Spiritual Warfare 03

Posted on August 10, 2021 by ehurst

Don’t be caught in legalism, because that’s just another lie of the Devil.

The bulk of popular mythology about fighting demons stands on a legalistic application of English translations of New Testament events. Without taking the time to understand the context of these events, it becomes mere rote ritualism to insist that all encounters with demons must follow some formula dreamed up by enthusiasts.

Why were there so many demons among the Jewish population in the New Testament? Was this somehow the unadvertised norm that Israel suffered in the Old Testament, too? By no means. There are two basic reasons for Jesus to encounter so many demons.

1. It was for His glory. Jews knew what demons were and how they worked. The Old Testament does provide the bulk of what we know about Satan and his operations. So the Hebrew people had learned to recognize the signature of a specific demonic presence that bound people. They should have known how to deal with this problem, but the meaning of the Covenant had been hidden from everyone. This is the heavy current against which Jesus had to keep wading. What Jesus faced was often a set-up from the Father designed to point out that Jesus was His Son, and to prevent anyone mistaking this. The demons had no choice but to serve the purpose of glorifying the Son.

2. It was contextual to the Covenant Nation alone. These people were bound because the Judean people had lost their way. They could have known they were off track, had they not been so wedded to the fleshly comforts of avoiding the deeper truth of the Covenant. They had drifted into legalism long before the rise of Hellenism among the rabbinical schools; the Aristotelian logic simply offered a better excuse for it.

The kind of demonic problems, the distribution of them in the population, and the remedy were peculiar to the Covenant context. The unique status of Israel before the Lord had a lot to do with what Jesus confronted and how He dealt with it. This means that you need to exercise that “rightly dividing the Word” discernment to know how much of that matches your context today. Blindly seizing upon the words and making it a rule is just the kind of thing the Devil did to deceive Israel in the first place so that he could pepper them with demons.

To a lesser degree, the same could be said of how the Hebrew Apostles handled the demons they encountered in the Gentile world of the Mediterranean Basin. This was an area that Israel should have already evangelized with the Covenant of Moses. They had done a very poor job of that; what little evangelism they performed was for the Talmud, not the Word of God. So the situation we see in Acts, for example, is rather unique to the situation of Hebrew Christians dealing with folks their forefathers left in the lurch.

It’s not that you and I today in the US are facing no demons. The issue is that the types, distribution and solutions are unique to our context. Some of what we see in the Bible does apply. In some places, it’s rather literal in application. In most of it, we are obliged to discern what we individually should do to counteract Darkness in the context.

I have my answer to this. You should develop your own. To the degree we get the same guidance in our hearts, we should endeavor to work together in this mission of cleansing the domain of the Lord — our lives. We hold our feudal domains as vassals of the Lord. When He brings His people to us, we seek to offer as much help, and the right kind of help, for the needs at hand, according to our commission.

There is no obligation that you mimic the dramatic silly posturing of some folks who are just so certain they have this all figured out. You aren’t obliged to denounce the demons aloud. You aren’t obliged to use the popular Charismatic terminology about such things, nor repeat their formulaic ritual denunciations. That’s not the only thing to which demons respond. My experience has been that, the vast majority of the time, all it takes is helping the victim to make the demons unwelcome by their choice to embrace Biblical Law.

You and I are now the Covenant Nation in our hearts. We cannot force the new vintage to fit into old wineskins. While being under a single culture of faith might be convenient, even somewhat of an ideal, it isn’t happening. There is no single rule for Christian religion. There will be cultural variations, and within any particular culture, even more individual variations.

Don’t be discouraged from trying to learn all you can about this. Sift through it and keep what’s appropriate for your commission from God. This is not some game of gotcha where you have to enunciate the proper legal notice for the demons to depart. It’s more a case of providing the guidance and strength for people to leave the demons, however it is they can.

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Spiritual Warfare 02

Posted on August 9, 2021 by ehurst

Spiritual Warfare is simply the quintessential metaphor for being a Christian. This is the biblical image of serving an ANE feudal master as newly adopted into His household. We are striving to claim the fullness of being His child, with a particular focus on bearing fruit for His domain.

This is the image inherent in Ephesians 1; Paul uses the term that should be translated as “economy” rather than “fellowship.” But more importantly, it conjures the image of an desert sheikh seeking to build up His household wealth and influence. We seek to make Him famous (AKA, glorious).

But His greatest treasure is His people, His household family. And it is only natural that He seeks their welfare. However, it works by allotment; we each have a certain collection of inherited blessings that belong to us. We increase His domain’s wealth and influence — His glory — by how we reclaim and occupy the lives He has given each of us.

So the biggest problem is not Satan, but His children who resist His will, who do not engage the mission to reclaim their lives from Satan. The Devil is a feudal punisher under God’s authority. There is no outside agency here; God owns it all. The biggest problem is that His children keep running off outside the boundaries, and the only way He is going to keep us inside the high privilege of His blessings is to appoint the Devil and his demons to wander the outside and capture the children that won’t stay home.

The demons are permitted to entice you outside the boundaries. If you fall for it, then they gain access to your life. That we are all born in sin means that we start that way, captured and enslaved outside the boundaries. God calls to us to come join Him inside the boundaries of His household. We spend the rest of our lives struggling to get back inside of Eden, the divine household. The first thing we face is the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of the Lord. That Sword is also the Cross; it must impale our souls and kill the fallen fleshly nature.

And it’s by our own hands that the Sword/Cross pierces us through. Otherwise, it won’t happen. If we don’t turn that weapon first on ourselves, we can’t use it at all. The domain of Satan in our lives is that fleshly nature. That’s the limits of his power to operate. Thus, our commission is to spend the rest of our lives constantly recapturing the fleshly nature that will not stay dead, will not stay on the Cross. As long as we are burdened with a mortal existence, that is the image under which we live. We keep denying the fleshly self; we keep nailing it to the Cross.

Yes, our God and Father operates this way. He keeps the Devil out there in the Fallen Realm and the demons can use all sorts of tricks to draw us out. As soon as we step outside, we discover that our fleshly nature has come down from the Cross and has followed us out there where it can rule and “live” the existence it desires. It is the prime ally of Satan in our lives, that zombie of fallen desire that takes over our lives so quickly.

There are a host of fallen people out there who remain surrendered to Satan. They are victims, too, but we cannot allow them to appeal to our fleshly nature. They all have demons running their lives. On some rare occasions, those demons will seek to step over to our fleshly natures, to give the zombie a little extra strength to hold us back from returning inside the boundaries. The most common path through our awareness is subtle, a matter of operating in the background through temptation. However, sometimes it’s far more open and direct, with the demons welcomed consciously. That’s when things get spooky.

But whole business can be spooky for us when we are perceptive enough to see it. We are wired to sense this directly, to know when something is less a latent response and a more in-your-face taunting from the Darkness. No two of us will see it quite the same way. What taunts you and I in the face may be shrouded to someone else. That’s because no two of us are called, commissioned and empowered to respond in exactly the same way. How you are supposed to influence someone else may well be different from how another believer gets the job done.

So, a critical element in defeating Satan’s grip is knowing the boundaries of which believers are supposed to be on your team, and which believers are supposed to be on some other team. Don’t work with believers who disrupt your commission. It has nothing to do with what they intend, and everything to do with what God intended. He has children we should avoid for reasons He never explained. But this becomes a critical element in Spiritual Warfare. You must pull in the harness with those who pull as you do, whose manner of service complements yours. If you team up with the wrong people, you simply give Satan new openings to interfere.

This, too, can be contextual. This time you work with them; next time you don’t. It may well be permanent, but you must be wise enough to recognize what God wants you to do. That’s one of those tests of faithfulness. You need to know who belongs to your spiritual clan, and who does not. It’s not a question of whether they belong to the Kingdom, but whether you have any business working alongside each other at that moment.

It’s not that there is only one path for all back toward Eden. Rather, there is only one path for you. The Lord will post signs that you should recognize as parts of the dominion He would grant you. “Explore this area! Come and occupy!” Sometimes, once conquered, you might well be asked to pass it off to another, or simply leave it behind for someone to claim it later. You might be asked to remove stones, while another will plow, and yet another plant the seeds.

Not every act against Satan’s dominion stirs epic visions. Just removing a badly placed stone is an act of Spiritual Warfare. It brings some portion of God’s promised blessings closer to reality for you or someone else. But their welfare is your welfare, because it all belongs to the King and His Kingdom.

This is the parable of Spiritual Warfare.

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Spiritual Warfare 01

Posted on August 8, 2021 by ehurst

Let’s get one thing straight: It is honestly impossible to write a study course on demonology. You could learn what I know by working closely with me long enough to see how I do it, but you would still have to learn your own lessons, and some lessons may well be non-transferable.

This is rooted in the very nature of understanding the Spirit Realm in general. One of the greatest flaws in the English speaking world is the false assumption that all truth can be approached logically and systematically. Moral truth is living and active, and cuts like a two-edged sword. It’s contextual; context is everything. God didn’t simply engineer everything and walk away. The totality of Creation is alive and sentient. It interacts with us on the basis of Biblical Law and living moral guidance from a living God.

Demons are also alive. There are some restraints on them that we can teach. It’s all part of the fundamental issue that Biblical Theology is universal, while Systematic Theology is peculiar to the person making the system. It remains one of the biggest lies of Western Christianity that the truth can be systematized for human intellectual consumption. Reality is fungible; one man’s reality is as good as another’s. A very large portion of how you act on your faith will be yours and yours alone. The same goes for your interaction with the Spirit Realm in general, and demons in particular. What one soul experiences will be different from that of another.

For my own sanity, I make the following general statements when I share with others about Spiritual Warfare:

1. Demons are bound by Biblical Law. It works on two levels, just as Law does in everything else. On the obvious level of practical particulars, demons are limited in what they do to deceive any community. Notice that they are bound by the fundamental requirements that Law is tribal, feudal and covenantal. They respect the boundaries of moral dominion that God delivers into the hands of His servants. If you are not committed to any particular community covenant, you are wide open to Satan’s interference in your life.

But it also works on the higher, moral level of ineffable truth. Demons are bound by your convictions. All the more so when you consciously speak those convictions where you, and God, and all Creation can hear it. It means to Satan what it means in your heart. Your mission and calling are his battleground in your life. He cannot do to you some of the things he can do to someone else, because Jesus stands before the Father keeping things just according to His Father’s divine moral character.

2. Enforcement of Biblical Law against demons requires knowing the Father and His Word. This should be an obvious corollary of the previous item. You must know Biblical Law, because your effectiveness is limited by the depth of your knowledge. The stronger your heart-led convictions, and your awareness of them, the more authority you can wield to protect yourself and others from demonic interference.

3. Demons serve to personalize everything. The whole point in this imagery of spirit beings with dark powers demands that you embrace the idea of a universe populated by all kinds of other beings. The only way you can be effective in standing against deception and perversion is the sheer power of seeing it as all personal. When you begin to work in someone else’s life, the single biggest barrier will be human resistance to coming under your moral dominion. People instinctively seek to make you accountable for their protection, but without surrendering to your authority. Stay sharp on the moral limits of what you can actually do. The second biggest problem is that their demons will do what they can to come upon you and those who assist you in this fight.

4. It seldom makes sense on a human level. You’ll need to get used to the accusation from others that you are paranoid and delusional. Get used to thinking of yourself as an outsider to the common culture of the West, largely because Western Civilization was designed by Satan.

5. The bottom line: Satan is our Enemy, but not God’s The best way to understand how Satan operates is to see him as God’s loyal servant. He is God’s left-hand, the feudal enforcer and jailer. If you step outside of the boundaries of Biblical Law, Satan will be there to capture that part of your life. His primary profit is to absorb all the blessings God promised you under Biblical Law; he takes what belongs to you.

We are born in the situation where he consumes what God says is ours. The job we have is to remove ourselves from his captivity by bringing ourselves in line with Biblical Law and conviction, to reclaim those blessings. We need the mindset that Biblical Law is privilege, not restriction. It is a privilege to know what God revealed about His Creation and how things work. God’s Law is always in our best interest. Satan’s job is to tempt you away from that understanding.

6. There is no such thing as “demon possession.” To live in a fallen, mortal state is to be compromised by some measure of demonic presence in your life. The issue is reclaiming and occupying the territory of your soul. Some issues will forever be contested in battle. It’s on you, as God’s feudal servant, to guard the borders of your life and be ready to defend God’s claim on you. Your soul is the battlefield, not some external space-time turf.

The grounds for driving demons out of the lives of others is that demons are using that victim to intrude on your divine domain (AKA mission and calling). You have a much stronger position and authority if that person has sought your spiritual dominion, your moral covering. But by far, the vast majority of Spiritual Warfare is the victim doing their own “exorcism” by surrendering some troubled part of them to the Word and the dominion of Christ. You, as the servant of God, are merely His proxy in the daily details.

In other words, the business of Spiritual Warfare is simply the business of our feudal existence under Biblical Law. This is the perceptual context — the parable — under which we live daily. It’s not a question of obsessing over demons, but of taking for granted how they operate. It also means recognizing extreme cases as extreme, and that some things will forever be outside your hands because the Lord didn’t give that to you.

The key is to know your mission and calling, and to give expression to your convictions. Satan is constrained to honor that.

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New Testament Doctrine — John 4:27-42

Posted on August 7, 2021 by ehurst

First, some chronology. Jesus passed through Samaria to get away from the political heat in Judea, but to also avoid the higher likelihood of arrest in Perea, on the heels of John the Baptist being put in prison at Machaerus. Jesus stays a couple of days in Sychar, then heads north. In Nazareth He encounters resistance to point they tried to push Him off a bluff to His death. From there He continues north to Cana, from whence He heals the nobleman’s son. The nobleman had hiked all day from Capernaum to plead with Jesus, and got back the next day to find his son healed.

But the story at hand is the time Jesus spent among the Samaritans.

Jesus told the brassy woman He was the Messiah. She completely forgot her water pot and quickly went back into Sychar. From a distance, the Disciples were returning and saw their Master talking to this woman, and thought it quite strange. Not only was she a Samaritan, but Jesus normally observed strict protocol about such things as talking to non-family women in public. Of course, they had no idea how pushy she had been with Jesus, and how aloof He had been with her. Still, knowing their Rabbi had done many strange things so far, there was not much use in asking Him about this odd scene.

She had run off to blabber in the town about this encounter with what she believed was the Messiah, seeing that He knew all she had ever done without ever seeing her before. She managed to stir up quite a crowd. Being a pushy gal, she would have pestered everyone in sight, and the difference in her message this time would have been quite obvious to the folks living in Sychar.

Meanwhile, the disciples were trying to get Jesus to join in the lunch they bought in Shechem. It’s probably not obvious to some readers what would make Jesus lose His appetite at this point. He was still a man, and had resolved to do nothing that wasn’t possible for any man under under the Covenant. But He did possess moral purity under the Covenant, and so was deeply moved by spiritual events.

This encounter with the Samaritan woman echoed with a mighty move of the Spirit. And it wasn’t over yet. Jesus was so stirred savoring this spiritual victory that He couldn’t be distracted with eating mere food, and He said so. But of course, He spoke in parables, and His disciples were puzzled, as usual. We aren’t told much about this event in terms of how it was so important to His mission, only that Jesus regarded this as something too good to miss.

This was the cool rainy season, when the crops around them were still green. It was still another four months before the grain would mature and turn dry, with the heads drooping. Yet, here came out of the city a hoard of people whose clothing would have been roughly the same color as ripened wheat, an off-white color some Samaritans still wear today. Jesus told them that the spiritual harvest was ripe. The Samaritan woman had planted the seed, and they were about to reap.

The crowd approaching had been primed to believe Jesus was the Messiah. Upon arriving, they asked Him to stay with them and share His message. We aren’t told how the disciples reacted to this prospect, but Jesus stayed a couple of days. If you keep in mind what kind of personality she had, it does matter what the townsmen said to her. They admitted that she piqued their curiosity. This woman, of all people, ranting and raving about the Messiah? But after a couple of days under Jesus’ teaching, it was obvious to them He certainly was the Messiah.

And we know that Jesus would have spoken straight from the Old Testament without compromise. They embraced it; John’s choice of words indicates it was not unanimous, but it was a substantial portion of the folks in Sychar. What John gets across is that these folks were already primed to hear what Jesus taught. From what we can tell, the Samaritans had latched onto the ancient Hebrew style of mysticism, and had never developed the legalism of the Talmud. They had far less resistance to Jesus’ parabolic style of teaching, and His emphasis on otherworldly truth.

But the most important element here is how even those who didn’t embrace His teaching weren’t hostile. His time there didn’t create any trouble. What He said to the woman about worshiping in spirit and in truth was not foreign to their religion, yet we know that such talk got Him into big trouble among Jews. This was a good time for His disciples to see just how hungry souls were to hear the message that Israel should have carried to the rest of the world.

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Introspection Required for Penitence

Posted on August 7, 2021 by ehurst

This is not a rule; it’s a tendency.

Apparently it’s shocking enough to our American culture that it warrants making a point of it on a regular basis. I’m not referring to having that inner conversation some of us keep running in our heads. That seems to be something you either have or don’t, based on DNA and some formative factors in your upbringing. Rather, this is more about the moral ability to see that you are a sinner.

This is what Paul meant about seeing yourself in a mirror, and then walking away totally forgetting what kind of moral condition you have. If you cannot see your sins, then you cannot repent. More to the point, if you cannot see that you are fundamentally flawed, you’ll never turn to the Lord.

I lived very close to someone who carried around major barriers to introspection. He choked when it was time to say, “Oops! I was wrong about that.” He wanted people to have the impression that he was never wrong. It was often said of him that he would argue with a fence post. But he was not merely hard-headed; he was hard-hearted.

To differentiate, let’s note that the proper biblical attitude about standing your ground is that you may well be wrong about facts, but that your convictions won’t let you take any other path. It’s an attitude that is placid in the face of conflict, because the outcomes don’t matter. What matters is the inner process of being faithful to your calling.

Thus, it’s never a question of being a winner or a loser. It’s always a question of being obedient. Your Master’s pleasure is the only guide. Hard-hearted people care only about their own pleasure, even if it comes off as a regime of “doing what’s right.” They have become their own law, and are determined to assert it over the rest of the world, as far as they can touch.

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Revelation Revision for Printing

Posted on August 6, 2021 by ehurst

My commentary on Revelation in printable format (Word DOCX): AT-Revelation. This one has page numbers added. As always, you can ask for it in other formats (older Word DOC, PDF, OpenDocument, etc.) I rushed this one because I had lost the source version of my 2nd edition, so I was a little anxious to recover that. I simply used Adobe’s online service to translate it from PDF to DOCX, but then had to do a lot of clean up. While I was at it, I did the usual editing for grammar, etc.

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Gospels Revision for Print

Posted on August 5, 2021 by ehurst

The revision of my Ancient Truth: Gospels book for print is ready: AT-Gospels-p

For now I’m offering the one version with footers and page numbers added. If you prefer it without, or in the older DOC format, I can send it by email. I can also do Open Document format and PDF. Other formats are possible, but only by request.

Now, on to the next book revision!

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Grab It Now

Posted on August 5, 2021 by ehurst

You need not be a prophet, only a heart-led observer, to have a fair idea of coming tribulations. I learned some hard lessons about expectations and seeing storm clouds on the horizon. It is too obvious that this is a time of God’s wrath.

Some obvious things we expect: economic collapse, political and social turmoil, violence, along with natural disasters. What may not be obvious is that tribulation seldom comes all in one fell swoop. For example, an economic collapse comes in stages. It isn’t the kind of thing that is ever complete, so that you can record clear turning points, and discern a fresh start. Some of elements of collapse are inevitable, just the results of bad choices taken too far. Some of it is carefully planned by people with evil motives and hands on the controls. Even with the latter, the consequences won’t ever work out as expected. It is humanly impossible to know all the details, much less account for them.

It’s better to think of it as a long transition period from one kind of trouble to another. Human folly is boundless, and sin always has consequences that may drag on for generations. It would be a mistake to expect big events with clear labeling, as if you were playing some big RPG (roll-playing game) or computer simulation.

However, I think it’s safe to say that, if you aren’t already moving your stuff somewhere else, now is not the time to start. If you were able to reduce your life to living on wheels, then this doesn’t apply to you. And know that I am envious, because I wish I could do that. I’ve enjoyed following the stories of people who were blessed to have the means for mobile living. But for those of us whom God didn’t endow with a mobile lifestyle, it’s too late to consider finding another home.

A major element in serving Christ is knowing your place, in the sense of where your mission field is. I’m utterly certain I’m in the location God intends for me to serve through this tribulation. I’ll probably die here. I sense very strongly that all the other options have closed. Of course, you must follow your own convictions, but I’m convinced that, for the most part, a major shift is right on top of us, and completing a move to another place would require extraordinary resources.

Long time readers may recall that, on the day I shattered my right kneecap back in 2016, I knew something was coming that day, but had no idea what it was. Just a few minutes before I collided with that sweeper, I had stopped to pray and all I knew was to ask the Lord for strength to keep a cool head. He delivered, and I managed to stay friendly with the guy whose mistake put me in the hospital.

Well, I’ve got that kind of “spidey sense” that something is on top of us again, something that will affect all of us. There are too many different issues that could explode into serious trouble, so I have no idea what the specific problem will be. Oddly enough, it comes with a sense that we can do this, that we should face it with aplomb, because anything we might lose was never ours in the first place. It’s more important to simply keep your eyes on the Lord and respond quickly to the flow toward His glory.

Indeed, I believe that there’s nothing we can do to prep any further. There will be plenty of moments ahead when the Lord will nudge you about something and will provide in the day of need. Let me discourage you from fretting about something you may have forgotten. Our Father is keeping track for us. I’d say it’s more important to spend time in worship and prayer. Just let things go and enjoy some time with the Spirit of God. When you feel the urge to do that, you’ll know that you are about to enter a time when you’ll wish you could do it again, because you are about to get busy with things you can’t predict.

I’ll be looking for an outdoor prayer chapel today…

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Technical Difficulties

Posted on August 3, 2021 by ehurst

Just so you’ll be aware, folks: I’ve been having trouble getting logged into the admin controls on this blog. Right now I’m testing it via a VPN to get a feel for what kind of problems we are having. Yesterday’s post went up on the forum under “Miscellaneous”. While there’s a good chance Jay can figure out what’s going wrong here, be prepared to check the forum for posts that should appear here.

Update: Jay says the server is overheating. For some reason I am able to login with my tablet, but not any computer I’ve tried. I can blog like this if necessary. Lord have mercy…

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New Testament Doctrine: John 4:1-26

Posted on July 31, 2021 by ehurst

Rome would not have tolerated any trouble between the Jews and Samaritans. The spite remained, but things were generally peaceful. According to the Law of Moses, Jesus would later restrain His disciples from preaching to Samaritans the message meant to give Israel one last chance to recover her original mission of revelation, before the Covenant was closed on them. Yet it was clear that Jesus bore the Samaritans no ill will when He referred to the Good Samaritan.

On the one hand, we have some reports that, during some periods of tension between the two nations, Jews would cross to the East Bank of the Jordan to avoid passing through Samaria. We have no way of ascertaining how prevalent this practice was, nor even if it were true at all. It need not be taken as a factor at this point. When Jesus realized that the Sanhedrin were aware that John’s controversial ministry was now passing to Him — and this was about the time John was arrested by Herod Antipas — it was time to leave Judea. He also needed to avoid provoking Antipas, so passing through Samaria was about the only way.

We get the feeling that Antipas was more strict in Perea where he actually lived most of the time. His fortress of Macaerus was down near the tense border with the Nabatean Kingdom; Rome never conquered them. But his domain in Galilee was the tourist trap, and he kept a gentler hand there for the sake of keeping a friendly face to the rest of the world. It was important for him to avoid being too much like his notorious father.

Nothing demonstrates Jesus’ lack of hatred for Samaritans more clearly than this episode we call the Woman at the Well. It also represents His lack of rabbinical spite for women in general. In other words, Jesus had more animus towards the Jewish leadership than just about anyone else. Still, it’s obvious that He remained somewhat aloof, which is what the Covenant had in mind for such occasions. This would explain His use of the third person.

Shechem never stood precisely between the Mounts Ebal and Gerizim. It was a little to the east of the narrow gap. Just outside that ancient city was Jacob’s Well on the southeast, and Sychar was a suburb lying on the northeast, which put it directly east of the peak of Ebal. Jesus stopped at Jacob’s Well, and the smaller village of Sychar was clearly visible across the fields there in the valley. We note that John seems to mix using Roman time and Jewish reckoning of the hours of the day, but it seems to make the most sense that here he means noon. They’ve been walking half the day and it’s time to take a break.

Most such wells offered something like a picnic area; it was a common eastern courtesy since ancient times. John notes that the disciples had gone into “the city” to buy food, which almost certainly refers to the main city of Shechem. A woman came walking out of Sychar from the north to draw water at the wrong time of day. Women typically did this just after dawn, making it a big social occasion to chatter and gossip with no men around. This woman came out at noon when only mostly male travelers were likely to be there.

Whether she was merely a social outcast unwelcome among the more respectable women, or something closer to a hooker checking if there were any clients, is hard to estimate. Maybe it was some of both. Either way, she found something totally unexpected. Normally at least one person in a traveling entourage would carry a soft leather bucket to get water from wells they passed while traveling, but they must have taken it with them. Thus, Jesus sitting alone there asked the woman if He could have some water from her draw. This was common enough, an acceptable variation from the routine of never speaking to non-family females in public.

So, her remark was about the tension between Jews and Samaritans. It says much about her — brassy and sarcastic. Perhaps she expected some self-righteous indignation, but was caught off guard by what Jesus said. Referring to Himself in the third person, He disarms her completely, even while retaining the upper hand. John translates a common Semitic expression for a surface spring of flowing water — “living water” — versus a deep well of more stagnant water. It was a parable.

Sticking with the literal, she missed the point. This was the only public drinking water for quite some distance, and one of the deepest wells in the land, and Jesus must not have had a traveler’s skin bucket on Him to get even this water. Where was He going to get spring water? Keeping up the sarcasm, she poked at Him some more by claiming Jacob as her forefather, referring to him as the one who dug this well in the first place, now the inheritance of Samaritans.

Jesus persisted with His parabolic riddles to get her into a different frame of mind. In a literal sense, drinking from this well was a body maintenance task that needed frequent repetition. He had water of a different type, something that would flow from within the soul, a source of eternal life. Again with the sarcasm, she said she would be glad to have it so she could stop taking that hike to draw from the well every day. Few men would have ever thought this was a pleasant woman.

Jesus tried a different tack. To her, it might seem He was going to provide her with something through a gift to her husband. He told her to go and bring her husband back. This sounded almost normal to her, but not normal for her. She claimed to have no husband. To which Jesus answered she was quite right. She was not married now, but had been married to five different men in the past, and was living with yet another at this moment. Her brassy demeanor in that culture was enough to explain such a bad record with marriage.

Now she was spooked, because it was an accurate assessment. Without admitting anything, she said that Jesus must be some kind of prophet. “So tell me this, all-seeing prophet: What’s up with this argument over where we should worship Jehovah? Where is God’s real home?” She was referring to Mount Gerizim just a short distance to the southwest of where they were having this conversation, versus Mount Zion. We can still see the ruins of a Samaritan temple on Gerizim today.

If this was one of the questions burning in her soul, she got a far better answer than anyone else might have given her. Someday the place would no longer matter; the Covenant was about to end soon. Jesus referred to how the Samaritans had embraced a portion of that Covenant without ever having been fully a part of it in the first place. The covenant claimed by the Jews was the true revelation of Jehovah, whereas the Samaritans had a highly excised version of it. Still, such as the Samaritan “covenant” was, it would be all the more dead when the Israeli Covenant from which it was derived was gone.

The Heavenly Father was no mere earthly king, but was a spirit being. Those who were going to connect to Him must do so on a spiritual plane. Historical human disputes have no place there.

It was over her head. She simply remarked that when the Messiah shows up — something the Samaritans believed in — she was sure everyone would have the final spiritual truth about things. Again, Jesus refers to Himself in the third person, but this time claiming to be this Messiah.

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