Jesus Visits Samaria

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him,
​and he would have given thee living water. Joh 4:10
Scenes by Wells

It is remarkable how many of the choicest scenes of Scripture should be associated with wells. It was by a well that Abraham's servant met with the destined bride of Isaac in that loveliest story of the Book of Genesis. It was by the well that Jacob first cast his eyes on Rachel. It was at a well that one of the crises in the life of Moses came, when he stood up and rescued the daughters of Reuel from the shepherds. And all the memories and meetings of these Oriental wells are crowned by this story of the woman of Samaria. It was the hour of sultry noon, and the whole land was weary, and Jesus shared in the weariness of noonday. And then a woman of Samaria came to draw, thinking, remembering, dreaming as she came, and all so busy with her woman's heart that she hardly spied the dusty traveler till He spoke. So do we stumble on life's greatest moments. So coming to the well a thousand times unaltered, we come one day and everything is changed. Life's crises often come unheralded. God is not pledged to warn of their approach. They wear the garments of the common hours and come in the multitude of common duties, when lo! we are at the parting of the ways, and all things shall be different forever.

Christ Disregards Prevailing Prejudices

Now what struck the writer of this story first was the disregard that Jesus showed for the most cherished prejudices of His day. Christ was a Jew after the flesh, and the woman with the pitcher was Samaritan, and for long centuries, and notably since the rebuilding of the Temple, Jew and Samaritan had been so ripening in mutual spite that now they would not speak to one another. But Jesus sweeps these prejudices off. He bids defiance to conventionality. Behind the sinner and back of the Samaritan, He hears the cry of a soul that can be saved. Everything else becomes as threads of gossamer before His burning passion to redeem her. Now there are some men who scorn conventionalities just because they want to seem original. But there are other men so filled with a burning purpose that in the heat of it common prejudices die. That is a right noble disregard; it is the disregard of Jesus by the well.

Christ First Asks for a Favor

It is remarkable that the first words of Christ are an appeal. "Give me to drink," He said. It was the first time in all her life that she had ever been asked a favor by a Jew, and to be asked a favor by those whom we are certain would despise us, produces a strange revulsion in the heart. I do not know if even on the cross the humility of Christ is more apparent than in these humble pleadings that fell on this Samaritan's ears and still are calling to our hearts today. We, too, may feel certain that Jesus will despise us. We may think ourselves very loathsome in His sight. Yet He is pleading with us as a brother pleads and calling to us as a brother calls, and He is holding out His death to us and offering us His pardon and His power. Nay, more, whenever we give a cup of water to a little one in Jesus' name, then like the woman of Samaria we are giving Christ to drink. And in every kindly deed we ever did, we are responding to this pleading of the Master. In every face of pain, every distorted limb, every moan and sigh, and all the sobbing of the helpless children, Christ still is saying, "Give me to drink." And we had better cease to worship Him as Lord than fail to respond to such a pleading.

Christ Was Impressed by the Samaritan Woman's Ignorance

I note, too, that what roused the compassion of Jesus for this woman was her ignorance. "Ah! woman, if you only knew the gift of God: if you only knew who was speaking to you!" In Sychar the honest neighbors rather shunned this woman, not because she was ignorant, but because she knew too much. They hated her. They tattled of her. She was a bold and an unprincipled woman. Only Jesus in the whole wide world pitied her from the bottom of His heart. She was so ignorant for all she knew. She had so missed the prize for all her unhallowed grasping! O heart of Christ, so infinite in pity, teach us again the ignorance of passion, and make us pitiful to the men and women who have missed the mark, because they have not known God's gift of love.

Christ Offers Something Superior and of Permanent Value to the Inner Man

So Jesus gently deals with the Samaritan, reading her heart and showing her what she was and leading her upward from the well of Jacob to the wellsprings that are found in Jacob's God. "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." Two features of this promised gift arrest us. (a) The first is that he that drinketh of the living stream shall never thirst again. But do we not find the Psalmist saying, "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God"? Is every longing of the soul satisfied forever when we have tasted of the wells of God? Nay, God forbid. The more we drink of holiness, the more we thirst for it. The more we drink of purity, the more we crave it. The more we taste of God, the more we long for Him. But under the power of this new affection, sinful affections gradually die; and baser cravings that dominated once sink slowly in this newborn life in God until at last the very craving is forgotten, and having tasted God, we thirst no more. (b) And then this fountain is within our heart. This poor Samaritan had to take her pitcher and run the gauntlet of the village street whenever she wanted a draught of Jacob's well. But the gladness and the peace are within us when we have truly met with Jesus Christ. There is a sense in which a Christian is dependent. There is another sense in which a Christian is the most independent man alive. He can go singing under the dullest skies; he can have royal fellowship in crowded streets, for he carries his heaven in his heart, and heaven in the heart is heaven on earth.  (Devotional Sermons)

Take Notice of Jesus at the Well

​The Samaritan was a woman. “Never speak to a woman in the street, even if she be thy wife”; “Burn the words of the law rather than teach them to a woman,” were current maxims in Jewish society. But Christ, in the unsullied purity of His manhood, brushed aside as cobwebs all social regulations which tended to perpetuate feminine servitude.
​
This woman lived in habitual sin. But Christ came to save sinners. Notice Jesus Christ.

I. ENLIGHTENING THE WOMAN. He leads her from natural to spiritual subjects.
1. Observe His sweet courtesy. He opens the conversation, not with a sneer or opprobrious epithet, after the manner of a Jew, but with a request; and notwithstanding her ungracious rebuff, not one word of rebuke escapes Him. A most gentlemanly stranger. True religion teaches us to be courteous. This urbanity impressed her, and He became successively in her eyes Jew, Sir, Prophet, Christ. The truth must be spoken in love, and love will impress quite as much as truth.
2. Notice that the woman’s lack of culture did not hinder Christ making the grandest disclosures. A radical mistake is made when the attempt is made to simplify the gospel beyond what Christ has done. The sublime will always awaken the corresponding consciousness. This is one reason why the words of Christ have more power and permanence than the systems of men.
3. The Lord made a discovery to this woman which He never made to any one else—His Messiahship. Why? Because that would not have been safe in Judaea or Galilee? Rather because of the different dispositions of those He addressed.

II. RECLAIMING THE WOMAN. The object of His enlightening her was to save her.
1. Christ always aimed at doing good.
(1) In ancient times men did good spasmodically; relief was the result of natural impulse. But in Christianity impulse has been dignified into a principle.
(2) Plato and Aristotle teach you to love men for your own sakes; Christ for their sakes and His. The essence of the gospel is not self-interest, but self-sacrifice.

2. He sought to do the highest good by reclaiming the worst characters. There are three stages in history relative to this subject.
(1) A state of well-nigh complete insensibility. The Iliad delineated heroes and cowards, strong men and weak, but not good and bad.
(2) The next stage is marked by the awakening of conscience and of the idea of right and wrong. Virtue is applauded, vice censured. But the idea of justice taught men to sympathize with the man sinned against, not the sinner.
(3) The last stage is that of full-orbed mercy in Christ, teaching us to compassionate both the injurer and the injured. Christ changed the attitude of the world in respect to its notorious sinners.
3. To accomplish these ends He threw into His philanthropic movements unprecedented zeal (Joh_4:34).

He had infinite faith in human nature. He saw its hidden potentialities. A lady, examining one of Turner’s pictures, remarked: “But, Mr. T., I do not see these things in nature.” “Madam,” replied the artist, with pardonable naiveté, “don’t you wish you did?” Christ saw what none of His contemporaries saw. The age was pessimistic; Christ was the only optimist of His time.  (J. Cynddylan Jones, D. D.)

Jesus Redeems to the Uttermost

No soul is so lost but the Lord can find it. Frivolity was natural to this woman. She had lived without restraint and morality. Woman has one safeguard against sin—innate delicacy. This lost, all is lost; and this was so with the Samaritan. How many would have turned away from her as hopeless, But Christ turns to her because she is a soul whom the Father has given Him to save.

No occasion is so trifling but the Lord can use it. The woman comes to draw water, a common act, by a common way. Who would have thought that the way would have led to everlasting life? The least trifle may become in God’s hand a means of salvation: a word spoken at random, a familiar scene, an unforeseen hindrance, the monotony of life, the influence of a friend. God’s seeking grace encompasses us like the air we breathe.

No strength is so feeble but the Lord can increase it. Few could have been morally weaker than this woman. She lacked the power to understand Christ and to know herself. Christ had to awaken everything in her. So are we impotent; but the Spirit of Christ helps our infirmities. Christ asks in order that He may give. He requires humility, but only to exalt, the surrender of the old life in order to confer life eternal.

No beginning is so small but the Lord can lead it to a blessed end. What a small beginning here, and yet before long a disciple and evangelist is found. Don’t despise little beginnings and struggling souls.
​(Carl Keogh, D. D.)