John 2–4 moves quickly. At a wedding in Cana, Mary tells the servants, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” and Jesus turns the water in six stone waterpots into wine, “this beginning of miracles” (John 2:5, 11). At Passover He drives the merchants and money changers out of the temple (2:13–17). Nicodemus, a Pharisee and “a ruler of the Jews,” comes by night and hears that he must be born of water and of the Spirit (3:1–5), followed by John 3:16. John the Baptist, told that the crowds are going to Jesus, answers, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (3:30). Then comes the woman at the well, and the chapter closes with a nobleman’s son healed from a distance by a word (4:46–53).
The setting of John 4 matters. Jews and Samaritans had centuries of hostility between them. The Samaritans were descended in part from peoples the Assyrians settled in the northern kingdom after it fell (2 Kings 17:24), and they worshipped on their own mountain, Gerizim, rather than at Jerusalem. John notes plainly that “the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans” (4:9). Yet Jesus “must needs go through Samaria” (4:4), and He sits down, tired, at Jacob’s well near Sychar at about the sixth hour, around noon. A woman comes alone to draw water. In one conversation He crosses the lines of nation, religion, gender and reputation.
Watch how the conversation unfolds. Jesus begins by asking for her help: “Give me to drink.” He offers “living water,” a phrase that in her world could simply mean running water from a spring rather than still water in a cistern, so she takes Him literally at first. He names her past plainly, without condemning her, and teaches that true worshippers will worship the Father “in spirit and in truth” (4:23). When she mentions the coming Messiah, He says, “I that speak unto thee am he” (4:26), one of His clearest early declarations in John. She leaves her waterpot, runs into town and says, “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” (4:29). Before long, many Samaritans testify that He is “the Saviour of the world” (4:42).
Twenty-five minutes goes fast. Center the class on John 4:5–42; Nicodemus is ready as a bonus step. Handle the woman’s history with care. The text doesn’t tell us why she had five husbands, and it isn’t our place to guess. Some in your room carry divorces, remarriages or painful histories of their own. What the text does show is that Jesus knew everything about her and still chose her as one of His first witnesses.
