John, chapter 4

• NKJ John 4:1 Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John 2 (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples),

John, chapter 4

• 3 He left Judea and departed again to Galilee.

• 4 But He needed to go through Samaria.

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• Some scholars get it all wrong here. Some (like renown F.F. Bruce) state that Jesus had to go through Samaria to get from Judea to Galilee. But Jesus is going from Aenon. He is circling to the south and then to the north.

• Jesus “has to go” through Samaria to fulfill the Scriptures that the Messiah brings peace to the nations and is a light from Galilee.

• Jesus is on a conquest – spiritual in nature.

John, chapter 4

• The Pharisees had sharp criticism against John the Baptist and Jesus.

• Jesus is faithful in the midst of criticism but will not play into an advantage for their exploitation.

• As able at this point, Jesus will not let the Pharisees define or manipulate His ministry.

John, chapter 4

• 5 So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

The Gift

• NIV Genesis 48:22 And to you, as one who is over your brothers, I give the ridge of land I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow.“

Nearby was Joseph’s Tomb

• NIV Joshua 24:32 And Joseph's bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph's descendants.

Joseph’s Tomb??? Probably not. But an Islamic weli – domed tomb.

Desecrated by PalestiniansIn 2007, burnt tires and garbage found inside.

A tourist’s take on the site• The Orthodox caretaker watches as

Saliba, our Syriac Christian guide, turns the hand-crank and lowers the bucket into the soft limestone well. The well bottom has varied in depth through the centuries, from 240 feet in A.D. 670 to 67 feet in A.D. 1881. It was "very deep" in Jesus' day (John 4:11). Our guide feeds out what he says are 125 feet of rope before the bucket touches water, then begins the arduous task of raising the bucket back to the surface. Several of us gather around and drink from a common brass cup. This well, from which Jesus once asked a drink, is fed by underground springs, and its water is fresh and cool. Because the water is moving and not from a cistern, the ancients called it "living water" -- a term to which Jesus gave a new and special meaning.

John, chapter 4

• The well, from which Jesus once asked a Samaritan woman for a drink, is fed by underground springs, and its water is fresh and cool. Because the water is moving and not from a cistern, the ancients called it "living water" -- a term to which Jesus gave a new and special meaning.

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• The sixth hour is noon.

• The watering hole was a social spot. The hottest time would be the time to come to avoid crowds.

John, chapter 4

• NIV John 4:7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

This woman goes when the sun is at its peak, perhaps to avoid

people.

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• 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?") (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

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• Samaritans built a rival temple on Mount Gerazim, not far from the well.

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• According to 2 Kings 17 and Josephus (Antiquities 9.277–91), the people of Israel were removed by the king of the Assyrians (Sargon II). The king of the Assyrians then brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avah, Emath, and Sepharvaim to place in Samaria. Because God sent lions among them to kill them, the king of the Assyrians sent one of the priests from Bethel to teach the new settlers about God's ordinances.

• Samaritan means keeper of the ordinances.• The eventual result was that the new settlers worshipped

both the God of the land and their own gods from the countries from which they came.

John, chapter 4

• According to Samaritans,[11] it was on Mount Gerizim that Abraham offered Isaac in human sacrifice Genesis 22:2.

• The Torah mentions the place where God shall choose to establish His name (Deut 12:5), and Judaism takes this to refer to Jerusalem. However, the Samaritan text speaks of the place where God has chosen to establish His name, and Samaritans identify it as Mount Gerizim, making it the focus of their spiritual values.

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• Relations soured when returning Jews from Babylon met Samaritan resistance.

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• In the 2nd century BC a particularly bitter series of events eventually led to a revolution of the Israelites against their Greek oppressors.

• Antiochus IV Epiphanes was on the throne of the Seleucid Empire from 175 to 163 BCE. His determined policy was to Hellenize his entire kingdom and standardize religious observance. According to 1 Maccabees 1:41-50 he proclaimed himself the incarnation of the Greek god Zeus and mandated death to anyone who refused to worship him. A major obstacle to his ambition was the fidelity of the Jews to their historic religion and their refusal to allow their homeland to be defiled.

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• The universal peril led the Samaritans, eager for safety, to repudiate all connection and kinship with the Jews. The request was granted. This was put forth as the final breach between the two groups, being alleged at a much later date in the Christian bible (John 4:9), "For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans."

• “the Samaritan temple had to be renamed either Zeus Hellenios (according to Josephus) or, more likely, Zeus Xenios, (in according to 2 Macc. 6:2) Bromiley, 4.304).

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• During the Hellenistic period, Samaria (like Judea) was largely divided between a Hellenizing faction based in Samaria (Sebastaea) and a pious faction, led by the High Priest and based largely around Shechem and the rural areas. Samaria was a largely autonomous state nominally dependent on the Seleucid empire until around 129 BCE, when the Jewish Hasmonean king Yohanan Girhan (John Hyrcanus) destroyed the Samaritan temple and devastated Samaria.

Galilee Resettled

• During the Hasmonean period, with the revolt of the Maccabees and the decline of the Seleucid Empire, Galilee was conquered by the newly independent state of Judaea, and the region was resettled by Jews.

Galilee Resettled

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• The Temple of Gerizim was rebuilt after a revolt against the Romans, around 135 AD.

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• Emperor Zeno reigned in a time when the empire was literally falling apart in the late 5th century. The Temple on Mt. Gerizim was again destroyed by his orders. This period is considered the worst for Samaritans.

• Under a charismatic, messianic figure named Julianus ben Sabar (or ben Sahir), the Samaritans launched a war to create their own independent state in 529 CE. With the help of the Ghassanid Arabs, Emperor Justinian I crushed the revolt; tens of thousands of Samaritans died or were enslaved. The Samaritan faith was virtually outlawed thereafter by the Christian Byzantine Empire; from a population once at least in the hundreds of thousands, the Samaritan community dwindled to near extinction.

Samaritan High Priest (Nabulus) and Synagogue, 1920

                                                                                                                                  

Samaritans on nearby Gerazim

NIV Deuteronomy 12:5 But you are to seek the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go. This wasn’t Gerazim.

John, chapter 4

• 10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

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• 11 "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?

• The water in the well was called “living water.”

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• 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

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• 13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

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• 15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

• She doesn’t understand at all what is being implied.

• Who could at this point?

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• 16 He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

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• 17 "I have no husband," she replied. Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

John, chapter 4

• This woman is thirsting with a thirst for peace, contentment, and security.

• She tries to quench the thirst to no avail.

• Jesus shows the spiritual thirst in this woman.

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• 19 "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.“

• She changes the subject.

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• 21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

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• The water is the Spirit.

• Every believer is a temple where the Lord dwells.

• Through the Spirit, we all can be forgiven and restored to fellowship with the Lord.

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• 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

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• 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

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• 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." 25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." 26 Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

John, chapter 4

• Jesus is the Temple.

• Believers are Temples also.

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• NIV 1 Corinthians 6:19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

John, chapter 4

• NIV John 4:27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

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• Why is there surprise?

• It is not just that she is a Samaritan, but it might be seen as offensive to strike up conversation with lady out of the blue, with whom there is no formal or familial relationship.

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• 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"

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• 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him. 31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." 32 But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about.“

• ACCURATE TRANSLATION – I have a meal to consume that you have yet to experience.

• MEANING - Jesus’ hunger above all others is to share the Good News.

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• 33 Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" 34 "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

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• 35 Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.

• Some say this is a poetic proverb.• I’ll say proverb because the meter doesn’t flow that well.• Epi tetramaenos 6• Estiv kai o theismos 7 • Erxetai. 3• But it may be poetic in Aramaic. This would be an

interesting study if the phrase is found in that language of the people actually farming the area.

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• Remember John points to greater spiritual realities.

• Spring of life within – Holy Spirit.

• The greatest hunger is the Gospel to abound.

• The greatest harvest is of souls.

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• 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.

John, chapter 4

• NIV John 4:39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did.“

• Jesus recognized her life of sin and yearnings.

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• 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.

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• 42 They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

Savior of the World

• Wouldn’t the Savior be a physical avenger for the state of Judah??? How could Samaritans call Him Savior???

• Because He can lead us to be temples of the Lord to fellowship with Him at all times and places. He is primarily a SPIRITUAL SAVIOR conquering for every soul.

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• 43 After the two days he left for Galilee. 44 (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.)

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• 45 When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there.

• The Galileans may have also been aghast at the greed of the Temple and approved of Jesus’ actions for possible reform.

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• 46 Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum.

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• 47 When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death. 48 "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe.“

• The Samaritans believed for sake of discovering fellowship restored with God, being living temples.

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• 49 The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies." 50 Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live." The man took Jesus at his word and departed.

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• 51 While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52 When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour."

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• 53 Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.

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• What does this say about the Samaritans who believed without signs???

• NIV John 20:29 Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

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• 54 This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee.