Christ the Living Water
William J. Wyne
John 4:1-12
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.
There are many things I love about the Christ of the Bible. One is that he was unafraid to identify himself with the least, the lost, the lonely, and the left out.
This is exactly what we have here in John 4; Jesus comes to this city, this region called Samaria. It's where the least lived (according to the social morays and norms, verse 9.), the lost (according to Jews), the lonely (they worshipped God in the mountains alone, verse 21 Jesus said that the time will come.), and the left out.
The Bible says in verse 3 that he left Judea and departed again into Galilee. In verse 4 it says, that Jesus must need to go through Samaria. Most Jews who were traveling would have gone the long way around. Samaria was the most direct route from Judea to Galilee.
There were three regions stacked upon each other, Galilee was in the North, Samaria was in the middle, and Judea was in the South. But a Jew would rather go around Samaria. They would go East into Perea, cross the Jordon River, and then go North and re-cross the Jordon again rather than to go thru Samaria.
Samaritan and Jews had too much negative history. It goes back to those days in Ezra, when the Temple was being rebuilt after the Jews returned to the land. There were Jews who had been left behind after the siege by the Babylonians for many reasons. They ultimately married Babylonians; they married out side of the faith and ethnicity. Therefore, they took on other ways of faith, a mixture of Judaism and the religion of their spouses. When the Jew re-entered the land again they called them that had been left and married others half breeds. They were multi-cultural and multi- racial and the Jews who proclaimed to be pure Jews refused to allow them to even assist in rebuilding the Temple and wa ...
William J. Wyne
John 4:1-12
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.
There are many things I love about the Christ of the Bible. One is that he was unafraid to identify himself with the least, the lost, the lonely, and the left out.
This is exactly what we have here in John 4; Jesus comes to this city, this region called Samaria. It's where the least lived (according to the social morays and norms, verse 9.), the lost (according to Jews), the lonely (they worshipped God in the mountains alone, verse 21 Jesus said that the time will come.), and the left out.
The Bible says in verse 3 that he left Judea and departed again into Galilee. In verse 4 it says, that Jesus must need to go through Samaria. Most Jews who were traveling would have gone the long way around. Samaria was the most direct route from Judea to Galilee.
There were three regions stacked upon each other, Galilee was in the North, Samaria was in the middle, and Judea was in the South. But a Jew would rather go around Samaria. They would go East into Perea, cross the Jordon River, and then go North and re-cross the Jordon again rather than to go thru Samaria.
Samaritan and Jews had too much negative history. It goes back to those days in Ezra, when the Temple was being rebuilt after the Jews returned to the land. There were Jews who had been left behind after the siege by the Babylonians for many reasons. They ultimately married Babylonians; they married out side of the faith and ethnicity. Therefore, they took on other ways of faith, a mixture of Judaism and the religion of their spouses. When the Jew re-entered the land again they called them that had been left and married others half breeds. They were multi-cultural and multi- racial and the Jews who proclaimed to be pure Jews refused to allow them to even assist in rebuilding the Temple and wa ...
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