Who is Jesus: The Messiah to be worshiped by all nations
Read: John 4
Introduction: The previous chapter (Jn 3) showed that while saving faith in Jesus and his death on the cross were already proclaimed by the Old Testament, even the best of the rabbis such as Nicodemus were unaware. By contrast, the present chapter 4 explains how the new faith taught by Jesus differs from that of the Old Testament (represented symbolically by an ancient well that was built by the Jewish patriarch Jacob). The difference concerns the indwelling of believers by the Holy Spirit which only Jesus made possible.
Background: If needed, let someone briefly explain terms such as Samaritans; Jacob’s well in Sychar. Also, like in many other places in the Bible, ‘water’ serves here as a metaphor for the Spirit of God (cf Jn 7:39).
1) Why did Jesus have to travel through Samaria, and why was it unusual for Jews to go there?*
2) The Samaritan woman came to Jacob’s well to fetch water: Why in mid day when the sun was burning at its zenith?
- Picture your stereotypical religious man in a similar situation, equipped with tracts and keen to proselytize ‘unbelievers’: How could this conversation have gone wrong (or nowhere at all)?
- By contrast, how was Jesus able to steer their conversation to faith, life and death in a way that this lady was interested?
- How did Jesus model here genuine empathy?
- What did he himself know about suffering rejection? Hint: What had just happened before?
- Why is empathy essential to touch the heart of others?
3) How was this lady disposed towards God and religion, and in what aspects can you identify with that?
- Do you think that she was genuinely interested in questions about the worship of God? Why or why not?
- What did stir her interest in the first place?
- How would you expect her multiple marriages to have influenced such an interest? And why did Jesus draw attention to these broken and unlawful relationships: To condemn or to heal?
- As a woman, and as a Samaritan, she did not expect Jesus to talk to her, least of all in the way he did. Why was she surprised that Jesus not only asked her for a drink of water, but offered to procure for her another source?
4) Why was the metaphor of ‘living water’ a perfect choice to explain the difference between OT religion and the new faith introduced by Jesus?
- What distinguishes the chore of lifting and carrying heavy water buckets for miles from having permanent access to a running ‘fountain tap’ like the ones we are used to?
- In what sense does that illustrate the difference between the new Christian faith and the old covenant of Mosaic law?
5) Faith in Jesus is neither legalism nor liberal licentiousness where ‘everything goes’. How is that explained by this story? ->
- Where did Jesus point the woman from Samaria to recognize the difference? v14
6) What does it mean for you to worship in Spirit and in Truth?
- What characterizes such worship: Does it matter where (vv 5-8), when (v6, cf 2Tim 4:2), how (v8), whom (v34), why (v34) his followers will worship?
- Does ‘in Spirit and in Truth’ simply mean: more spiritual (or more true) than in the Old Testament? [No: The OT is no less true or less spiritual than the NT. What is new about worship ‘in Spirit and in Truth’ is that now the worshiper can and must be “born of the Spirit” (Jn 3:5), i.e. born of God himself (Jn 1:13), and be set free and then led by the Spirit of truth, Jn 8:32 16:13 to be capable of such worship].
- Can ‘in Spirit and in Truth’ mean a balance of ‘one half Spirit, the other half of it Truth’? Why not? [No: The Spirit is the Spirit of Truth Jn 14:17; 16:13, the words of Jesus are the truth (Jn 17:17) and Holy Spirit (Jn 6:63) => To say that worship should be ‘half of each’ would amount to saying no more than that it should be two halves of the same, which would be pointless. Rather than depicting Spirit and Truth as complementary, “In Spirit and in Truth” emphasizes they are as inseparable as the two sides of a coin: When devoid of truth, worship will always be spiritless, and without the Spirit, it will alway be emptied of truth, the truth embodied by Jesus (Jn 14:1) as revealed and taught by the Spirit]
7) How did Jesus himself model that new kind of worship in the present story? How did he not do it?
- Look at his servant heart and attitude towards all the people he encountered here: How did his ‘sowing’ and ‘harvesting’ illustrate what he meant by worship in Spirit and Truth, vv35-38?
- What do the metaphors of sowing and harvesting stand for?
- How does such worship meet the CARE criteria, C: Christ-like; A: Alive; R: Real; E: Eternal?
8) Personal & application
- What will change in those who actually drink the ‘water’ that Jesus gives, vv14 & 28-29?
- How does that compare to your own experience of when you became a Christian?
- What has been your example for how we are and how we are not to worship?
- What is so attractive about how Jesus worshiped God?
- What particular aspect here inspires you to change the way you think of and ‘do’ worship?
* Jews typically traveled around rather than through Samaria: They regarded its inhabitants as reprobates who had left the pure worship of God already since the 6th century BC when they intermarried with gentile neighbors, i.e. since the time when their Jewish relatives were exiled in Babylon. Due to hostility from the Jewish elite, Jesus had to escape to Galilee. Besides escaping persecution, Jesus probably also chose this less traveled territory to meet its people.
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