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God Seeks People to Worship Him in Spirit and Truth
By John Piper April 8, 1984
John 4:16-26
If people are spiritually asleep, you have to shock them, startle them, scandalize them, if you want them to hear what you say. Jesus was especially good at this. When he wants to teach us something about worship, he uses a *****. "Go call your husband!" "I don't have a husband." "That's right. But you've had five, and the man you sleep with now is not your husband." She was shocked. We're shocked. But Jesus simply sits there on the edge of the well with his hands folded, looking at the woman with razors in his eyes ready to teach us about worship.
Worship and Real Life
The first thing we learn is that worship has to do with real life. It is not a mythical interlude in a week of reality. Worship has to do with adultery and hunger and racial conflict. Jesus is bone-weary from the journey, hot, sweaty, thirsty—and he decides: "Yes, even now, just now I will seek someone to worship God—a harlot, a Samaritan adulteress. I will show my disciples the worship that my Father seeks and how he seeks it in the midst of real life from the least worthy. She is a Samaritan. She is a woman. She is a harlot. Yes, I will even show them a thing or two about how to make true worshipers out of the white harvest of harlots in Samaria."
Jewish and Samaritan Animosity
Let's go back to the beginning, John 4:4–6. "Jesus had to pass through Samaria on his way to Galilee. So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about noon." Before we meet this woman who comes to the well, recall who Samaritans were. They were the remnant of the northern Jewish kingdom who had intermarried with foreigners after the chiefs and nobles had been carried into exile in 729 BC. They had once built a separate worship place on their own Mt. Gerizim and they rejected all of the Old Testament except their version of the first five books of Moses. The animosity toward Jews was centuries old.
Raising the Levels of Amazement
Jesus walks right into this hostility, sits down, and asks for a drink (v. 7). The woman at the well is amazed that Jesus would speak to her. "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" Instead of answering her directly, Jesus shifts the focus of her amazement up a level. He says (in v. 10), "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." Jesus says that the really amazing thing is she is not asking him for water. He calls it living water and he calls it the "gift of God."
But the woman doesn't rise very high. Her background has not made her a prime candidate for spiritual insight. She was more like the three guys behind Karsten and Benjamin and me at the Twins game on Thursday who kept saying how full of beer they were and arguing endlessly like five year olds about whether Eisenreich should have tagged up on third base. She was simply enslaved to the flesh. Her spirit was dead. She simply says (vv. 11–12), "How can you give me water when you don't have a bucket? And if you want me to drink water that doesn't come from Jacob's well, then you must think you're greater than Jacob. Well, if this water was good enough for Jacob, it's good enough for me." She's not on Jesus' wavelength yet at all.
So Jesus again lifts the level of amazement (vv. 13–14): "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The amazing thing is not just that I can give you water without a bucket, but that the water I give takes away thirst forever and, even better than that, it will turn you into a spring that brings eternal life to yourself and others.
Living, Thirst-Quenching Water and a Fountain of Life
What did Jesus mean? Proverbs 13:14 says, "The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life." Perhaps, then, Jesus meant that the wisdom he gives satisfies the soul and turns a person into a fountain of life. Perhaps the water is his teaching. But the closest parallel to verse 14 is John 7:37–39, "Jesus stood up and proclaimed, 'If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.' Now this he said about the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive." Just like John 4:14, this passage speaks of a drinking in and a flowing out. But here John makes plain that Jesus is speaking about the Holy Spirit. It's the presence of God's Spirit in your life that takes away your frustrated soul-thirst forever and turns you into a person who overflows with life for others instead of sucking up other people's life like sandy soil.
But probably both these answers are true—that Jesus' teaching satisfies your thirst and makes you a fountain of life, and that the Holy Spirit satisfies your thirst and makes you a fountain of life. Jesus kept the Word and Spirit together. For example, in John 14:26 he says, "The Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said." The work of the Spirit of Christ is to make the Word of Christ clear and satisfying to the soul. When we come to Christ to drink, what we drink is truth—but not dead, powerless facts. The Spirit and the Word unite to slake our thirst and make us a fountain of life. (See 1 Thessalonians 1:5; 2:13.) The word of promise and the power of the Spirit are the living water offered to the Samaritan harlot.
I hope this encourages you as much as it does me. Sometimes I feel so dead and so sinful that I don't see how I can be of any use to the church any more. But up till now God has always come to me at those times and graciously shown me something like this—the hope that a worldly, sensually-minded, unspiritual harlot from Samaria can become—not just saved (which would be wonderful enough)—but a fountain of life. She can be used to give life. And I take heart that if I just turn from my sin and keep drinking at the well of Jesus' words, I may still be of some use to this congregation. And so can you if you just drink deep at the right well.
Deadened Senses and Open Wounds
I think that's what Jesus wanted her to see. But harlots and beer-bellied baseball fans have hardened their spiritual senses so deeply they can't taste what Jesus means. So she says (in v. 15), "Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw." Beware of giving up on people too soon. This woman seems hopelessly carnal. She can't see beyond her physical senses. But Jesus aims to make her a worshiper of God in spirit and truth.
So now he touches the most sensitive, vulnerable spot in her life—"Go call your husband." The quickest way to the heart is through a wound.
Why does Jesus strip open this woman's inner life like this? Because he had said in John 3:20, "Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed." Concealed sin keeps us from seeing the light of Christ. Sin is like spiritual leprosy. It deadens your senses so you rip your soul to shreds and don't even feel it. But Christ has set his sights on this woman's conversion. So he lays bare her spiritual leprosy. "You've had five husbands and the man you're sleeping with now is not your husband."
Evasive Irrationality
Now watch the universal reflex of a person trying to avoid conviction. She has to admit in v. 19 that Jesus has extraordinary insight ("You're a prophet!"), but instead of dealing with her guilt, she tries to **** Jesus into an academic controversy: "O, so you're a prophet, well, where do you stand on the issue of where people ought to worship?" Verse 20: "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you [Jews] say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." A trapped animal will chew his own leg off. A trapped sinner will mangle his own mind and rip up the rules of logic and discourse. "Why, yes, as long as we're speaking about my five husbands and my adultery, what is your stance on the issue of where people should worship?" Brothers and sisters, that kind of double-talk and evasive, verbal footwork is very common. And texts like this incline me to think that wherever I hear it, someone is hiding something. If your conscience is clean, reason can hold sway; if it's not, you will be instinctively irrational.
The "How" and "Whom" of Worship
It's interesting, though. Jesus never goes back to the issue of adultery. It was a thrust against the sealed door of her heart. But now his foot is in and he is willing to take the very issue she raised and use it to finish his saving work. She raised the issue of where people ought to worship. Jesus responds by saying, "That controversy can't compare in importance to how you worship and whom you worship." How and whom are vastly more important than where.
By John Piper April 8, 1984
John 4:16-26
If people are spiritually asleep, you have to shock them, startle them, scandalize them, if you want them to hear what you say. Jesus was especially good at this. When he wants to teach us something about worship, he uses a *****. "Go call your husband!" "I don't have a husband." "That's right. But you've had five, and the man you sleep with now is not your husband." She was shocked. We're shocked. But Jesus simply sits there on the edge of the well with his hands folded, looking at the woman with razors in his eyes ready to teach us about worship.
Worship and Real Life
The first thing we learn is that worship has to do with real life. It is not a mythical interlude in a week of reality. Worship has to do with adultery and hunger and racial conflict. Jesus is bone-weary from the journey, hot, sweaty, thirsty—and he decides: "Yes, even now, just now I will seek someone to worship God—a harlot, a Samaritan adulteress. I will show my disciples the worship that my Father seeks and how he seeks it in the midst of real life from the least worthy. She is a Samaritan. She is a woman. She is a harlot. Yes, I will even show them a thing or two about how to make true worshipers out of the white harvest of harlots in Samaria."
Jewish and Samaritan Animosity
Let's go back to the beginning, John 4:4–6. "Jesus had to pass through Samaria on his way to Galilee. So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about noon." Before we meet this woman who comes to the well, recall who Samaritans were. They were the remnant of the northern Jewish kingdom who had intermarried with foreigners after the chiefs and nobles had been carried into exile in 729 BC. They had once built a separate worship place on their own Mt. Gerizim and they rejected all of the Old Testament except their version of the first five books of Moses. The animosity toward Jews was centuries old.
Raising the Levels of Amazement
Jesus walks right into this hostility, sits down, and asks for a drink (v. 7). The woman at the well is amazed that Jesus would speak to her. "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" Instead of answering her directly, Jesus shifts the focus of her amazement up a level. He says (in v. 10), "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." Jesus says that the really amazing thing is she is not asking him for water. He calls it living water and he calls it the "gift of God."
But the woman doesn't rise very high. Her background has not made her a prime candidate for spiritual insight. She was more like the three guys behind Karsten and Benjamin and me at the Twins game on Thursday who kept saying how full of beer they were and arguing endlessly like five year olds about whether Eisenreich should have tagged up on third base. She was simply enslaved to the flesh. Her spirit was dead. She simply says (vv. 11–12), "How can you give me water when you don't have a bucket? And if you want me to drink water that doesn't come from Jacob's well, then you must think you're greater than Jacob. Well, if this water was good enough for Jacob, it's good enough for me." She's not on Jesus' wavelength yet at all.
So Jesus again lifts the level of amazement (vv. 13–14): "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The amazing thing is not just that I can give you water without a bucket, but that the water I give takes away thirst forever and, even better than that, it will turn you into a spring that brings eternal life to yourself and others.
Living, Thirst-Quenching Water and a Fountain of Life
What did Jesus mean? Proverbs 13:14 says, "The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life." Perhaps, then, Jesus meant that the wisdom he gives satisfies the soul and turns a person into a fountain of life. Perhaps the water is his teaching. But the closest parallel to verse 14 is John 7:37–39, "Jesus stood up and proclaimed, 'If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.' Now this he said about the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive." Just like John 4:14, this passage speaks of a drinking in and a flowing out. But here John makes plain that Jesus is speaking about the Holy Spirit. It's the presence of God's Spirit in your life that takes away your frustrated soul-thirst forever and turns you into a person who overflows with life for others instead of sucking up other people's life like sandy soil.
But probably both these answers are true—that Jesus' teaching satisfies your thirst and makes you a fountain of life, and that the Holy Spirit satisfies your thirst and makes you a fountain of life. Jesus kept the Word and Spirit together. For example, in John 14:26 he says, "The Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said." The work of the Spirit of Christ is to make the Word of Christ clear and satisfying to the soul. When we come to Christ to drink, what we drink is truth—but not dead, powerless facts. The Spirit and the Word unite to slake our thirst and make us a fountain of life. (See 1 Thessalonians 1:5; 2:13.) The word of promise and the power of the Spirit are the living water offered to the Samaritan harlot.
I hope this encourages you as much as it does me. Sometimes I feel so dead and so sinful that I don't see how I can be of any use to the church any more. But up till now God has always come to me at those times and graciously shown me something like this—the hope that a worldly, sensually-minded, unspiritual harlot from Samaria can become—not just saved (which would be wonderful enough)—but a fountain of life. She can be used to give life. And I take heart that if I just turn from my sin and keep drinking at the well of Jesus' words, I may still be of some use to this congregation. And so can you if you just drink deep at the right well.
Deadened Senses and Open Wounds
I think that's what Jesus wanted her to see. But harlots and beer-bellied baseball fans have hardened their spiritual senses so deeply they can't taste what Jesus means. So she says (in v. 15), "Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw." Beware of giving up on people too soon. This woman seems hopelessly carnal. She can't see beyond her physical senses. But Jesus aims to make her a worshiper of God in spirit and truth.
So now he touches the most sensitive, vulnerable spot in her life—"Go call your husband." The quickest way to the heart is through a wound.
Why does Jesus strip open this woman's inner life like this? Because he had said in John 3:20, "Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed." Concealed sin keeps us from seeing the light of Christ. Sin is like spiritual leprosy. It deadens your senses so you rip your soul to shreds and don't even feel it. But Christ has set his sights on this woman's conversion. So he lays bare her spiritual leprosy. "You've had five husbands and the man you're sleeping with now is not your husband."
Evasive Irrationality
Now watch the universal reflex of a person trying to avoid conviction. She has to admit in v. 19 that Jesus has extraordinary insight ("You're a prophet!"), but instead of dealing with her guilt, she tries to **** Jesus into an academic controversy: "O, so you're a prophet, well, where do you stand on the issue of where people ought to worship?" Verse 20: "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you [Jews] say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." A trapped animal will chew his own leg off. A trapped sinner will mangle his own mind and rip up the rules of logic and discourse. "Why, yes, as long as we're speaking about my five husbands and my adultery, what is your stance on the issue of where people should worship?" Brothers and sisters, that kind of double-talk and evasive, verbal footwork is very common. And texts like this incline me to think that wherever I hear it, someone is hiding something. If your conscience is clean, reason can hold sway; if it's not, you will be instinctively irrational.
The "How" and "Whom" of Worship
It's interesting, though. Jesus never goes back to the issue of adultery. It was a thrust against the sealed door of her heart. But now his foot is in and he is willing to take the very issue she raised and use it to finish his saving work. She raised the issue of where people ought to worship. Jesus responds by saying, "That controversy can't compare in importance to how you worship and whom you worship." How and whom are vastly more important than where.
