Life Ministries

“A Little Drink of Living Water”
 John 7:37-41 and  John 4:1-42

    1932 was not a very good time to go into business. But Ted and Dorthy Husted bought the little drug store in their town. Grasshoppers had eaten all the crops in the region; followed by a dust-bowl of a drought; days on end of temperatures over 100* … It seemed like the drug store was about to fold. Ted and Dorthy got to talking one night, and they asked themselves; “How can we get people into our drugstore?” They figured if they could just get them to come in for some reason, they would spend money while they were there. Well, they decided that the one good thing they had going for them was the fact that they had an excellent well. They decided that the cheapest form of advertising was to make up some signs themselves… So, they drove 25 miles in each direction and each mile or so on the way back they put up signs that read; “Free Ice Water at Wall Drug Store.” 

    On our way to Wyoming, several years back, I stopped at Wall Drug South Dakota - and (although they have been updated) there are still signs about every mile as you approach from each direction. The original portion of the drug store is still there, and you can still get free ice water at the soda counter, but today more than 1,500 people a day pass through it’s doors and it remains a very successful business that takes up one whole square city block.
    Our scripture describes another encounter of the divine kind with Jesus and a Samaritan woman, at another famous well. This is an amazing story of Jesus showing us the love and grace of God, and calling out for us to do the same. Notice in verse 4 it says that he “had to go through Samaria”. Now, Samaria was located between Judea and Galilee, and the Jews often avoided going through Samaria by crossing the Jordan at a certain point, and then crossing back over when they got closer to where they were going. This just shows how great the animosity was between the Jews and the Samaritans. They had a centuries- old feud going on that centered on religious judgment. Years before Jesus, Jewish Samaria had been conquered by the Assyrians, with most of the people being carried off into captivity. Those who remained in the land committed the unforgivable act (in the opinion of the Jews) of inter-marrying with the foreigners who moved in. This made the Samaritan descendants half-breed Jews…totally unacceptable to the racially pure Jews of Judea and Galilee.
    This was the history of the woman whom Jesus encounters at Jacob’s well. They met from two different worlds; they shared a few minutes of conversation; it led to a little drink of living water that changed this woman’s life forever! This also sheds a little light on her comment in verse 9 - “How can you ask me for a drink? You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan.”
    Why did Jesus have to go through Samaria? I think, first of all, that he had a divine appointment with this woman that would lead to a two-day crusade in which most of the people in this city would come to believe! This “divine appointment” however, went beyond just pointing people to Jesus; through it Jesus accomplished three things: First of all, Jesus had to destroy the culture barrier. Let me explain that a little more with scripture; In Luke 9:51 it says “As the time approached for him to be taken up into heaven, Jesus (resolutely) set out for Jerusalem. And, he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a (Samaritan) village to get things ready for him.” In Luke 10 we have the story of the “Good Samaritan” we are all familiar with. In Luke 17 we have the story of the ten cleansed lepers…and, it says only one returned to thank Jesus “and he was a Samaritan.” Jesus was attempting to break down cultural barriers. And then, after Jesus ascended and the disciples began their ministry, it says in Acts 8:25 “When they had testified and proclaimed the word of the Lord, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many (Samaritan) villages.” That tells me that they got the point! However, the point is still the fact that there are cultural barriers existing today that need to be broken!
    Second, Jesus had to break the gender barrier. Jewish men did not engage in conversation to women in public. It would seem as though, in the church, women were to be seen and not heard. Women were to be absolutely obedient to their husbands and were not seen as equals. Women had to be completely covered as to not be a temptation to any man. Not much has changed along those lines in the Middle Eastern culture today. Jesus tried to break the gender barrier. It’s interesting that in Matthew 27:55 there is a small, rather seemingly insignificant sentence - When Jesus was on the Cross it says: “Many women were there, watching from a distance.” I think Jesus made them feel important. He gave them back a little self-esteem, and they followed him!
    This comes through in Paul’s teaching in Galations 3:28 where he says: “There is neither Jew nor Greek; slave or free; male or female; for you are all one in Christ.” Jesus tries to break the gender barrier…and still today there is controversy over whether God would call women into ministry…
    Third, Jesus had to go through Samaria to break the religious barriers. In verse 20 the woman says to Jesus: “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is Jerusalem.” To better understand this, we have to go all the way back to the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. After the exile, it seems the first thing the Jews did was to rebuild the altar and the Temple; which were vulnerable to any enemy. Then, Nehemiah comes in to rebuild the walls around the city of Jerusalem. In Ezra 4 it tells us that when the exiles were building the Temple, the Samaritans came to them and said: “Let us help you build, because we seek your God and have been sacrificing to Him since the Assyrians”...(makes sense to me) But, the reply of the elders and the heads of the families was: “You have no part with us”… So, tradition has it that the Samaritans built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim; the place they worshipped God; the place this woman points to in her conversation with Jesus. This barrier has gone on for 700 years, and to break this barrier Jesus simply tells her that the place of worship is irrelevant if the spirit of worship is not there! “God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
    So, we find here in this story a lot more than meets the eye. It’s a lot more than just evangelism. It’s evangelism that goes beyond culture barriers; and gender barriers; and religious barriers, because the eternity of every person on earth depends on these barriers being broken!
    Jesus closes this story by showing his disciples - and us - “the fields ripe for harvest”… And, the fact that what should catch our attention about people is their NEED not their OFFENSES. They don’t need our citations and judgments, what they do need is our SAVIOUR!