Jesus Grew Weary Too

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As I was preparing to teach from John 4 our VBS at Central Baptist Church I saw something in this chapter that somehow I had seemed to miss all the other times I had read this chapter… and I have read John 4 more times than I can count. It’s amazing really how the Word of God works… we see what He allows us to see when He allows us to see it. Jesus meets us always right were we are and true to the story of John 4 His living water is a well within those who ask Him for a drink.

What the Lord caused to jump out to me this past week was John 4:6,

So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well…

What? Jesus grew weary from the journey?

Yes, He did.

The word wearied in this verse is kopiaó and it means to labor until worn-out, depleted (exhausted). He was not just a little tired He was kaput. He was exhausted, and He was hungry, and He was thirsty. When the Samaritan woman came to the well and He asked her for a drink… He really needed a drink.

But the Redeemer must participate in that from which He redeems; and the condition of His strength being ‘made perfect in our weakness’ is that our weakness shall have cast a shadow upon the glory of His strength.

The measure of His love is seen in that, long before Calvary, He entered into the humiliation and sufferings and sorrows of humanity; a condition of His power is seen in that, forasmuch as the ‘children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same,’ not only that ‘through death He might deliver’ from death, but that in life He might redeem from the ills and sorrows of life.

Nor does that exhausted Figure, reclining on Jacob’s Well, preach to us only what He was. It proclaims to us likewise what we should be. For if His work was carried on to the edge of His capacity, and if He shrank not from service because it involved toil, what about the professing followers of Jesus Christ, who think that they are exempted from any form of service because they can plead that it will weary them?

What about those who say that they tread in His footsteps, and have never known what it was to yield up one comfort, one moment of leisure, one thrill of enjoyment, or to encounter one sacrifice, one act of self-denial, one aching of weariness for the sake of the Lord who bore all for them?

The wearied Christ proclaims His manhood, proclaims His divinity and His love, and rebukes us who consent to ‘walk in the way of His commandments’ only on condition that it can be done without dust or heat; and who are ready to run the race that is set before us, only if we can come to the goal without perspiration or turning a hair. ‘Jesus, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well.’

MacLaren Expositions of Holy Scripture

As exhausted as He was, when an opportunity to give a drink of the Living Water to another thirsty soul walked up He didn’t say, not now, not today, I’m too tired. No, He seized the moment and took full advantage. He preached the gospel. He was revived and strengthened through the will of the Father that this woman and those whom she would run to and share her testimony with might be saved…

From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. Many more believed because of His word; and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.”

John 4:39-42

When Jesus was weary from His journey His Father gave Him more than a drink. The Father gave Him a reminder of why He was on the journey to begin with…

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