4:27 Just then [Jesus’] disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said [to her], “What do you seek?” or [to him], “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” 39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.”
40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
Last Sunday we saw that Jesus and his disciples were traveling to Galilee from Judea – about a 70 mile walk. They stopped to rest at Jacob’s well outside the Samaritan village of Sychar. It was high noon, the heat of the day, and since they had probably been on the road since early morning Jesus was tired, hungry and thirsty. When the disciples went into the village to buy food, Jesus sat down beside the well, and before long a local woman came with her jar to draw water. Jesus began to talk to her.
For a variety of reasons, this woman was not the sort of person that a respectable man would care to be seen with in public, especially if he valued his reputation. In the first place men and women were not supposed to interact with each other outside the home. In the second place, Samaritans and Jews looked down on each other. Worst of all, the woman had a bad reputation as the former wife of five husbands, who was now living with a man who was not her husband. According to the social conventions of their place and time, Jesus ought to have gone out of his way to avoid her.
As for her, the woman seems to have been a bit suspicious about Jesus and his motives. She knew that no man, especially a Jewish man who was just passing through, would strike up a conversation with a strange woman in a public place unless he was looking for something more than talk. She may have suspected that Jesus was making chitchat because he intended to proposition her, and her evasive replies to him may indicate that the whole situation made her feel uneasy.
But Jesus was not put off by social conventions about the proper interactions between men and women, and he was not put off by her evasions. He knew every detail of her life, and he knew that deep down inside she was needy. And as they talked, he very patiently directed her attention to the one thing which is most important for all of us: our need to be in fellowship with the one true God who unites Himself to us through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Instead of giving the woman helpful hints on relationships, or advice about how she could improve her reputation with her neighbors, Jesus said to her: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. [. . .] Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (vv. 10, 13, 14). The “living water” which Jesus spoke about is the indwelling presence of the Spirit of God.
When the disciples returned from their shopping trip to the village, the woman was so impressed that Jesus knew the details of her private life and saw the deepest need of her heart, and she was so moved by his compassion for a person like her, that she left her water jar on the edge of the well and hustled back into town to tell anyone who would listen (vv. 29, 30): “‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?’” When her neighbors heard what she said: “They went out of the town and were coming to him.”
Of course, as so often happens in the Gospels, all of this left the disciples clueless. They were astonished to find Jesus talking to a woman, but they knew better than to ask him what he thought he was doing. All they could think of was to open their parcels of food and say (v. 31): “Rabbi, eat.”
What Jesus said to them reveals the motivation that inspired him during his entire earthly ministry. But more than that, Jesus’ reply to his disciples points you and me to the source of the joy and satisfaction, the abundance of life, that Jesus himself experienced (vv. 34, 35): “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.”
In other words, everything that Jesus did was motivated by his desire to do the will of his Father, and to accomplish the work his Father sent him into the world to do. What was the Father’s will? What was the Father’s work? In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells us: “the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
During the three years or so of his public ministry, Jesus was totally absorbed in this mission of seeking out lost men and women like Peter and John and Philip and Nathaniel and Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman and her neighbors, so that he might bring them into fellowship with God, where they would discover the same joyful, abundant life that he himself experienced: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).
That’s why, when the disciples urged Jesus to eat something after his long morning on the road, he said to them: “I have food to eat that you do not know about [. . .] My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (vv. 31-34). Nothing else on earth, literally nothing, not eating, not drinking, not his own comfort or pleasure or safety, not even preserving his life. gave him more satisfaction, more joy, or more fully engaged him than accomplishing his mission to seek and to save the lost.
But there’s more. Jesus invites his disciples to experience for themselves that same joy and satisfaction – the abundant life – as they join him in his Father’s work (vv. 35, 36a): “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life” The “wages” that Jesus is talking about are the deep satisfaction and contentment which come from going about the work our Father has given us to do. Few people have experienced that satisfaction and contentment more than the Apostle Paul, which is why he could write: “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11b-13).
My friends, I often wonder how many of us Christians have discovered that a lifestyle of conscious, faithful obedience to our Lord Jesus and his heavenly Father in that small corner of the world where we live our lives and where our behavior can make a real difference to others can be as absorbing and as satisfying as Jesus found it.
Recently I read an article about Joel Osteen, pastor of the Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. The church meets in the former Compaq Center sports arena where Osteen attracts about 40,000 people every Sunday with his message of prosperity and positive thinking. Supposedly, his third book, “It’s Your Time” earned him an advance of $12 million dollars and a first printing of 850,000 copies. In the article one of Osteen’s aides was asked why the Lakewood Church was so successful, and he replied: “Have you been to church in America recently? They put on a funeral. If you put on a funeral every week, eventually people stop coming.”
I hate to say it, but that aide has a point. Many people are attracted to megachurches like Lakewood and its clones because they find something there that they do not find in their own congregations, or in their own personal spiritual lives. The problem is that sound and light shows and smoke machines and lasers and pop music and positive thinking do not add up to the abundant life that Jesus promises. That abundance of life is a gift of the Spirit which is given to those who join Jesus in the Father’s work in that small corner of the world where they live.
When churches share Jesus’ passion for the work of seeking and saving the lost by pointing them to him through the faithful proclamation of the Gospel and good works motivated by compassion and love, then the Holy Spirit will flood those churches with the living water of abundance of peace, joy and contentment.
When we individual Christians consciously adopt Jesus’ passion for the honor and glory of his heavenly Father as we go about our daily tasks, then the Holy Spirit will flood our hearts with the living water of passion and joy in the Lord that the Samaritan woman felt after she met Jesus. Do you share her enthusiasm for the Lord Jesus? Do you experience the abundant life as Jesus did? Do you share the Apostle Paul’s deep contentment with life because you know that whatever happens to you, you can do all things through the Spirit of God who strengthens you?
A Reformed preacher and writer, John Piper, has written: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” Think about that. God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in him.
God is most glorified in us when we are moved to praise Him because of His beauty and wisdom and power which are on display all around us from the farthest reaches of the universe down to the deepest depths of the micro world.
God is most glorified in us when we are moved to honor Him by the way we go about the daily work of our lives.
God is most glorified in us when we come to worship not from a sense of duty or from long habit or because we were raised in a church, but because our hearts are drawn to Him and we sincerely desire to rejoice in Him in our songs, connect with Him in our prayers together, and learn of Him as his Word is read and preached.
God is most glorified in us when our passion for Jesus Christ leads us, as it led the Samaritan woman, to share with other the Good News that he is indeed the Savior of the world.
This is the abundant life, the fountain of living water, which Jesus promises to everyone who believes in his name, and acknoweldges him to be "the Savior of the world."