The Woman at the Well - part 1

Have you hungered for answers to your life and didn't know where to turn?

Have you ever been at the end of your rope wondering if anyone cares?

Have you felt trapped, ashamed, confused, or burdened and just didn't know how to be set free?

In so many ways the story of the woman at the well gives us insight into just these kinds of real life questions that all of us have had at one time or another.  For the next four weeks, let’s examine the Scriptures and talk about this woman found in John chapter four who is seeking answers for her life. She is going through her daily routine, yet within her is an empty place that nothing in her world has been able to fill.

We read in this passage that Jesus has stopped by this woman’s city to rest and recover from a long journey. Tired and dehydrated, He calls on her to bring him a drink from the well. This vicinity was no ordinary location, as men like Isaac had lived there many years before. In this very area Isaac had prospered a hundredfold. The Philistines had tried to stop up the wells by filling them with earth, but Isaac just kept finding new locations and digging wells, until one day he found a place where the well could not be stopped.

With this background and history, we come into Jesus’ time, only He has come not to unearth a well of natural water, but to unearth or remove the stones from the heart of a lovely woman. This time the meeting at the well would lead an unsuspecting woman to an overflowing well of salvation!

Let’s now read the story of the woman at the well found in John 4: 1-37 (NKJV) 

1 Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, 2 (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), 3 He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. 4 But He needed to go through Samaria.

5 So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9 Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”  For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and Who it is Who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.

11 The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? 12 Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?” 

13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. 14 But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” 

15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”  16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”  Jesus said to her, “You have well said, I have no husband. 18 For you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”

21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth:  for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 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” (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.”  27 And at this point, His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman;  yet no one said,” What do You seek? or Why are You talking with her?” 28 The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, 29 “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”

30 Then they went out of the city and came to him. 31 In the meantime, His disciples urged him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”  32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” 

33 Therefore, the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”  34  Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest?’  Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! 36 And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37 For in this the saying is true:  ‘One sows and another reaps.’”

In next week’s entry we will examine how this account of the woman at the well relates to our own lives as women and Mothers of Nations.  I encourage you to meditate on this passage of Scripture and ask the Lord to speak to you from it before we share next week.

Dr. Sharon Predovich