The
Woman That Left Her Waterpot
by Octavius Winslow
Then, leaving her waterpot, the woman went back to the
town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything
I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”—John 4:28-29.
It was a striking and instructive feature in the personal ministry of
the Lord Jesus, that the most gracious and unreserved discoveries of His
Messiahship were to the most unworthy and improbable objects. His saving
and sovereign grace delighted to illustrate its wealth by conferring it
upon the poorest, and its power by saving the most vile. It was deep in
the mine of fallen nature He loved to sink the shaft of His Gospel, in
quest of the lost and hidden jewels He had come from heaven to seek and
to save.
This fact introduces us to that large class of the community to whom,
for the most part, our blessed Lord limited His ministry. They were the
poor and unlearned, the depraved and despised of the race. Far different
from these might have been His listeners. Had He chosen He might have
identified Himself with the most celebrated scholars of Greece and Rome,
placing Himself at their head, attracting and chaining them to His feet
as His adoring disciples. He could have composed a poem, or have painted
a picture, or have propounded a philosophy that would have filled all
Athens with the splendor of His genius, and the world with the echoes
of His fame. But this was neither His mission nor His sphere.
He left these pagan sages to prove to the world that by its wisdom it
knew not God; and allowed them to learn the utter inefficacy of are, science,
and philosophy, either to emancipate their own selves from the groveling
superstitions by which they were enthralled, or to elevate the masses
from the moral degradation into which they were sunk. The people asked
for bread, and these heathen philosophers gave them a stone; they looked
for a fish, and received a serpent. Thus true is the Bible—“Has
not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the
wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the
foolishness of preaching, to save those who believe.”
But let the evangelical Prophet Isaiah describe the nature of the ministry,
and the character of Christ’s hearers: “The Spirit of the Lord
God is upon us, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings
unto the meek: He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim
liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are
bound.”
The incident selected for our present exposition is a true and impressive
illustration of these remarkable words. It refers to the conversion of
the woman of Samaria. Our Lord had traveled forty miles on that day, and
at the sixth hour (or, at about twelve o’clock, the time of the Jewish
meal) weary and footsore, He sat Him upon (or, probably, near by) Jacob’s
well. “There came a woman of Samaria to draw water.” Then follows
the remarkable, soul converting conversation of Christ with this woman,
and the happy result, as narrated in the words I am about to unfold: Then,
leaving her waterpot, the woman went back to the town and said to the
people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could
this be the Christ?”—or, the Messiah.
Guided by the leading points of this interesting and instructive narrative,
three things suggest themselves for our study—Christ’s knowledge
of the woman of Samaria—the woman’s discovery of Christ—and
her spiritual change consequent upon that discovery.
The knowledge which the Lord Jesus possessed of this woman was marvellous
and minute. They had never met before, and, perhaps, never met on earth
again, and yet He knew all about her—her name, her abode, her past
history, and the sad, sad life of sin she then was living. What a great
and precious truth does this unfold with regard to Jesus—His especial
knowledge of His people. “I am the good Shepherd, and know My sheep.
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them.” Jesus knows them before
conversion, when in their natural state of sin and rebellion. Hidden though
they are in the quarry of their unregeneracy, mixed with the world, lost
in the crowd, He has His eye of mercy upon them, for He knew them from
eternity. When the Father placed the lost jewels in His hand to seek and
to save, each one passed before His eye; He knew them when, with His own
hand, He wrote their names in His eternal Book of Life; He knew them when
He hung upon the cross, pouring out His soul unto death—a ransom
to God for their redemption.
Not less minute is Christ’s knowledge of His people after conversion.
If He knew them from eternity—if, when involved in the wreck and
ruin of our fallen nature, He knew them—if, in their rebellion and
folly (lost, perhaps, in many instances, to virtue, honor, and happiness)
He knew where to find them—surely there is nothing belonging to them,
since His sovereign grace has sought and found them, which He does not
know—and with the minute knowledge of His own divine love.
Believer in Jesus! the Lord knows everything about you. Deem not yourself
as hidden in the crowd. While His knowledge of His flock is universal,
it is also personal and special. He knows them collectively, and He knows
them individually. You may feel yourself almost overlooked; those who
are acquainted with you do not know you, and those who do know you may
not understand you. But, be still every thought! hushed be every murmur!
Jesus knows you personally, knows you minutely, knows you altogether.
He knows your name, for He wears it upon His breastplate; He knows your
burden, for He carries it upon His shoulder; He knows your sorrow, for
He enshrines it in His heart; He knows all the way that you take, for
all that way He has Himself ordained. Such knowledge as this, how unutterably
precious to the believing soul!
How closely and firmly does the faith of the Christ-loving heart enfold
around itself the omniscience of Jesus!
O Lord, you have searched me
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O Lord.
You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.—Psalm 139:1-10
We approach now a remarkable and instructive part of the narrative—Christ’s
discovery of Himself to the woman. In the course of a lengthened conversation
the question of Christ’s Messiahship was raised. “The woman
said unto Him, I know that Messiah comes, who is called Christ: when He
comes He will tell us all things.” The blessed Savior could not resist
this pointed and touching reference to Himself. The hidden spring of His
love was touched by the hand of a poor sinner, in quest of whom He had
traveled that day many weary miles—and that touch, unconscious to
herself, was irresistible with Him. No longer able to preserve His disguise,
and, as if aware of discovery, He removed the veil, and stood before her—the
long promised, the true, the acknowledged Messiah: “Jesus said unto
her, I that speak unto you am He.”
What a precious prophecy concerning Christ was now fulfilled! “But
I will reveal my name to my people, and they will come to know its power.
Then at last they will recognize that it is I who speaks to them.”
What an honor did Jesus confer upon this woman! That He should make Himself
known in such explicit terms, in so gracious a manner, and to so obscure
an individual and so great a sinner, while from all others the fact of
His Messiahship had been withheld, except to His Apostles—and only
revealed to them under the seal of silence—surely was a marvellous
and precious instance of His great and free grace to poor sinners!
What an announcement—“I who speak unto you am He!” The
discovery of a new world were as nothing, compared to this! The Savior
promised, before the gates of paradise closed upon our sinning and expelled
parents; of whom Moses wrote, and Isaiah sung, and whose day Abraham saw;
the Redeemer whom types foreshadowed, and symbols taught, and prophets
predicted; the Beloved Son and the unspeakable gift of God, now stood
before this guilt-stained woman; the revealed, the confessed, the gracious
Savior of men!
O what marvellous, what sovereign grace! Here let me pause, and ask you,
my reader—Has there been a discovery of the Savior, through faith
and by the Spirit, to your soul? Has this same Jesus been made known to
you? I inquire, not if you have found Him, but—has He found you?
Oh! it is of infinite moment to you to be assured of this. The religion
of many is a religion destitute of a manifestation of Jesus to their souls.
It is a cold, lifeless profession of Christianity without Christ,—a
form of godliness without the power! It is for your life I press the inquiry—Has
Christ revealed Himself to your soul? This is the essence, the very soul
of vital, experimental, saving religion. Real religion is to know Christ,
to have a revelation of Christ—yes, it is Christ Himself in us. And
there can be no true comfort, no assured hope until faith has apprehended
or laid hold of Christ, and Christ has removed the veil from our heart
and the disguise from Himself, and has spoken these precious words—“I
who speak unto you am he.”
And the Lord Jesus is prepared to make Himself known to poor anxious souls.
What the woman of Samaria, in her deep sinfulness, found, you may find.
Limit not His redeeming mercy, restrict not His free grace, doubt not
His pardoning love, but bend your ear to His gracious voice. “I who
speak unto you am He who came into the world to save sinners. I am He
upon whom my Father laid the burden and the curse of your sins. I was
wounded for your transgressions, and was bruised for your iniquities.
I obeyed the law, and my obedience is your righteousness; I suffered and
bled, and my death is your atonement. I am He who binds up the broken
in heart and heals their wounds. I am He whose blood cleanses from all
sin, who pardons the guiltiest, accepts the poorest, saves the vilest.
I require no merit, expect no worthiness, ask no price; but receive, pardon,
and save you just as you are. It is My office, My delight, My glory to
seek and to save lost sinners. I am the good Shepherd; I know My sheep
and the work of My Spirit in their hearts, and the desire of their souls
towards Me. I am He that speaks unto you by My Spirit, in My Word and
through My ministers; by all the temptations that test you, and by all
the sorrows that shade you, and by all the blessings that gladden you,
and by all the hopes that cheer you. Let no voice but mine speak peace
to your soul. Let no other pronounce you forgiven, or assure you that
you are saved. Let your prayer to me be, ‘Say unto my soul, I am
your salvation.’ Let Me speak, and all shall be peace!” Such,
virtually, are the precious words of Jesus to every spiritually awakened
sinner.
We now reach the transforming effect of this manifestation of Christ upon
the character and conduct of this woman. Our text informs us—Then,
leaving her waterpot, the woman went back to the town and said to the
people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could
this be the Christ?” She left her waterpot. What does this sudden
and marvellous change mean? Why this forgetfulness of her errand to the
well? What had she found as a substitute? Why this hasty and eager abandonment
of her worldly goods? Oh, she had now, by the Savior’s converting
grace, become” a new creature.” A new spiritual world had burst
upon her view. She had found Him of whom Moses and the prophets spoke—Jesus
of Nazareth; the Christ of God, the Savior of sinners. She had found the
Fountain of living water; she drank of it, and her soul lived.
Until now she loved sin, lived in sin, and, had it not been for Jesus,
she would have perished in sin. The object of His everlasting love, she
now became the subject of His converting grace. The living water which
Jesus gave her was now a well of water in her soul—a springing well
of life, grace, and love in her heart; and, with this new-found treasure
and this new-born joy, she forgot her errand to the well, and retraced
her steps back to the city, to tell her friends and neighbors what great
things the Lord had done for her soul!
Such, my reader, is true conversion! The Holy Spirit imparts a new and
a divine nature; divine grace supplants the principle of sin with the
principle of holiness—changes the thirst for the world into a thirst
for Christ. The pottery of earth is exchanged for the golden vessel of
heaven, now filled to overflowing with the new-born love and joy of Christ
the Lord. “Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever
drinks of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst.”
“I thirst: but not as once I did,
The vain delights of earth to share;
Your wounds, Immanuel, all forbid
That I should seek my pleasures there.
“It was the sight of Your dear cross,
Fast weaned my soul from earthly things;
And taught me to esteem as dross
The mirth of fools and pomp of kings.
“I want the grace that springs from Thee,
That quickens all things where it flows,
And makes a wretched thorn like me
Bloom as the myrtle or the rose.
“Dear Fountain of delight unknown!
I no longer sink beneath the brim;
But overflow, and pour me down
A living and life-giving stream!”
Precious and important are the instructions we may gather from the whole
narrative. We learn, in the first place, that our Lord’s initiative
step in the conversion of this sinful woman, was to make her spiritually
acquainted with her own self. She was living in known and deadly sin.
Jesus, who knew all that she was, said unto her, “You have had five
husbands and one whom you now have is not your husband.” Thus did
the Lord turn her eye in upon herself. Where did He get the knowledge
of her sin? How did He know her life and read her heart? Because He was
GOD as well as Man—the God-Man, Christ Jesus. What a proof of the
divinity of our blessed Lord is this!
Thus we learn, in conversion, that before the Lord makes Himself known
to us, He first makes us known to ourselves. A personal acquaintance with
our sinfulness is essential to a personal acquaintance with Jesus as our
Savior. Have you been so enlightened, my reader? Have you approached God
in the spirit, attitude and prayer of the humble and penitent publican,
and cried, “God be merciful to me a sinner”? O this is the first
step in your conversion! Lord! show me to myself, that I may know You!
We learn from the history of this woman the coexistence of formalism and
sin in the same individual. How close may be a religious form and an irreligious
life! The woman of Samaria was a zealous Ritualist; she could argue intelligently
and contend warmly for her place and mode of religious worship. “Our
fathers worshiped in this mountain; and you say, that in Jerusalem is
the place where we ought to worship.” How deceitful and desperately
wicked is the human heart! Thus may an individual maintain with tenacity,
and contend with fiery zeal for a form of godliness which is utterly destitute
of its vital, sanctifying reality; for a party, a denomination, a church;
and all the while be the vassal of Satan, the servant of sin, and the
slave of lust.
But nothing can be a substitute for the new birth; no religious service,
nor creed, nor zeal, nor profession, nor worship, nor sacraments, can
be a substitute for the conversion of the heart. We must be BORN AGAIN,
or eternally perish! Oh, let us examine our hearts, each for himself,
touching this vital and momentous matter!
The Lord Jesus likewise teaches us in this narrative the nature of true
and acceptable worship. He emphatically declares it to be spiritual. “God
is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in
truth.” No other worship is acceptable with Him. However splendid
the building, or beautiful the ritual, or imposing the ceremonial, it
is nothing with God. The sweetness of the music, the grandeur of the service,
the solemnity of the demeanor, without the devotion of the heart are an
abomination in His sight. Let us seek much of the power and anointing
of the Holy Spirit, that we may worship our heavenly Father in spirit
and in truth; for He seeks such, and only such, to worship Him. He looks
to the heart—“to the man who is of an humble and contrite spirit.”
Oh how costly and precious in His view is the incense of a heart lying
lowly and broken at His feet!—no sacrifice upon His altar is like
this to Him.
Thus our Christian homes may be true sanctuaries of God; the worship offered
to Him there pure and spiritual, and its ministry—expounding and
enforcing His sacred Word—a holy and divinely-authorized agency for
making known Christ, blessed and made a blessing, encircling the whole
household with the fragrance of His precious name.
We are told, in the commencement of this spiritually instructive narrative,
that Jesus “must go through Samaria.” Why this constrained necessity?
Has it not a most precious spiritual significance? The whole incident
supplies the answer. There was a poor adulterous woman living in that
city, needing His grace, and for whom He had covenant purposes of mercy,
and eternal thoughts of love, and He must—as in the case of Zaccheus—“pass
that way” to search and find her, and draw her to Himself.
We learn a most precious truth from this, my beloved reader. There is
a holy needs be in all that Christ does. There was a needs be in the providence
which brought you into grace; and there has been a needs be in all His
gracious dealings with you since then—a needs be in every permitted
assault of Satan, and in every discovery of inbred corruption, and in
every season of spiritual darkness. There is a needs be in all the way
by which God is at present leading you, in all the dispensations of His
love, in every cloud that shades, in every element that embitters, in
every stroke that wounds. God does not deal with His people as a despot—tyrannically
and arbitrarily—but as a Father, lovingly and wisely.
O yes! there is a wise, righteous, loving needs be in all that He does
with us. He would not thus have shaded your life’s bright landscape,
nor have embittered your sweet domestic joy, nor have thus sorely tried
your faith and patience, had there not have been a holy needs be—some
inbred corruption to subdue, some threatening evil to check, some unseen
evil to prevent, some untold blessing to bestow.
Yield yourself up unto God; and, “though now for a season, if needs
be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations,” yet, “the
trial of your faith, though tried with fire,” will most surely result
in your greatest good and in the Lord’s highest glory.
Have you left the waterpot? or, to speak less figuratively, Have you abandoned
your idols for the Lord Jesus?—and, finding Him, have you turned
your back entirely upon things that are seen and temporal, Caleb-like,
“WHOLLY following the Lord?” O to be true followers of Christ!
following the Lamb wherever He goes—wholly; unreservedly following
Him; renouncing a sinful, Christ-rejecting, God-hating world its carnal
enjoyments, its worldly gaieties, its human confidences, its unhallowed
friendships and connections—following hard after that blessed Savior
whom the ungodly world condemned, whom the religious world covered with
shame, and whom the infidel world nailed to the tree!
Such is the world now!—and as such we must come out of it, and separate
ourselves from it, and touch not the unclean thing. We must leave all,
if need be, for Christ; we shall find all we have left, and infinitely
more, in Him.
“We have left everything to follow you!” “I tell you the
truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers
or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel
will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes,
brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions)
and in the age to come, eternal life.” And now the “waterpot”
is left! The world has lost its charm, the creature its attraction, carnal
sweets their power to please, earth is exchanged for heaven, and henceforth
CHRIST is all in all through time and through eternity!
Let us imitate the zeal of this new convert, and seek to bring others
to Christ. “Come, see a man that told me all things that ever I did.”
One of the first publishers of the glad tidings of the Gospel was a woman,
just rescued from sin and made a monument of grace! The Lord would teach
us by this fact that, while the office of the Christian ministry, as a
divine institution, stands alone, all private Christians not excepting
the female sex, may, like the woman of Samaria, invite sinners to Jesus.
While it is the work of the Holy Spirit alone to convert, it is our duty
instrumentally to say—“Come, and see Jesus.” Oh! let none
of us aspire after a “starless crown.” May the diadem which
Christ will place upon the brow of every disciple faithful unto death,
be gemmed with many a precious soul, led to Jesus by our hands. Then,
with the Elders we will lay down that jeweled diadem at Jesus’ feet,
and He shall have all the glory, and to Him shall be all the praise!
“Now will I tell to sinners round,
What a dear Savior I have found
I’ll point to Your redeeming blood
And say—“Behold, the way to God!”
One word: “The well is deep!” God’s love, Christ’s
grace is an infinite depth, —deeper than our sins, deeper than our
unworthiness, deeper than our need. Come in child-like faith, and just
as you are, to Christ; and with joy shall you draw water out of this deep,
this fathomless, this free well of salvation. “Of His fulness have
all we received, and grace for grace.” The lord add His blessing,
for Christ’s sake. Amen.