Walking with Jesus to Sychar
Notes
Transcript
HE HAD to go through Samaria
HE HAD to go through Samaria
he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria.
Was it the only route?
From Judea to Galilee
Several options based on the ancient road systems.
So why this route?
He must reveal he is the messiah (Something he rarely does) right here.
In the early part of Johns gospel John invites us to watch the way Jesus introduces himself to people.
They did not always go well:
1. Religious leadership: overturning tables ()
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there.
2. Nicodemus ()
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?
He could not make sense of it.
Even John the baptists disciples appeared confused over Jesus’s identity and relationship to John ()
Now a discussion arose between some of John’s disciples and a Jew over purification. And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.”
All of these stories are from Judea (Ironic)- this is the part of the promised land that prided itself on having a more sophisticated understanding of all things religious.
By the end of chapter three, we begin to wonder if anyone is going to understand who Jesus is.
Then in chapter 4, our expectations go lower as Jesus goes to Sychar in within the Roman district of Samaria.
History: 800 years before Christ, the hebrews in this area rejected the truth the Lord had revealed to them, adopting religious views of the cultures around them. They came to believe there were many legitimate gods, not just the one true God.
As a result the Lord allowed the assyrians to invade and conquer their territory. They exported many of the jews and brought in gentiles and they intermarried.
IN the end, this area became the home of an ethnically mixed and religiously blended people who got some things rigth but many more wrong when it came to worship of the one true God.
See
But when they urged him till he was ashamed, he said, “Send.” They sent therefore fifty men. And for three days they sought him but did not find him.
So these nations feared the Lord and also served their carved images. Their children did likewise, and their children’s children—as their fathers did, so they do to this day.
Remained until the NT era. Samaritans.
If the people of Judea could not understand who Jesus is, how could these people possible get it?
It is noon at the well when Jesus arrives.
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 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.) 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.” 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? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
Living water:
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.”
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.
“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.
But Samaritans only recognize first five books of the Bible so she doesnt get it.
Jesus probes about marriage, she deflects to worship sites.
Samaritans consider nearby Mt Garizim as their holy mountain.
Jews consider Mt Zion, as the appropriate location for God’s temple.
So she just says, we will just wait for Messiah to tell us who is right, when he finally comes one day.
I am he!
WHY would Jesus make such a rare and powerful statement here?
We have been here before!
Their ancestors had worshipped on this mountain, just like the woman said, so this is a place Jesus had to go.
Sychar did not exist in OT times.
IN the OT the pass between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim - a town called Shechem. (Map)
This town hosted some of the most powerful moments of history associated with the coming Messiah.
Abram:
three great promises ()
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
family would grow to be a great nation
Lord would give this nation a land of its own
and from that family, on that land, the promised savior would be born.
When Abram traveled to the heart of this newly promised land, the Lord appeared to him at Shechem. ()
Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
2. Jacob (Abraham’s grandson)
a. Returning to the promised land after an extended stay at Paddan Aram. Purchased a plot of land, built memorial.
And Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, on his way from Paddan-aram, and he camped before the city. And from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, he bought for a hundred pieces of money the piece of land on which he had pitched his tent. There he erected an altar and called it El-Elohe-Israel.
Carried a lot of significance so he wanted his family to visit it often. Dug a well there.
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.
3. Joshua
a. At the beginning of the conquest of Canaan and at the end.
b. Messiah would come from this people on this land, the conquest was critical to the ushering in of Messiah.
c. He took them to Shechem to review their history, their legal obligations to the Almighty, and the important role they played in the salvation plan God had given to Abraham.
At that time Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal,
just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, “an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool.” And they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings.
And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written.
And all Israel, sojourner as well as native born, with their elders and officers and their judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark before the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded at the first, to bless the people of Israel.
And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law.
There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.
Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel. And they presented themselves before God.
And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.
Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac.
And to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. And I gave Esau the hill country of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt.
And I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in the midst of it, and afterward I brought you out.
“ ‘Then I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea. And the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea.
And when they cried to the Lord, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians and made the sea come upon them and cover them; and your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. And you lived in the wilderness a long time.
Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan. They fought with you, and I gave them into your hand, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you.
When you assemble all these stories together, the importance of this place called Shechem or Sychar becomes clear. Before Jerusalem became Israel’s religious center, even before Shiloh hosted the Tabernacle, Shechem was the religious focal point of the OT.
No geographic location carried greater expectations about the coming savior.
No place had waited longer for His coming. So Jesus returns here and makes himself known clearly.
This is a place Jesus HAD to go.
A place we have to go to, we need a savior! Discuss this.