Living Water
JASON MARTIN
Jesus in the Gospels / Jesus teaches about living water / John 4:1–42
After the nighttime conversation with Nicodemus about being born again, Jesus stayed in the Judean countryside. After John’s imprisonment, Jesus traveled back to Galilee. On the way there, as He traveled through Samaria, He had a Divine appointment with a Samaritan woman.
This passage has a 6 step progression;
1. Jesus offers Living Water
2. Jesus reveals the Heart
3. Jesus defines True Worship
4. Jesus reveals Himself as Messiah
5. Jesus reveals the Harvest
6. The Samaritans confess the Savior of the World
Read John 4:1-6
Let’s make a few observations before the conversation starts
1. Most Jews refused to even travel through Samaria and would usually travel a longer path around it to get back and forth. Not Jesus
2. In the Old Testament, wells are where a bride is found
a. Rebekah
b. Rachel
c. Zipporah
John 3:29 ESV
29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete.
a. Jesus is the Bridegroom seeking His bride—not just one woman, but a people from every tribe, nation, and language. He begins in the most unexpected place, with an outcast among a nation of outcasts.
Read John 4:7
3. Who were the Samaritans?
a. A mixed population descended from Israelites that intermarried with the surrounding nations in and after the Assyrian captivity and fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They followed only the 5 books of Moses (Torah), but none of the prophets or wisdom literature.
4. Why is she there at noon - the hottest part of the day?
a. She is an outcast among a nation of outcasts
5. Who started the conversation?
a. A Jewish Rabbi would generally not talk to any woman in public. Yet here is Jesus talking to not just a woman, but a foreign woman. Not just a Gentile, but a disgraced Samaritan woman. Even she is surprised.
Read John 4:10-15
1. Jesus intentionally used a term that has multiple meanings.
a. Living water is moving and active like a spring out of the ground or a stream or river.
i. Note that living water is not stagnant
b. Living water was required for many of the ceremonial cleansings given in Leviticus 14-15. It symbolized cleansing.
c. God is the source of it and only He could provide it
Psalm 36:7–9 ESV
7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. 8 They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. 9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.
i. He not only provides it, he IS the fountain
Jeremiah 2:13 ESV
13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.
d. Jesus is telling her ‘the fountain has come to you’
2. Notice the water theme throughout John;
a. John 2 - water to wine
b. John 3 - Born of water and Spirit
c. John 4 Living water
d. John 5 water at Bethesda can’t heal the paralytic
John 7:37–39 ESV
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
i. Jesus is echoing Isaiah 55:1
Isaiah 55:1 ESV
1 “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
a. Ezekiel 47 pictures life-giving water flowing from a future Temple that;
i. has water flowing out from it that gets deeper and deeper
ii. wherever the river goes, everything lives
iii. trees grow fruit
iv. The Dead Sea becomes alive and the wilderness turns into a lush orchard
b. John has already identified the true Temple as Jesus
c. Living waters flow from Jerusalem at the Second Coming of Jesus
Zechariah 14:8–9 LSB
8 And it will be in that day, that living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and the other half toward the western sea; it will be in summer as well as in winter. 9 And Yahweh will be king over all the earth; in that day Yahweh will be the only one, and His name one.
d. Then, in the New Creation:
Revelation 22:1–3 ESV
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.
3. The Samaritan woman wants physical water - Jesus is offering eternal life through the Spirit and the blessings that go along with that. She wants this water but she doesn’t understand.
a. People still try to satisfy spiritual thirst with
i. success
ii. relationships
iii. religion
iv. money
v. entertainment
1. Only the LORD can satisfy us spiritually - and that’s our greatest need
1. Before Jesus heals her deepest need, he exposes it
a. As we were told before the encounter with Nicodemus, Jesus knows what’s in all men / women
John 2:25 ESV
25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.
1 Samuel 16:7 ESV
7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
b. According to Psalm 139, the LORD knows every thought we have
Jeremiah 17:9 ESV
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
c. Jesus can. He’s not guessing about the woman - He knows. He knew Nicodemus, He knew the Samaritan woman, and He knows our desperately sick hearts too
i. Yet He still pursues us
Romans 5:8 ESV
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
2. Five husbands + another. What is she looking for?
She changes the subject
Read John 4:19-24
1. Where can YHWH be found?
a. The Samaritans chose Mount Gerizim to be their holy mountain
b. The Jews said it was Mount Zion in Jerusalem
Deuteronomy 12:5 LSB
5 “But you shall seek Yahweh at the place which Yahweh your God will choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and there you shall come.
c. Jesus said He picked Jerusalem but the location is changing. The Glory that left the Temple is now standing beside a well.
2. Spirit and Truth
a. not just rituals
b. not just sincerity
c. both - because God is Spirit and Truth
i. True worship begins with knowing Christ and growing our relationship with Him.
Read John 4:25-26
1. The Samaritans expected a deliverer called the ‘Returning One’ to fulfill the promise of a Prophet like Moses from Dt 18:15-18
Deuteronomy 18:15–18 LSB
15 “Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers; you shall listen to him. 16 “This is according to all that you asked of Yahweh your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of Yahweh my God; let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.’ 17 “And Yahweh said to me, ‘They have spoken well. 18 ‘I will raise up a prophet from among their brothers like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
2. Notice the irony
a. Nicodemus was incredibly educated in religious things and didn’t get it
b. This outcast Samaritan woman is starting to understand
i. The Jews expected political deliverance from the Messiah, while the Samaritans expected Him to restore proper worship.
3. I AM He - Jesus echoes the Divine Name here and will use it more explicitly later
1. Harvest sometimes symbolizes
a. Judgment
Joel 3:13 ESV
13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great.
Jeremiah 8:18–20 LSB
18 My sorrow is beyond healing; My heart is faint within me! 19 Behold, the sound! The cry of the daughter of my people from a distant land: “Is Yahweh not in Zion? Is her King not within her?” “Why have they provoked Me to anger with their graven images, with foreign idols?” 20 “Harvest is past, summer is ended, And we are not saved.”
b. Salvation
Amos 9:13 ESV
13 “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.
Psalm 126:4–6 ESV
4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb! 5 Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! 6 He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.
2. Now Jesus is saying harvest means people entering God’s Kingdom
Luke 10:2 ESV
2 And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
3. No matter who plants the seed, or waters, or reaps - only God gives the growth and only He gets the credit and everybody rejoices together.
1 Corinthians 3:6–9 ESV
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
Read John 4:39-42
1. The woman believes and tells the whole village
a. The village comes, hears, and believes
b. They go from believing because of her testimony to hearing for themselves.
c. Every believer has to eventually move from borrowed faith to personal faith
2. Savior of the World - salvation comes from the Jews, but is available for everybody
a. John 1 - Light came into the world
b. John 3 God so loved the world
c. John 4 - Savior of the world
d. John 12 - Draw all people to myself
e. John 20 - He sends His followers into the world
3. Everything in this chapter moved from physical to spiritual
a. water to eternal life
b. thirst to salvation
c. five husbands to the heart’s deepest need
d. mountains to true worship
e. food to doing the Father’s will
f. harvest to people entering God’s Kingdom
4. Jesus continually uses physical realities to reveal spiritual truths
a. New birth
b. Living water
c. Bread
d. Light
e. Shepherd
f. Vine
The woman came to draw water from Jacob's well, but she left having met the One who actually is greater than Jacob—the Bridegroom, the Messiah, and the Savior of the world.
Exported from Logos Bible Study, 8:19 AM August 6, 2026.