Samaritan Ministry and Return to Galilee

The Ministry in Samaria; The Woman at the Well

(Jn 4:1-42)

^4:1When Jesus found out that the Pharisees heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John (2though Jesus didn’t perform the baptisms himself; his disciples did it), ³he left Judaea and headed back to Galilee. ⁴He needed to go through Samaria. ⁵He came to a town in Samaria called Sychar near the plot of land Jacob gave his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there. Jesus was sitting on the well, tired from the trip. It was about noon.

⁷A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and he said to her, “Give me a drink.” (8His disciples had gone into town to buy food.)

⁹The woman said, “How does a Jewish man like you ask a Samaritan woman like me for a drink? Jews don’t associate with Samaritans.”

¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew God’s gift and who’s saying, ‘Give me a drink,’ you’d be asking him to give you living water.”

¹¹“Sir, you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. Where are you going to get ‘living water’? ¹²You aren’t greater than our ancestor Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, his sons, and his herds.”

¹³Jesus answered, “Everybody that drinks this water gets thirsty again. ¹⁴Whoever drinks the water I give him won’t ever get thirsty again. It’ll become a well inside of him, springing up into eternal life.”

15“Sir, give me that water so I won’t get thirsty and have to come here to draw it!”

¹⁶Jesus told her, “Go call your husband and come back.”

17“I don’t have a husband.”

18“You said it well. You’ve had five husbands; the one you’re living with now isn’t your husband. You told the truth.”

¹⁹The woman said, “Sir, you must be a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain. Youpl say people should worship in Jerusalem.”

²¹Jesus told her,

“Believe me, the time’s coming when youpl won’t worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. ²²You don’t know what you’re worshiping. We know what we’re worshiping, because salvation does come from the Jews. ²³But, the time’s coming—and it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. The Father’s looking for people like that to worship him. ²⁴God’s a spirit. and the ones that worship him need to worship him in spirit and truth.”

25“I know the Messiah’s coming [called Christ]. He’ll explain everything.”

²⁶Jesus said, “I am the Messiah.”

²⁷At that point his disciples got back and were surprised he was talking to a woman. But nobody said, “What are you trying to find out?” “Why are you talking to her?” ²⁸She left her water pot, and went in town, and said to the men, 29“Come see a guy that told me everything I ever did. This isn’t the Messiah, is it?” ³⁰They left the town and were on the way to him.

³¹Meanwhile the disciples kept saying, “Rabbi, eat something.”

³²But he said, “I have ‘food’ to eat that you don’t know about.”

³³They said to one another, “Nobody’s brought him anything to eat, have they?”

³⁴Jesus said,

“My ‘food’ is doing the will of the One that sent me and finishing it up. ³⁵Aren’t youpl saying, ‘Harvest is still four months away’? Look; the fields are ready for harvest now. ³⁶Whoever reaps earns wages and gathers grain for eternal life. ³⁷In this respect the saying rings true, ‘One sows, another reaps.’ ³⁸I’ve sent you to reap what you haven’t worked on. Other people have worked, and you’ve joined in their work.”

³⁹From that town many Samaritans believed in him because the woman said, “He told me everything I ever did.” ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans got to where he was, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed two days. ⁴¹Many more believed because of what he said. ⁴²They told the woman, “We don’t believe just because of what you said. We’ve heard him ourselves, and know this really is the Savior of the world.”

The Arrest of John the Baptist

(Lk 3:19-20)

¹⁹When John rebuked Herod the tetrarch about Herodias, his brother’s wife, and the wicked things Herod had done, 20Herod added this on top of them all: he locked John up in prison.

Introductory Statements

About the Galilean Ministry

(Mt 4:12-17; Mk 1:14-15; Lk 4:14-15; Jn 4:43-45)

¹²Jesus heard that John had been arrested. ⁴³After the two days in Sychar, ¹⁴aJesus left for Galilee in the power of the Spirit. ²⁴He testified that a prophet doesn’t get any respect in his hometown. ¹³He moved from Nazareth and settled in Capernaum, ³¹a town in Galilee by the lake in the region of Zebulum and Naphtali. ¹⁴That fulfills what Isaiah the prophet said,

¹⁵“LAND OF ZEBULUM, LAND OF NAPHTALI,

BY THE ROAD ALONG THE LAKE,

BEYOND THE JORDAN,

GALILEE OF THE GENTILES—

¹⁶THE PEOPLE THAT LIVED IN DARKNESS

SAW A BRIGHT LIGHT.

A LIGHT DAWNED ON THE PEOPLE LIVING

IN THE REGION AND SHADOW OF DEATH” [Is 9:1-2].

⁴⁵So when he got to Galilee, the Jews welcomed him because they’d seen what he did in Jerusalem; they’d gone to the festival themselves. ¹⁴bThe news about him spread throughout the region. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everybody was praising him. ¹⁴He was presenting God’s good news: “It’s time; God’s kingdom’s coming. Repent and believe the good news.”

Healing the Official’s Son

(Jn 4:46-54)

⁴⁶Then he went to Cana in Galilee, where he’d turned the water to wine. There was an official whose boy was sick in Capernaum. ⁴⁷When he heard that Jesus had come from Judaea to Galilee, he went to ask him to come down and heal his boy, who was about to die.

⁴⁸Jesus told him, “Unless youpl see signs, you won’t believe, will you?”

⁴⁹The official said, “Sir, come on down before my boy dies.”

⁵⁰Jesus told him, “Go on, your boy’s alive.”

The man trusted him and went on back.

⁵¹As he was going back down to Capernaum, his servants met him and said his child was alive. ⁵²He asked what time he recovered. “Yesterday at one o’clock the fever broke.” ⁵³So his dad knew it was when Jesus said, “Your boy’s alive.” He and his whole household believed. ⁵⁴This was a second sign Jesus did in Galilee, which he did after he came back from Judaea.

The First Rejection at Nazareth

(Lk 4:16-30)

¹⁶He went to Nazareth, where he grew up. He went in the synagogue on the Sabbath as usual, and stood up to read. ¹⁷They gave him a scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he unrolled it to where it says,

18“THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS ON ME.

HE’S ANOINTED ME TO TELL GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR.

HE SENT ME TO ANNOUNCE RELEASE TO CAPTIVES,

AND SIGHT TO THE BLIND,

TO FREE THE AFFLICTED,

¹⁹TO ANNOUNCE THE LORD’S ACCPETABLE TIME” [Is 61:1-2].

²⁰He rolled up the scroll, gave it to the attendant, and sat down. Everybody in the synagogue was looking directly at him. ²¹He began, “Today you can hear this scripture being fulfilled.”

²²They were talking about him and marveling at the eloquent way he was speaking. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”

²³He said,

“No doubt you’ll use this saying against me: ‘Doctor, heal yourself.’ ‘What we heard happened in Capernaum do in your hometown too.’ ²⁴I’m telling you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. ²⁵Lots of widows lived in Israel at the time of Elijah, when it didn’t rain for 3½ years and a severe famine dragged on. ²⁶But Elijah wasn’t sent to any of them but to a widow in Zarephath up around Sidon. ²⁷Lots of lepers lived in Israel at the time of Elisha the prophet, but none of them were cleansed but Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸Everybody in the synagogue just lost it. ²⁹They jumped up and threw him out of town. They hustled him to the brow of the hill the town was built on, to throw him over the cliff. ³⁰But he passed through the mob and left.

Calling Four Fishermen

(Mt 4:18-22; Mk 1:16-20; Lk 5:1-11)

^5:1While the crowd was pressing him and listening to God’s message, he was standing by Lake Gennesaret, ²and saw two boats on the edge of the lake. The fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets.

³He got in one of the boats—Simon’s—and asked him to shove it out a little from the shore. Then he sat down and started teaching the crowd from the boat.

⁴When he stopped teaching, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

⁵Peter answered, “Master, we worked all night and didn’t catch a thing. But, at your bidding I’ll let down the nets.”

⁶When they did, they caught such a big school of fish that their nets started to break. ⁷They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come help. They came and filled both boats so that they were riding low in the water. ⁸When Peter saw it, he fell at Jesus’ knees, “Go away from me; I’m a sinful man, Lord.” ⁹Amazement gripped him and everybody with him over the catch of fish, ¹⁰including James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon.

Jesus said to him, “You don’t need to be afraid. From now on you’ll be ‘catching’ people.”

¹¹When Peter and his brother Andrew brought their boats to land, they left their nets and everything behind and went with him. ¹⁹A little farther along, ²¹James and John were in a boat with their father, mending nets. ²⁰He called them, and they ²²left the boat and their father and the hired help.

Teaching and Miracles in Capernaum

(Mt 8:14-17; Mk 1:21-34; Lk 4:31-41)

³¹He went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee. ²¹He went in the synagogue on the Sabbath and started teaching. ³²The people were astonished. ²²He was teaching them like someone that had authority and not like the scribes.

²³A man in their synagogue had an unclean spirit that shouted, ³⁴“Ah, what’s between you and us, Jesus, you Nazarene? Did you come to destroy us? I know who you are: God’s Holy One.”

²⁵Jesus rebuked it, “Be quiet and come out of him.” ²⁶The unclean spirit convulsed him right in front of them, and made a loud noise, and came out without doing him any harm.

³⁶Everybody was amazed ²⁷and started wondering with each other, “What is this? A new teaching? With authority and power he even gives orders to unclean spirits, and they obey him.” ²⁸The news about him spread everywhere in that part of Galilee.

³⁸He left the synagogue and went to Simon and Andrew’s house with James and John. Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a high fever, and they asked Jesus about her. He went to her, ³⁹stood over her and took her hand, and ordered the fever to leave. He raised her up and the fever went away. She got up right away and started waiting on them.

⁴⁰As the sun was going down, the whole town gathered at the door. They brought him people with several kinds of diseases. He laid hands on each one and healed them. ¹⁶People brought him a number of demon-possessed people, and he cast the spirits out with a word. ⁴¹They came out of many, crying out, “You’re God’s Son.” He wouldn’t let them keep talking, because they knew he was the Messiah.

¹⁷As Isaiah the prophet said,

“HE TOOK OUR WEAKNESSES

AND BORE OUR ILLNESSES” [Is 53:4].

The First General Tour of Galilee

(Mt 4:23-25; Mk 1:35-39; Lk 4:42-44)

³⁵In the morning, a good while before daylight, he got up and went out to a place away by himself and prayed. The crowd was looking for him, and ³⁶Simon and the others hunted for him ³⁷and found him, “Everybody’s looking for you.” The crowd came and tried to keep him from leaving them.

³⁸He said, “Let’s go to the villages nearby so I can preach there. That’s why I came.” ³⁹He went preaching in their synagogues all over Galilee and casting out demons.

²³He started going all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, announcing the good news about the kingdom, and healing every disease and weakness among the people. ²⁴The news about him spread all over Syria, and they brought him the ill, people distressed with various sicknesses and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and he healed them. ²⁵Large crowds followed him from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judaea, and beyond the Jordan.