She Left Her Bucket At The Well

There are people in this world you cross the street to avoid. There is the neighbor whose life is such a mess you would rather not get pulled into it, and the relative the whole family quietly gave up on years ago. All of us have one or two. If you are honest, there may have been a stretch of your own life when you were that person to somebody else.

Picture a woman like that, going about an ordinary chore on an ordinary day. She is not praying, and she is not searching for God. As far as she can tell, heaven has nothing to say to her, and after the life she has lived she would tell you she is the last person on earth the Lord would ever bother with. She is simply out to fetch water.

On that particular day, Jesus arranged His route so He would meet her at a well.

John 4 puts a question to us, and it has nothing to do with whether we would go out of our way for a person like that. It asks whether Christ would, whether He did, and what that has to do with people like us. None of us deserved to meet Jesus. None of us went out looking for Him. But praise God, He came to where we were.

Jesus went out of His way for an outsider who was not even looking for Him, and the sinner He found He made into a worshiper and a witness. It all begins with a road nobody expected Him to take.

He Had to Pass Through Samaria

When I sit down to study and prepare a sermon, I am looking for an outline that is driven by the text and centered on Christ. Right away, something in this passage ought to grab your attention. If you are in the habit of underlining in your Bible, underline verse 4: “And He had to pass through Samaria.” Read past it too quickly and you will miss it, but friends, it will preach.

Several roads led from Judea up to Galilee: one near the seacoast, another through the region of Perea, and one straight through the heart of Samaria. Jesus had options. On top of that, there was a prejudice against the Samaritans that everybody in the region knew about, and it went back generations before this woman was ever born. Because of it, Jews regularly took the long way around Samaria just to keep from dealing with Samaritans.

But not Jesus. He had to pass through Samaria that day.

The split between the two peoples ran deep. Jews received the whole Hebrew canon, while the Samaritans received only the five books of Moses, and they liked to point out that the first place Abraham built an altar to Yahweh was at Shechem, in the shadow of Mount Gerizim (Genesis 12:6–7). So the Samaritans put a great deal of weight on their mountain, the same way the Jews did with Jerusalem, the city Yahweh had chosen (2 Chronicles 6:6). As far as the Jews were concerned, Samaritans were unclean outcasts with no part left in the promises God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus knew that. She knew it, and so did the disciples.

The geography is real, but the “had to” is sovereign.

I imagine you have a calendar hanging on your wall and another one on your phone. Those are the calendars you can see, and you feel like you have some control over them. There is another calendar you have no control over at all. You did not write down the day you would be born, and you will not write down the day you will die, but both of those days are on it. If you know the Lord Jesus, the day you met Him is on it too. You did not know about that day until it came, but it was marked long before you got there.

That woman was on the Lord’s calendar. She did not know He was coming, and she was not looking for Him, but He had an appointment with her. That is why He had to go through Samaria.

Think about how you got to St. Simons Island. The farther away you started, the more routes you had to choose from. When I used to drive down from up north, I did everything I could to stay out of Atlanta. I am not ashamed to admit it, I have a prejudice against Atlanta traffic. After going on six years in Georgia, I can count on one hand the times I have been to Atlanta. I will take the long way around every time.

Some commentators say Jesus went through Samaria simply for convenience, to save time and distance. The Bible does not say that. Put two and two together and you see He went because there was a need, and the need was a woman He had an appointment to meet. By the reckoning of the Jews in that day she had no hope and no chance of heaven. She was on His calendar anyway.

Take in the scene. Verse 5 puts Him at Sychar, near the field Jacob gave to his son Joseph. That was a real place. A Jew reading John’s Gospel could put his finger on it on a map.

If you have met Jesus, you can put your finger on a real place and time too. Maybe it was a godly mother telling you about Jesus while you were growing up, or a faithful pastor in a pulpit, or a man like John MacArthur or Alistair Begg preaching over the car radio. It may have been in a church building, or it may have been in somebody’s living room. Wherever the gospel was preached, you can tie your meeting with the Lord to a real place and a real time. There are folks out there, Baptists even, and I use the term loosely, who will tell you a person can go all his life and never know he has been saved. Don’t believe it. The Bible does not teach that. When you meet the Lord, you are going to know it.

Verse 6 reminds us that Jesus was truly a man. He was wearied from His journey and sat down by the well at about the sixth hour. The One about to offer living water is Himself tired and thirsty. Our Saviour is fully God and fully man, always holy, never once sinning, the spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He knows what we go through. He can relate, and we thank God for that.

Then look at what happens in verses 7 through 9. Jesus, a Jew, opens the conversation with a Samaritan woman: “Give Me a drink.” Her shock tells you how far He reached down. “How do You, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, being a Samaritan woman?”

You and I are a long way removed from the prejudices between Jews and Samaritans in the first century. But we are no better off spiritually than that woman was. We are sinners, every one of us, and we have fallen short of the glory of God. If the Lord took the very best moment of your life, set everything else aside, and weighed that one moment by itself, it still would not earn His favor. Even our best had to be paid for at the cross. We were outsiders, rebels against Almighty God, and none of us was out looking for the Christ. Yet we needed Him, and He came at the right time. Paul put it plainly: “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

He crossed every barrier to reach her. She still has no idea who she is talking to, and she is about to ask Him for the wrong thing.

Living Water

The gift and the Giver stand together. “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you.” She cannot value the gift until she sees who is offering it. Jesus takes fresh, running water and uses it to picture something far better: the overflowing life that is found only in union with God through Christ, by the Holy Spirit.

There is a contrast here. Water from Jacob’s well leaves you thirsty again. You go to the tap, get a drink, and you are fine for a little while. Before long you are back at the tap. The water Jesus gives is a different thing altogether. It “will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

Remember Nicodemus back in chapter 3? Jesus spoke to him about the new birth, and all Nicodemus could think about was a physical birth. This woman does the same thing. Jesus is talking about the need of her soul, and she is still thinking about the bucket in her hand. Her misunderstanding bends toward longing, though: “Sir, give me this water.” Praise God, He does not leave her at the physical.

Every one of us has lowered a bucket into a well that runs dry. For one man it is the paycheck that was finally supposed to be enough. For the next man it is one more drink, and then the next one, and the one after that. Somebody else is chasing drugs, and somebody else is looking for one more person who will love them the way the last five never did. You drop the bucket, haul it up, and drink. By afternoon you are thirsty again.

So what well have you been going back to? Name it. It is the thing you keep returning to that never fills you. Jesus is not offering you a bigger bucket. He is offering you a spring that will not quit.

She wants this water so she will never have to walk out to that well again. She is still thinking about her thirst. Jesus is about to put His finger on the reason her soul has stayed thirsty all these years.

Go, Call Your Husband

It is a simple request, and it goes straight at the thing she has been avoiding. From the rest of the passage it is plain He already knows what she is hiding. He says it anyway. I am convinced He does it to awaken in her a sense of guilt and shame.

Have you ever sat in church while the preacher seemed to be preaching right at your sin? A sin he had no way of knowing about. You start to wonder whether he has been on your computer or talking to your coworkers, because it feels like he has some secret information and is aiming the whole sermon at you. I have been on both ends of that. I have stood in the pulpit and found out later that the message hit somebody square between the eyes, and I have sat in the pew while the preacher stepped on my toes. No conversation ever happened beforehand. So where did it come from? It came from the Holy Spirit, who convicts of sin.

In verse 17 she admits to a stranger what she would not have told anybody else: “I have no husband.” She had five husbands, and the man she has now is not her husband. Jesus exposes her sin to bring it into the light, where it can be dealt with.

God has been asking questions like this since the Garden of Eden. When our first parents hid in shame, “Yahweh God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” (Genesis 3:9). God does ask questions, but not for the reason we do. He is not gathering information. He already knows. When God asks you a question, He asks it for your good.

That is what He was doing at the well, and it is what He still does through the preaching of His Word. He brings these things into the light so they can be dealt with now, in this life, rather than stay hidden until the life to come.

Once He names her sin, she does what a lot of us do when the conversation gets too close. She changes the subject to religion.

Spirit and Truth

She recognizes that Jesus speaks the truth. “Sir, I see that You are a prophet.” Then she steers the conversation off of herself and onto something less personal: which mountain is the right place to worship. I understand why she did it, and I am thankful she did, because look at the answer Jesus gave.

The hour “is coming, and now is.” The old geography of worship was passing away. Jesus Christ is the turning point of the ages, and worship was never going to hang on buildings, temples, cathedrals, or traditions.

The Jews and the Samaritans squabbled over where to worship based on how they had always done it. One group said this is the way we have always done it, the other group said the same thing, and on and on they went. So it is today. You are no less a Christian if you worship in a park or a house than if you worship in a church building, and you are no more of one for meeting somewhere with padded pews and a steeple. Jesus does not need a magnificent building. A man can go to a church house Sunday after Sunday, and if he is not a true believer, if his heart is not in it and he is holding on to some idol the whole time, God knows.

Be careful that you do not build your beliefs on what you have always done. George Hutcheson, the Puritan commentator from the 1600s, put it this way: “…antiquity and the practice of some is a crooked rule to follow when it contradicts the current of the Scriptures.” Our basis has to be the Bible, one hundred percent.

God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. To worship in spirit is to worship spiritually. To worship in truth is to worship truly. As A.W. Pink observed, those are not two different kinds of worship but two aspects of the same worship. It means worshiping Him in the innermost soul and paying Him the homage of reverence, which is the only kind of worship that fits who He is. You either hold Almighty God in reverence or you don’t.

Jesus’ point is that a person must worship inwardly, with the right heart, and not simply by going along with outward rituals and holy places or the traditions of men, however important the traditions of the fathers may have been. Worship “in truth” agrees with the revealed Scripture and is always centered on Christ, because He is the truth. Jesus prayed to the Father, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17), and He said of Himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

She brings up the coming Messiah to dodge the moment. Jesus takes her at her word and tells her the Messiah is standing in front of her.

I Who Speak to You Am He

“I know that Messiah is coming,” she says. Jesus answers, “I who speak to you am He.” This is the summit of the whole passage.

Look at verse 28. The woman left her water jar. She came to Jacob’s well for water, and she walked off and left her jar behind, because she had found the living water. In her hurry to tell the town about Jesus, she abandoned the very reason she came. What seemed so important that morning all of a sudden did not seem important anymore.

When I was young I heard the Inspirations sing a song called “Bucket at the Well,” and I could not get it out of my mind while I studied this passage. The whole song leans on this one scene, a woman who came to draw water and then walked off and left her bucket sitting at the well. Why would she leave a good bucket behind? She had found a water that bucket could never reach. You don’t haul the old bucket home once the living water has come to you. She left hers right there. Nothing but Jesus satisfies, and He satisfies for good.

How is it with you? Job said:

What have you forsaken for Jesus? Some folks say, “I can’t do that. I’ve got this house, I’ve got this career, I’ve got obligations,” and on and on we go. I have known men who walked away from careers that paid well to carry the gospel to the far side of the world. Listen to what the Lord told Peter:

It costs something to serve God, but the reward cannot be measured. She left her bucket at the well. What will you leave for Jesus? We are so pitiful in this country that we cannot put our cell phones down long enough to hear a sermon.

Mark it well, this woman did not leave her jar and go home to live a quiet, separate life like some do. No. She was a witness. “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; is this not the Christ?” The very sin He exposed became her testimony.

A word of caution here. This passage was never meant to be a proof text for women pastors. That a woman bore witness to Christ does not mean she is to be a pastor in a church. Those are two different things, and the New Testament lays out the difference.

Are you willing to be a witness for Jesus? I am willing to be the one voice crying out in the park if that is what it takes. When I preached this in the open air at Neptune Park, I put a few questions to our own church, and I will put them to you. Who did you tell about Jesus this week? Did you invite anybody to come hear the Word preached? When the announcement went up online, did you share it with anybody? Have you handed somebody a gospel booklet or passed along one of the sermons?

You say, “Preacher, I’m shy. I’m bashful.” That may be true, but it does not change the fact that every one of us is called to be a witness for the Lord. Don’t hide behind the sovereignty of God, or behind eschatology, or behind whatever other excuse happens to be handy.

Look at verse 30: “They went out of the city, and were coming to Him.” None of that would have happened if she had kept quiet. We sow the seed, we water it, and God gives the increase. The results are His. Our part is to be faithful, and we do not have long to do it.

I am 45 years old, and I have done the math. Odds are I have more years behind me than ahead of me. What am I going to do with the ones I have left? What about you? Will you be content to stand before the throne of heaven and tell the Lord you were a spectator, that you sat on the sidelines while others did the work? Don’t let it happen.

Leave Your Bucket

Watch the arc of this account one more time. A tired Jesus sits down at a well He arranged to reach. That was the meeting place, and it was on the calendar. A woman comes for water and meets the One who made her. He seeks her and offers her more than she came for. He tells her the truth about her own life, lifts her eyes off the mountain, and points her to Himself. Before the disciples ever get back with lunch, she has dropped her jar and run to tell the whole town about Jesus.

She came to that well an outcast with a past. She left it a worshiper with a message, and with an eternity ahead of her in the presence of Christ. Nothing about her circumstances had changed. Everything about her had.

Look one more time at verse 6. The man offering living water is worn out and thirsty Himself, sitting by that well. Remember that picture, because you will see Him thirsty again.

On the cross, just before He gave up His spirit, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” He went thirsty so you would not have to. He drank down the judgment your sin had coming, every drop of the wrath of God, so that living water could be poured out free for people like her and people like you and me.

Maybe you came to this article the way she came to that well. You were not looking for God. You have a past you would rather nobody knew about. Hear me. The same Jesus who knew everything she had ever done still sat down and talked with her, and He gave her living water. He knows everything you have done too, and He went to the cross and died for sinners like her and like me.

So here is the good news, plain as I can say it. You are thirsty and you know it. You have gone back to the same dry well for years, and it has never once filled you. Jesus offers you the water that will. Turn from your sin and trust Him. Come to Christ and drink. It costs you nothing because it already cost Him everything.

Leave your bucket. Leave the old life you have been hauling around that never satisfied you. You will not need it where He is taking you.

If you belong to Him already, rest in this. The water He put in you does not run dry. He knows your whole record and loves you still, and He will never let you go.