Woman at the Well - John 4:1-36

Read John 4:1-36

In John 3 we met the Pharisee Nicodemus who was a part of a group that devoted themselves to strictly obeying God’s law. (However, by the time Jesus came, the order had set up thousands of rules that actually weren’t in the Torah.) We know in verse one that Jesus’s disciples were baptizing more than John the Baptist did during his ministry. (At this time John was in prison.) Once the Pharisees heard of this, Jesus decided to go to Galilee. Galilee is on the north part of Israel, while Judea was on the part of Israel. In between was the land of Samaria. Samaritans were kind of Jews, but kind of not. They descended from Israel’s fathers (e.g. Jacob), however they were not full-blood Jews. They also didn’t keep many of the commandments in the Torah, such as worshipping in the temple. Samaritans worshipped on mountains, or “high places”. Prophets and good kings in the Old Testament detested worship in the high places, and even tore them down, since that was where pagans worshipped. This, among many other things, was the reason why Jews LOATHED Samaritans. They hated them so much, when they traveled between north and south Israel, they would go the long way around Samaria, even though it took a lot longer, and traveling in those days was slow and abysmal.

This passage contains many points, but I’m going to focus on one aspect of the passage. The woman at the well is eager to know of the water Jesus gives, which will leave the person no longer thirsty. This water, as the Scripture says, “will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit, who He talks about later in the passage. “A time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem”. Because of the Holy Spirit, we don’t have to meet God in the temple. That’s because all of us Christians are temples that the Holy Spirit dwells in. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.” (1 Corinthians 6:19). We don’t have to go anywhere special to worship Him. We can worship Him, not just at church, but anywhere. That means in school, at home, or like Tim Tebow, on the football field. As long as we are worshipping God in spirit and in truth.