The Word This Week
John 4:1…
In some cases, people come to Jesus. In some cases, Jesus goes to them.
Whatever is necessary in each individual case to bring each person to saving faith in Christ is what Jesus will do.
We often refer to these occasions as ‘divine appointments.’
Here we read Jesus, “needed to go through Samaria.” Without understanding the cultural significance of this statement, this may seem innocuous, but it wasn’t. It was something that would have jumped off the page in Jesus’ time. No Jew would go through Samaria unless it was absolutely necessary.
To the Jew, the entire region of Samaria was considered ceremonially unclean. This region was inhabited by an amalgam of peoples the Jews regarded as ‘mongrels.’
When the ten northern tribes were exiled by Assyria in 722 B.C., the Assyrians had removed the Jews living there and replaced them with people from other nations they had conquered. But the Assyrians soon discovered the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was displeased with this arrangement, and much woe came to the region.
So the Assyrians, believing God was merely a God of this region, resettled some of the apostate Jewish priests from this region back into the land to teach the people the Assyrians had resettled there the ways of the Hebrew God.
Over the proceeding 700 years, (prior to the coming of Christ,) these people had appropriated this faith system they had been taught by the apostate Jewish priests. Unfortunately, this was the broken Jewish faith system practiced by the northern tribes of Israel which had caused God to send them into exile by the Assyrians in the first place.
So, in Jesus’ day, no true self-respecting Jew would traverse through Samaria intentionally.
But Jesus needed to go through there. (We can only imagine what His disciples must have been thinking.)
And now we see why. Jesus knew there were sinners there who would hear His words and place their faith in His words of salvation. We tend to focus on the woman at the well – and with good reason – but we see the entire village also came to believe in Christ. Jesus knew why He needed to go through Samaria.
Pastor Bill
In some cases, people come to Jesus. In some cases, Jesus goes to them.
Whatever is necessary in each individual case to bring each person to saving faith in Christ is what Jesus will do.
We often refer to these occasions as ‘divine appointments.’
Here we read Jesus, “needed to go through Samaria.” Without understanding the cultural significance of this statement, this may seem innocuous, but it wasn’t. It was something that would have jumped off the page in Jesus’ time. No Jew would go through Samaria unless it was absolutely necessary.
To the Jew, the entire region of Samaria was considered ceremonially unclean. This region was inhabited by an amalgam of peoples the Jews regarded as ‘mongrels.’
When the ten northern tribes were exiled by Assyria in 722 B.C., the Assyrians had removed the Jews living there and replaced them with people from other nations they had conquered. But the Assyrians soon discovered the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was displeased with this arrangement, and much woe came to the region.
So the Assyrians, believing God was merely a God of this region, resettled some of the apostate Jewish priests from this region back into the land to teach the people the Assyrians had resettled there the ways of the Hebrew God.
Over the proceeding 700 years, (prior to the coming of Christ,) these people had appropriated this faith system they had been taught by the apostate Jewish priests. Unfortunately, this was the broken Jewish faith system practiced by the northern tribes of Israel which had caused God to send them into exile by the Assyrians in the first place.
So, in Jesus’ day, no true self-respecting Jew would traverse through Samaria intentionally.
But Jesus needed to go through there. (We can only imagine what His disciples must have been thinking.)
And now we see why. Jesus knew there were sinners there who would hear His words and place their faith in His words of salvation. We tend to focus on the woman at the well – and with good reason – but we see the entire village also came to believe in Christ. Jesus knew why He needed to go through Samaria.
Pastor Bill