A Meeting at the Well

Text: John 4:1-18, 28-29

In this text, Jesus is preparing to leave Judea for Galilee. In order to get there, he had to pass through Samaria. Jesus arrived in a Samaritan village called Sychar, the place where Jacob’s well was. It was noonday and Jesus was worn out by the trip. So he decided to sit down at the well.

A Samaritan woman arrives to draw water from the well and Jesus begins to engage in a conversation with her. Jesus asked her for a drink of water. Now the woman was astonished by His request because Jesus was a Jew and the woman was a Samaritan. Back in those days, Jews would not be caught dead talking to Samaritans. The woman replied by asking Him why He was asking her for a drink. The woman was unaware of who she was talking to. Jesus answered by explaining to her that if she knew the generosity of God and who He was, she would be asking Him for a drink, and He would give her fresh, living water. Jesus continued by saying to her that everyone who drinks the “well water” will thirst again. But the water He gives will become a fountain of everlasting life.

There are certain things that you do not know about this woman: her age, her name, her family, nor her upbringing. But what we do know is that she had struggles in her relationships with men. She had 5 husbands. Each time she met a new man in her life, she decided to “shack up” before marrying him.

From her previous relationships and present behavior, we can conclude that her actions may have been a result of her upbringing. She may have been in a cycle that her mother was also in, man, after man, after man! It may have been that she had an abusive father or maybe her father wasn’t there at all. Pastor Durham teaches us that what you see is what you will be. Without a close relationship with her father, she would have had a difficult time in relationships with her husbands.

In verse 15 of this text, the woman asks Jesus for some of His water so that she would never thirst or come back to that well again. Jesus told her to go call her husband and come back. We learned that the woman was not currently married, but she had had 5 husbands. What Jesus was trying to get the woman to realize was that the water was a gift, a gift of salvation. In order to receive her request for the water, the woman had to work her way through her ignorance. She had to become convicted of her immoral acts. Jesus had to open her eyes to her circumstances. You can’t receive anything of the supernatural while you’re in a natural state. In conclusion Pastor Durham asked: What quenches your thirst the best? WATER!

 

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