Mark Bradford's Bible Blog

Philip in Samaria

⁴Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. ⁵Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ^[a]there.

After the stoning of Stephen, the church scattered into Judea and Samaria, in accordance with Jesus’ command to them in 1:8:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

The Philip mentioned here is not Philip the apostle, but the Philip who is named in 6:5. He was one of the Seven along with Stephen, the men who were charged with making sure that the needs of the widows and orphans in the church were met. We know this because Luke says in 8:1 that the apostles stayed in Jerusalem, and because when the apostles learned that Samaritans were believing and being baptized later in this chapter, Peter and John were sent to help them receive the Holy Spirit. The authority of the Twelve was needed for that, and apparently this Philip did not possess that authority.

Two things strike me about this right off the bat. First, though the church also scattered throughout Judea, Luke, as a Gentile, chose to tell us about what happened in Samaria. Jews of that time despised Samaritans, and the feeling was mutual. Devout Jews would walk a long way around to avoid even walking through a Samaritan area. The division between Jew and Samaritan went back to the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. When the Northern kingdom of Israel was taken into captivity by the Assyrians in 722 B.C., they intermarried with their conquerors, so Jews considered them “half-breeds.” Although the divided kingdom and their captivity stemmed from pagan religious practices, in Jesus’ time, Samaritans were strict monotheists, and though they didn’t practice mainstream Judaism, they did worship Yahweh. They only regarded the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, as true scripture, and they insisted that the true temple for Israel’s worship was on Mt. Gerazim, rather than Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. They looked for the Messiah, but they expected him to rule from Mt. Gerazim, not from Jerusalem. (If you’re interested in learning more about the Samaritans, I recommend Bible-History.com’s pages on it.)

Though Jews of that time despised and avoided Samaritans, Jesus had shown his attitude toward them in his healing of the ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19, blog), his parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37, blog), and in his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-26, blog). He had also shown compassion toward a Samaritan village that rejected him when James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven on them (Luke 9:51-56, blog), and he had made sure to specifically include Samaria in his command to be his witnesses. I don’t know if Philip went to Samaria because he drew the short straw, or if he volunteered, but there must have been many among the early believers who were reluctant to go there. That leads me to the other thing that strikes me about this. Philip was one of those who were charged with meeting people’s material needs in the church. Like Stephen, he had shown a willingness to be assigned to what some might consider an unglamorous ministry. So God used his willingness to do whatever the church needed him to do to use him in a very public way. He was willing to be a servant to others, and God exalted him.

⁶When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. ⁷With shrieks, evil^[b] spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed. ⁸So there was great joy in that city.

The work that Jesus had done in the passages mentioned above had planted the seeds that Philip was able to harvest here. Jesus had shown his disciples what their attitude toward Samaritans should be, and Philip followed his example. Sometimes God stretches us by putting us in the position of ministering to people we may not like. If we will let him get us past our prejudices, he can use us the way he used Philip. We may not perform miracles, but we can be a source of great joy to people who need Jesus if we will go to them and proclaim Christ like Philip did.

Mark Bible Acts, Philip, Samaritans

Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman

¹The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, ²although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

⁴Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.^[a])
The story of Jesus is one of reaching out to the lowest of the low, of showing love to the unlovable. The hatred between Jews and Samaritans at that time cannot be overemphasized. One of the greatest offenses in Judaism has always been intermarrying with Gentiles. The Samaritans were the descendants of the northern kingdom of Israel who had been exiled, and had intermarried with their conquerors. This, of course, was not the fault of the children of those marriages, but that didn’t stop the hatred. The Samaritan woman who came to the well was probably a woman of ill repute. There would have been a well in the town of Sychar, where she lived, but she had to go to Jacob’s Well, a half mile out of town. She was probably not allowed to use the well in town because of her reputation.

Rabbis at that time were not allowed to speak to a woman in public, even their own wives, daughers, and mothers. So the fact that Jesus engaged in conversation with this Samaritan woman of ill repute in public shows that his message and his love are for everyone, no matter who we are or what we’ve done.

¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

¹³Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus is making a Messianic claim here. Living water was a familiar concept to the Jews. It literally meant running water, like the water of a stream, rather than the stagnant water of a pool. But it also signified the Holy Spirit. There are many passages in the Old Testament about the thirst that only God can satisfy. (Psalm 42:2, Isaiah 55:1) By claiming to be able to provide this living water, Jesus was claiming to be no less than God himself. I think the woman knew what he was claiming, but could not accept it. That’s why she asked him if he was greater than “our father Jacob”. What she says to him in verse 15 could be taken as a taunt. “OK, if you’re so smart, let’s see you produce this living water so I don’t have to lug this bucket a mile every day.”

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

¹⁷“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

¹⁹“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

²⁵The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
When Jesus demonstrates that he knows exactly who she is and what she’s done, she immediately tries to change the subject and talk about doctrine. How often do we get distracted from the real needs of people by getting caught up in doctrinal differences? But Jesus wouldn’t let her get away with it. By talking with her in the first place, then by knocking down the doctrinal barriers between the Jews and Samaritans, Jesus is saying, “All that stuff we think is so important doesn’t matter anymore. The Kingdom of God is here. The Messiah is here, speaking to you right now.” When we meet Jesus, all the stuff we thought was so important doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t matter what our reputation is, or what our preconceptions are. The old things have passed away, and all things become new.

Mark Bible Jesus, John, Samaritans, woman at the well

Ten Healed of Leprosy

¹¹Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. ¹²As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy^[a]met him. They stood at a distance ¹³and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

Since lepers were unclean outcasts, they would often hang together in groups. Since they couldn’t go near anyone else, their only company was other lepers. As we see later in the story, at least one of the lepers was a Samaritan. The implication is that not all of them were. Jews and Samaritans of that time despised and avoided each other, but this mixed group of Jews and Samaritans stayed together because of their common illness. It’s amazing how our ideological differences become less important when we face a common adversity.

Lepers were supposed to cry out “Unclean!” when anyone walked by so that people would not come into contact with them and be made unclean themselves (Leviticus 13:45-46). And lepers were permanently ceremonially unclean, which meant that they could never participate in Israel’s worship. They could not be saved. Leprosy not only affected them physically, but spiritually as well. When these ten lepers saw Jesus coming, they kept their distance like they were supposed to, but they didn’t cry “Unclean!” Instead, they called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” This was another common plea of lepers and other beggars. Lepers relied on the pity of others for all the necessities of life. They recognized Jesus, and knowing him to be a man of compassion, asked him to take pity on them. They didn’t specifically ask to be healed. But Jesus showed them more than pity. He gave them their lives back.

¹⁴When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.

When Jesus healed another leper in Luke 5:12-15 (see my post on that passage here), he touched the leper when healing him. But this time, he simply told the group to go show themselves to the priests. When a leper was cleansed, which was extremely rare, there was an elaborate procedure they had to go through over a period of 8 days to be restored to Israel’s worship community. The procedure is described in Leviticus 14:2-32. These lepers were not cured yet, but Jesus told them to take a major leap of faith, and go show themselves to the priests anyway. And as they went, they were cleansed. They didn’t say to Jesus, “We can’t go yet, you have to heal us first!” They did as Jesus told them, and were cleansed on the way. This reminds me of when Israel crossed the Jordan into the promised land in Joshua 3 (blog), when God commanded the priests to step into the Jordan before he stopped the waters. Sometimes God asks us to step out in faith and believe him even when it looks bad. The word believe means to live in accordance with. We demonstrate our faith by what we do (James 2:14-26).

¹⁵One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. ¹⁶He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

¹⁷Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? ¹⁸Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

At some point along the way, the lepers found themselves healed. Nine of them continued on their way to the priests, but one went all the way back to Jesus to thank him. He praised God in a loud voice. His thanks and praise to God were as loud as his cry for mercy had been. Is our gratitude to God as loud as our many requests are? Jesus was obviously bothered by the fact that only one had returned to thank him, but the ones who did not may well have thought they were simply doing what Jesus told them to do, go and show themselves to the priests. We can’t get too busy to stop and thank God for what he’s done for us, even when we’re doing his work. The one who returned threw himself at Jesus’ feet. After all he has done for us, the only appropriate response is to throw ourselves at the feet of Jesus in gratitude and praise. Jesus told the man, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” The word that the NIV translates well can also be translated saved. We can be healed through faith, but more importantly, we are saved through faith.

Mark Bible faith, Jesus, leprosy, Luke, Samaritans, thanks

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

²⁵On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

²⁶“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

²⁷He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’^[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^[d]“

²⁸“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

The parable of the Good Samaritan is probably the most familiar parable of Jesus, and it only appears in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus had been teaching about the kingdom of God and the eternal life that was offered through belief in him, and this teacher of the law wanted to know how to inherit this eternal life that Jesus was talking about. A similar exchange regarding the greatest commandment appears in Mark 12:29-34. See my post on that passage here. Though verse 25 says the teacher of the law stood up to test Jesus, the Greek word for test does not necessarily indicate a malicious intent. This seems to be a sincere question. Jesus replied by asking him what the law and prophets said, as if to say, “You already know what is required”. This teacher of the law understood that the law and the prophets were summed up in these two commandments.

Has anyone, other than Jesus, completely lived up to these standards? Who among us has completely loved God, without reservation, in all of these areas?

1. With all of our heart, which I take to mean our emotions in this context. Our emotions wax and wane, they come and go. Our emotions are fickle. We can’t live on emotions, and if we don’t control our emotions, they will get us into trouble. God wants our emotions to be devoted to him.

2. With all of our soul. The Greek word for soul in this context is not talking about what we think of as our eternal soul. The Greek word for soul is the same as for life or self. We are to love God with all of our life, with all that we are. Not just during our times of worship, but all of the time, during every part of our life.

3. With all of our strength. I think this is referring to our physical activity. Loving God isn’t just a spiritual thing, it should infuse everything we do with our bodies. Too often we separate the physical from the spiritual, and we say we love God, but that love is not reflected in what we actually do.

4. With all of our mind. This is the hardest part, to love God with every thought. The best instruction regarding this in the Bible that I know of is in 2 Corinthians 10:5;

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. That’s loving God with all of our mind. The second command is just as hard as the first, to love our neighbor as ourselves. Contrary to current popular belief, this does not mean that we must love ourselves in order to love others. It means that we are to take care of others like we take care of ourselves, and be just as concerned about the welfare of others as we are about our own welfare. Who among us has lived up to that standard?

²⁹But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Apparently this lawyer thought he had kept the first commandment pretty well, since he didn’t ask about that one. His only concern was with figuring out who he had to love, and who he didn’t. It all depended on how he defined the word neighbor. The Jews of Jesus’ time believed that they had to love their neighbor, but they also believed they were supposed to hate their enemy. But of course, Jesus wanted to demolish that belief (Matthew 5:43-45). Loving our enemies is a difficult concept, but this parable is a perfect illustration of it.

³⁰In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. ³²So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. ³⁴He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. ³⁵The next day he took out two silver coins^[e] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

The teacher of the law was asking who he had to love. It seems to me that Jesus could have answered his question more directly with this story by making a Samaritan the one who was hurt, and a teacher of the law the one who helped him. But instead, Jesus made a priest and a Levite (a pastor and a worship leader) the bad guys of the story, and a hated Samaritan the hero, which challenged the lawyer’s belief system even more.

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was notorious for bandits, so all of Jesus’ listeners could relate. Bandits and robbers were a real problem on the roads between cities in the ancient world. Mary and Joseph had reason to fear for Jesus’ life when they lost him on the journey home from Jerusalem when he was a boy for that very reason (Luke 2:41-48). They probably all knew of cases like this where someone was robbed and beaten on this road. In Jesus’ story, a priest, who made the sacrifices for their sins, and a Levite, who led the worship at the temple, both passed by without helping the injured man. But a supposed enemy, who Jews of that time believed it was their duty before God to hate, didn’t just stop at the next town and tell someone to send help, he stopped and helped the man himself, at considerable cost. He treated the man’s wounds. He put the man on his own donkey, which meant he walked the rest of the way. He paid for a room at the inn, and spent the night taking care of him. As he left, he paid the innkeeper two denarii, which was two days wages for a working man. Divide your yearly salary by 365, multiply that number by 2, and that’s how much the equivalent would be for you. The average yearly income in America is $50.000 per year. So in today’s dollars, he paid about $275 on top of what he had already paid, and he committed to pay any additional costs the innkeeper incurred after that money was gone.

³⁶“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

³⁷The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

By telling the story in this way, and putting the Samaritan in the role of the hero rather than the victim, Jesus didn’t really answer the question the way the lawyer wanted him to. Instead, he illustrated what it means to be a neighbor to someone else. The teacher of the law was asking who he had to love in order to inherit the eternal life Jesus was talking about. He wanted to love his neighbor, but hate his enemy. Jesus gave him an example not of a Jew showing love to an enemy, but an enemy showing love to a Jew. It’s obvious that the teacher of the law didn’t like Jesus’ answer much. When Jesus asked him who had been a neighbor to the injured man, the lawyer wouldn’t even say the word Samaritan. He just said, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Lots of people think the Bible tells us to love everyone, but it doesn’t. The Bible tells us to love our neighbor. So who is our neighbor? Our neighbor is the one who we might think of as an enemy. Our neighbor is the one who has a need right in front of us. And loving them is not feeling affection toward them, it’s doing everything in our power to help them with their need. It’s loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Mark Bible Jesus, Luke, parable of the Good Samaritan, Samaritans

Samaritan Opposition

⁵¹As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. ⁵²And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; ⁵³but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.

This is the point where Jesus began his long, determined journey to Jerusalem to enter into his suffering. He had been trying to prepare his disciples for this, but his warnings had gone over their heads. He sent messengers ahead to a Samaritan village, to see if they would be welcomed there. I wonder what welcoming means, exactly. I imagine they were looking for a house where they could stay for the night. Maybe he also wanted permission from the local rabbi to teach in their synagogue. In verse 5, when Jesus sent his disciples out to preach and heal, he had told them what to do if the people of a town did not welcome them, so apparently this was the usual practice, to send messengers ahead to see if they would be “welcomed” in a town. Whatever welcoming means, this Samaritan village would not do it, for the specific reason that they were on their way to Jerusalem.

Jews of that time despised Samaritans, and the feeling was mutual. Devout Jews would walk a long way around to avoid even walking through a Samaritan area, so it’s revealing that Jesus and his whole group were not only going to travel through a Samaritan village, but wanted to be welcome there. The prejudices of his time did not keep Jesus from trying to minister to people. The division between Jew and Samaritan went back to the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. When the Northern kingdom of Israel was taken into captivity by the Assyrians in 722 B.C., they intermarried with their conquerors, so Jews considered them “half-breeds”. Although the divided kingdom and their captivity stemmed from pagan religious practices, in Jesus’ time, Samaritans were strict monotheists, and though they didn’t practice mainstream Judaism, they did worship Yahweh. They only regarded the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, as canonical, and they insisted that the true temple for Israel’s worship was on Mt. Gerazim, rather than Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. They looked for the Messiah, but they expected him to rule from Mt. Gerazim, not from Jerusalem. (If you’re interested in learning more about the Samaritans, I recommend Bible-History.com’s pages on it.) That’s why the Samaritans would not welcome Jesus and his group, because they were on their way to Jerusalem for Passover. So they missed out on having Jesus in their village because of their ideology. Do we argue about doctrine so much that we miss Jesus?

⁵⁴When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them^[c]?” ⁵⁵But Jesus turned and rebuked them, ⁵⁶and^[d] they went to another village.

When Jesus had sent his disciples out to preach and heal, he told them in verse 5 that if they were not welcomed in a town, they should shake the dust of the town off their feet, like they would the dust of a Gentile town. That was enough of a statement for Jesus, but that apparently was not enough for James and John when it came to this Samaritan village. What amuses me about their question is that they didn’t ask Jesus if he would call down fire from Heaven on the village, they asked if he wanted them to do it. As if they could! If you click on the footnotes in verses 54 and 56, you will see that there are some things missing that appear in other translations. Some manuscripts add an expanded conclusion to verse 55 and an additional sentence in verse 56. In verse 55, some manuscripts have James and John asking if they should call down fire from Heaven like Elijah did. They are referring to II Kings 1:9-16, where the wicked king of the northern kingdom, Ahaziah, had consulted with pagan gods to see if he would recover from injuries he had sustained. Elijah called down fire from Heaven on Ahaziah’s army because of his wickedness. But James and John wanted to do this because of a perceived personal insult!

In the rest of the part that’s left out of the NIV, Jesus says this in verse 56:

And he said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”

Jesus knew that the divisions between Jews and Samaritans (and Gentiles, for that matter) would no longer matter in the new covenant that he was about to establish. In fact, Samaritans would be quicker to accept Jesus as the Messiah after his death and resurrection than his own people would. So they simply went on to another village. I wonder if that was a Samaritan village also, but one that did welcome them. Jesus will not force his way into our lives. He wants us to welcome him. Is Jesus welcome in your life?

Mark Bible Jesus, Luke, Samaritans