In Jesus day water was like that, it was precious, it was life giving. It required daily effort to fetch. As Jesus leaves Judea and for Galilee and heads through Samaria we see Jesus use the image of water to help a lady see what she is really longing for, thirsting for, made for and reveal who he is and what that means.
As a thirsty Jesus weary from a long walks rests by the well, a woman comes to draw water(5-7). Jesus asks her for a drink, as he does Jesus is crossing boundaries, that’s made clear in her reply isn’t it(9). Jews looked down on Samaritans, Samaritans had intermarried with the nations round about them during the exile, they only had the Pentateuch –the first 5 books of the Old Testament, and they didn’t worship at the temple in Jerusalem. Jews regarded Samaritans as unclean, especially Samaritan women.
But Jesus cross that divide and asks for a drink, he isn’t restricted by social conventions. Jesus isn’t worried about contagious uncleanness because he is contagiously clean. Jesus will talk to and teach a Samarian woman by a well just as he’ll teach a Nicodemus at night or a royal official. Jesus knows that sin isn’t a racial, class or gender problem, it’s a universal condition one no-one escapes. And he knows what each heart needs, what it’s searching for, where rest and forgiveness and cleansing is found.
As we begin we need to ask ourselves do we understand that? Do I understand that sin is universal, it affects everyone, and that Jesus is the answer to every sinners need? And if so how has that truth impacted my attitudes and actions? Would I have sat where Jesus sat, with whom he sat? The gospel doesn’t recognise social conventions or norms just as sin doesn’t, neither does Jesus and neither should we. Having seen that, lets see what Jesus teaches this woman.
Finding what we were all made for(1-18)
(10)Jesus responds to this woman’s question by telling her he’s the one who can offer her “living water”. That phrase has a rich Old Testament background. Turn to Jeremiah 2. There’s a link here to John the Baptists wedding imagery in (2)Israel was God’s bride, but (5f)they were unfaithful, exchanging (11)their “glorious God for worthless idols”. In (13)the picture changes though the theme of forsaking continues:“They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
God is the spring of living water, the one who satisfies, provides life, sustains, enriches and brings joy, but Israel have forsaken him. But notice that they don’t just give up God they replace him, they make a stupid exchange. Instead of coming to the one who is the spring of living water they build their own cisterns. They look for meaning, love, life, elsewhere, they try to make it themselves rather than finding it in God.
It’s the same for the Samaritan woman, it’s the same for us. We’re made to know, enjoy and glorify God, that is living water; life giving, satisfying, refreshing, sustaining, joy bringing. Yet we look for that elsewhere, we make that same stupid exchange. What has the Samaritan woman exchanged God for? Jesus in love shows her(16-18)“Go, call your husband and come back.” Relationships – she has sought meaning, life, love, worth, purpose, contentment in relationship with a man. Has she found it? No. “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is you have had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband.” Relationships have been where she has been looking for what only God can give her. And they cannot take that pressure because they were never designed to bear that load, they will collapse under it, again, and again, and again.
We live in a relationship obsessed culture. Firstly in terms of having one, but then having a better one, or a different one if that one isn’t working for you. What are we doing? Searching for meaning, purpose, love, worth, and contentment in it. But it cannot bear that load. No other person, no husband or wife, no relationship can ever bring you meaning in life. Marriage, relationships are only ever a pointer to God as the satisfaction, the lover, the relationship we need. Marriage is important but we mustn’t make it an idol, it’s a picture of the greater reality of a perfect relationship with God. God the bridegroom, his people the bride.
But it’s not just relationships is it? We do it with anything. Our hearts are little idol making factories, churning out idol after idol. Career, money, education, ministry, reputation, significance, parenthood, success, education, popularity, fame… Good things, precious gifts from God for us to enjoy and through them to see and praise him. But tragically sometimes we stop at the thing and never move on to seeing God through them.
Apparently I need glasses at certain times to be able to see clearly. But I have to use them rightly don’t I. I’m not supposed to take them off and marvel at them as if the glasses were an end in themselves. I’m to look through to see things in greater focus. To stop at the glasses is to miss their purpose.
It’s the same with all the good things we’re tempted to make our source of significance or purpose or love. Good gifts but given to us not so we depend on or marvel at or worship them but so that through them we see, praise and marvel at God. What is God lovingly putting his finger on in your life where you are making that same stupid exchange? What are you pursuing for meaning? What is your life geared up to achieving, because that is your cistern, where you are looking for love, meaning, purpose, life? How do you know? Use the diagnostic tools; look at your diary, your bank account, your goals, your dreams to find out. Or maybe answer this; what if it was taken away would lead you to feel life was no longer worth living?
Jesus says to this Samaritan woman that’s your broken cistern and you know it doesn’t hold water, it cannot satisfy. But he doesn’t just expose her problem he offers her living water. As he does Jesus is revealing himself. In Jeremiah 2 who gives the living water? God. Here Jesus, God the Son made man, reveals himself as he offers her water.
And look at this water. Look at what Jesus gives, what it brings. (13-14)Jesus offers eternal satisfaction, it doesn’t need topping up or refilling, those who drink it never thirst again. “The water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Jesus isn’t offering a cup of water, a temporary experience of God, he’s offering relationship with God, he’s offering to reconnect us with what we were made for. Turn to John 7 where Jesus picks up the water imagery again(37-39), Jesus promises that by believing in him, by faith, God the Holy Spirit comes to live in us, making our relationship with God a daily reality. Enabling us to enjoy eternal life now, made real by the Spirit indwelling us, God in us.
But something has to happen first. In order to receive and believe you have to repent of your searching for meaning, life, satisfaction elsewhere. That’s what Jesus is calling the woman to (16-18)as he unmasks her broken cisterns. In Isaiah 55 God promises water to the thirsty, a life of abundance, joy, and satisfaction in God. But in order to achieve it the wicked must forsake their way and turn to God for mercy and pardon. Searching for life anywhere but in God is sin, and leaves us guilty before God. We need to repent of our sin in searching for meaning, satisfaction, love in anything but God before we will turn to God. You can’t have both you have to forsake one in order to have the other.
Maybe this morning you’ve recognised that just like this woman you’ve been searching for love, life, meaning, satisfaction in something other than God. Only Jesus offers a way for us to know God, only Jesus can give us life that satisfies, no more searching, no more failed promises of satisfaction and love, not a broken cistern but a life sustaining spring. God in us. Will you repent, will you forsake everything else?
For those of us who’ve been following Jesus for a while we need to ask ourselves where might we have begun forsaking God for something else? Our culture is an idol pushing culture, which of those are we in danger of buying into? Where am I believing the lie that anything other than God can satisfy? And we need to repent of it this morning.
Beholding Jesus leads us to worship God
We think of worship as a religious thing. It’s what people do in churches or temples, or on their prayer mat or pilgrimage. It’s praying, reading, singing, liturgy etc. The Bible has a different view of worship. It tells us that we’re all worshippers, and worship happens when we behold the glory of something, when we’re shaped by and pursue what we behold. For example we might worship money when we are captivated by it, when we behold it’s glory by pouring over the stock market or our bank balance or saving goals, or working hour after hour pursuing what others have, when we constantly worry about what we have or might have, or when we spend time contemplating and envying what others have and what it’s done for them. We worship something when we behold its glory and long to experience it.(19)As the Samaritan woman asks Jesus about worship she isn’t trying to side track him. We had a teacher at school who you could always get side tracked onto her hobby horse so that you didn’t have to do any work. A quick question and 20 minutes later the bell would ring and you’d be free having done no work. But that isn’t what’s going on here. This question about worship is connected to Jesus unveiling her search for fulfilment, life, purpose in relationships. The Samaritans worshipped God on Mount Gerizim but the temple there had been destroyed by the Jews, and if she went to the temple in Jerusalem to make sacrifice for sin she wouldn’t get very far because she was a Samaritan woman she had restricted access. I think she’s raising the question of how she can be made right with God. How can a Samaritan woman repent and obtain forgiveness? You’ve shown me my need, how can I be made right with God?
Jesus answer cuts to the very heart of what worship is. It cuts through religion and rite and worship is changing it’s not about where it’s about who and how. (21)With Jesus coming worship is now not centred on Jerusalem, the Messiah’s coming changes everything. (23-24)God is spirit and his worshippers must worship him in Spirit and truth.
What does Jesus mean? Truth – there is a right way to worship God, a right way to come to him, to know him, to behold him and respond to him. God has revealed himself to the Jews in scripture but now he fully reveals himself in Jesus. We aren’t free to imagine either God or worship however we like, worship is responding to the revelation of God supremely in Jesus.
Spirit – We also worship God in spirit as God is spirit. God is divine and other, you can’t tie him to a place or limit him. Therefore our worship is like that, it involves our whole being without limit. But there’s more to it. In Jesus we see what it means to worship in Spirit and Truth. Jesus reveals God to us in all his glory so that we know God and can share in the life of God, that promise of living water, the Spirit in us, making worship natural as we behold God. God the Spirit causing us to love and live in response to God and in love and awe at what he has done for us and made us in Jesus.
This woman began by wondering what sort of Jew asked a Samaritan woman for a drink, then she wondered if he was the prophet(19), now she wonders if he is the Messiah, and Jesus declares “I, the one speaking to you – I am he.” Do you see what Jesus is saying to her, I am God’s coming anointed king, the rescuer, I am God made man. She doesn’t need to worry about where to worship, how to get right with God, which temple, what sacrifice. God the Son has come to her to make her right with God if she will repent of her sin and believe in him.
It’s that simple. Will you trust Jesus? Will you repent and believe in him? His sacrifice will forgive, atone, and transform worship. Because he will send the spirit to live in his people, so that as they behold God in Jesus they will be transformed, to live seeking God, to live reflecting Jesus glory. ‘Do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ don’t transform our worship, beholding God in Jesus does.
How do we find freedom from our broken cisterns? We look to Jesus and see our idols for what they are. How do we worship God in Spirit and Truth? We behold the glory of God in the face of Christ, and now our idols are transformed so that we look through them not to them and see the glory and love of God, Father, Son and Spirit for us.
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