John 4:1-26
"Greater Than Jacob"
You are invited this morning to hear a love story. The love of this story is more sacrificial than Romeo's love for Juliet; more pure than Don Quixote's love for Dulcina, and more committed than Odysseus's unwavering love for his wife Penelope. You are to give special heed to this love story for two reasons. One, unlike those classic stories just mentioned, this is not a fictional story dreamed up by mere men. This story is inspired of God and is anchored in history. But even more, this love story is about you, the saints of God. Please do not allow your familiarity with this story to hold you back from giving it your full attention. There is so much more here than could ever be brought out in one sermon.
Standing behind this love story is another story, and that is the story of Jacob and Rachel. The Jewish readers would have caught the similarities immediately. But in case you wouldn't see it by the similarities, the text itself draws you back to Jacob a number of times so you don't miss it.
In v. 5 John informs us that Jesus stopped near the place where Jacob gave his son Joseph a plot of land. A strange detail to add if it held no significance. In v. 6 John reminds us that the well spoken of by the woman was Jacob's well. In v. 12 the women asked Jesus the most important question of the passage; "are you greater than Jacob?" Indeed!
So let's first remind ourselves of the story that stands behind this passage. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham, and the son of Isaac. The Lord had promised Jacob that God would bring about the gospel through Jacob's descendants. The world would be blessed through Jacob. As with Abraham, Jacob as the head of the OT church in his time stood as a type of Jesus Christ, the descendant of Jacob.
The problem for Jacob was that his brother Esau was seeking to kill him. So Isaac sent Jacob on a far journey to the east to seek out a wife for himself. After many days Jacob came to a well and saw Rachel, and immediately resolved to take her as his bride.
Who was Rachel? She was a foreigner who worshiped her idols. As the prospective groom, Jacob provided abundant water for Rachel and her sheep. On his own Jacob rolled away the stone and provided water from the well.
Yes, the OT is about Jesus Christ. You see the point, do you not? Another father sent Jacob's descendant to go seek a wife. He who was greater than Jacob obeyed His father and set out on a long journey. As with Jacob Jesus was on a divine mission when He appeared at that well that day.
That is the point of the rather odd phrasing of verse 4. The Apostle writes, "It was necessary that He pass through Samaria." Christ and His disciples were on their way to Galilee. They could have easily taken the commonly used road through the Jordan Valley. Jews normally did this to avoid the Samaritans. It was not necessary for geographic reasons that they travel through Samaria. It was necessary because this meeting had been divinely ordained.
Our Lord had recently left Jerusalem where for the most part he had been rejected. Now he heads to Samaria and stops for a long conversation with this woman. This is the longest conversation Jesus has with any one person recorded on the pages of Scripture. Now who is this person our Lord gives so much time to?
Well, first of all, she was a Samaritan. The Samaritans were a mixed race of Jews and Gentiles. In the eighth century BC Assyria conquered the northern ten tribes of Israel. The Assyrians followed a policy of assimilation when conquering kingdoms. They would carry some of the captured people to foreign lands to assimilate there, and they would bring in foreign peoples to intermarry with the people of their newly captive kingdom. This would leave no room for nationalistic uprisings in the future.
The Samaritans retained the worship of Jehovah but had worshiped the pagan gods of the Assyrians also. When the returning exiles rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, the Samaritans were not allowed any participation in the rebuilding, not being pure Jews. So around 400 BC the Samaritans built their own temple on Mount Gerizim. They claimed that this temple was the true temple of God.
The Samaritans did not like to be considered "half-breeds" by the Judeans to the south. In Jesus' day the Jews looked down on the Samaritans. They considered them as unclean as full Gentiles, and the Samaritans returned the hated.
Now it would be amazing for any first century Jew to witness a Jewish rabbi instructing a Samaritan in religion. But it would have been unheard of for a Rabbi to be instructing a woman in religion. Our Lord was breaking all the social and religious taboos of His day in this conversation. He had come to inaugurate something new.
Not only was she an outcast from religious circles because she was a Samaritan and a woman, but this was no ordinary Samaritan woman. This woman was even an outcast even among her fellow Samaritan women! This was a woman of vile and wicked character, most likely a prostitute. It was almost unheard of in those days to have had five divorces. We would be naive to believe that all five divorces were none of her fault. And now she was living with another man in fornication. Her reputation would have been well known in her village.
This explains why she had come out alone to draw water at the sixth hour, or 12:00 noon. Normally the women of the village came out together in the morning or evening when it wasn't so hot. But this woman was alone. Not only was she an outcast from Judaism, she was an outcast from her own village. She was an outcast as a consequence of her own sinful lifestyle. It is this person our Lord chooses to have the longest conversation in Scripture with.
Jesus begins the conversation by requesting her to give him some water from the well. Her response in v. 9 reveals her lack of respect for this Jewish stranger. Without proper address she reproaches Jesus instead of serving Him "Why do you, being a Jew, ask "me" for a drink...?" Can you hear the disdain in her question?
But the Lord is not offended; He uses her disrespect as an opportunity to introduce her to spiritual truth. In v. 10, he challenges her to consider who it is that is speaking to her, and to consider the spiritual gift he had come to give her.
The gift He calls "living water." We can see from her response in v. 11 that she had no idea what He meant. She supposed that he was claiming knowledge of a running spring, perhaps near this well. If he were telling the truth it would constitute good news. She would not have to perform the laborious task of drawing out the deep water every day.
V. 12 reveals that her doubt was mixed with some interest in who this stranger was. You are not claiming to be a greater provider than our father Jacob, are you? Jacob was a local hero to the Samaritans. Local tradition held that Jacob had dug this well for his family and herds. Since it was still there they held a special place in their heart for Jacob as their provider. You can not give us more than Jacob did, can you? Of course the church reads this question with a smile on her face. Indeed he can.
In vv. 13 and 14 Jesus contrasts the water she was thinking about with the water he came to give. Earthly water quenches physical thirst only for a short period. It can do nothing for our deepest need. But Jesus is speaking of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit would indwell the believer of the gospel and grant them spiritually everything they would need to be sustained in this life and unto everlasting life. The Spirit would cleanse us from our sin and pour out the love of God into our hearts.
But for the moment this woman's mind could not attain to such heavenly realities; they remained hidden from her soul. She could only think of this world and its provision. "Give me this water that I will not be thirsty nor have to walk so far to draw it out from this well."
Our Lord did not give up on this woman. He had come to take a bride and His purposes would not be thwarted.
In v. 16 the conversation seems to change rather abruptly. But remember that Jesus was only taking her to a point she was able to go. She could not yet understand the nature of this living water, so the Lord moves to another area she could understand, and that is the need for divine forgiveness.
Jesus commands the woman to go and call her husband. She replies, "I have no husband." She could have lied. But she admits she has no husband. Jesus commends her for her honesty.
Then the Lord reveals that he knows all about her sin, both her sin in the present and her sins from many years ago. You have had five husbands and even now you are living in fornication.
Now we would expect a negative response. This Jewish stranger has just exposed her sin. How did the Pharisees respond when Jesus had done the same in Jerusalem?
But this Samaritan woman does not object; she does not deny; she does not protest that this was none of his business. Instead she replies, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet." Her mind begins to ascend to greater heights than before. If he knows my sins, could he be a true prophet.
She has not yet come to the point of believing He was the Savior. But she did entertain the possibility that he was a prophet like the prophets of old. So she tests his knowledge to discern if he indeed was a true prophet. This was not her using evasive tactics to change the subject, as is often suggested.
She asks Jesus to settle an age-old theological dispute between the Samaritans and Jews. She is finally showing her interest in spiritual things. Let's see how he answers this 400 yr. old dilemma that so far could not be solved. Which temple is the true temple; the one in Jerusalem, or the one here in Samaria?
By the way, if you ever think that women cannot handle deep theology, have you considered this passage?
Jesus explains to her that the entire OT system of worshipping God at a temple was now in the process of being replaced. This would suggest to her that this man was no ordinary prophet. He was here to bring about something new in the history of salvation.
But Jesus would first need to expose the illegitimate temple the Samaritans had built, and He does so in v. 22. You see, like Rachel this woman had her idols also. The Samaritans had not been worshipping the true God, for the true God is only worshiped through His Word, and the Jerusalem temple up till now had been God's appointed dwelling place. She would not only need to repent of her adultery and fornication, but of her idolatry.
Jesus reveals to this woman more concerning the temple than he had yet given to his disciples. With the coming of the Messiah a new access unto heaven is being opened, a direct worship without the aid of symbolic rituals and man-made temples. The word "true" in v. 24 is not true opposed to false, but true as in real and eternal. Jesus was the true temple, not in the sense that the Jerusalem temple was false, but that it was typological and temporary.
This is also how we must understand the statement that God is seeking worshipers that will worship Him in spirit and truth. In the Old Testament God desired worship from the heart as well as in the New. God never accepted hypocritical worship. That is not the point here.
Jesus is saying that since God is a spirit, He cannot be worshiped in a symbolic manner. God ultimately could never be worshiped through the agency of an earthly temple or a man-made building. Christ came to bring in worship that would end the types and shadows of the Old Covenant; worship directly in the true temple; the temple of heaven.
How thrilling it is to see the response of this lowly Samaritan woman to these sublime spiritual truths. She goes beyond her previous conclusion that Jesus was a prophet. In excitement she inquires if He truly was the Messiah promised by Moses. V. 26 is much more powerful in the Greek. He says to her, "He who speaks to you, I am."
This is the first "I am" in the book of John, and it was reveled to this lone woman by the well. Why choose this woman of all people to reveal this to? So we would see that no one is to sinful to be forgiven, only too righteous.
This descendant of Jacob was sent from his father's house to seek a bride. He came to open the wellspring of heaven and pour out living water. He is the prophet who knows all of our sins past and present. He is the priest who grants divine forgiveness. He is the Messiah who replaced Old Testament worship with direct access to heaven. And He is the great "I am," who appeared to Moses at the burning bush.
Jesus truly did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. By the end of this conversation this outcast had became a true worshiper of God, a full disciple of Jesus Christ.
It is fascinating to see the growth of her faith in Christ as the conversation develops. She begins by addressing Him rather rudely, displaying her hatred of the Jews. In v.11 she addresses Him as "Lord" or "sir" as we might translate it. By v. 19 she considers him a prophet, and in v. 25 she is willing to consider Him as the Savior of the world. As Jesus was breaking the social barriers of His day by instructing this Samaritan woman in the gospel, she also began to break all the social barriers by becoming a disciple of Lord.
How gently our Lord He dealt with this social outcast and sinner. Oh what awful memories must have plagued her heart daily! Yet who of us deserved better? What righteousness can you claim that makes you a better candidate for His grace and love? But you know this is your story. By His Holy Spirit He came down to seek you specifically and to draw you to Himself as His bride; to make you true worshipers of God.
Maybe the most amazing verse in this whole passage is v. 6. Jesus was weary and thirsty. How could a holy God unite himself with a sinful bride like us? Jesus became weary. The one by whom all thongs held together, the one who spoke all creation into existence, was tired. He came to take our burdens. He came to take upon Himself the vile sins of that wicked Samaritan woman and our sins also. He identified with our weaknesses so that we could possess His strength.
You see the transaction in the text, do you not? He was thirsty, yet he offered her living water. He went without, so she could be full. Already before you is a foreshadowing of the cross, the greatest act of sacrificial love in the history of the universe.
Yes, you are to identify with this woman and rejoice in God's glorious grace in forgiving your sin and giving you living water. Yes, you heard a love story this morning. He who is greater than Jacob has sought us out to be his bride. As Jacob bore the burden for Rachel by removing the rock and providing water, so too our Lord bore our burdens on the cross and through his sufferings has provided us with eternal water so that you may never thirst again.
Now that's a love story. Amazing love. Is not our savior worthy of all our service and devotion? Greater than Jacob indeed!