Saturday, April 25, 2015

A Samaritan Woman Meets Her Messiah


What we often think that only influential people in a village or in a particular place can bring the difference. We often neglect the way God looks at the things, he considers us great when we ourselves doubt.

The Woman at the well is a well known story in the Gospel of John. But when we look into it in detail, God reveals us that it was not just an accident that Jesus pass through Samaria and the woman meet Jesus - The Messiah. What then happens is History.

This story breaks down some of the most important aspects of our life:

Its not an accident that Jesus wanted to pass through Samaria:


Jesus asks the Woman for Water and Explains the River of Living Water:
This way Jesus makes her understand that the Water which she drinks will be required as she will thirst, but the water Jesus spoke about was the Living Water - There will be no thirsty.
Revelation 7:16 NIV
Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them,' nor any scorching heat.

Jesus asks her to come with her Husband, but we know what she responded. But the point is that even before she could tell Jesus anything, he knows it. Yet he made that choice to tell he to share the Gospel to that place.
1 Corinthians 1:27 NIV
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

Worshiping in Spirit:
There is no limitation of space for worshiping God. That is what Jesus meant. Because the Women's perception is that Worshiping God in a particular place is the only way and that they followed on one way (On the Mountains) and they believed others (Jews) worship in Jerusalem. But Jesus confirmed that God is Spirit and whoever worships him has to worship him in Spirit and truth.

The Disciples - In the act the Disciples were not there, and when they came back from their purchase (to buy food) they saw Jesus talking to a Women. This is not so new, even in today's culture people perceive different things when they just see and not understand. The people had a prejudice that only Jews should talk to Jews, Men should talk with men and the list goes on. But Jesus broke all the rules.




John 4:1-45English Standard Version (ESV)

Jesus and the Woman of Samaria

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]
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 woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)10 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.” 11 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? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.[b] The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 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.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
27 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?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 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.36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 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.”
43 After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testifiedthat a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.

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