Introduction to John 4:27-42

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/12/2016 12:36 PM

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  Introduction to John 4:27-42

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                       Reference:  John 4:27-42

Message of the verses:  I am not going to include all of these verses on this SD since we are going to go over the introduction to them and will put them on the SD’s as we go over them.  There is one thing that I would like to do before we look at the introduction and that is to go over something from the last section we looked at John 4: 24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.’”  As I was listening to the second message on worship from John MacArthur on this section of John 4, along with many other verses that he is looking at, but the main focus comes from the section that we just completed in our previous SD.’s.  I knew that worship if very important to not only us but to the God we worship through Jesus Christ, but MacArthur states in this message that worship it the reason that God saves us.  I got to thinking about that and came to the same conclusion and one of the things that I thought about to come to this conclusion was to think about why God created the angels.  Now we know that one third of them followed Satan, but they were all made, including Lucifer, to worship God and so why would not this be true of why God saves us.  There are many more benefits that certainly go along with salvation but worship it at the top of the list as to why God saved us.

John MacArthur entitles this chapter in his commentary “The Savior of the World,” and I believe that once we get into the study of this section we will understand the name he gives this section of verses from John chapter four.

In past Spiritual Diaries we have gone over the wonderful benefits that the nation of Israel has from the Lord, we have seen these words from the Lord to Abram, a man who is the physical father of the nation of Israel:  “1 Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; 2  And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; 3  And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed."”  God gives great promises to Abram in these verses, and He also gives a great promise to all the families of the earth as they will be blessed through the nation of Israel.  I believe that the first time that I ever heard “The Judao-Christian Faith” was when President Reagan spoke that term, but that is what we have in our country even today, even though there are many who want to take it away from us.  That statement or title means to me that it is because of the nation of Israel that we have the opportunity to become Christians today, for as we read at the end of verse forty-two “"It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world."”  Jesus spoke the gospel to the Jews in Judah first and they did not respond, other than His disciples, and now just like in the “great commission” He goes to the Samaritans to tell this “woman of the world” the wonderful message of salvation, and as a result there are many in her town who become believers in Jesus Christ.  We must remember what Jesus said to the woman “for salvation is from the Jews (John 4:22b).”  John MacArthur writes “The Lord Jesus Christ summed up the most significant privilege Israel received when He told the Samaritan woman that ‘salvation is from the Jews.’

“But because ‘God [is not] the God of the Jews only, [but] the God of the Gentiles also’ (Rom. 3:29), the Bible promises salvation to them as well.  Isaiah 45:22 records God’s gracious invitation, ‘Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.’  Later in Isaiah, God said prophetically to the Messiah:  ‘It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make you a light of the nations so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth’ (49:6; cf. 42:6; Luke 2:32).”  We are getting the point that God has always planned salvation for all the nations, and would do it through the blessing of the Jewish nation, namely bring Jesus Christ into the world through that nation to become the Savior of the World.

As we look at verses 27-42 they tell the story of what happened after the salvation of the Samaritan woman, and she did what most people do after they get saved from their sins, and that is go and tell others about it, which is exactly what she did. 

MacArthur concludes:  “ The story that unfolds in this section reveals five subtle, yet unmistakable proofs that corroborate Jesus’ claim to the be the Messiah:  His impeccable control of circumstances, His impact on the woman, His intimacy with the Father, His insight into men’s souls, and His impression on the Samaritans.”  Those are to topics we will look at as we continue our journey through the fourth chapter of the gospel of John.

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “Matthew (Matthew 3:4).

Today’s Bible question:  “How old was Moses when he died?”

Answer in our next SD.

2/12/2016 1:19 PM