Two Stories, One City

Let me tell you two stories...

 

The first comes out of 2 Kings 17, and it's a story of what the Assyrians were notorious for doing to the people that they conquered. Assyria has just conquered Israel and type keep the people from revolt against the king, the king blended people from five other people groups into the land of Samaria with the Samaritans. The people from the five other nations brought with them their own gods, mixing together five different traditions of gods. Lions became a problem in the region attacking villages and brutally killing the people. A wise thought came to the Assyrian King; maybe the lions were a result of the people not worshiping the god of the land of Israel? So he sent some of Israel's priests to Samaria to teach the people how to worship the Lord, and they settled in Sechem. However, the people continued to worship the gods from the five nations, made their own priests, did not follow Torah, nor worship God properly. "They woshiped the Lord, but they also served their idols." Even though they claimed to worship God, they did not.

 

Along walks Jesus hundreds of years later to the town of Sechem...

 

Jesus is sitting by the same well that Jacob had dug nearly a thousand years earlier. He is sitting by himself while the disciples are in the town trying to buy some food, and a young woman walks up...

 

He says to her, "Give me a drink."

 

She replies by asking, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?"

At this point, there is some bitter blood between Jews and Samaritans. The Jews treated them like filth because they had married into those other nations years ago. They hated each other so much so, that they acted much like the nations of Israel and Palestine today.

 

Jesus continues, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."

"Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do you get living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gace us the well, and drank of it himself with his sons and cattle?" To the Hebrew's, living water is when water naturally flows from a fresh source, without man made assitance like a well or modern plumbing.

 

"Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."

 

"Rabbi, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw."

These are some serious word pictures and she answers in a very Hebraic way, understanding what Jesus is saying.

"Go, call your husband and come here."

 

"I have no husband."

 

"You have correct said, 'I have no husband' for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly."

Woah, could Jesus really be mentioning the gods from the five other nations? Could he be telling her that even though they think they worship God, in fact, they do not? Or is Jesus revealing her as an adulterous? What is her reaction? Is she ashamed that some stranger knows that she is an adulterous? Is she taken back by his commanding authority of the Scriptures?

 

Let's see...

"I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and your people say that men ought to worship in Jerusalem."

She instantly goes to the fact that her people do not worship the Lord properly and that her people, like pagans, worshiped on 'high places' (mountains).

"Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for the salvation is from the Jews."

'You worship what you do not know.' They do not know who God really is because centuries of tradition has mixed worship of pagan gods with the worship of God, from the first generation after returning from exile.

"But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

I love her next reaction.

"I know that Messiah is coming; when that he comes, he will teach us all things."

 

"I am who you speak of."

The disciples just now, finally, show up and are confused that Jesus is talking to a Samaritan woman; she leaves her water-pot and runs into town to tell the city,

"Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done, is this the Messiah?"

Jesus gives a fantastic parable basically highlighting the prejudice that they have against the Samaritans but the harvest is ripe, they should go reap.

The city invites Jesus to stay with them for two days, to ask questions. After two days, they believed because of his words and say,

"We have heard for ourselves and know that this is the savior of the world."

 

If we paint the picture that the Samaritan woman was an adulterer and was amazed that a stranger, a Jew, miraculously knew that she was an adulterer, we are doing the same thing that the disciples did. We building prejudices against the Samaritans and miss that they were ripe for the harvest, and readily recognized Jesus as Messiah, not just of Israel or Judah but of the whole world! What could we draw from this?

If we are building prejudices against people in the Bible, how much more can we build prejudices against others in our life? How are we prejudiced against a people and think that they won't or can't receive God's word; and because of that prejudice, we ignore these people?

What of the young woman and the Samaritans for a moment. How many of our doctrines, dogmas, rituals, and practices could be the result of generations and centuries of mixing in other gods and traditions and beliefs? Could there be beliefs so fundamental to the faith, that are flat wrong? Is the God we think we worship, not really our husband?

If Jesus showed up today, would we recognize that he trully is the Savior of the world like the people of Shechem so long ago?

Let's see that Jesus really is living water, the Messiah, savior of the world.
Let's find out who Jesus really is, what he really taught.
Let's be springs of living water, examples of who Jesus is, to the communities and the world around us.