Bonus (John 4) // Who were the Samaritans?

hey welcome everybody to Bible time hey this is a first in a gonna be I think fun a special special episode I guess if you call these episodes but if you're new here just know that the point of this is I just want to read the Bible with people and help my friends who are trying to follow Jesus get in the Bible everyday and hopefully you spend time in prayer and just spend time with God in relationship in hopes of growing in real affectionate intimacy with him in obedience to him so what we've been doing is just reading through the Gospel of John 10 15 minutes a day so this is gonna be a special bonus episode because after yesterday's reading the beginning that John chapter 4 Jesus and the woman in Samaria the Samaritan woman at the well I I had to go back and do some more research and and I think that this is a good moment to emphasize just to all of you out there that maybe you watch you know this Bible time these videos daily because you struggle with your own Bible reading and I know a lot of my friends they just it seems like they don't understand things at times and that's I just wanted to emphasize that that's true for all of us even pastors even people with degrees in theology like myself that there's just no way that we can know at all but the beautiful thing about the era that we live in is that we have so much access to research and so I just I want to kind of show you what it is that I learned and in particular point out that I didn't know everything about what you know what the scripture was even talking about and even though I've been talking about knowing about preaching about Samaritans forever I thought to myself after yesterday's reading I need to go back and and read look into that and kind of figure out exactly what the context is because I found myself in yesterday's reading even making statements about who the Samaritans were and how the Jews treated them and you know etc etc and so I wanted to just kind of point out to you guys that you know the subtitle of the section yesterday was Jesus in the woman of Samaria and so you know we we speak of them as Samaritans and you probably heard of you know the parable of the Good Samaritan and that that that was also taught and Jesus chose that particular type of person for that story for a reason but I went back and started doing some more research and so I just wanted to and we probably have time to actually read more sections today so consider this maybe a bonus or addendum or in addition to yesterday's reading but I hope that this will illuminate you a little bit on what exactly this is going on in this section who the Samaritans are but also just to show you that it's okay to not know on your first reading something and then it's okay to to jump in you know on the internet and find some good study resources to figure out exactly what it is that you don't understand so here we are I just want to show you a few things about who the Samaritans were why it was important in the biblical narrative in general and then why what the context in many was in Jesus's time in particular so here's a sort of a map of what would have been biblical Israel and so as you can see Galilee is up here and Nazareth is right there which is where Jesus is from and then there's this this section right here in the middle that's labeled Samaria and it goes all the way to the Jordan River which is right here and then down here is of course the extremely important city of Jerusalem and whole region of Judea and so I do think that it's important to point out a few things about the history here so basically all of this area was the the Promised Land and originally the Jews or the Israelites or the people of Abraham came in through from Egypt when Moses was delivering them and and then they wandered around the wilderness for 40 years and then eventually when Joshua was leading them into the Promised Land they came in this direction and they crossed the Jordan River and they went in and of course started entering the land that way so then over the years the people of Israel you know filled this land and God's command to them was to you know fill the land not to intermarry not to pick up on other people's gods or follow anybody else's ways not to allow any of their influence to enter their people or their land and if you know any any bit of this story there are some issues that took place there's this constant cyclical pattern of following God and then becoming oxidase achill and starting to worship other gods and foreign idols and then falling away from God and then having problems and issues and then crying out to God and God delivering them and it repeated and repeated and repeated and eventually they say we want a king for ourselves and so King Saul entered the picture and he didn't work out and so God gave them David and then David's son Solomon and then after Solomon the Kingdom splits and then there basically becomes a northern kingdom and the southern kingdom and the northern kingdom had ten tribes in the southern had two tribes the tribes of Judah and Benjamin and then of course the Levites Levi Levites who were the priests that didn't have land and so any Levites that were among the people so what took place is that in the year 721 BC the Assyrians came in and took basically all of the northern kingdom away into captivity and the general thought is that from that captivity those those people never returned to the land those people it's untraceable where they ended up it's just that they're gone now of course they didn't all you know die and never have kids again but they as far as traceability and the biblical context that the northern the northern ten tribes of the people of Israel God's people after the the captivity of 721 BC from the Assyrians they're there just going and probably you know had babies and intermarried or whatever somewhere else but they're not to be heard from really ever again and so just for the sake of sticking with the history the southern tribes were also eventually taken into captivity by Babylon and that was in 586 BC and so that's where you're gonna in the scriptures read the stories of like Daniel Nebuchadnezzar all of those things where the people God's people were the remaining of God's people the southern tribes were also taken into captivity but then later on we see of course they come back into the land they're allowed to come back to Jerusalem rebuild the wall rebuild the temple Riaan habit the land and that's what leads up to Jesus's time when the Jews are in the land but then of course by Jesus's time at least politically being role ruled by Rome but God's people are still in the promised land in that sense through the seed of these two southern tribes so that's just kind of a really a really important biblical lesson on the narrative of the scripture and the history of God's people in general but what it is pointed out to us in and how Wyatt's illuminated in terms of who the Samaritans are is that basically during this captivity in 721 by the Assyrians the idea was that all of all of the true Jewish people were either taken and therefore anybody that was living in this land by the time that Jesus showed up was either a foreigner or a Jewish person who had intermarried and commingled with this foreign person foreign blood as it were and so for that reason many Jews considered the Samaritans to either be foreigners or half-breeds and so now it is true that you know Samaria lies between between the Jordan River and the coast and so it is not true that every Jew would go around Samaria I think I referenced that yesterday what I've discovered is that many Jews if they need to go from Jerusalem or Judea up to Galilee many Jews would indeed walk through Samaria but it is also true that the Pharisees in particular and people that did not want to associate with Samaritans at all would actually cross the Jordan River and walk around and through this area called Perea which I can circle right there I'm sorry SMAP is doughy marked uh but they would walk they would cross the term never walk around this eastern side of the land and then cross back over in order to get into Galilee in an attempt to completely avoid the Samaritan people in general because they did not want to associate with them at all and so it's within that context and that history that at the time that Jesus shows up there is definitely a distaste and a for both both parties generally the Samaritans and the Jews did not like each other but I think that I think that most of the writings that we have in history to have show that in particular the Jews really didn't like the Samaritans and wanted to avoid them and so it's within that context that we find ourselves here in John chapter 4 with Jesus going specifically not just randomly but specifically to and through Samaria and and uh I remember yesterday we read that it you know he says it's necessary that I go there and this was all you know obviously because he knew that he was gonna meet this woman he had something in his heart in his mind that he wanted that to give to her and as we'll see in our next reading that I think through her he wanted to give to the people of the land in general and so hope you uh you know got something out of that little bonus episode normally this is not a pre studied thing which is why after yesterday's reading I needed to go and do some more study in this case this video is a little teaching for you based on just some research that I did and reminding myself of the history of the the two captivity 's and who the people of Samaria are and so I just wanted to encourage you with this knowledge but also to encourage you that as you get into habit of reading the scriptures on your own okay not to know everything it's okay to go back and say you know what I need to study that to make a mark in your Bible give yourself you know a question mark somewhere and then standing to go back and answer that question through some research and through some study so that's what I got for you today I hope that helped and please tune in for the next video we'll continue in John chapter 4 and what happened after Jesus was speaking prophetically to the woman at the well god bless you

Channel: Craig Brown

Views: 251

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: uH4204dHyAs

Length: 13min 23sec (803 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 08 2020