Bible Study Notes - Gospel of John 4:1-26 Part II

Bible Study Notes – Gospel of John 4:1-26 

Part II

• Her entrenched beliefs will be the basis of her defensiveness later in the conversation.  Like many contemporary Christians, this woman struggles to align her beliefs with her lifestyle.  When questioned about nay inconsistencies, she appeals to the correctness of her theoretical beliefs as justification.
• In an act of pure empathy, Jesus foregoes furthering any controversy about religion. He shifts the conversation to a discussion of genuine spirituality as it develops as a natural outgrowth of a vibrant relationship with Almighty God.
• In employing the symbolism of living water, Jesus demonstrates the limited ability of staid religious beliefs to affect positively someone’s life.  Just as anyone drinking from Jacob’s well at noon on a sunny day in this Middle Eastern town will thirst again, anyone relying upon theoretical religious concepts will still thirst for love, peace, joy and wholeness.
• In contrast, Jesus offers living water which is the Holy Spirit and His fruit which become an everlasting spring of abundant and eternal life within anyone who receives Christ.  The fruit of the Holy Spirit is faithfulness, gentleness, goodness, joy, kindness, love, peace, patience and self-control.  These attributes yield an unimaginable life!  Moreover, they naturally further a growing relationship with Almighty God.  Whether you adhere to orthodox doctrine or not, if you progress in a relationship with God, He will satisfy any existential thirst you have.
• The Samaritan woman immediately asks for living water.  Although, she still relegates her thirst to a physical need instead of spiritual or emotional ones.  Yet, her question ends with a desire to remove the need of returning to the well each day.  Perhaps, her statement signifies the limitations she sees in her religion.
• With loving empathy, Jesus incredulously responds by asking her to call her husband.  This conversation must have been one of the strangest ones the Samaritan woman ever had.  In reply to her request for living water, Jesus instructs this woman to retrieve her husband.  What does her marital status have to do with her desire for living water?  Actually, it is central to her ability to receive it.  Prophetically, Jesus knows she possesses a very deep thirst for genuine, unconditional love.  He senses her tremendous need which ritualistic religion cannot satisfy.  Significantly, Jesus does not raise the issue to condemn or demean her.  He addresses her deepest need and pain.  Practically speaking, he feels her need thereby showing her considerable and incredible empathy.  He switches places with this woman because His heart feels her pain.
• The Samaritan woman answers factually.  She says “I have no husband.”  This fact, however, cloaks her deep emotional, spiritual and psychological need.  Her limited truthfulness demonstrates the inadequacies of her religious commitment.
• Jesus acknowledges the truth of her statement.  Yet, he challenges her to examine the underlying and more significant truth which belies the factual correctness of her answer.  Having been married five times previously and currently living with a man, this Samaritan woman greatly desires love.  I imagine she probably is not older than forty if she has reached that age.  Consider her internal thirst for relational and financial security which she expects to find in marriage.  Imagine the cumulative emotional pain she suffers as she risks again and again to find genuine love.  Ponder the self-condemnation she imparts upon herself as a “serial monogamist.”  Think of the things her mother, siblings, childhood friends and neighbors have said to her over the years.  Then as well as now, society assuredly judges and dismisses someone who experiences this number of marriages.  In stark contrast, Jesus departs from this conventional practice.  He refuses to condemn this woman.  He loves here and desires inner healing and wholeness for her.  Jesus does not humiliate this woman; instead he genuinely empathizes with her hurt and seeks her restoration.
• Regrettably, she reignites the religious and ethnic argument.  She appeals to the mountain on which they are standing as her religious and personal justification.  Whereas she respects Jesus as a prophet, she believes his words emerge from his Jewish beliefs. 
• On the contrary, Jesus redirects the conversation toward genuine spirituality.  In the twenty-first verse, he dismisses her emphasis upon geography whether on Jacob’s mountain or in Jerusalem.  Without any definitive commitment to God with a heartfelt intention to strive for integrity, does it matter where you worship?
• In the next verse, Jesus declares salvation originates with the Jews.  After all, Yahweh makes His initial covenant with the Israelites who are to be a light unto every other nation.  Then, Jesus who is the Lord and Savior of the world is a Jew.  Accordingly, anti-Semitism is antithetical to Christianity.  I refer you to Romans 9 to 11 where Paul details God’s covenantal commitment to Israel even in the new covenant with Jesus Christ.
• The twenty-third and twenty-fourth verses arguably comprise the heart of this passage.  Jesus defines true worshipers as those people who glorify and honor the Father in Spirit and in truth.  Disciples develop a vibrant relationship with the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, the Triune God.  The Holy Spirit is not a religious concept.  He is a Person with whom believers relate in order to know His voice and receive His wisdom.  The Scriptures contain Christ’s truth.  Disciples adhere to the Bible in their lifestyles.  James exhorts us to be “doers of the Word” more so than mere “hearers of the Word.”  Our Heavenly Father seeks worshipers whose lifestyle accords with Christ’s commands. 
• Jesus says God is spirit.  This teaching relegates the enduring controversies about Christ’s physical appearance to meaninglessness.  Ultimately, we are eternal spirits who are born of the Great Eternal Spirit, Almighty God Himself.  To honor and glorify Him, we do so with love, truth, justice, joy and integrity.
• Still, the Samarian woman returns to her religious argument.  She dismisses Jesus’ teachings with a reference to the coming Messiah who will explain divine truth.
• Jesus concludes their conversation with a self-declaration as the Messiah.
• The Samaritan woman discovers genuine faith in Almighty God as she encounters Jesus.  God offers the same privilege to anyone who humbly and authentically receives Jesus into his or her heart.

Bible Study Notes - Gospel of John 4:1-26 - Part I

Bible Study Notes – Gospel of John 4:1-26 – Part I

We continue our study of the Gospel of John, “Encountering Jesus.”  The great apostle of love writes this gospel to share the human side of Almighty God whom Jesus personifies during His earthly journey.  In Jesus, we glimpse the essence of God’s unconditional love.  Jesus declares the “Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.”  In Jesus, God identifies directly with our daily challenges.  As we study John, we will focus upon Jesus’ teachings and the life changing encounters of the people who meet him.

This week’s passage is a very familiar text which records the encounter of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.  When we study a passage about which we have heard many sermons and studied often in Sunday School or Weekly Bible Study and Prayer Meeting, we fall prey to the tendency and temptation of concluding there is no greater or further revelation on this text.  Consequently, I ask you to pray immediately and ask the Holy Spirit to share a fresh revelation of the Word of God with you as you open your mind and heart to Him.  Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal new, fresh and penetrating insights which you can apply to our own life as you strive for greater maturity as a disciple.

Usually, people approach this text by emphasizing the acuteness with which Jesus identifies the hidden sin of the Samaritan woman.  She conveniently withholds her five past marriages and current arrangement of living together with a man to whom she is not married.  Notwithstanding these very personal moral and ethical challenges she has, she steadfastly defends her religious convictions.  She straightforwardly rebuffs Jesus’ approach and teaching about Almighty God.  This woman perseveres in an emerging debate about the nature, promises and character of God. 

Parenthetically, the Samaritan woman is more than chagrined at Jesus’ request for a drink of water from her.  The Samaritans and Jews intensely despised each other because of centuries of petrified hatred.  In 722 BCE, the Assyrians sacked the Jewish people and nearly destroyed their culture, language, literature and religion.  Afterwards, some Jews taken in captivity intermarried with the Assyrians; their offspring became the Samaritans.  The Jews who forcefully resisted this assimilation and acculturation disdained their relatives who acquiesced out of fear, convenience and hopelessness.  Pejoratively, the “pure” Jews characterized the Samaritans as “half breeds” who abandoned their heritage, culture, legacy and inheritance as detailed by the covenantal promises of Almighty God.  On the contrary, the Samaritans as partial descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob straightforwardly demanded the promises of these covenants as they exist for any of the patriarchs’ posterity.  In time, these racial, ethnic and cultural differences morph into major theological, political and social controversies.  The enduring hatred between the Samaritans and Jews provide the context of this encounter at well. 

I suggest this encounter centers more upon authentic worship of God than anything else.  The Samaritan woman’s character deficiencies are significant yet secondary.  As the Johannine evangelist stipulates later in the Gospel, moral and ethical obedience are natural outgrowths of a genuine relationship with God.  John’s perspective further recommends religion as a means of a right relationship with God but not a viable or worthy substitute.  This woman fails to see any contradiction between her lifestyle and her beliefs.  She seemingly assumes her “reasonable” religious beliefs surmount her lack of integrity.  Jesus does not condemn her.  Rather, He challenges her concepts about genuine worship of God.  In this exchange, John records the Lord’s pivotal teaching about “true worship of God” which combines Spirit and truth.  I bemoan the prevalent declaration of many celebrities, “I am spiritual and not religious.”  Whereas I am yet to hear a clear discourse detailing the finer points of distinction between these two adjectives, I find it interesting that most people who utilize this phrase have lifestyles reminiscent of the Samaritan woman.  One actress who recently uttered this phrase has been married five times before reaching forty-five years of age.  Does being spiritual rather than religious exempt a person from moral obligations?  Nevertheless, Jesus’ inquiry to the Samaritan woman posits the necessity of lifestyle integrity and doctrinal correctness.  Essentially, He declares God wants people to follow and worship Him who do so with their heart, mind, soul and strength.  In adhering to this “Great Commandment,” we demonstrate our love for Almighty God with a lifestyle of integrity of word and deed.

Consider the following ideas and questions as you study this passage.

• The first verse of this text notes the Pharisee’s concern about Jesus’ rising popularity.  The evangelist notes Jesus’ disciples were gaining more adherents and conducting more baptisms than John the Baptizer.  Earlier in the gospel, John forcefully stated “I must decrease so He can increase.”  Although John is Jesus’ elder cousin, he subordinates his ministry to Jesus in obedience to divine revelation and fulfillment of prophecy.
• Sensing the growing opposition and hatred of the religious rulers, Jesus leaves Judea and retreats to his home turf of Galilee.    As he travels, Jesus goes through Samaria, a place where he would not ordinarily receive hospitable greetings as one hundred percent full-bloodied Jew. 
• In the town of Sychar, Samaria, near a plot of ground Jacob, the father of the twelve Israelite patriarchs, had given to Joseph, Jesus stops for water, rest and refreshment.  Adjacent to Jacob’s well, held as a sacred religious place for the Samaritan people, at approximately noon time, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman.
• Her presence is very odd at this time of day.  Normally, the women of surrounding communities went to this well just after sunrise to catch water for cooking and other daily uses.  This woman’s isolation coerces us to question her motives for being present at a public well in the middle of that day knowing she would encounter multiple men.  What are her motives?
• Interestingly, her paths cross with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Left alone by His disciples who travel to a neighboring town to buy food, Jesus is the man this woman encounters notwithstanding her motives.  He asks her for a drink as she approaches the well to draw water.  Perhaps, she considers this question to be a “pick up line.” 
• Nevertheless, this woman rebuffs Jesus’ question with an inquiry her own.  Knowing the disdain with which Jews held Samaritans, she asks Jesus what leads him to ask her for a drink.  The prejudice against Samaritans by Jews was so great that the latter group would not even use dishes which the former group had utilized.  This practice is reminiscent of the intractable racial prejudice of the American South during the century of segregation following the Civil War.
• In the commanding tenth verse, Jesus answers her with a peculiar reply.  If she knew the gift of God and who really asked for the water, she would quickly reverse roles and ask Him for a drink and in turn receive living water.  Let’s assume the place of the Samaritan woman.  Imagine her reaction to such an odd statement.  Initially, she hesitates because of the longstanding, historical ethnic strife between their respective people.  Allowing her possible ulterior motives given the inconsistency of her timing and loneliness, she finds Jesus’ request for water most interesting as he forthrightly asks although his appearance reveals He is a Jew.  Beyond her amazement about his straightforward and immediate request, she now receives a very perturbing reply which actually questions her understanding of her religion.
• The apostle John, author of the gospel, uses the words of Jesus’ reply in the tenth verse to remind the reader of His divinity.  Further, Jesus is the Messiah for whom both Samaritans and Jews had been waiting for centuries.  The evangelist challenges us to consider how we view Jesus.  How do we define Him? 
• In the eleventh verse, the Samaritan woman inquires practically about Jesus’ lack of a dipper, ladle or bucket with which to draw living water.  Conceivably, many persons upon encountering Jesus ask about the incongruence between His teaching, preaching and healing with modern science and technology.  They would like to exercise faith but they experience difficulty in reconciling the gospel with the scientific method, psychology and other branches of the social and behavioral sciences.  Can the gospel of Jesus Christ continually perform the personal miracle of transformation and renewal when we are able to attempt self-actualization?  Where is this miracle potion and how do we get it?  The woman asks where she can obtain living water. 
• She then asks Jesus if he is greater than Jacob who imparted the Law to his sons.  This question reveals the Samaritan woman’s religious beliefs.  As someone of partial Israelite heritage, she claims Jacob and his forebears as her spiritual ancestors.