“Bible places: Samaria:
John 4:1-6
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
If someone were to, out of the blue, give you $50,000 to visit any place on earth, where would you go? What would you like to see?
Apparently, Hong Kong, with its exotic foods, shops, and museums, is the place most people would like to go. It’s the home of Disney’s 4-D Magical World, not to mention “The Peak,” one of the most breathtaking city sites in the world. Of course, London is popular, and so is Dubai, Singapore, and Istanbul, Turkey.
But you know, there’s also a list of places where no one wants to go? Take Ilha de Queimada Grande, just south of Sao Paulo, Brazil, for example. To give you a clue why no one wants to go there, Ilha de Queimada Grande means, “Snake Island.” And not only does no one ever want to go there, no one even lives there--it’s just too dangerous! Just to visit, you’ll have to get special permission from the Brazilian Navy.
Then there’s Azerbaijan, a small island in the Caspian Sea. It’s where you can find right about four hundred mud volcanoes that, all day, every day, shoot mud, gas, and flames high up into the air.
And last, but not least, there’s Ramree Island in Burma. It’s the home of thousands of big, hungry, saltwater crocodiles, malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and venomous scorpions. And if that’s not bad enough, they say, in the morning vultures come and clean up what the crocodiles left.
I really wouldn’t want to go there either.
And in Jesus’ day, there was another place no one ever wanted to go--and that was a place called Samaria.
Please turn in your Bible to page 1131, and you’ll see what I mean. I’ll start at John chapter 4, verse 1: “Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, (although Jesus Himself did not baptize, but only His disciples), He left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 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.”
These words from John chapter 4 take us to the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry among us. In chapter 1, He called His first disciples. In chapter 2, He changed water into wine. And in chapter 3, He said to a man named Nicodemus on a cool, dark night: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son.”
And just as soon as He began His work among us, teaching, healing, and baptizing, it didn’t take long for the religious establishment, the Sadducees and Pharisees, to notice. So rather than cause any more controversy or conflict, (at least, not yet!), it was time to “get out of Dodge,” to get out of town. So as it says in verse 3, “He left Judea and departed again for Galilee.”
Now before I go any farther, let me mention two things. First, let me give you a little geography lesson, because it’s rather important.
You see, in Jesus’ day, there were three regions that were stacked one on top of another. Galilee was in the north, and Judea was down in the south. And right in between was a place called Samaria.
And who lived there? People called Samaritans, of course!
So who were the Samaritans? That’s where it gets a little more complicated.
You see, back in the days of David and Solomon, the north and south were a united kingdom, a place of power and prosperity. But after Solomon died, the nation fractured into two kingdoms--Judah in the south and Israel in the north. And while the southern kingdom was usually faithful to God, the northern kingdom was not. And over time, two hundred years time, things went from bad to worse, so bad, that God had no choice but to send another nation, the kingdom of Assyria, to destroy them. Anyone who lived were taken as prisoners of war.
And as the years passed, that place in the middle began to fill with other people, neither Jew nor Gentile, but something in between. And along with them came a very different people with very different backgrounds and beliefs. Not only did they develop their own language and customs, they had their own Bible (which contained only the first five books!). And when they built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim, that was the last straw. From that point on, good Jews, faithful Jews, God-fearing Jews, absolutely hated them, and would have nothing to do with them.
To give you a little better idea just how they felt, a little later in chapter 8, the Pharisees will say to Jesus, “Are we not right in saying that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?”
You get the point.
So if you were a good, faithful, God-fearing Jew who planned to travel from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north, what would you do? You would go miles out of your way just to avoid them.
But that’s not what Jesus did. Look at verse 4: “And He had to pass through Samaria.”
Why did He have to pass through Samaria? If you think about it, He didn’t really have to. He could have gone around it, just like everyone else.
But Jesus knew that if you’re going to reach out to Samaritans, you have to go to Samaria.
Let me say it again, because that’s a first lesson we should learn from this text. If you’re going to reach out to Samaritans, you have to go to Samaria.
Now it’s easy to say that reaching people for Christ isn’t always comfortable and, sometimes, it’s nearly impossible. But just as firefighters would never stand outside and call out to those still inside, “You better come out before the house burns down!” we too need to reach out to save them!
Besides, isn’t that how it always was with Jesus? When He came to earth, He didn’t spend so much time with the Sadducees and the Pharisees, the spiritually elite. Instead, He reached out to the poor, the orphaned, the widowed, the lonely, and the outcast. He ate with tax collectors and “sinners.”
And when men asked why He ate with tax collectors and sinners, He answered: “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” And He said in Matthew 18: “For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save the lost.”
And what happened as He sat down beside that well? Verse 7: “A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’”
Now at the risk of getting ahead of myself, between Jesus and that woman stood four invisible walls--a religious wall, a gender wall, a racial wall, and a moral wall.
Even she couldn’t help but notice! Look at verse 9: “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.)”
Or an another translation puts it: “How can a Jewish man like You ask a Samaritan woman like me for a drink?”
And she was right!
In fact, there’s a triple surprise in this verse--first, that a Jew would even speak to a Samaritan. Second, that a Man would speak to a woman He didn’t know in public. And third, that a Jew would drink from a Samaritan’s cup.
But that’s not all! Drop down to verse 16: “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.’”
Now before we jump to any conclusions about this woman’s moral integrity or lack-thereof (five ex-husbands, not to mention a live-in boyfriend?!), you have to remember that she lived in a male-dominated society. Men often did what they wanted, and women ended up with the short end of the stick.
For years, five men had used and abused her. They took what they wanted from her, then left her standing on the side of the street. Then when number six came along, she just couldn’t put herself through it all over again. So she chose to just move in instead.
Think about it! The Jews hated her, her husbands rejected her, and her neighbors shunned her. No wonder she came to draw water at noon, the absolute hottest part of the day!
Yet there we find another important lesson from this text. Jesus didn’t look at her as a category fit to be judged. He looked at her as a sinner in need of a Savior. For even though He knew everything there was to know about her, His love for her didn’t change one bit.
And what good news that is for us! I don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve done. I don’t know the people you’ve hurt, or the people who’ve hurt you.
But Jesus does. Yet still He comes--a Savior for even the worst of sinners, to fill our deepest need.
As one author put it: “There is no one so lost, that God will not save him.”
Mary McLaurine of Frederick, Maryland, has a problem. It’s called “Developmental Topographical Disorientation,” or DTD for short. Though she’s never suffered from a brain injury, a tumor or a stroke, for some strange reason, she can’t form a mental map or image of her surroundings. She has no internal compass. In other words, she gets lost.
The first time it happened was when she was only thirteen. She was staying at a friend’s home, and decided to take their dog for a walk. And after walking just four blocks, she started to head back. That’s when she realized she was lost, like she had been dropped in the middle of a foreign land.
She didn’t know what to do. Should she knock on someone’s door? Should she call the police? Fortunately, a woman happened to recognize the dog, then took her back home.
Even today, at the age of 61, she says, “I still can’t follow a map or directions, and I still get lost and frightened.”
We live in a world full of lost people. Some know it. Most don’t.
Yet it is to us that Jesus once gave this command: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
You know, this story ends in a most amazing way. Just as soon as that woman met Jesus beside the well, she ran back into town and said to all the people, “Come, see a Man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” And as John writes in verse 40: “So when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them, and He stayed there two days. And many more believed because of His word.”
In the words of a hymn: “Waft, waft, ye winds, His story; And you, ye waters, roll, Till, like a sea of glory, It spreads from pole to pole; Till o’er our ransomed nature, The Lamb for sinners slain, Redeemer, King, Creator, In bliss returns to reign.”
We thank You, dear Father, for a Savior who dared to go to a place no one else would ever go. Help us to go to our Samaria’s, wherever they might be, as we seek to share the good news of Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen