John 4.
SHE came to the well at Sychar with her empty bucket to get it filled. But who came? Nameless is she among women, yet familiar to every reader of her history in this chapter of the gospel of John. We know her only as the woman of Sychar, a city near to the parcel of ground which Jacob gave to his son Joseph. She came at noontide to the well, and there met with the God of Jacob, the Man who had wrestled with the patriarch, the Messiah, the Hope of Israel. She had a want which drew her there. But the Son of God, who was sitting at the well, was ready to supply a need greater than any she had ever felt, and one which God alone can meet, that which can satisfy the soul.
But if she had no felt need of this kind, how should she participate in the blessing He could give? He must create that want in order to satisfy it. What a thought is this about our God! So ready to bless, but the fallen creature is unconscious of its condition. Does He wait till the, creature discovers it? In the other world it might, it will, wake up, if unsaved here, to its real condition as a sinner! But surely, unless God speaks to the soul, it never will on this side of death, till too late, learn what it lacks. In harmony then with God’s ways in grace, the Lord commenced the conversation with that woman, saying, “Give me to drink.” A Jew to be thus indebted to a Samaritan That she thought was strange. Well, the Lord got not the draft of water that He asked for, but He found meat to eat of which even the disciples were unconscious.
The woman expressed her surprise at His request; but without, that we read of, supplying His need. He told her of grace, which was within her reach. The free gift of God, ―living water, which she should have, if she only asked for it. But to whom was He speaking? To a dead soul. To a guilty creature. To one who had never worshipped God aright. Living water offered to such an one! The Holy Ghost as the power of communion with God for a creature like her! Yes. It was true. It is still true. The living water was for her, if she would ask for it. It is for everyone who will receive it.
But she was dead in her soul, and she showed it. God as a giver she heard of from the lips of the Lord, but she understood it not. Her thoughts, her desires rose not above her temporal need, which Jacob’s well had hitherto supplied each day. “If thou knewest the gift (a free bestowing) of God (i.e., that God gives freely without money and without price), and who it is that saith to thee, “Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” A plain, a full offer. Would she accept it?
God was a giver. Man is to be a receiver. Good news this assuredly is! But she heeded it not. With thoughts bounded by earth, and not rising higher than her temporal need, she wondered how He could make good His offer, who had neither bucket nor rope to draw up fresh or living water, as opposed to stagnant water, as she thought, from that well beneath her and His feet. He, a Jew, had spoken of God as a giver. She, a Samaritan, would speak of Jacob as a giver. “Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?” That One, to her but a Jew, was sitting over that fountain from which the twelve patriarchs, with Jacob at their head had often slaked their thirst What more could He give? She seemed to think, and, like so many, in effect said,—What more do we want? Had He been so minded, He could have replied in a way which would have shut her mouth with astonishment. He could have told that He made the water, and created the gasses which composed it. He might have told her that He had seen Jacob, that He had wrestled with him, had humbled him, and then blessed him. He might have told her how Jacob valued His blessing, and earnestly sought it. But her real welfare was His desire, so He spoke to her again about the living water: “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
But all seemed spoken to no purpose. Her only reply being, “Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.” Nothing beyond ministry to her temporal need did she as yet care about or understand. God as a giver of spiritual blessing, she neither knew nor wanted to know. Of her condition before Him she was really in ignorance. Her answer showed that she was dead; for though the Lord’s words were plain enough, she could not by her intellect comprehend their real meaning. Life was not within that soul. He knew it when she came thither. He knew it when He accosted her. Yet He offered her the living water, the Holy Ghost, as the power of communion with God, if only she would ask for it. Her condition, viz., dead, was no barrier to her receiving such a blessing, if she would ask for it. Thank God, it is no barrier even now.
But, as dead, she could not receive it. A dead soul wants life, yet it cannot by any effort of its own procure it. A dead soul cannot enjoy communion with God; it needs first to be quickened. It is plain, then, that power from without must act on the soul for that, for no one can quicken himself. This the woman experienced, for it is by the word of God that souls are quickened. How simply in her case was this mighty and momentous change effected, and done by Him whose words of grace she had wholly failed to understand. “Go, call thy husband, and come hither.” He put his finger on her conscience and convicted her of sin, and of her sinful condition at that moment. “I have no husband,” was her reply, — a truth, but only half the truth; and to her astonishment she finds that this, to her, Jewish stranger, knew all her history. Concealment was impossible; nor did she attempt it. “Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet,” was the admission of her guilt, and the confession that He was more than she had thought. She was in the presence of one who had the mind of God, and knew all about her. A solemn position for a sinner to be in, but one from which she did not run away, nor did He drive her away. He convicted her, that He might bless her. He told her of her present life, that she might become a child of God, and a recipient of the living water. But what good news to learn, that one who had been thus guilty, and willfully so, could yet have, on the condition laid down for its reception, the living water, and have it as a well within her, a spring that could never dry up! The dead one, the guilty one, may, if willing, know God in the character of a giver, partaking of such a gift.
But all her condition had not yet come out. Her words and questions, however, drew it out. He was a prophet, she felt sure, so she asked him about the burning questions in dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews as regards the place of worship. He answered her inquiries, but surely in a manner she never expected, as He plainly declared that she and the Samaritans had never really worshipped God at all. “Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.” With these few words He dismisses the claims of Gerizim and its rival ritual, leaving her without one single thing to stand on by which to commend herself to God. Dead in her sins, that was plain; guilty, with no character and no righteousness to plead before God, that she had to own; and now nothing that she had ever offered to God in the way of worship at Gerizim had He accepted at her hand! She stood then in the presence of the Lord, stripped by Him of everything that man could cling to, ―character, righteousness, all gone; and though a worshipper of God by profession, one whose worship He had never accepted. Her life, whether as regards profession or practice, was without one redeeming point, without anything that God could really accept; and yet to such an one was the living water offered, and enjoyed, as the sequel shows.
What a waking up for her that day! God she had never known, till she met Him in the person of the Son at the well, and found she had met Him who would deal with her in grace, and not, as she deserved, in judgment. His word, in quickening power, she had never, never known, till she experienced it that day. His gift of the living water she had never heard of, till the day that she drank of it; and what it was to worship God acceptably, she had never proved till she learned about it from the lips of that stranger who came down from Jerusalem. How her whole position as a Samaritan was judged She must be indebted to One, whom she had viewed simply as a Jew, for her knowledge of the right way to worship the God of her fathers; and whilst He opened out a new way of worship, He distinctly condemned the Samaritan worship. God did not own it; God would not receive it. Yet God was to be worshipped, as the Father was seeking worshippers even among the Samaritans at Sychar. Dead in her soul, and guilty; a worshipper by profession, but not in reality. Such though she was, she might get, if she would receive, the living water; and she did, for the Lord, as the Son of God, quickened her; made her a subject consciously of grace; and giving her the living water, she could worship God as her Father in spirit and in truth. She came to know God as a giver and then as a receiver; and now she, who had lived for herself, worked for Him and for the benefit of those around her. What a change was wrought in that soul Energies, activities, desires, all called out, but in a new way, and from new motives. It was the same person, but a new creature.
Reader, have you like her been brought to know your condition by nature? Have you come to know God in the right order, ― first as a giver, and then as a receiver? a giver of life and of the living water, that He may receive the worship and accept of the praise of His creatures. Man would view God in the light of a receiver first, and then in that of a giver; accepting the good deeds of the fallen, but really dead and unsaved one, that He might show mercy to him in return. The gospel presents God to men in the inverse order, as it teaches that He gives life and the Spirit, that He may receive from those quickened and filled the worship that He can really accept, and the service which flows from the knowledge of grace, the outflow of life in the soul. C. E. S.
GOD ever loves to give. “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and we must let Him have the “more blessed” place. Besides, “without all contradiction, the less is blessed of the better,”
How simply this puts us in our place as receivers, and lets God have His place as a giver.
W. T. P. W.