This Bible reading plan takes you through most of the Holy Scriptures each weekday of the year. Each day has three Bible readings:
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4:1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.1
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.2 The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
43 After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.
46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you3 see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. 51 As he was going down, his servants4 met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour5 the fever left him.” 53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. 54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.
[1] 4:6
[2] 4:14
[3] 4:48
[4] 4:51
[5] 4:52
(ESV)
Oil and water. Night and day. Sweet and sour. Republicans and Democrats. Longhorns and Aggies. Some things just don't go together.
Galileans and Samaritans. This was the "oil and water" combination of the first century. These two people groups despised each other. The Galileans considered the Samaritans spiritual "half-breeds." According to 2 Kings 17:24-41, Samaritans were the result of intermarriages between Gentiles and Jews after Assyria exiled the bulk of the Jewish nation in 722 BC and brought in Gentiles to live alongside a remnant of Jews still in Israel. When these Jews intermarried with these foreign people, they also began worshipping their foreign gods. Thus, Samaritans were born. And hostilities between Galileans, who were pure-breed Jews, and Samaritans, who were half-breed Jews, only intensified with time. Allow me to share two examples, both from a first century Jewish historian named Josephus.
In AD 9 during the Passover feast, a group of Samaritans snuck into the temple at Jerusalem, the Galilean place of worship, and scattered human bones over the temple floor, which, understandably, dramatically increased tensions between these two people groups (cf. Antiquities, 18.29-30). Then, in AD 50, a Galilean man was brutally murdered while on his way to worship in Jerusalem. This so enraged the Galileans against the Samaritans that Josephus records that the Galileans "massacred them, sparing no one regardless of their age" (cf. Jewish War 2.232-237). Needless to say, the relationship between the Galileans and Samaritans was shockingly hostile.
"Now Jesus had to go through Samaria" (John 4:4). Of course he had to go through Samaria. For Jesus was a Galilean (cf. Matthew 2:19-23). And no Galilean would ever willingly travel through Samaria unless travel plans absolutely demanded it.
While traveling, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman and tries to strike up a conversation. Her response is telling: "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman" (John 4:9). This woman can simply not imagine that a Galilean would want to talk to a Samaritan.
In spite of strained national and political relations, and in spite of the cultural and religious mores that divide them, Jesus presses on. He talks to her about her relationally broken life (for this woman had been married five times and now had a live-in boyfriend) as well as, on a lighter note, worship differences that separate Galileans and Samaritans. Following their conversation, this woman finally responds, "I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us" (John 4:19, 25). And then, Jesus drops his bomb: "I who speak to you am he" (John 4:26).
The gospel of John is well known for preserving the "I am" sayings of Jesus. "I am the bread of life" (John 6:35). "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12). "I am the good shepherd" (John 10:11). Many biblical scholars see these statements as a testament to Jesus' divinity. For in Exodus 3:14, we learn that "I am" is God's given name. Thus, Jesus appropriates God's name as his name. The first "I am" statement in John's gospel, however, is not be found in John 6, or in John 8, or in John 10. No, it is to be found in John 4:26: "I who speak to you am he." A more wooden translation would read, "I am! This is the one speaking to you." This, then, is a forthright and unequivocal statement of Jesus' divinity. And he shares it not with a fellow Galilean, but with a half-breed Samaritan.
As Jesus finishes his conversation with this woman, John records that his disciples are "surprised to find him talking with a woman" (John 4:27). I'm sure they would have been even more surprised to know what he was talking about with this woman. For Jesus was telling this woman that he was the God of the universe.
God often says of himself, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Exodus 3:6). God, it seems, is the God of many. Other names can be lined up behind God's "I am" as well. The God of Moses. The God of David. The God of Daniel. The God of Galileans. The God of Samaritans. Our God is the God of all. And our God desires to say, "I am your God too." Do you take him at his word?
12 “I, I am he who comforts you;
who are you that you are afraid of man who dies,
of the son of man who is made like grass,
13 and have forgotten the LORD, your Maker,
who stretched out the heavens
and laid the foundations of the earth,
and you fear continually all the day
because of the wrath of the oppressor,
when he sets himself to destroy?
And where is the wrath of the oppressor?
14 He who is bowed down shall speedily be released;
he shall not die and go down to the pit,
neither shall his bread be lacking.
15 I am the LORD your God,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—
the LORD of hosts is his name.
16 And I have put my words in your mouth
and covered you in the shadow of my hand,
establishing1 the heavens
and laying the foundations of the earth,
and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’”
17 Wake yourself, wake yourself,
stand up, O Jerusalem,
you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD
the cup of his wrath,
who have drunk to the dregs
the bowl, the cup of staggering.
18 There is none to guide her
among all the sons she has borne;
there is none to take her by the hand
among all the sons she has brought up.
19 These two things have happened to you—
who will console you?—
devastation and destruction, famine and sword;
who will comfort you?2
20 Your sons have fainted;
they lie at the head of every street
like an antelope in a net;
they are full of the wrath of the LORD,
the rebuke of your God.
21 Therefore hear this, you who are afflicted,
who are drunk, but not with wine:
22 Thus says your Lord, the LORD,
your God who pleads the cause of his people:
“Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering;
the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more;
23 and I will put it into the hand of your tormentors,
who have said to you,
‘Bow down, that we may pass over’;
and you have made your back like the ground
and like the street for them to pass over.”
52:1 Awake, awake,
put on your strength, O Zion;
put on your beautiful garments,
O Jerusalem, the holy city;
for there shall no more come into you
the uncircumcised and the unclean.
2 Shake yourself from the dust and arise;
be seated, O Jerusalem;
loose the bonds from your neck,
O captive daughter of Zion.
3 For thus says the LORD: “You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money.” 4 For thus says the Lord GOD: “My people went down at the first into Egypt to sojourn there, and the Assyrian oppressed them for nothing.3 5 Now therefore what have I here,” declares the LORD, “seeing that my people are taken away for nothing? Their rulers wail,” declares the LORD, “and continually all the day my name is despised. 6 Therefore my people shall know my name. Therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here I am.”
7 How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
8 The voice of your watchmen—they lift up their voice;
together they sing for joy;
for eye to eye they see
the return of the LORD to Zion.
9 Break forth together into singing,
you waste places of Jerusalem,
for the LORD has comforted his people;
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
10 The LORD has bared his holy arm
before the eyes of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God.
11 Depart, depart, go out from there;
touch no unclean thing;
go out from the midst of her; purify yourselves,
you who bear the vessels of the LORD.
12 For you shall not go out in haste,
and you shall not go in flight,
for the LORD will go before you,
and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
[1] 51:16
[2] 51:19
[3] 52:4
(ESV)
The hearts of God's people were still frightened at the prospect of the Babylonian captivity, so God appeals to them once again to trust His promise of redemption. God reminds them of His great strength displayed in creation. God promises that the prisoners will soon be set free, for the LORD's hand is stronger than that of any mortal man whom God's people might fear. God tells His people to arise, for although they have been forced to drink the cup of God's wrath, they will not drink it to the dregs. God promises to take the cup of His wrath and place it in the hands of Israel's tormenters, forcing them to drink it. God's Word is true: "You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money." The enemy paid nothing for the opportunity to oppress God's people. Rather, God's people were sold as slaves because of their debt of sin. And no one can pay any sum sufficient to redeem themselves. "The ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough." (Psalm 49:8) Therefore, God promised, "without money you will be redeemed." God would ransom His people from captivity, for the sake of His name, and further, He would ransom all mankind through His Servant, the promised Messiah. This is truly good news, and the promise concerning those who proclaim it still rings out today: "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns." In the death and resurrection of Jesus, "The LORD has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and the ends of the earth [have seen] the salvation of our God."
17 All this has come upon us,
though we have not forgotten you,
and we have not been false to your covenant.
18 Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from your way;
19 yet you have broken us in the place of jackals
and covered us with the shadow of death.
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God
or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
21 would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart.
22 Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
24 Why do you hide your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
our belly clings to the ground.
26 Rise up; come to our help!
Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!
(ESV)