QT 10/29/2026 John 4:1–10, Does not getting what we want in life cause emotional rage?

John 4:1–10 (ESV) —

1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

 

NOTE: I had not noticed how John had placed this story up against the previous story of Nicodemus. The previous story concerned an important man, with reputation, who met Jesus in the night and whose first question is "how." This next story is a story of extremes, a Samaritan women (later we would find multiple divorces), getting water in the middle of the day (to avoid the eyes of other women), and also asking "how." She was a picture of a "nobody" with also a sarcastic attitude, probably because life had not worked for her. Tenney describes her response to Jesus (in today's language) as:

 

“There was a trace of sarcasm in the woman’s reply, as if she meant, ‘We Samaritans are the dirt under your feet until you want something; then we are good enough!”

 

From one end of the "importance" spectrum to the "bottom," Jesus shows that all mankind is equal in God's eyes. She was not a person to be avoided, but a lost soul, chewed up and spit out by the evil system of sin.

 

Today, these same souls go looking for a cause to exhaust their rage at life. They look for same-sex relationships, they look for perceived injustice, they look for someone to be angry at. This Samaritan woman would have done the same I think if life was not so much harder to survive. She had to get water from a hill some distance from the village. They were no poverty programs or government handouts. Staying alive was her cause.

 

When I look at the women emotionally exhausted by life, and raging out their anger, I need to remember Jesus' compassion for their plight. I don't have the best attitude for these souls. I admit that is sin on my part.

 

PONDER:

1. What is it you really want in life?
2. Are you an angry person -- what is it you want but cannot get? Most anger is because a person wants something but it is not happening.

 

PRAYER: Father, forgive me for disregarding these women in my society. I'm the sarcastic one who finds amusement in their foolishness and rage. That is wrong. I confess my sin. My applications, at least a first step, is to pray for the person every time I see another example of a person consumed by hatred.