John 4

First and foremost we need to remind ourselves WHY we take time to study and consider God's Word. It is NOT to earn cosmic brownie points. We look here to better see the Person of our Savior and Lord Jesus, to better understand the character of our Heavenly Father as it is revealed IN the person of His Son Jesus. And we will do that again here in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel today.
[HAVE THEM READ THE ENTIRE CHAPTER!]
Here in this chapter we have two stories that seem initially unrelated, about two utterly dissimilar people; but on closer examination we will see that BOTH are told to reveal a profound truth about Jesus, revealing Him to be the "Giver of Life". We will study each story individually first, and then compare them. As we read and study each story, I want each of you to look for the unifying theme that characterizes them both; to ask what do each of these stories have in common. 

In vs. 1-26 we see Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well. Jesus did not intend to allow the Pharisees precipitate the final Crisis before He was ready. So, when He hears His ministry is creating agitation among them, he leaves to continue His work where it will not provoke the final confrontation too soon. 
Vs4 would have needed some sort of explanation to the typical Jew first to read this Gospel. There were two routes from Jerusalem to the region of Galilee. One went through the region called Samaria, the shortest most direct route. The other went east through Perea, a longer round about path thats ONLY positive feature was that it allowed the traveler to NOT go through Samaria. So what IS the big deal about Samaria, you ask? It was FULL of Samaritans! These folk were descendants of colonists whom the Assyrian Kings planted in Palestine after the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 721 BC. The conquered Israelites who rebelled against God and fell under His judgment courtesy of Assyria continued to deny God's Word and Law and hence inter-married with these Assyrian transplants. 
The result was a mixed Gentile-Jewish population with a religion that was ALSO a false blending of true Judaism and other false religions. These people represented the worst about Israel's past, they were the living testimony to Israel's failure as described in the OT, and the Samaritans were despised above all others, maybe even more than the Romans. Interestingly, the Romans failed to appreciate this local attitude among it's conquered vassals and so Samaria was NOT recognized as a separate political entity, but rather was ruled by the same Roman governor as the rest of Israel. But to a Jew, a Samaritan was the lowest of the low, so that Jews even went WAY out of their way to avoid even walking THROUGH the area, so eager they were to avoid ANY possible chance of contact with this bunch. The Samaritans, so totally despised, were more than willing to return the compliment, in that they sold Jews into slavery whenever they had them in their power, lighted spurious signals for the beacon fires kindled to announce the beginnings of months and waylaid and killed pilgrims on their road to Jerusalem.
But JESUS, He HAD to go through Samaria. WHY? THAT was where the need was, where the "harvest" was to be found. Consider this, HE went into the worst place they could imagine at that time; WE are ALSO. Sometime, when circumstances seem to have conspired to force you into a place utterly UNpleasant, and UNdesirable, and definitely NOT where YOU would have chosen to be, before getting TOO frustrated, bummed out and otherwise ready to call it all a total loss, understand that THIS is YOUR Samaria, and SOMEwhere there is a person YOU "HAD to go through Samaria" to find in order to tell them of Jesus. 
In vs. 5, we find Jesus and company at the outskirts of a little town with the pleasant name of Sychar, which translates drunken-town or lying-town; now THERE'S and endorsement in I ever heard one! Not exactly a name to encourage one to stop and settle down, eh? 
VS6, Jesus was TIRED! John throws this in just in case we were inclined to forget that no matter HOW totally God he was and is, he is STILL ALSO a MAN, too. And being so, he was tired and hungry and thirsty. The "sixth hour" was either Noon if you were Jewish or 6 PM if you were Roman. Since John was Jewish, and since it was a hot time of the day, the Noon time frame is the more likely one, if it matters to you. 
Vs7. Jesus violated several local and Jewish traditions at once in one verse, and never came close to pushing God's laws. First, a man never talked to a woman in public, a Jew would never talk to a Samaritan at ANY time or place, and especially involving people who were strangers to one another (although the woman could not know that NO ONE is EVER a stranger to God's Son). So, He shocked her with what would seem like a pretty innocent request to us. Furthermore, Jesus asked to be served from HER cup, a doubly unclean dish that would have made any proper pious Jew curl up their toes in horror and disgust. Typical of Jesus, He really GOT this ladies attention in a hurry! Jesus already knows who this woman is. Reading the text we can also know about her too. She is NOT the kind of girl you want to take home to meet mom. Because of that, she is having to get water when no one else is around to shun and publicly repudiate and condemn her. 
This woman is an example of what one man called "living a life of quiet desperation". Having lived her life, having made her choices, she now lived out the consequences of isolation and loneliness, of rejection by her own, an outcast; living with an unsatisfied gnawing yearning for something or someone to satisfy her empty life. But beyond that? Only to trudge alone in the heat of the day to draw water from a well, perhaps now beyond hope that things will ever change beyond moving in with a NEW man...which is really no change at ALL, is it? 
Jesus seeing it all, begins to talk to her about something TOTALLY new, so new and unexpected that she first can't understand Him. He mentions a "gift", the word meaning in the Gr., a bountiful, free, honorable gift. 
He contrasts TWO KINDS of "drinking" in the Gr. The first is mentioned in vs. 13, the words used indicating a drinking that is habitual everyone that drinks repeatedly, as men must do on the recurrence of their thirst. But in vs. 14, we see a different kind of drinking spoken of by Jesus: He uses the aorist verb tense for the word "drink", this expresses a single act, done once for all time, never having to be repeated again. 
The result of this amazing "drink" is expressed in a strong double negative, as if to say by no means, never ever to thirst. Does this mean that salvation removes all sense of need for more? NO. This was stated here in order to indicate the divine principle of life as containing in itself alone the satisfaction of all holy desires as they continue to arise. This is in contrast with human sources that once exhausted, drive one to OTHER "fountains" looking for something ELSE that might FINALLY satisfy "once and for all". 
One man once described this odd circumstance this way: "He who drinks the water of wisdom [i.e. salvation] thirsts and does not thirst. He thirsts, that is, he more and more desires that which he drinks. He does not thirst, because he is so filled that he desires no other drink."
The woman hears and appreciates these clear distinctions in His words, but struggles to understand their meaning. Jesus breaks through her confusion by demonstrating His power and knowledge of her inner most sin. He confronts her with her need for salvation, with her failure that cries out for a Savior. But see His persistent love of the lost. He treats her sin frankly, but NOT harshly. He wants her to realize that through Him as the Discerner of sin, she can go on to discover Him as the Forgiver of sin. 
This must hit way too close to home for her. Being a woman of the world and not without some ability to dodge an issue so close to home for her, she tries to side track Jesus in vs. 19ff with an intellectual pseudo-religious controversy: the old "Who's right: Jews or Samaritans?". How common it is that people try to hide from the issue of their relationship with the Living God by pointless arguments involving Religion. 
In vss 21ff, Jesus cuts right through this smoke screen. He talks about TRUE worship that involves BOTH Spirit AND Truth. In their ignorance, the Samaritans worshipped in a sort of spirit, but NOT in the TRUTH of God's Word, since they only acknowledged the first five books of the OT (called the Pentateuch). As a result they were ignorant of the later and larger revelations of God in the rest of scripture. They had preserved only the abstract impersonal notion of God. In their dead knowledge, the Jews worshipped in a sort of truth, but NOT in Spirit, certainly not with a spirit that would cause them to recognize the Messiah when He came to them. 
What Jesus was saying was that it takes BOTH. Without the Truth, fervent worship is meaningless, a pathetic ignorant howling at the moon, lacking focus, aim, a frame of reference, an OBJECT of worship. Without Spirit, GOD'S Spirit, mere knowledge is a dead shell, lacking genuine purpose or life. 
Without truth, the Samaritans worshipped wrongly, and without Spirit, the Jews worshipped meaninglessly. The first a jumbled confused content without form or shape; the second mere form without content. 
In vs. 25, the woman finally decides to honestly respond to what Jesus is saying. She tells Him what SHE knows about salvation and Messiah. Interestingly, the Samaritans also expected the Messiah, basing such hopes on scriptures in the Pentateuch (Gen 3:25, 49:10; Num 24:17; Deut 18:15). They called Him the Hushab or Hathab, meaning The Converter or The Returning One. Ironically, THEIR idea of Messiah was less worldly and political than the Jewish one at the time.
How does Jesus respond to her honest expression of her limited understanding and faith? Does He hammer her for not knowing the "truth"? NO! He willingly responds to her limited faith with His FULL revelation, He honors her incomplete but honest expression of faith with His FULL revelation. He declares openly and without hesitation to this woman that HE IS in fact the Messiah she had learned about as a child. 
And she believed in HIM, NOT in EITHER religion of Judaism or Samaritanism, but in the PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP He had offered her and that she had accepted. And in doing so she in fact DID receive that eternal, living, never-ceasing, river of LIFE in her life. She came to the well with TWO thirsts, and only ONE, the physical one, did she expect to get even briefly satisfied that hot 6th hour of the day. She left eternally filled and satisfied, having forgotten the physical thirst altogether. 
What did she do then? She went and told the town that had despised her that very same day. And her WITNESS was COMPELLING. She did NOT fell compelled to force them to believe, nor to force them to accept Him. She merely stated what she herself had experienced in Jesus. Thus having raised their interest and curiosity they went to Him to see for themselves, and believed because of their OWN experience with Him. We TOO are called to act in just the same way, not hard-selling or arguing people into salvation, but rather simply telling what has happened to us BECAUSE of HIM. People may not LIKE it, they may not accept it, but they CANNOT DENY it, because YOU WERE THERE! 

And now we come to the second part of this chapter, to the second presentation of Jesus as the Giver of Life in vss 43-54. I confess that I cannot read this story or study it without becoming caught up in it in more than just an intellectual way; this account grips me emotionally, and I want to go through it with you to make you see and feel and understand at a personal and emotional level just what happened here. The father remains forever unidentified except for the crucial facts about him. It's clear that he was desperate - and that he was at least a local big shot civil official. We don't need to know his name, what we are told is enough. His name could be ANY of ours, and anyone of a dozen friends we have known. We know that he is a father and that his son is dying.
How horrible it is to stand there by the bed and helplessly watch your child waste away, dying by inches, feverish, miserable, painful inches - ALL that power and position MEANINGLESS in the face of a greater power: death and disease.
So, you hear Jesus is back, you know all the stories; perhaps as a civil authority you even see and provide some of the local intel on Galilean problems and threats to the public peace that have mentioned Jesus.
You KNOW He is reported to be a miracle working healer. SO, for you the issue is NOT one of Messiahship or of "Authenticity of messianic claims". All you know is there is NO MORE HOPE. All that CAN be done HAS been done according to world standards and STILL that precious over all else withers under the hateful feverish disease.
Jesus MUST help. So, you go, NOT as a powerful civil official, full of threats subtle or blatant, not with bribes or promises of favors - NO, you go and beg, knowing there is NOTHING you could do to MAKE this man heal your son; so you beg, DETERMINED NOT to be turned away. 
Jesus sees right through you, sees the questions you have and have had about WHO He might be, KNOWS the comments and reports you've made, perhaps considering the options Jesus presents and creates for the Empire - KNOWING you've said "All I've had so far are reports; I would really like to see this for myself..." But NOW it's no LONGER idle speculation. NO! It's REAL gut twisting bile tasting FEAR - what if it's NOT true? or what if He refuses me because I AM a civil authority and hence not well loved by a conquered people? How can I believe in a Man I've never seen or met, but how can I NOT believe in the LAST chance for my sons LIFE?! WHAT CAN I DO? WHAT WILL HE DO?!
And even more, Jesus can see the usual crowd of the curious and skeptical that gather around Him at every town almost draw closer to see what He might do with this pathetic spectacle of a man... perhaps He'll do something amazing or miraculous, and wouldn't THAT be worth a drink or two at the bar tonight, to be able to say "yessiree, I was standing right there when he waved His arms over His head, and called up thunder and lightening, howling with terrible fury His magic wonders to commit...!"
And Jesus calls you and ALL the others on that - telling you and everyone else in that motley crowd in vs. 48 about your hard headedness about ALL you've ALREADY learned of Him. 
The others may be able to snort their disdain and refusal to admit He's right, BUT YOU! WHAT CAN YOU DO? In vs. 49, ALL you can do is cling helplessly to Him, NOT denying ANY of the truth He hits you with, only KNOWING NOW that Jesus IS Life, the ONLY life your son has left. The Gr. word trans son is diminutive, lit my little one. 
ALL you can see with your minds frantic eye is that pale pale wasted form, covered in that terrible oily sheen of sweat, that sickening awful smell of death and disease rising from his soaked bed clothes - his tiny chest barely moving up and down, each faint rapid breath barely visible at all; when you lay across him in heart broken fear and uncertainty, as if to somehow physically force yourself between him and that unseen monster that is slowing eating his life away, you can hear his heart fluttering so faint and weak, like a frantic bird trapped in a cage, fighting to fly away, leaving his form with that terrible perfect stillness of death. ALL this crushing out a now hard to believe faint memory of a happy strong laughing boy running across the yard to slam with full delight into you - the very solidity of his life almost knocking you over...and now such memories only mock and horrify you, making you all the more desperate than before to GET that man to your son before it's all too late. 
So, NOW you PLEAD, YOU, the local big shot, begging like a miserable wretch in the street, all pretense is gone, and all you have left that really matters in a life of influence and affluence lies dying a hard days walk from here...
And all of a sudden in the very midst of that inner storm of fear and agony, in vs. 50, Jesus simply says: It's done, go in peace...and you DO! You KNOW He can and HAS done it! You don't know HOW He could do it, you really don't CARE how He did it, you just know with an absolute certainty that NO man could look at you with those piercing eyes of compassion, of absolute certainty, of total tender reassurance and LIE to you; NO man who's voice was so rich with emotion and quiet joy at the chance to announce such marvelous news could LIE about such a terrible thing as your son's precious life.
So, you go - wild with joy and release from that awful burden of helplessness and of utter futility before so overwhelming a foe who sought to consume your own son's existence.
You race home now, not driven by fear at what you'd find, but at delirious yearning to not miss one precious moment of his new restored life, to feel as soon a possible that solid impact again as he races out the door full of life and health and a future to collide with you in a joyous greeting, returned, no, MORE than that, DELIVERED from the front steps of deaths bleak door. 
Your precious servants are flying to get to you with the good news, unwilling that their master should suffer agony one instant longer than necessary - what Godly servants! When you ask what time the miracle had occurred, you laugh out with hilarious delight at their answer, when you see in an instant that Jesus didn't even wait a SECOND, an INSTANT to make good on His words of promise and healing. You laughed out "AHA!" and then seemed to mutter "of course! Why would He have to delay it even a little? NOTHING limits the reach of Messiah, not death, and certainly not distance...". It must have startled the servants a bit, that not only did you not seemed surprised, you seemed to be just more convinced of something they aren't even aware of.
And always, always, as long as you lived, you'd remember those eyes, and hear that voice and once again be swept away in the wonder of it all, and you'd believe in Him all over again. For you see, that healing would mean MORE than a 2nd chance for his son, it would mean that everything ELSE that Jesus said was true, too, including His resurrection. That moment of belief for that father was the key that unlocked all the REST of the story about Jesus for him. So, it meant the man never need fear death again, not for his son, not for himself. 
Vs 53: evidence of real belief? he could not KEEP it to himself - he had to tell them ALL what REALLY happened so they TOO could believe in Jesus as Messiah. We have got to understand that when it says his whole household believed in vs. 53, this was NOT simply the blind mindless obedience of a family that says "whatever you say, Lord and Master, we will accept". NO! THEY TOO had watched that precious child dwindle away. 
Picture the scene, the house dark and bleak, the deathly still broken only by the muffled sobs of the weeping mother and household, as they waited, waited, waited for that last final ragged breath to slip from the boys lips, a horrible sigh of final release, and then...nothing. 
But they also waited for the father, some wondering at his fools errand, his desperate mad flight a full half-days walk, sacrifcing what little time he would surely have left with his dying son - and he has gone away to see WHO?? A rough backwoods carpenter, who spoke with that silly hick Galilean accent, the Man father before had talked about around the family dinner table in the cool of the evening meal with such curiosity and mild interest mixed with disbelief, the wealthy family man chatting idly about the interesting odd bits of his days work. And now, the fleeting memory of his tear stained grief struck face, wild with a tightly controlled insane hope against hope, as he bolts out the door, fired like an arrow from a bow, the message of Jesus' return to Galilee still hanging in the air, the startled messenger unsure what to make of the royal officials unexpected response. Such things filled their hearts and minds as they waited, kneeling at the child's bedside, empty with exhaustion, drained by their fear and grief, unable to do more than wait and hurt and weep. 
And then picture this: they were THERE when suddenly he sat up and asked for a drink of water and food, as if he had NEVER been ill a day of his life! His face, once gaunt and pale, now full and filled with the fresh blush of health and youth! Picture the pandemonium, the joy and cries throughout that big royal officials villa, everyone rushing in to see for themselves, hugging each other with delight, gawking at the child in amazement. For you see, Jesus didn't just "cure" him, He RESTORED him. This wasn't some gradual drawn out rehabilitation, this was INSTANTANEOUS DELIVERANCE FROM DEATH AND DISEASE. Unmistakable and undeniable. See the wife cry out to the senior servant commanding him to immediately send the fastest runners to get the news to the father. Do not wait a moment more, her cries of joy still ringing in their ears as >they< now raced out the door, not stopping to get cloak or food, letting the door bang open as they tore out the courtyard and down the road, their hearts filled to bursting with wonderment and joy, each encouraging the other to not tarry or lag behind, each wanting to be the first to gasp out breathlessly the amazing news. 
Each of that family got to see a part of that miracle, and when the father brought back his piece of it to them, they ALL believed because they ALL had seen it, and heard it and and felt it; they ALL knew WHY it had happened and WHO had made it so. That healing meant ETERNAL Life had arrived for them ALL, as surely as for that woman at the well and her entire Samaritan town. 

What are the parallels in these two stories?
Both the man and the Woman were social and religious outcasts to the local people.
Both were surprised by Jesus' response to their presence before Him
Both came to Him, one "accidentally", the other on purpose...But He was ready for them BOTH, and He was there because of THEM.
Both He asked questions revealing their INNER condition of unbelief
Both asked for more - with equal desperation, one quietly, the other pleadingly.
Both were satisfied beyond ALL possible imaginable measure of hope or expectation.
Both returned to their own to declare His glory and so many others were saved.
Both were miracles of LIFE triumphing over death, both ULTIMATELY were issues of spiritual life over death.

And now, what of US who DO know Him? What do these stories tell us that we don't already know? They remind us of WHO He is, a lesson we can NEVER hear enough of, that can NEVER be taught too often. Ultimately, we need to focus NOT on the woman or the father, BUT ON JESUS, the GIVER of Life. To remember His ever-searching compassion, His LIMITLESS power to save, to rescue and to restore, His forever willingness to reach out to us and restore us again and again and again, with joy and tenderness and compassion.
And what ELSE? When a friend or even a stranger seems to be where these people were, TAKE them to Jesus at the well, SHOW them Jesus along the road, reassuring a father with MORE than empty pathetic platitudes, but with POWER, real, abundant, and full of grace to save.
SHOW them John 4, Jesus the GIVER of ETERNAL Life.