John 4

1 Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus Himself wasn’t baptizing, but His disciples were), 3 He left Judea, and went back towards Galilee. 4 He had to go through Samaria. 5 He came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph, 6 and Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from His journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.*The sixth hour from sunrise, or about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” 8 His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. 9 The Samaritan woman therefore asked Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink, since I’m a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew God’s gift, and who it is who says to you, ‘Please give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

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

13 Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will get thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water that I will give will never, ever get thirsty. The water that I will give will become in that person a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming all the way here to draw water.”

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

17 The woman answered, “I have no husband.”

Jesus told her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now isn’t your husband. What you have said is quite true.”

19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 Jesus told her, “Woman, believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you don’t know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 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 that the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

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

26 Jesus told her, “I who speak to you am He.”

27 Just then Jesus’ disciples returned. They were surprised to find him talking with a woman, but no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and began telling the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the city, and started to go to Him.

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

32 He told them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”

33 So the disciples asked one another, “Nobody brought Him anything to eat, did they?”

34 Jesus told them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to accomplish His work. 35 Don’t you say, ‘It’s still four months until the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 He who harvests is already receiving wages, and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that he who plants and he who harvests may rejoice together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One plants and another harvests’ is true. 38 I sent you to harvest that for which you didn’t labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans arrived, they asked Him to stay with them, and He stayed there two days. 41 Many more believed because of His words. 42 They told the woman, “It’s no longer just because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world, the Christ.”

43 After the two days, He departed from there and went to Galilee, 44 for Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. 45 When He arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed Him. They had seen all that He had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they had been there, too.

46 Therefore He came back to Cana of Galilee, where He had made the water wine. There was a certain royal official, whose son was sick at Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and begged Him to come down and heal his son, who was at the point of death.

48 Jesus told him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe.”

49 The royal official said to Him, “Sir, come down before my child dies!”

50 Jesus told him, “Go in peace. Your son lives.” So the man believed the words that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way. 51 As he was still going down the road, his servants met him, saying that his son was living. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they told him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour,†The seventh hour from sunrise, or about 1:00 p.m . the fever left him.” 53 The father realized that it was at that hour that Jesus told him, “Your son lives,” and he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54 This was the second sign that Jesus did, when He had come from out of Judea to Galilee.

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