WWUTT 821 Jesus Visits Samaria?

John’s Departure from Judea and the Gospel to Samaria

Jesus was in danger while he was in Judea, so we went up to Samaria and preached the gospel to a group of people the Jews hated, but they received his testimony before the people he first came to, when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text, as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt .com.

Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the gospel of John, this week in Chapter 4, which is most famous for Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well in Samaria. I'm going to start off reading the entire story, verses 1 through 42.

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples, he left Judea and departed again for Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria, so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

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. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. 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.

The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.

The woman said to him, sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come up here to draw water. Jesus said to her, go, call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband.

Jesus said to her, you are right in saying, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where we ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you, am he.

Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, what do you seek, or why are you talking with her? So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did, can this be the Christ?

They went out of the town and were coming to Jesus. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, Rabbi, eat, but he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. So the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him something to eat?

Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, there are yet four months, then comes the harvest? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.

Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor, others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.

Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there for two days.

And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.

John 4:1-6 and the Significance of Samaria

And that is the story of Jesus and the woman of Samaria. We come back to chapter four, verse one. Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, remember that's where we left off last week with John the Baptist seeing that people were now going to Jesus to be baptized.

No longer were they coming to him, at least not as many, and John's disciples were upset about this. Hey, isn't this the guy that you bore witness about? Baptism was our thing, and yet people are going to him, kind of like, hey, John, say something about this.

We're losing what it is that we had labored for. But John said that he rejoiced to see that the bridegroom had come, the bridegroom's friend, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice, therefore this joy of mine is now complete.

John 3, verse 30, he must increase, but I must decrease. And then where we finished last week was verses 31 through 36, which was kind of a theological interlude between that exchange, between John and his disciples, and then Jesus going into Samaria and this conversation that he has with the woman at the well.

Remember what I had said about Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, that the passage that goes from verses 16 through 21 is probably not Jesus talking to Nicodemus. It's probably one of those theological interludes that John puts into his gospel.

So we see that in verses 31 through 36. There's clearly no confusion there that John the Baptist is no longer speaking. This is John the Apostle writing. But we're a little bit more confused about verses 16 through 21.

Is that still Jesus talking, or did Jesus finish his thought with Nicodemus at the end of verse 15, and then verses 16 through 21 is actually John the Apostle writing? Because there were no quotation marks in Greek.

So we have to assume either that Jesus is still talking or that his conversation with Nicodemus came to an end in verse 15. And I side with R .C. Sproul on that. I really think that Jesus finished his thought with Nicodemus in verse 15, and verses 16 through 21 were not a direct quote from Christ.

Now that doesn't mean that Christ didn't say it, and it's certainly inspired by the Holy Spirit. So it's still God's word one way or the other. But it probably wasn't part of the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus.

So just the same, John the Apostle writes this little theological interlude here in verses 31 through 36, talking about how Jesus, who comes from above, is above all. And what Jesus says is even greater than what any apostle has said, because he is coming from the father and he reveals the father.

The apostles or I'm sorry, the prophets were just pointing to the future of things that were going to transpire, things that were going to be fulfilled in Christ. And they were not even clear as to how this was going to come about.

They knew it was going to, but just the manner in which these things were going to take place. Many of these prophets just wrote down what God told them to say, even though they didn't fully understand it.

The best illustration that we have of that is in the book of Daniel, where Gabriel says to Daniel, this is not for you to understand. It's for a group of people in the future, a future generation is going to understand these words that I am telling you to write down.

So Jesus comes revealing heaven, the kingdom of God, the father to us in a way that no other prophet was able to because Jesus came from above. He who comes from above is above all. So he was able to reveal things to us about God and heaven that were not previously known.

At Bible study this past Thursday, we've been going through the book of Job in my Bible study that I hosted home, just like we've been doing here on the podcast. And somebody asked, was there much of an understanding of the afterlife in the Old Testament?

And the answer is there really wasn't. And it's not that the Old Testament or yeah, it's not that the afterlife is never mentioned in the Old Testament. There are certainly suggestions of it and statements about like in the book of Ecclesiastes, for example, that when the body dies, it goes in the ground and the soul goes back to the Lord.

But there is not much of a revelation of of dying and going and being with God that doesn't come until the New Testament. And it's Jesus who reveals that. And then more comes also from his apostles by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

So we really don't know much about what happens after death, simply that the saints of the Old Testament trusted in God and it was counted to them as righteousness. They put faith in Yahweh. So Jesus comes and reveals things about what has been written down by the prophets, what has been foretold concerning the Messiah.

And he even reveals himself to this woman as being that very Messiah. For the woman knows, hey, when that Messiah shows up, he's going to reveal to us all these things. He's going to make sense of this stuff that you and I are arguing about.

And Jesus kind of drops it on her. Yeah, well, I'm he. So I am telling you about things that you do not understand. So Jesus, to get away from the Pharisees, learning that that people are now flocking to him instead of John the Baptist, Jesus leaves Judea and he departed again for Galilee.

This was the region, the northern portion of Israel, where Jesus came from. And to get to Galilee, he had to pass through Samaria. Now, ordinarily, Jews did not go through Samaria. They went to an outside road on the eastern side of Judea that passed through Jericho and kind of up and around so they wouldn't have to go through Samaria.

That's how they got to Galilee. Why did they not want to go through Samaria? Because it was full of Samaritans. The Jews just did not like Samaritans. To kind of recap who the Samaritans are, we went through this a little bit in our Old Testament study when we were in first and second Kings.

And it's in second Kings, chapter 17, where we read about the Israelites being exiled out of their land, the ten northern tribes of Israel. Their lawlessness had finally become so repugnant unto God that he drove them out of the land and into the hands of their enemies.

But the area wasn't left unpopulated. It was still a very fertile and valuable piece of land. And so the Assyrians populated it with people from Babylon, Kutha, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvim and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel.

And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. And at the beginning of their dwelling there, the people that the Assyrians moved into that region did not fear the Lord. And this was still the promised land.

It was still land that God had given to his people. And because they did not fear God, God sent lions in among them, which killed some of them. So the king of Assyria was told, the nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the God of that land.

Therefore he has sent lions among them and behold, they are killing them because they do not know the law of the God of the land. Then the king of Assyria commanded, send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there and let him go and dwell there and teach them the law of the God of the land.

So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord. So this was how the Samaritans came to a knowledge of the law of God.

But they were still pagans. They still had all their pagan spirituality that they believed in and practiced. So what ended up happening was they took on a form of Judaism and at the same time they also continued to practice all of their pagan arts and practices and spiritualness.

And so the Samaritans became kind of a hodgepodge of people. They were a mix of different nationalities, but they also became a mix of different religions and they were hated by the Jews because of this.

They're taking our religion, our Jewish religion, and they are soiling it with all of their pagan practices. Not to mention that there may have even still been some Jews among them or some Israelites from kind of the Northern Territory, so they're mutts.

They're not really of the line of Abraham, although many of them claim to be. And so this is not a people that we want to be associating with. They make a mockery of us just by their very existence. That was the way the Jews thought of the Samaritans, so they didn't want to have anything to do with them.

They were disgusting. They were dirty. They were impure. They were not truly the children of Abraham. And so the Jews hated the Samaritans and likewise the Gentiles also hated the Samaritans. So this really was an unloved group of people and Jews would not travel through that region.

They didn't want to be interacting with Samaritans at all. But Jesus does not discriminate against anybody. So he and his disciples on the way to Galilee, they went through Samaria instead of taking that outside route along the eastern side.

So passing through Samaria, verse four, he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well and it was about the sixth hour.

So even though the people that populated this particular region were not true Israelites, nonetheless, there were still many Israelite markers in that particular area. Jacob, of course, being popular in that region.

And this was all taking place on Mount Gerizim. That's where this interaction between Jesus and this woman is going to happen. This is the mountain where the Samaritans believe that the true worship of God was supposed to take place.

Whereas the Jews said that the true worship of God was supposed to be on Mount Moriah, the temple mount there in Jerusalem. So there was even some religious argument, disagreement between Samaritans and the Jews as to where the worship of God should actually happen.

That plays into this conversation that Jesus has with the woman at the well. You probably already piecing parts of this together based on what we read in our introduction. So you have the well that Jacob dug that is there.

Jesus is sitting beside the well. And remember, Jesus is a descendant of Jacob. He is from the line of Jacob. He is going to be having a conversation with a woman who is not a descendant from Jacob, at least as far as we know, as a Samaritan.

She is of that line of people that the Assyrians moved into that locale. She is not actually a descendant from any of the tribes of Jacob. And so she kind of boasts in this place of this being the place where true worship is supposed to happen.

But she doesn't actually have any heritage to that place. Jesus does. So that's just kind of interesting to me between the two of them arguing as the woman is trying to lay claim on this particular piece of property as being sacred.

And yet it would be more sacred to Jesus than it would be to her, since he is actually a descendant of Jacob himself. It is said that the Messiah would come through the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

And we have that genealogy in the book of Matthew and also in Luke. And so we know that Jacob or sorry, that Jesus is of that line, that he is indeed a true child of Abraham by lineage. But but as Jesus will talk about later on in the Gospel of John, the true children of Abraham know who Jesus is.

The Samaritan woman at the well is going to come to know him. She will know Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, as well as many others there in Samaria. And this is going to end up becoming a judgment on Judea, who should recognize Christ as the Savior, since he came from the line of Abraham, from the line of David, et cetera.

Yet they did not receive him. But the people of Samaria did. So that's significant. That's a significant portion of this story here. We've been through the first six verses of chapter four, and we'll pick it up there tomorrow with the actual conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.

It may not be what you commonly remember or have commonly heard this conversation as being, but that's just a little bit of a teaser for tomorrow. We'll talk more about that later. As I said, let's conclude with prayer.

Our great God and Savior, we thank you for revealing to us your son. For no one knows the son except the father and no one knows the father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him, as Jesus said in Matthew chapter 11.

So we are grateful to you that we know Christ as Savior, that we have been delivered from our sins. We have been forgiven. We have been transferred into the kingdom of God and are a citizen of your kingdom even now.

So help us to live as kingdom citizens of this world, taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations. That others may know the good news of Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave so that whoever believes in him will not perish, will not fall under the judgment of God, but we will have eternal life.

This woman at the well in Samaria 2000 years ago was privileged to know who the Savior is. And we praise God for that, what we're going to learn in this story and also that the Savior was revealed to us as well by your mighty and providential hand.

In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

Closing Prayer and Ministry Sign-Off

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