John 4
1 The Lord learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John.
2 In fact, Jesus himself was not baptizing; his disciples were.
3 So he left Judea and went back to Galilee.
4 He had to pass through Samaria.
5 So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
6 Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from the journey, sat down by the well just as he was. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
8 His disciples had gone into town to buy food.
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
10 Jesus replied, “If you knew God’s gift, and who it is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
11 She said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this living water?
12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.
14 But whoever drinks the water I give will never be thirsty again. The water I give will become in that person a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said, “Sir, give me this water, so I won’t be thirsty anymore or have to come here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband and come back here.”
17 The woman replied, “I don’t have a husband.” Jesus said to her, “You’re right when you say, ‘I don’t have a husband.’
18 You’ve had five husbands, and the man you have now isn’t your husband. What you said is true.”
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.
20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that Jerusalem is the place where people must worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation comes from the Jews.
23 But the time is coming—and is here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is looking for people like that to worship him.
24 God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25 The woman said, “I know the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us everything.”
26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one speaking to you.”
27 Just then his disciples arrived and were surprised that he was speaking with a woman. But no one asked, “What are you looking for?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and said to the people,
29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he be the Christ?”
30 They left the town and came to him.
31 Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, “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, “Could someone have brought him food?”
34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work.
35 Don’t you say, ‘Four months more, and then the harvest comes’? Look, I tell you: lift up your eyes and see the fields. They are already white for harvest.
36 The one who harvests is already receiving his pay and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who harvests may rejoice together.
37 For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows, and another harvests.’
38 I sent you to harvest what you did not work for. Others have worked, and you have come into their work.”
39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony: “He told me everything I have done.”
40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.
41 Many more believed because of what he said.
42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said. We have heard him ourselves, and we know that this really is the Savior of the world.”
43 After the two days, he left there for Galilee.
44 For Jesus himself had declared that a prophet is not honored in his own homeland.
45 When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen everything he had done in Jerusalem during the festival; they too had gone to the festival.
46 So he went again to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned water into wine. There was a royal official whose son was sick in Capernaum.
47 When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was close to death.
48 Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
49 The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my boy dies.”
50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son is alive.” The man believed what Jesus had said to him and went on his way.
51 While he was still on his way down, his servants met him and told him that his boy was alive.
52 He asked them what time his son had begun to get better. They said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”
53 Then the father realized that this was the very hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son is alive.” And he and his whole household believed.
54 This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.
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