top of page

The Pastor's Blog

Gospel Symbols - Header.png

THE WOMAN AT SYCHAR





Jesus had a unique way of stretching His disciples. Jesus often took them where they had never been, to do things that they had never done. Such was the case when Jesus and His troop of followers stopped at Sychar, the historic location of Jacob’s well.

 

Peter had likely never been to Sychar, a Samaritan community. Jews and Samaritans didn’t mix socially, politically, or spiritually. In fact, a traveler could walk from Capernaum to Jerusalem, a distance of about one-hundred miles, if they traveled the most direct route through Samaria. But, to avoid the Samaritans, Jews would often travel one-hundred-thirty or one-hundred-forty miles, the long way around, just to avoid those nasty half-breed Samaritans… half Assyrian, half Jew.

 

Traveling from Jerusalem back to Galilee, Jesus led Peter and the gang through Samaria to Jacob’s well. When they arrived, Jesus was pooped-out, so He sat down by the well to rest and sent His followers into Sychar to purchase some groceries.

 

At noon, a “woman of Samaria came to draw water” (John 4:7). In that culture, it was the woman’s job to retrieve buckets of water for household use. Every day, crowds of women would make the trek to the well together, usually in the cool morning hours. So, when this woman came alone, at the hottest time of the day, it was obvious that something was wrong.

 

The omniscient Jesus knew everything about the woman. He knew she’d “had five husbands” (John 4:18), and she was shacked-up with a man who wasn’t her husband. And Jesus knew that she had been ostracized by the rest of the ladies in town due to her loose living.

 

“ ‘Give me a drink,’ Jesus said to her” (John 4:7). From that simple conversation-starter, Jesus led the woman to recognize her need of a Savior. Read the rest of the conversation in John’s fourth chapter.

 

When the disciples returned to the well and heard Jesus carrying on a spiritual conversation with this woman, they were flabbergasted. “They were amazed that he was talking with a woman” (John 4:27), a Samaritan woman!

 

What happened next must have seemed unfathomable to His proudly-Jewish disciples.

 

Jesus led her to saving faith and then commissioned her to become a missionary evangelist to her own community. “Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of what the woman said… So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. Many more believed (saying,) ‘We … know that this really is the Savior of the world’ ” (John 4:39–42).

 

Imagine how Peter must have felt as they lived and ministered in that Samaritan community for two days. Does Jesus ever lead you out of your comfort zone?

 

“… think on these things” (Philippians 4:8, KJV).




Comments


© 2021

bottom of page