John 4:1-26. Person not Place
Where do you go if you want God to bless you? Where do you go if you want to receive eternal life? Where do you go if you want to worship God?
For many Christians, the most obvious answer to this question is “church.” We think that if we go to church, God will bless us. We think that if we go to church, we will receive eternal life. We think that if we go to church, we’ll be able to worship God.
In many ways this is true. If by “blessing” we mean a “good gift from above,” then we are blessed when we go to church. We meet with God’s people; we get to hear his Word; we get to encourage others and be encouraged ourselves. That’s a blessing.
As the Bible is faithfully explained and applied, we come to hear the message of eternal life, and we can put our trust in Jesus alone for our salvation.
We can worship God as we meet together, hear his Word and sing his praises.
However, we must be careful not to confuse place with person. When a church meets, it does so at a place. But the place is not what blesses us, nor is it the source of eternal life, nor is it the exclusive zone at which we can worship.
In John 4:1-26, we’re encouraged to prioritise person over place. God blesses us, giving Living Water, through Jesus, a person, not a place. Jesus gives eternal life by giving us Living Water. In John 7, we discover that this Living Water is, in fact, a person, not a place. Finally, God seeks true worship of him, and he is a person, not a place.
1. God gives Living Water through Jesus: a person, not a place
The escape to Galilee (1-3). In the opening verses, Jesus begins an escape to Galilee, a territory to the north of Judea. The Pharisees had mistakenly heard that Jesus’ baptism and disciple count was getting higher than that of John the Baptist (it was actually Jesus’ disciples doing the baptising). So, he heads back to Galilee, where he had been for the wedding back in chapter 2.
Samaria (4). In verse 4, we read that he had to go through Samaria. As you can see from the map above, going through Samaria is the shortest route available for Jesus. The only problem is that he would have had to go through Samaria. And that’s a problem because Samaria contains Samaritans.
Samaritans were seen as the treacherous, naughty half-cousins of the Jewish people. Here’s a brief timeline which shows how we got to where we are:
United Kingdom of Israel (Before the Split)
1050 BC. Saul becomes the first king of Israel.
1010 BC. David becomes king and establishes Jerusalem as the capital.
970 BC. Solomon becomes king and builds the temple in Jerusalem.
The Split of Israel and the Northern Kingdom of “Israel” (931 BC)
931 BC. Solomon dies, and his son Rehoboam becomes king, who refuses to lower taxes. The 10 northern tribes rebel and form the Northern kingdom, “Israel,” with Judah and Benjamin form the Southern Kingdom, called “Judah,” with Jerusalem as the capital. The temple remains in Jerusalem. The original capital city of the northern kingdom is Shechem (1 Kings 12:25).
909 BC. Tirzah becomes the capital city of the Northern Kingdom during Baasha’s reign (1 Kings 15:33).
880 BC. Samaria becomes the capital city of the Northern Kingdom during Omri’s reign (1 Kings 16:24).
722 BC. Assyria conquers Samaria, ending the Northern Kingdom of Israel (2 Kings 17:5-6). The Assyrians exile many Israelites to foreign lands, leading to the dispersion of the ten northern tribes (2 Kings 17:6). The Assyrians resettle the land with people from various places (2 Kings 17:24).
Post-722 BC. The new settlers mix Israelite worship with their own pagan practices, leading to religious syncretism (2 Kings 17:25-33).
c. 5th century BC. The Samaritans built a temple on Mount Gerizim, likely under the influence of the Persian Empire. They viewed Mount Gerizim as the true place of worship rather than Jerusalem.
c. 222–187 BC. Antiochus III reconstructs the Samaritan temple.
111–110 BC. John Hyrcanus destroys the Samaritan temple during Jewish expansionist campaigns.
As the timeline above shows, the northern kingdom, known confusingly as “Israel,” succeeded from the southern kingdom in 931 BC. The southern kingdom, consisting of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, was known, confusingly, as Judah. Later, the Romans referred to it as “Judea.”
Israel was invaded by the Assyrians in 722 BC, and its people were either exiled or forced to intermix with the new settlers. These people eventually became the Samaritans, who were, therefore, of mixed race and religious backgrounds.
The Samaritans built a temple on Mount Gerizim, but Jewish troops, who worshipped at the temple in Jerusalem, later destroyed it under John Hyrcanus in 111–110 BC.
As you can imagine, by the time of Jesus, the Samaritan and Jewish people were not huge fans of one another.
Prophesies about reunification. However, in the Old Testament, we find various prophecies about a future reunification of the two kingdoms (e.g., Hosea 1:10-11, Jeremiah 3:18). In my article on John 3, we saw that Ezekiel made various prophets about the Spirit working in people’s hearts (Ezekiel 36:26). In Ezekiel 37:22-24, we read of a future restoration of the Northern and Southern kingdoms:
22 I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. There will be one king over all of them and they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms. 23 They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and vile images or with any of their offenses, for I will save them from all their sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them. They will be my people, and I will be their God. 24 “ ‘My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd.”
A day will come when God reunifies these two kingdoms with one king, the new David, as their shepherd. Before Jesus crosses through Samaria, this day has not arrived. However, as Jesus distributes Living Water to Samaritans in the verses that follow, we start to wonder whether a spiritual reunification has now begun and whether it will continue as the gospel is taken from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
The place giving physical water: Jacob’s well (5-6). In verses 5–6, Jesus turns up at a Samaritan town called Sychar. It’s near “the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph,” probably the plot of ground Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor in Genesis 33:19 and where Joseph’s bones were buried in Joshua 24:32.
And well, well, well. Jesus arrives at a well, a hole in the ground storing water. Wells tend to be places where people find wives in the Bible. In Genesis 24:15-67, Abraham’s servant finds Rebekah at a well as a wife for Isaac; in Genesis 29:9-12, Jacob meets Rachel at a well; and in Exodus 2:16-21, Moses meets Zipporah at a well and later marries her. Not today.
Jesus comes to the well. Even though he’s God’s eternally begotten Son, fully divine and the creator of the universe, Jesus is also fully human and, therefore, has basic human needs: he’s thirsty. However, our focus is about to turn from the place that gives physical water to the person who gives Living Water.
The person giving Living Water: Jesus (7-12). Jesus asks for water while his disciples pop into town. The woman recognises that he is a Jew and is confused as to why he would be asking for water. After all, John tells us in verse 9 that “Jews do not associate with Samaritans.” By speaking to a Samaritan woman, Jesus is crossing a line most Jewish men would not normally cross.
Jesus crosses this line because he has something to offer her: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you Living Water” (verse 10). Jesus has a gift from God to give her: Living Water. If anything, she should be asking him for water.
The woman is confused. He doesn’t have a bucket, and she doesn’t know of any place nearby offering Living Water. She’s also sceptical about Jesus. She’s drawing water from a well that Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, owned and used himself. Where on earth is this man going to find better water? So, she asks him, “Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
She thinks that Jesus is talking about water that comes from a place. But Jesus is talking about Living Water that comes from God through a person. Jesus is that person.
In Jeremiah, we read of how God’s people have “forsaken the LORD, the spring of Living Water” (Jeremiah 17:13, cf. 2:13). But there is also hope for God’s people. Zechariah prophesies a coming day when “living water will flow out from Jerusalem” (Zechariah 14:8), while Ezekiel prophesies a coming day when a river will flow from the temple itself (Ezekiel 47:1-12). Given that Jesus has spoken of himself as the new temple (see John 2:19-21), it seems that there is now a sense in which he is the prophesied temple from whom rivers of Living Water will now flow.
2. Jesus gives Eternal Life through Living Water: a person, not a place
Living Water and Eternal Life (13-15). In Isaiah 12:3, we’re told, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Now we discover that the Living Water Jesus gives the woman wells up into eternal life—it is the water of salvation prophesied by Isaiah. If you drink normal H20 water from a tap (or a well), you’ll be thirsty again (John 4:13). Not so with Living Water: “whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (4:14). Jesus offers the ultimate thirst-quencher. However, in verse 15, it seems that the woman doesn’t yet understand that the water Jesus speaks of is non-physical: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” She is looking for the place from which to draw this water. No such place is available. Why?
Living Water is a Person (John 7:37–39). The Living Water is a person. We discover this later in John 7:37–39:
37 “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.
The Living Water is the Holy Spirit. Again, the person is what matters, not the place. [1]
3. God seeks true worship of Him: a person, not a place
Outing the Outsider (16-18). In the next few verses, things get personal. When Jesus asks her to get her husband, she states that she has no husband. Jesus then affirms the truthfulness of her statement. “The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true” (4:18). We already know that the woman is something of an outsider from the perspective of a Jew since she is a Samaritan. Given the number of partners she has had, combined with the fact that she is now living out of wedlock, we assume that she would also be regarded as an outsider by her own people.
Worship at “This Mountain” (19-20). In verses 19-20, the woman shifts the focus to the topic of worship and where it should take place. She suspects that Jesus is a prophet (4:19), probably because he seems to have a significant amount of intel on her personal life and speaks cryptically about water. So she says, “Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem” (4:20). By “this mountain,” we presume that she is talking about Mt Gerizim, the site of the old Samaritan temple where the Samaritans had traditionally worshipped.
Worship is not about a place (21–22). However, Jesus responds by drawing attention away from the “place” of worship. He says, “Believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” In the past, Samaritans had merged their religion with that of neighbouring nations—there’s a sense in which they don’t really know the true God. Similarly, they don’t seem to understand the significance of salvation coming from the Jews through the tribe of Judah. But, still, a time is coming when “place” will no longer matter when it comes to worship. What will matter?
Worship is about a person (23–24). Jesus shifts the focus toward the “person” to whom worship should be directed. “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father,” Jesus says. A time is coming when what matters is not where the worship happens but to whom the worship is directed.
People will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth. What does this mean? It could mean that people will worship him in their human spirits and do so in the light of the truth. Given that worship traditionally took place in the temple, and that Jesus has identified himself as the New Temple and the Spirit as the Living Water that flows from the temple, he might also be saying that a day is coming when believers worship the Father as enabled by the Son, who is the New Temple and who also refers to himself as “the Truth” (John 14:6), and as enabled by the Spirit, the Living Water that flows from this New Temple. Whatever the case, what particularly matters is that 1) worship is no longer geographically restricted to one place and 2) worship is primarily directed to a person, the Father.
And what exactly is true worship? This is an important question to ask as it is something that the Father “seeks” (4:23). We know that it involves worshipping the Father in spirit and truth or Spirit and Truth; we know that a time is coming when it won’t be restricted to one location. But it’s not entirely spelled out here. However, Romans 12:1-2 is particularly helpful for thinking through what true worship is:
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
True worship involves giving ourselves to God sacrificially, living in a way that is holy and pleasing to God, resisting the ways of the world, and allowing him to transform our minds. It’s an all-of-life thing. It involves our whole heart, soul, strength and mind. It’s way more than what we do for 16 minutes during the singing on a Sunday.
The Messiah explains all (4:25–26). The woman is blown away by Jesus. She knows that when the Messiah (or “Christ”) comes, he will explain everything to her (4:25). In verse 26, Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah. In truth, he has already revealed a lot to her. He has told her where to find Living Water, eternal life, and where to worship God: come to him.
Implications
Now, what does this mean for us? Two things.
True Worship is a Lifestyle: Live that Lifestyle. God seeks people who truly worship him. We’ve seen that true worship is a lifestyle. It involves singing in church, but it involves so much more than that. It involves giving ourselves to God sacrificially, living in a way that is holy and pleasing to God as we resist the ways of the world and allow him to transform our minds. We need to live this lifestyle. We need to direct our lives toward God the Father and make it all about him. We do this with our spirits, based on the truth, as we come to him with the access provided to us by the Holy Spirit and the Son (who also goes by “the Truth”) in God’s metaphysical temple.
True Worship Involves Change. It involves resisting conformity to the norms of the world, and letting God transform us. For the Samaritan woman, letting God transform her would mean changing her living situation. It was not holy or pleasing to God. It is inappropriate for someone who worships God to live with someone they are in a romantic relationship with if they are not married. For us, that means letting God transform any wayward thoughts, actions or patterns of speech that are not holy or pleasing to God.
True Worship is not Geographically Limited. Whereas Old Testament believers would go to the temple to worship God, we go to the New Temple to worship God. The New Temple is not the church or the church building—it’s Jesus. He is not in Jerusalem or on Mt Gerizim—he’s in heaven. The Holy Spirit gives us access to Jesus, meaning that we don’t need to make a pilgrimage to heaven every time we seek to worship him. We can go to him wherever and whenever we want.
True Worship Involves Sharing Living Water with Outsiders. One simple way that we can live this life of worship, sacrificially pouring ourselves out for God, is by sharing the Living Water with outsiders, just as Jesus does with the Samaritan woman. He tells her where it can be found, how she can receive it, and where it flows. Who in your life might be regarded as an outsider? These are the kinds of people we are to share Living Water with.
Discussion Questions
Pray and Get Going
1. What drinks do you crave when thirsty?
Read John 4:1-26.
2. What does Jesus ask for? Does he really need it?
3. What can Jesus offer the woman? Why is it so much greater than what she can offer him?
4. How does Jesus help us think about the idea of worship? Where do we go to worship God?
Read Romans 12:1-2.
5. What does it mean to worship God? How do we do this? What does this look like practically?
Pray and Give Thanks
[1] In John 7, Jesus is attending the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles in Jerusalem (see John 7:2). Zechariah 14:16-19 speaks of a day when all nations will be required to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem. This will take place on that same day, mentioned above, when “living water will flow out from Jerusalem” (Zechariah 14:8).
