The Necessary Weariness: John 4:1-6
Introduction: Strategic Withdrawal
In the economy of the Kingdom, a retreat is often the first step in a great advance. A withdrawal can be a strategic redeployment. We live in an age that is obsessed with metrics, with numbers, with the appearance of success. The Pharisees were the ancient masters of this kind of religious bookkeeping. They were constantly measuring, comparing, and counting. Their entire system was built on external performance, and so when they heard that Jesus was outperforming them, that He was making and baptizing more disciples than John, their envy was immediately kindled. This is what dead religion always does. It cannot rejoice in the success of grace; it can only measure it, resent it, and seek to control it.
The Pharisees were not interested in the substance of what Jesus was doing; they were interested in the threat He posed to their market share. And Jesus, knowing this, refuses to play their game. He refuses to allow His ministry to be defined by the terms of His opposition. He will not get into a numbers race in Judea. He will not let the Pharisees dictate the time or the place of the confrontation. And so, He leaves. He withdraws. To the world, and perhaps even to some of His disciples, this might have looked like a retreat. The pressure got too hot, and so He fell back. But God's purposes are never thwarted by the petty jealousies of men. This withdrawal from Judea was not a flight from danger, but a direct march toward a divine appointment. Jesus leaves the religious heartland, the place of controversies and spiritual scorekeeping, in order to go to a place of profound spiritual thirst. He is leaving the men who thought they were full in order to find a woman who knew she was empty.
This is a pattern for the Church in every age. We are not called to win every argument on the enemy's turf. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is to walk away from a fruitless debate in order to go and sit by a well somewhere and talk to a sinner. The Kingdom advances not by winning the approval of the establishment, but by invading the forgotten places with unexpected grace.
The Text
Therefore when Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. And He had to pass through Samaria. So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
(John 4:1-6 LSB)
The Rumor Mill of Religion (v. 1-3)
We begin with the catalyst for this journey.
"Therefore when Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), He left Judea and went away again into Galilee." (John 4:1-3 LSB)
Notice the first thing: Jesus knew what the Pharisees had heard. The religious rumor mill was buzzing. The central issue for them was not truth, but influence. Their concern was one of numbers and popularity. "More disciples than John." This is the carnal calculus of worldly power. They see ministry as a competition. Who is up? Who is down? Whose stock is rising?
John gives us a parenthetical clarification that is theologically rich: Jesus Himself was not the one physically putting people in the water. His disciples were. This is significant for two reasons. First, it establishes a pattern for the church. The authority for the sacrament flows from Christ, but it is administered by His delegated servants. Christ did not come to do everything Himself, but to raise up a body that would carry on His work. He is the head, and we are the hands and feet. Second, it keeps the focus where it belongs. The power is not in the administrator, but in Christ, the one who sent him. If Jesus had been baptizing personally, people would have inevitably created a two-tiered system of baptism, a superior "Jesus-baptism" and an inferior "disciple-baptism." But the efficacy of the sacrament is in the promise of Christ, not the prestige of the minister.
Because the Pharisees are stirring, Jesus leaves. He is not afraid of them, but it is not yet His time. His hour has not yet come. He operates on a divine timetable, not a Pharisaical one. He will not be drawn into a premature battle over baptismal statistics in Judea. He has a more important appointment to the north. So He leaves the hotbed of religious politics and heads for Galilee. But the straightest line between two points is not always a straight line.
The Divine Necessity (v. 4)
This brings us to the hinge of the entire passage, a verse of massive theological weight packed into a few words.
"And He had to pass through Samaria." (John 4:4 LSB)
The Greek here is emphatic. It says, "it was necessary" (edei) for Him to go through Samaria. Now, geographically, this was not strictly necessary. Pious Jews, wanting to avoid the unclean and despised Samaritans, would often take the long way around, crossing the Jordan and going up through Perea. The necessity here is not geographical, but theological. It was a divine necessity. It was a covenantal necessity. God the Father had set an appointment for His Son, and that appointment was in the heart of enemy territory.
This "had to" is the language of sovereign purpose. It is the same necessity that required Him to be about His Father's business (Luke 2:49), that the Son of Man must suffer many things (Mark 8:31), and that He must be lifted up (John 3:14). This was not an accident. This was not a shortcut. This was the mission. Jesus is being driven by a divine imperative to bring the gospel to those who were considered beyond the pale. He is deliberately crossing ethnic, cultural, and religious boundaries that the Pharisees had spent centuries fortifying. Their entire system was about separation and exclusion. Christ's mission is about invasion and inclusion.
Samaria was a place of deep-seated animosity. The Samaritans were a mixed race, descended from the remnant of Israel left behind after the Assyrian conquest and the pagans who were imported. They had their own temple on Mount Gerizim and their own corrupted version of the Pentateuch. To the Jews, they were half-breed heretics. But it is precisely to this place of schism and hatred that Jesus "had to" go. The gospel does not tiptoe around our divisions; it tramples them.
The Covenantal Well (v. 5-6a)
The destination within Samaria is not random. It is saturated with redemptive history.
"So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; and Jacob’s well was there." (John 4:5-6a LSB)
Every detail here is intentional. He comes to Sychar, near the plot of ground that the great patriarch Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes, gave to his beloved son Joseph. And at this historic place is Jacob's well. This is covenant ground. Hundreds of years before, Jacob dug this well to provide water for his family and his flocks. He was providing for the physical thirst of the people of the covenant. Now, the one who is greater than Jacob, the true Israel, has come back to that very spot to provide living water for the spiritual thirst of a broken world.
This is a collision of Old and New Covenants. The entire history of God's dealings with His people is converging on this one dusty location. The well is a potent symbol throughout Scripture. It is a place of life, of refreshment, of provision. It is often a place where marriages are arranged, where life-changing encounters happen. Isaac's bride was found at a well. Jacob met Rachel at a well. Moses met Zipporah at a well. And now Jesus, the true bridegroom, has come to this well to call a bride for Himself out of a most unlikely people.
The Weary God (v. 6b)
And it is here, at this place of divine appointment and covenantal history, that we get one of the most profound descriptions of our Lord's humanity.
"So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour." (John 4:6b LSB)
Jesus was tired. He was physically exhausted from the journey. The word for "wearied" means to be worn out, spent. And John adds the detail that "He was sitting thus," which has the sense of Him just slumping down, sitting however He could. This was not a posed, dignified rest. This was the real exhaustion of a real man who had been walking a long way on dusty roads under a hot sun. John even gives us the time: the sixth hour, which is high noon. The hottest, most draining part of the day.
We must not glide past this. This is a direct assault on every form of Gnosticism, which denies the goodness of the material world and the reality of the incarnation. Jesus was not a phantom. He was not God pretending to be a man. He was, and is, the God-man. He had a real body, with real physical limitations. He got hungry, He got thirsty, and here, He gets bone-weary. This is a glorious truth. Why? Because His weariness is part of our salvation. He took on our frailty so that we could take on His strength. He emptied Himself so that we could be filled. He sat down in exhaustion so that He could offer a rest that never ends.
His humanity is not a liability to His mission; it is the vehicle of it. He is approachable precisely because He is weary. He is not a distant, untouchable deity. He is the God who sits down at a well at noon, covered in dust and sweat, waiting for a sinner to arrive. It is at the very point of His human weakness that His divine power is about to be most gloriously displayed. He is tired, but He is not too tired to save. He is weary, but He is not weary of His work. He has come a long way, on a necessary journey, to this specific well, at this specific hour, to meet a specific woman, because that is the kind of shepherd He is. He leaves the ninety-nine who think they are safe to go after the one who is utterly lost, and He will not rest until He finds her.