EXPLORE IT! - John 4:5-26

The Pharisees learn that Jesus is baptizing more people than John the Baptist, although the text says that "...in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples."

And when Jesus learns this, he leaves Judea, and returns to Galilee. He then goes to the Samarian town of Sychar, and rests at Jacob's Well. 

His disciples go into town to get food, and while Jesus is waiting for them, a Samaritan woman comes to the well and Jesus asks her for a drink. 

The woman is surprised and says that Samaritans and Jews do not associate. 

Jesus responds that if she really knew who he was, she would have asked for the "water" that Jesus was offering. 

Jesus says, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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."

Like the story of Nathanael sitting beneath the fig tree, this story also brings to mind the life of Jacob. This story takes place at Jacob's Well, and like Jacob, Jesus offers the young woman he finds there water... though not of the same variety.

The woman asks for this "water" and Jesus tells her to go and find her husband and bring him back. 

The woman states she has no husband, and Jesus says that in fact she has had five husbands and is now living with a man who is not her husband. 

She then believes that he is a prophet. 

Jesus then teaches her about worshiping God, how it has been done in the past, at certain locations, and how it will be done properly in the future.

When the Samaritan woman started up a conversation with Jesus about the proper place to worship — this question would have been a hot topic to most Jewish rabbis, many of whom believed that God should only be worshiped in Jerusalem! 

But Jesus declares that in the new age, it will no longer be about worshiping in a particular place. Worship won’t be a matter of geography. Rather, the true test of worship will be whether it’s “in spirit and truth.”

He says, "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. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

The woman then says that the Messiah will come some day and explain all.

Like the Jews, the Samaritans were also anticipating the arrival of the Messiah. They held Moses as the true prophet of God, and they believed the promise in Deuteronomy 18, which stated that a prophet like Moses would one day restore both themselves and their sanctuary. They referred to the Messiah-to-come as the “Restorer.”

A classical Samaritan document writes, “Let the Restorer come safely and sacrifice a true offering. The Restorer will come in peace and reveal the truth and will purify the world and establish the heads of the people as they once were.”

And Jesus declares that he is the Messiah.