Alive To God

Do you remember the Magic Eye stereograms that were all the rage a few decades ago? You saw a poster with a jumble of colors, focused on a dot in the center, and soon a jet in 3D popped out of the poster, coated with the random pattern saw earlier. Every now and then we would read the Word of God, reading a passage we’ve read many times, but then, focusing on it a little longer, there comes a freshness, a great dimension is added to it, and we wonder. Sometimes we get these “Aha” moments when the Spirit opens our understanding.

Passing through Samaritan territory, Jesus did what Jews don’t normally do. He took time to start a conversation with a marginalized woman which started when He sat at a well asking her for water.

She, surprised, asked, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (John 4:9). She points right at the bone of contention. The elephant in the room. They were speaking from opposite sides of the tracks. How, indeed, could He ask?

Because He’s Jesus. He came to break down walls that separate people from God. Easing the conversation forward, Jesus addresses her with a spiritual question, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (v. 10).

We are continuing the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at a well. But the claims Jesus makes of Himself are not what she expects.

When Jesus, tired by His journey from Judah midway to Galilee, asks for a drink, the woman who came to the well is puzzled or perhaps suspicious. “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (John 4:9). She knows that Jews avoid her people at all costs.

Jesus said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (v. 10).

In many places, racial, religious, and cultural differences divide us from one another. Jesus transcends these boundaries, bringing salvation to all peoples. In John 4, we see Jesus breaking through boundaries.

John 4:1-3 gives the reason why Jesus is on the move from His place in Judah at the end of the previous chapter. He is returning north to His hometown in Galilee.

What changes everything, though, is v. 4, “But He needed to go through Samaria.” Generally, the Jews avoided meeting Samaritans by taking a longer route around them. The Samaritans had intermingled with other races when the Assyrians led the northern tribes into captivity in 722 BC, and left behind Gentile captives from other lands.

There are times when people seem to be depending on you or praising you more than they ought, and you need to direct them to trust in Someone greater than yourself. Unfortunately, sometimes we’ll be full of ourselves when we speak. In this passage, we’ll see how John the baptizer, called “Rabbi” by his followers, dealt with it.

John 3:21-24 introduces the setting and the characters. The time is prior to John’s imprisonment, and his followers were baptizing at the Jordan river, just south of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus and His disciples were further south, in Judea, also baptizing.