Revealing True Identity

The Passage

John 4:1-44

¹Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John ²(though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), ³He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. ⁴But He needed to go through Samaria.

⁵So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. ⁶Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour[1].

⁷A woman of Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” ⁸For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

⁹Then 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.

¹⁰Jesus 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.”

¹¹The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? ¹²Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”

¹³Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, ¹⁴but 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.”

¹⁵The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

¹⁷The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ ¹⁸for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

¹⁹The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. ²⁰Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”

²¹Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. ²²You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. ²³But 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. ²⁴God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

²⁵The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”

²⁶Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”

²⁷And at this point His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?”

²⁸The woman then left her water pot, went her way into the city, and said to the men,

²⁹“Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”

³⁰Then they went out of the city and came to Him.

³¹In the meantime His disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”

³²But He said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”

³³Therefore the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”

³⁴Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. ³⁵Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! ³⁶And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. ³⁷For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”

³⁹And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all that I ever did.” ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans had come to Him, they urged Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. ⁴¹And many more believed because of His own word.

⁴²Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.” 

⁴³Now after the two days He departed from there and went to Galilee. ⁴⁴For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. 

A Little Background

The descendants of Jacob’s twelve sons became the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob settled in a place called Shechem where he would have dug a well for his large family. Shechem was later known as Sychar.

Later in Israel’s history, King David’s son, Solomon took the throne. He was gifted with great wisdom. However, Solomon turned from godly to worldly wisdom. He saw the political advantage of having peace agreements with other nations, so he married many of the daughters of various kings. Solomon had over 300 wives and 700 concubines who eventually led him into idolatry. The heart of the Israelites followed the example of their king.

For his idolatry, God swore to Solomon that the kingdom would be divided after his death. When Solomon died his son Reheboam ascended to the throne. But one of Solomon’s servants, Jereboam rose up in rebellion. As a result, civil war broke out. Only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained faithful to the royal line of David and Solomon. They became known as the nation of Judah, the southern tribes. The remaining 10 northern tribes retained the name Israel. But Jerusalem and the temple sacrifices were in Judah. Jereboam feared that the hearts of the people would turn back to Judah when they went to Jerusalem for worship. So he set up his own alternative worship system.

Because of the rebellion and false worship of Israel, not one king of Israel ever did right in the eyes of the Lord. Israel was always apostate (meaning they “fell away” from true worship). Eventually, Judah also fell. God promised both nations that foreign powers would lead them into captivity. George W. Wright explains:

          The feud between Jews and Samaritans extended over many centuries, According to 1 Kings 17:24, after the Assyrian conquest of 722 B.C., the cities of the Northern Kingdom (Israel) were repopulated by foreigners from Babylonia, Syria, and several other pagan nations. The Jews in this region intermarried with these foreigners. This produced a mixed race of “half-breed” Jews who grew to the point where they knew nothing of the religion of Israel. They rejected the temple in Jerusalem and substituted their own shrine at Mount Gerizim.

          Judah, the southern Kingdom, also fell to a foreign power.  Its leading citizens were deported to Babylonia, but they retuned seventy years later with their Jewish bloodline intact. These full-bloodied [sic] Jews of Judah looked down on the Samaritans because of their mixed marriages and pagan worship. The hostility between these two groups was so severe that this Samaritan woman was amazed that Jesus would talk to her. (A Simplified Harmony of the Gospels, pg. 43) [See additional note below[2].]

Some Explanation

“But He needed to go through Samaria.”  Jesus had gone from Galilee to Judea just a short time before. Apparently, he took the route around Samaria as all good Jews had done. But this time Jesus needed to go through Samaria. The Greek word dei indicates that it was a necessity that Jesus go through the “hated” territory.

 

“A woman of Samaria came to draw water.”  In addition to being a Samaritan, some have said that the woman at the well faced a great social stigma. We don’t know the facts of her circumstances except that having had five husbands, she was now living with a man who was not her husband. Jesus’ comment seems to suggest a loose lifestyle. The daily run to the village well would have been done by the women early in the morning for their daily needs before the heat of the day set in. Perhaps this woman was avoiding the gossip and derision of the other village women.

“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.”  Just like He spoke to Nicodemus, Jesus engaged the woman in conversation about a very common concrete topic, but He was really speaking in spiritual terms. Perhaps as she approached the well, she had been feeling the weight of her social burden.  The idea of living water that kept her from coming to that well would have been a great relief!

“Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come here.’”  Apparently Jesus had missed all the tolerance and diversity training classes. He wasn’t very sensitive about approaching the woman’s past. His direct statement caused her to own her situation head on; she couldn’t hide behind excuses. This surely must have been a prophet; He knew about her past!

“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain...”  But the woman deflected; she tried to justify her own self-rightness. Surely, if He were a prophet, He would recognize that the Samaritans had a superior religious system. Instead, Jesus declared that the time was coming (it would be finalized at the cross) and “now is” (because Jesus was here) when all true worshipers would worship in spirit and in truth.

Jesus corrected her erroneous understanding. First of all, true worship soon would no longer be at a singular location—the temple. Worship would not be a matter of works—that is, the animal sacrifices. Worship would soon be an issue of the spirit. Jesus defined this to Nicodemus. True worship would be from a heart that was “born again”—born of the spirit.

But Jesus also said that true worship would be in spirit and in truth. The Jews had it right when they claimed that their system of worship was the true one, and Jesus did not back down from that. Was Jesus being unloving when He challenged the woman’s statement on the issue of true worship? After all, if the where and how of worship was about to change, why push the point?

The answer to that question is absolutely critical. Contrary to some trends in the church, Jesus did not take an “all-inclusive” approach to the woman. He didn’t declare a “big tent”, or "open a conversation that all could share in". Instead He affirmed that salvation was (as understood at that point) “of the Jews” or through the Jewish sacrificial system. When He died on the cross, Jesus fulfilled all the Old Testament worship practices. His death fully atoned for the sins of the people and satisfied the wrath and judgment of God in our place. To worship the Lord in spirit and in truth is to embrace this truth for oneself, and worship God within its context.

There is one more critical point to realize in this part of the exchange, and why the historical background is so vital. The forefathers of the Samaritans were the same Israelites who had fallen away in mass apostasy even in the face of the great prophets who preached repentance such as Elijah, Hosea and Jonah. This Samaritan stood face to face with the very God in human flesh that her ancestors had defied. Jesus could do nothing but tell her the truth. The Israelites and Samaritans created their own way to God. They worshiped on their terms. Jesus disarmed her argument. There was only one way to the Father.

The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”  The Samaritan woman knew how to get out of an argument, and that is when Jesus revealed His identity to her.

“I have food to eat of which you do not know.”  Just at that moment the disciples returned with food for Jesus. I would love to know what was going through Jesus’ mind as He spoke to the woman. What a feast His spirit must have been delighting in as he watched her understanding unfold and she realized who He was! Jesus continued to speak in spiritual terms to his disciples. “Don’t you say that there are four months until harvest? Look! The fields are ready now!” The Old Testament Law or Torah, laid the groundwork, or planted the seed. Jesus saw that the hearts of the people were ready for Him. All who labored together would rejoice at the harvest. Jesus was also both harvesting, and sowing for when the disciples would return to reap “...Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.”

“...they urged Him to stay with them...”  The Samaritans welcomed Jesus’ with hearts of faith. He continued to minister to them for two more days They declared, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”

Observations and Insights

We can only guess about the Samaritan woman’s background. What circumstances would have caused her to have five husbands? Perhaps some died; perhaps some divorced her for barrenness (a disgrace for Jewish women). Perhaps she had been abused or abandoned at a young age sending her into a life of promiscuity.  Whatever her situation, Jesus didn’t coddle her. He didn’t show her the wounding of her inner child, or reveal the enemy’s lies about her self-image.  Jesus went straight to the solution—He showed her the truth about who He was—Her Messiah, the answer for all her needs. The answer for the Samaritan woman is also the answer for my life. It is significant that in the end, the woman left her water pot to go and tell the people of Sychar that she had met the Messiah. She would no longer live for water that didn’t satisfy. Self would be replaced with the new living water of faith in Jesus. I have a new desire for Jesus, the living water. I am learning that the more I turn away from self, the more I’m satisfied in Jesus. And the more satisfied I am in Jesus, the less I desire to please my "self". So, I’ll keep my eyes fixed on the Great Shepherd, who is the author and the finisher of my faith.  His living water feeds my soul. All I need, I find in Him.

Next: Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:14-15; John 4:43-45

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[1] It was about 6:00 in the evening according to the way the ancient Jews reckoned time.

[2] Contrary to popular opinion, these tribes are not "lost". Although the norther kngdom, Israel, did not return as a nation and the people were mostly of mixed race, there were some members of the tribes of Israel who retained their Jewish identity.  When Assyria invaded Israel taking the people captive, some Israelites would have been left behind such as the old, and weak. Some Jews may have lived in foreign lands such as Egypt. We know that Anna the prophetess was from Tribe of Asher (of the northern kingdom), for example.