – John 4:39.

They already believed and trusted in Him! This is awesome! What thirst! The acceptance of this people for Lord Jesus Christ was such that He stayed with them for two days. There is something exceedingly beautiful here.

John 4:41-42 states – ‘Then many more believed in and adhered to and relied on Him because of His personal message [what He Himself said].

And they told the woman, Now we no longer believe (trust, have faith) just because of what you said; for we have heard Him ourselves [personally], and we know that He truly is the Savior of the world, the Christ.

What an amazing testimony! The truly beautiful part here is that the Scriptures do not record that Jesus ever did any miracle in this town. No healings, no lepers cleansed, no crippled walking, no blind seeing, no raising from the dead! It was simple –  He said and they heard and believed that He is the Savior of the world, the Christ! There is no argument. There are no heated discussions. There is no testing Him. There is only simple acceptance by faith. And in that there was healing, cleansing, crippled walking, blind seeing, and dead being raised to everlasting life.

Forces Ready for Action …

Jesus sowed for His disciples in Samaria. His harvest was ready. This was the first year of His ministry. The Samaritan woman is never named or showed again in the Scriptures, but the work done there is evident.

Three years later, after His resurrection, Jesus would be telling His disciples – ‘… you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends (the very bounds) of the earth.’

[Acts 1:8]

 Samaria is one of the places, named by Him, alongside Jerusalem and Judea!  That is because He sowed there three years before. And now, He already has a town full of witnesses in Samaria, ready for action!