The disciples are scratching their heads, but many Samaritans come to faith in Jesus as the Christ.
1. We should always want to know more of Christ.
– 4:28-29, 39-40. Thomas Chalmers called this ‘the expulsive power of a new affection’. The Samaritan woman may not know much at this stage but she did what she could.
– 4:29, 39, referring to her sins in 4:16-19. She does not hide it: ‘This man hurt me but somehow this man healed me. I found grace in this man even when He wounded me.’
A two-day camp with Jesus! His lessons with the disciples were wonderful enough – Luke 24:26-27, 44-46. But here it is two days.
2. Jesus blesses the desire to grow in faith.
– 4:41-42. Many Samaritans came – ‘more people by much’. They already were professing faith. When the Scottish preacher John Brown of Haddington died in 1787, his last words were ‘My Christ’. There is an element of that with these Samaritans but they are saying not so much that they had come to faith in Christ – they already had done that – but that their faith was strengthened greatly through this two-day teaching experience with Jesus. Faith in Christ if true and alive grows.
3. Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world.
– 4:42; 1 John 4:14. Hadrian, who reigned from A.D. 117 to 138, was called the ‘Saviour of the world’. But nobody today takes that seriously. Salvation comes from the Jews – 4:22. But it does not remain with the Jews – John 1:9, 29; 3:17; 12:20-21, 31-32. – Modern day Samaritans are little more than 700 of them, from only four families.