Josh Benner

Tag: woman at the well

  • The sustenance Jesus gives to a hungy world. Studying John 4:30-34

    The sustenance Jesus gives to a hungy world. Studying John 4:30-34

    In John 4, Jesus has met a Samaritan woman at a well and told her of the living water that he provides. It’s also a passage where we see this woman respond to Jesus by telling others about him. She’s the first evangelist to Christ in north Israel. 

    The woman asked the people “can this be the Christ?” She certainly doesn’t know everything about Jesus. But she’s gone to her people and told them about this man. She draws intrigue from her people. 

    John 4:30 says: They went out of the town and were coming to him. 

    A heavenly nourishment

    The Samaritan woman has left, and the story takes us back to Jesus and his disciples. 

    31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”

    Natural metaphors

    Jesus refers to food that he has and the disciples do not understand his reference. 

    Throughout John’s Gospel, there are many other instances where Jesus metaphorically talks of something from the natural world in a spiritual way and the audience misses the point. 

    When Jesus was at the temple and he said that they could destroy the temple and he would raise it up in three days. He was referring to his death and resurrection and his body as the true temple of God. The people just thought he was talking about a building. 

    When Jesus was talking to Nicodemus about being born again. Jesus was referring to Spiritual rebirth but Nicodemus thought Jesus was talking about physical birth. 

    When Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman and talked of living water he provided and she initially thought he was simply referring to water. 

    And here again, Jesus refers to food and the disciples are like “did someone bring him a sandwich? Do they deliver pizza over here at the well?” 

    Verse 34

    “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

    Deuteronomy connection 

    Jesus is making a reference to the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 8. 

    The Israelites have been in the desert for 40 years and it has been the Lord who has sustained the people. 

     And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, 

    that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 8:3)

    Jesus finds his sustenance in his earthly ministry in fulfilling the will of God. 

    That is his food. That is his nourishment. Man does not live on bread alone but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Jesus lived in accordance with the divine plan to fulfill the divine mission in the world. 

    What are we living for? 

    The mission of God is everything. 

    Living on purpose 

    I say all the time that the purpose of life is not happiness, it’s knowing and serving God. And we serve him through being part of God’s mission in the world. 

    But my point of that is not that we are called to drudgery and begrudging submission. 

    Rather, the point is that true life is found from the Lord and from serving him. 

    Jesus said “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

    And that should be the food for which we all long. 

    Borrowing an idea from Charles Spuregon, we so often like to think that if we could do exactly what we wanted, if we could orchestrate our lives exactly as we wished, then we would be happy. 

    What this verse is saying is the opposite. 

    Happiness is not about what we want, what we desire, having our way. Happiness, meaning, purpose is found in going away from ourselves and what we want and following the Lord and his will. 

    We are sustained by living for God and his will to accomplish his work. There is no greater sustenance than that. There is no greater nourishment than that. 

    Illustration – hoarding food 

    Jesus says: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

    So often, our focus is on our physical needs. And not just the bare minimum of our needs. We have fridges and pantries. Most of us in this country have days worth of food. 

    I think of coronavirus. When the crisis began, there was widespread reporting of people going to grocery stores. Some were hoarding and buying massive quantities. Locally, stores were running out of food. There’s still a shortage of toilet paper and hand sanitizer. I’m not judging that. I’d be hypocritical. I want to the store too. 

    But I think it’s illustrative of the inherent concern we have for our physical needs. It’s a typical human behavior in a crisis to want to stock up on food. 

    Food is important.

    But I ask: “how different would the world be if the people of God took our Spiritual needs with the same seriousness and urgency as we treated our physical needs?” 

    An urgency to go to God. An urgency to live out our faith. An urgency to rejoice in the goodness of God. To pray to God. To overcome sin. To study God’s Word. 

    Man does not live by bread alone.  

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  • The broken person and the Mission of God. Studying John 4:27-29

    The broken person and the Mission of God. Studying John 4:27-29

    An unlikely missionary 

    At the beginning of John 4,  Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well. The Samaritans were a minority ethnic group who were half-Jewish. In the first century, there was a lot of animosity between the Samaritans and the Jewish people. Samaritans had some theological differences and given their ethnic differences, these fueled the division between the two groups. 

    The Samaritan woman meets Jesus at a well and they start to talk. 

    The woman has had five husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband. So she’s already part of a group who’s looked down upon, and she’s also had her sins exposed. Jesus tells her of the living water that he provides. He tells her of true worship of God. 

    As the preceding section winds down, John records Jesus speaking to the woman. 

    24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” 

    An incredible conversation. 

    Verse 27 suddenly changes the direction. 

    Just then.

    Just then his disciples came back.

    Earlier in the story, we learned that the disciples had left Jesus to go and find food. It’s the reason why Jesus had been alone when he met the Samaritan woman. 

    They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”

    The disciples want to question Jesus for talking to this woman. Out of respect for Jesus, they keep their mouths shut but they’re wondering “why are you talking with her?” 

    The disciples are not perfect. We see this time and again in the gospels. 

    We see examples of their pride, at times we see them lack faith, and we see here that they are not above prejudice. And they see Jesus talking with this woman. They don’t question it, but they’re thinking about it. 

    Probably giving her strange looks. 

    It was the culture at the time. There was a lot of prejudice against women. 

    There are rabbinic sayings which go back to the first century and talk of interactions between men and women. Some of these sayings are extremely misogynistic towards women. 

    There’s a rabinnic teaching against a man even talking to a woman in public, even his own wife. 

    There were rabinnic teachings which discouraged teaching women to read. 

    I’m not saying that those views were universal to every Jewish person in the first century. But they were within the social consciousness. Every generation has its own areas of sin, and misogyny was a common area of sin in the first century and sadly at many other times. 

    But the Samaritan woman, like everyone else, needs Jesus. She needs to know his love, needs to know his grace. 

    So the disciples didn’t publicly question Jesus, but not because they didn’t want to. 

    The text says that they marveled that Jesus was talking to a woman. Let alone a Samaritan woman. 

    John 4:28:

    So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 

    John notes that the woman leaves her jar. It’s interesting that this detail is mentioned. 

    Throughout our study of John’s gospel, we’ve seen this theme of newness, new creation, Jesus as replacing the Old Covenant with the New Covenant. 

    I believe that the detail of her leaving the water jar is mentioned because it’s symbolic of the fact that this woman is leaving behind the cares and concerns of her own nourishment to serve the purposes of Christ in the world. 

    She had come to the well for water, but she’s leaving it having learned about the living water which Jesus provides. 

    So we have this Samaritan woman, who’s had five husbands and who’s living with a man who’s not her husband, someone looked down upon in society, she goes into the town and starts telling people about Jesus. 

    Verse 29: 

    “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

    Jesus has revealed himself to be a prophetic figure who has a knowledge of her life that’s supernatural. He’s claimed to be the Christ, and so she rhetorically asks the people “can this be the Christ?”

    It’s very powerful to consider that this woman from this marginalized Samaritan group is the first recorded person in this gospel to tell people about Jesus in northern Israel. 

    This story should be encouraging to all of us from the standpoint that God also uses broken and sinful people to serve him, to share his gospel and to tell the world about Jesus. 

    No one is ever too broken to know the love of Christ. 

    And no one is ever too sinful, as this woman was. No one is ever too lowly to share Jesus and be used by God to serve God. 

    Serving the mission of God is not just for the spiritual varsity team, but God has ways for all of his people to serve him. 

    And God desires for all of his people to serve him. To be light, to share the gospel, to serve others. To serve God’s mission of the world of being disciples who make disciples. 

    God uses broken people to do his work, and he can use you. No matter where you’re from, no matter what you’ve done. If you’ve wasted time, if you’ve spent years not serving God, it’s not too late. 

    God can use you. Not because of who we are, but because of who God is. And to his glory, he uses broken people to serve his purposes. 

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  • The greater worship to which Jesus points. Studying John 4:22-26

    The greater worship to which Jesus points. Studying John 4:22-26

    In John 4, Jesus is speaking with a woman at a well. Already in this passage, Jesus has pointed to the new life he gives and to the greater access to God that he provides. At the end of the passage. Jesus points to the greater worship of God that he points to. 

    In John 4:22-23, Jesus is speaking to the woman at the well: 

     22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 

    He says that she worships what she does not know. And he’s referring not just to her but to the Samaritan people. 

    When Jesus says “we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” he’s saying that the promise of God, the covenants God had made, the promised land, the scriptures of the Old Testament, the royal line which brought forth Jesus was also from the Jewish people. 

    The Samaritans had an incorrect understanding. But what Jesus is also saying as we move into verse 23 is that a paradigm shift is coming.

    But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth

    Jesus again refers to the hour. Not only is that hour coming, Jesus says that this hour is now here. The hour is coming and will be actualized at his death and resurrection. And that hour is already present in the world at that time as Jesus ministers to the world. 

    The time has come when true worshippers, when people who really are worshipping the Father will worship him in spirit and truth. 

    Spirit and truth

    What that means is that it’s worship from people who have the Spirit, in other words, people who have been born again, been regenerated, have the living water that Jesus provides.

    And the truth is referring to THE truth. Jesus. Jesus came into the world and he did not merely believe true things, or make true statements but Jesus himself is THE truth. 

    Grace and truth come through him (John 1:17). 

    He is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). 

    And worship of the Father is meant to be in Spirit and truth. Not Spirit or truth, but Spirit and truth. 

    Jesus brings the greater worship. Jesus brings a Spiritual revolution. And it is through Jesus and Jesus alone that God is truly worshiped. 

    In verse 24, Jesus says:

    God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

    God is Spirit. Not God is a spirit, but God is spirit. God and existence is not merely about the material world, because God is spirit. 

    But God cannot merely be known intellectually or cognitively. He is Spirit. 

    When Jesus told Nicodemus that we must be born again, the reason why we must be born again is because we’re dead in our sin. That we need new Spiritual life. The wages of sin are death (Romans 6:23). 

    A dead person can’t worship the living God. We cannot worship God in Spirit and truth if we have not been born again. Because if we have not been born again, we do not have the Spirit. 

    It must be worship based around the gospel from people who believe in the gospel. God must be worshiped this way. It’s the only worship that God will accept. Spirit and truth. 

    Jesus came to bring the greater revelation, the greater access to God, and the greater worship. 

    Meditation – Worship without Jesus is not worship 

    You cannot truly worship God without Christ. That’s what this verse is saying. 

    A person who is not a Christian is incapable of true worship of God. Because if you don’t have the gospel, then you cannot worship in Spirit and truth. There are no participation trophies. 

    Matthew 7:21-23

    21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ 

    Just being here is not what causes you to be born again and enabled to worship in Spirit and truth. It’s faith. Faith in the gospel. Faith in Jesus. 

    Hebrews 11:6 says that it is impossible to please God without faith. 

    Participation alone is not good enough for the Lord. Singing songs by itself does not constitute worship in Spirit and truth. I could sing “O Canada,” and that doesn’t suddenly make me a citizen of Canada. Just as much as singing Amazing Grace does not inherently make you a citizen of heaven. 

    It doesn’t if you don’t have faith. 

    Someone who is unregenerate is incapable of worshiping the Lord as the Lord has ordained to be worshiped.  

    The exclusivity of the gospel  

    This flies in the face of any argument that many roads lead to God. One road leads to God. One road leads to salvation. One road leads to true worship. 

    We don’t decide the worship which is acceptable to the Lord. 

    He does. Jesus is the one who gives us grace and forgiveness. Not the Old Covenant, not another religion, and not our own goodness.

    Jesus is the place where we go to meet with God. And he is the way we worship God. 

    For the Samaritan woman, she has been told the most amazing news that has ever existed in the world. It’s overwhelming. It’s difficult to understand and comprehend. 

    She still does not fully understand. 

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

    She points forward to a coming Messiah who will explain all of the things about which Jesus is speaking. 

    Once again, we see the irony. Because she is talking to the Messiah, to the Christ. 

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

    Fun fact. This is the only place in the gospels where Jesus acknowledges his messiahship before the time of his trial. Jesus is the Lord’s Messiah, he is the savior of the world. And it’s because of who he is that he can speak with authority. 

    Time and again, this gospel makes absolute claims about Jesus and Jesus makes absolute claims about Jesus. There’s no gray area. It forces you to pick a side. 

    Jesus is the Christ or he is not. He is the one who leads us in true worship or he is not. He is the one who brings us into the presence of God, or he’s not. What do you believe about Jesus? 

    Don’t believe that? Then we have work to do. 

    If you do believe it? 

    Then the response is to come and worship the savior of the world who has brought us into the presence of the Lord, forgiven us of our sins, and allows us to worship today and forevermore in Spirit and in truth. 

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  • The greater access Jesus gives. Studying John 4:20-21

    The greater access Jesus gives. Studying John 4:20-21

    In John 4, so far, we’ve seen how Jesus brings the greater water, he brings the greater revelation from God. He points forward to a New Covenant which he makes available.

    In the next part of the passage, we see that Jesus also brings greater access to God. 

    Verse 20. The Samaritan woman is speaking to Jesus:

    Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 

    Jerusalem vs Mt Gerizim

    This woman was a Samaritan. The Samaritans were an ethnic group who were half-Jewish. What’s more, they believed only in the first five books of our Old Testament. 

    When she says “our fathers worshiped on this mountain,” she’s referring to Mount Gerizim. To the Samaritan Jews, Mount Gerizim was a sacred place. 

    And there was a lot of hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Samaritans did not believe that Jerusalem was the epicenter of religious life or the rightful site of the temple. 

    Instead they believed then and now that Mount Gerizim was the central locale of meeting with God. Of the roughly 800 Samaritans who are still living today, about half of them live in the area of Mount Gerizim. 

    Mount Gerizim overlooked the city where Abraham first built an altar to God in Genesis 12. There were also Old Testament commands for various celebrations on this mountain once the Israelites began to possess the land. 

    So for the Samaritans, that was the place where you worshiped. 

    It was – and is – the place where Samaritan Jews celebrate the annual festivals such as Passover, the day of atonement, the feast of tabernacles, etc. 

    So I return to the woman and Jesus. 

    She points to the difference between the Jews and the Samaritans as to the proper place of worship. 

    Jerusalem vs Gerizim. 

    Verse 21: 

    21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

    Jesus says “Believe me.”

    The Samaritan woman has the Lord of creation telling her to believe him. 

    It’s not simply me telling a friend to believe me when I share an opinion on football. It’s not you telling your spouse to believe you when you’re suggesting a home improvement. It’s not telling your grandkid to believe you. 

    It’s God telling her to believe him. 

    “The hour is coming.” We’ve noted this before, but when Jesus talks about the hour, he’s referring to the time of his death.

    And what Jesus is saying is that after his death and resurrection, neither of those sites will be the epicenter of approaching God. 

    Jesus provides the greater access. 

    It’s not ultimately going to be about either of those places where we go to meet God, because it is through Jesus that we go to God. He is the true temple. Approaching God is not about a mountain, or a city, or a building, but through a person. 

    We approach a personal God through a personal savior. The irony of the story is that she’s talking about Mount Gerizim vs Jerusalem and which is the greater place to be with God. 

    But she’s never been closer to God than at the moment when she is talking to the Lord Jesus himself. And that is true for all of humanity. Jesus is the meeting place with God. 

    Not only is he the meeting place for how we approach God, he is the greater meeting place. He is the greater temple, because he is not confined to a location. 

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  • The woman at the well. Studying John 4:1-9

    The woman at the well. Studying John 4:1-9

    In John 4, Jesus is on the move. He’s left Judea and is journeying into Galilee. He’s venturing out of Jewish territory. 

    John 4:1-2 says: 

    Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2(although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 

    First thing I want to focus on is where the text says that Jesus had to pass through Samaria. That’s relevant because it will be the location of our story today. There actually more than one route Jesus could have taken. But where the text says Jesus had to pass through Samaria, it’s an indication of the divine will. Jesus had to go this way because it put him in a place to have a divinely appointed meeting. 

    John 4:5: 

    5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

    John makes a reference to Jacob and Joseph. In the Old Testament, Jacob is the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. And the region to which Jesus has traveled is an area of land that had been owned by Jacob and given to Joseph.  We see that in Genesis 48. It’s this land to which Jesus has come. 

    The humanity of Jesus

    John 4:6:

     6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 

    When the text talks of Jesus being worn from his journey, it is a reminder to us that Jesus is human. During his earthly ministry, he experienced fatigue. We see him sleep. We see times where he eats and drinks. Times where he goes off by himself to be alone. He was fully man. 

    This verse tells us it was the sixth hour. That’s relevant to the story. In first century Jewish time keeping, the first hour was sunrise, so in it being the sixth hour, it’s around noon. 

    All of this is setting the scene for what follows. 

    John 4:7:
    A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

    Background on Samaritans 

    We need some background. 

    When we were looking at passages in Isaiah over Christmas, one thing we talked a lot about was how Israel split into two kingdoms. You had a northern and a southern kingdom. 

    In 722 B.C, the northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians. 

    Thousands of the Jewish people from the northern tribes were deported from their land. The Assyrians procreated with the Israelites, and so you had an ethnic group who was half-Jewish and half-Assyrian. 

    That is the ethnic group which became known as the Samaritans. There are still Samaritans today. It’s a very small community of about 800 people and they mostly live in Israel. There are some very significant distinctions between Jewish people and Samaritans. 

    Samaritans do not believe the entire Old Testament is scripture. They only believe in the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 

    Since they do not believe in the entire Old Testament, Jerusalem is not the sacred place to them that it is to other Jewish people. Because if all you have are the first five books, the Jewish people had not yet reached Jerusalem. 

    Instead, the sacred site of worship for the Samaritans then and now is Mount Gerizim. And actually, about half of present day Samaritans actually live there. 

    In the first century, there had been a lot of animosity between the two groups. About 160 years before Jesus had this interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well, a group of Israelite soldiers had destroyed the Samaritan temple at Mount Gerizim. 

    And there was later retaliatory attacks.  

    In John 8, when he’s being questioned, Jesus will be asked if he’s a Samaritan or has a demon (John 8:48), which essentially puts those two situations on the same plain. 

    The Samaritans were looked down upon. These two groups hated each other. 

    Within a generation of the life of Jesus, official Jewish teaching from their scholars ruled that Samaritans were inherently unclean and defiled. 

    In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus gives the Parable of the Good Samaritan. A lawyer is questioning Jesus about the command to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus tells a parable about a man who had been severely beaten, left for dead. A priest and a levite both come by the man and stay on their journey, but it’s a Samaritan who sees the man, tends to him, sees that he gets taken care of. The Good Samaritan is the hero of the story. 

    It’s a spectacular picture of selflessness and love for your fellow man. 

    But when you understand that parable in the context of the hatred that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans, it makes the story all that much more striking. 

    I go into those details because the tensions will also color our passage this morning in John 4. 

    Give me a drink

    So we return to the passage. The woman is coming to the well in the middle of the day. Unusual for her to be coming to the well alone and also at the hottest point of the day.

    It was generally women who would come for water in the morning. The fact that she’s going at an off time alone suggests that she possibly doesn’t want to interact with others. 

    Jesus speaks to the woman at the end of verse 7 and says “give me a drink.” 

    Verse 8 adds the note that Jesus was by himself as his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

    So Jesus asks for a drink. A Jew speaking to a Samaritan. Verse 9, the woman is taken aback. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” 

    The verse ends with the parenthetical comment that Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. 

    These are two groups who do not get along. As he often does in the gospels, Jesus is unconcerned with social customs or taboos. 

    We see Jesus touch lepers. We see him associating with sinners, with those on the margins. 

    Even within his band of disciples, he picks someone like Matthew who was a tax collector, a profession hated by Jews in the Roman world. 

    And here we see Jesus openly conversing with a woman in an ethnic group who was looked down upon.

    So the woman asks how it is that he could ask her for a drink. But Jesus will flip the conversation. 

    Because the matter of ultimate significance in the story is not about her giving a drink to Jesus, it’s about the water he can provide. 

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