Sat Inspiration

Morning Inspiration with Pastor Merritt

“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.” (John 4:1-6)

John records a lot of details in the story that are very, very important, because it is not just who is in the story, but where the story takes place that makes it fascinating. Jesus is at a well and it is not just any well; it is Jacob’s well. Any student of the Old Testament would immediately know where this was. This was a field that Jacob had purchased thousands of years earlier so that he could pitch his tent in the land of Canaan. This was the very first piece of real estate recorded in the Bible that any Jew ever owned in the promise land. You would think it would be a natural place for Jesus to visit – wrong.

Jesus was traveling north from Judea headed up to Galilee. Between those two regions was a territory known as Samaria. Even though it was the shortest path between Judea and Galilee, Jews never, ever, went through Samaria. If you accidentally put one foot on one square inch of Samaria you would never let anybody know it. For Jews, it was the other side of the tracks. It was no-man’s land. Any self-respecting Jew would always take a detour either to the west or to the east even if it added a day’s journey to keep from going through Samaria.

Why? Seven hundred years earlier the Assyrian Empire had invaded the northern territories of Israel, conquered it, took many of the Jewish people into exile, but in order to control the territory replaced them with Gentiles from other conquered territories. Gentiles began to intermarry with Jews and the Jewish race was virtually bread out of existence.

Even worse, the Samaritans out of their hatred for Jews and Judaism, rejected Jerusalem as the center of worship and built their own temple on Mt. Gerazim which happened to be the site of the original tabernacle. Fast forward to the time of Jesus and because of their inner-marriage and idolatry Samaritans were so gross to Jewish people they were seen as even lower than Gentiles. Between the Jew and the Samaritan was a fire of hostility and hatred that was so hot that to touch it meant a first-degree burn.

For Jesus to be in Samaria at all was not only unusual, but it was bordering on scandalous! Samaria was considered a filthy, unclean area and the Samaritans were considered filthy, unclean people and a decent Jew wouldn’t be caught dead in Samaria. That is why it is so fascinating when John says,

“And he had to pass through Samaria.” (John 4:4)

In fact to get to where he was going Jesus not only didn’t have to go through Samaria, but He shouldn’t have gone through Samaria (which tells us something). Sometimes the very places we think we should avoid are the very places God wants us to attend. It is in those places that divine encounters await us that God wants us to experience.