The Living Water

In this week’s lesson we will be looking at the time when Jesus came to a woman who needed a Savior.  While you read, I pray that you remember the time when He came to you personally and saved your soul.  If you have not been saved, I pray that you will read and seek The LORD and find that living water that will change your life.  He is the Living Water and He is enough!  He will complete you and satisfy you in a way that NO other can!  He is JESUS, and HE is AMAZING!

Handout: Living Water


John 4:1-43  “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.
So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied fromHis journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

I love that it says JESUS needed to go through Samaria…Ray Pritchard of Keep Believing Ministries writes…In Jesus’ day there were three regions stacked on top of one another. There was Galilee in the north, Samaria in the middle, and Judea in the south. The easiest and quickest way to get to Galilee from Judea was to go due north right through Samaria. John 4:4says that Jesus “had to” go through Samaria. Now why did he have to do that? The answer is, he didn’t. There was another route he could have taken. Some pious Jews would go east, cross the Jordan River, enter the region of Perea, then go north, re-cross the Jordan River, and they would be in Galilee. This was out of the way but it meant they wouldn’t have to go through Samaritan territory.
A little history will help us at this point. The Jews and the Samaritans disliked each other. It all went back to 722 B.C. when the Assyrians conquered Israel and took the northern ten tribes into captivity. They brought in Gentiles from other areas to settle in that same region. Eventually those Gentiles with their pagan ways intermarried with the Jews who had been left behind. Over the generations those people were called the Samaritans, and they developed their own religion that was partly based on pagan ideas and partly based on Judaism. Eventually they built their own temple at a place called Mount Gerizim. And they developed their own language and their own version of the Old Testament (which contained only the first five books).
That brings us back to verse 3. Why did Jesus “have to” go through Samaria when the Jews either didn’t go there at all or passed through as quickly as possible? The answer is simple and profound: Jesus went because he intended to meet the woman at the well. He knew she would be coming to the well at precisely the moment he was sitting there weary from his journey. Nothing happens by chance in this story. Every detail is part of the outworking of God’s will. And that, I think, is a hugely important point. The woman isn’t looking for Jesus. All she wants is water. But Jesus is looking for her. You have to go to Samaria if you want to reach Samaritans. He doesn’t avoid Samaria and he doesn’t hurry through it. Though she does not know it, this woman has a “divine appointment” with the Son of God.”
Do you remember the time when Jesus needed to pass your way?  Do you remember the divine appointment He set up for you?  Praise The LORD!  We didn’t choose HIM…He chose us! 
John 15:15-17  “15 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. 17 These things I command you, that you love one another.”
That should make our hearts leap in Praise!  He chose us!  Jesus could have chosen a different route to get to Galilee, but He knew there was a woman there who was sin sick and needed a healer…and He, being the good shepherd, went to where she was.  I’m so thankful that when I couldn’t get to HIM, He came to me!  Thank You JESUS!  What a SAVIOR!
Reading on…John 4:9
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.”
The Samaritan woman is confused that JESUS, being a Jew is even speaking to her.  Jesus right from the start begins to talk to her about spiritual things…but she doesn’t understand…
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.”
This woman is still not getting it!  She is still thinking in physical terms and not spiritual ones.  When you and I were lost, without CHRIST, we did not understand spiritual things either.  It takes The HOLY SPIRIT to enlighten us and to teach us and to give us wisdom and understanding.  We have to keep this in mind when we are talking to unsaved/lost people about JESUS.  Their eyes have not been opened to the truth yet, and they will be thinking in physical terms.  I love how JESUS is so gentle and loving with this woman as He begins to show her the need for salvation.  Let’s read on and watch The MASTER at work. :)
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.”
This is AMAZING!  I heard a preacher talking about this one time…it made me laugh.  He called it a truth sandwich…Notice Jesus asked her a question…she told him a half truth and Jesus did not scream at her calling her a sinner, nor did he condemn her.  He praised her honesty first….”you have well said ‘I have no husband.’ So He says…you are right you have said you don’t have a husband.  Then, He lovingly zaps her with the truth, confronts her sin, “for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.”  Whoa!  I’m sure she was shocked.  Then He again praises her honesty…”in this you spoke the truth.”  I love her reaction to this…it makes me giggle inside.
19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”
Notice how she changed the subject really quickly!  Sir I think you  must be a prophet…Don’t you think she as freaking out inside!!! How does HE know this!!! What do I say??? What do I do???  He knows!  See notice before it tells that she came around the sixth hour…that would have been around noon…that would have been in the heat of the day…the other women would have gone to the well earlier when it wasn’t so sweltering hot.  She didn’t go when the other ladies went because of her shame…her lifestyle.  Now this stranger is sitting her, a Jew talking with her…and He is telling her about her own sins!  So she is changing the subject FAST.  I love how JESUS is still so gentle with her and He just goes along with her…then He brings her back around to where she needs to be in the conversation.
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 worshipers 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.
She had been with five men who were husbands…that hadn’t worked out for her, now she was with the sixth man and not married to him.  This woman was looking for love and affection.  She was in need desperately.  She had now met the Seventh man…Praise The LORD!  Seven is the number of completion…She had met the seventh man and He would be the end of her searching!  He would make her whole, complete.  She would know that she was loved.  Jesus revealed Himself to her at the right time!  Right on time…as always…HE IS AWESOME!  Remember when He revealed Himself to you?  I sure do!  I’m so thankful HE did.  When we seek HIM…He will be found and HE will show us things about Himself that we never knew!  What a lovely Savior He is.  Praise You LORD!

The Harvest Is White

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?”
Earlier in this account we are told that the disciples were away going to buy food. It doesn’t say this but I believe that Jesus sent them to buy food so that He could talk one on one with this woman with no interference.  He wanted to get down on her level and have no one there to judge or condemn her.  We can learn so much from this.  When we are telling others about Jesus and about their lost condition…we need to follow this example.  We need to try to do it in love, and to make it where they understand that they need The LORD.  We are not to condemn them, but to show them the need for JESUS in love and concern and get them one on one if possible.  The disciples came back and saw this conversation happening and in their hearts they were wondering why in the world Jesus was talking to this Samaritan woman but they didn’t dare say a word.
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?”
Here the disciples are worried about the physical and Jesus was trying to get them to see the Spiritual need.  He was saying to them…stop worrying about your stomachs and physical needs, there are people coming who are dying lost without hope and they need a Savior…go out to the fields and bring them in.  It is a call as believers that the disciples had and that we have as born again children of GOD.  We are to being lost souls into The Kingdom of Heaven!
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.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”

The Savior of the World

39 And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans had come to Him, they urged Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of His own word.
42 Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world  43 Now after the two days He departed from there and went to Galilee. 
I love that it says Jesus stayed about two days there with the Gentiles…Remember that scripture 2 Peter 3:8?

2 Peter 3:8 “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
Peter was trying to get across that time doesn’t effect GOD…HE lives in the eternal present…but notice the parallel here.  Jesus stayed two days with these Gentiles.  The scripture said that Jesus needed to go through Samaria.  One day as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.  About two thousand years ago, Jesus died on the cross and was buried and arose the third day and the gospel went out to all gentiles to come and be saved.  It’s been about two thousand years and we know that after the rapture of the church GOD will turn His focus back to the Jews.  After two days, Jesus went to Galilee back to the Jews. 

He has called out to the Gentiles for two thousand years and I believe that He is coming to get us soon and take us home, and then He will return HIS focus on Israel.  It’s time that we be praying more than ever and trying to reach the lost more than ever that He is coming soon and to be ready before it’s too late! 

Luke 12:40 “Be ye therefore ready also: for The Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.”

Dear Righteous, Holy FATHER…
Thank You for coming to me when I couldn’t come to You.  Thank You for choosing me.  LORD help me to be what You would have me to be.  Help me to live each day through You because I can’t do anything on my own.  I know that You are the vine and I am the branch and apart from You I can do nothing.  Thank You for going to the woman in Samaria and thank You for coming my way and picking me up out of the miry clay of sin and setting my feet on You…The Solid Rock!  You are my firm foundation and I know that I am safe, sure and steadfast in You, because of You!  I love You and I worship You and today I pray that You help each one who is born again to go out and bring others into Your Kingdom for Your glory and Your honor because You are so worthy to be Praised…In Your name JESUS I pray…Amen! 

~*cindygirl*~
September 2, 2018