The Gospel Is for All People
John 4:1-42
Dr. Tamene Menna, Executive Pastor

Overview: The purpose of John’s gospel is that those who hear it might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that, believing in Him, they might have life in His name (John 20:30). The story in John chapter 4 shows how Jesus crosses over a number of cultural barriers and reaches out to a Samaritan woman to reveal who He is, what His coming means to all people, and to offer her the gift of salvation. The result was her coming to faith in Christ and the confession of many in her town that Jesus is the Savior of the world. And this course of events showed that Jesus’ mission is to all people, not just the Jews. Through His conversation with the Samaritan Woman, we learn three truths about who Jesus is, what His coming means to all people, and how we continue to take this truth of the gospel to those who have yet to believe.

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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION & DISCOVERY

1. In John 3, Jesus met Nicodemus, a man of religious authority in Israel, and in John 4, Jesus met a Samaritan woman with low status from a despised and rejected community. Compare their response to Jesus.

2. Read the pattern of Jesus’s ministry in John chapters 3 and 4: from a Jew, to a half-Jew, to a Gentile royal official. Compare this with Acts 1:8

3. Read John 4:13-15. One of the main issues in the story is the woman’s struggle to understand the symbolic meaning of Jesus’ statement. What is the meaning of ”living water” here?

4. What are some of the dissatisfactions that people experience today, and how do they try to fill the emptiness in their lives?

5. How can we form a relationship with people with different worldviews and religious beliefs than ours? What do we learn from Jesus’s approach of His encounter with the Samaritan woman?

For Further Reading: John F. MacArthur Jr., Nothing but the Truth: Defending the Gospel in a Doubting Age (Crossway Books, 1999)