Together In Testimony

by PENN, I.E. | Category: Wonders In Samaria | Feb 2009

God the Father has a deep desire: He seeks worshippers. He seeks them amongst sinners who, when converted, can be just the right persons to fulfil that desire! Not only is it a wonder that the woman of Samaria was interested in worship, but she was particularly interested in the worship of a united or collective people - those bound together by a common adherence to ordinances of worship, which are acceptable to God because He has ordained them. What is more, she knew, even in her unbelieving days, something of the key features of what the Scriptures call 'divine service' (John 4:1-43). She recited the importance of birth to the worship of the God of Jacob; and that Moses taught worship was to be associated with one place (a mountain at that), with one people, and in some way with the Messiah.

The Lord dismissed her erroneous beliefs about worship in less than a sentence (John 4:22). She was in error about her people's descent from Jacob (2 Kin. 17:24-41) and about her people's belief that God could be worshipped in Mount Gerizim rather than Zion (Deut. 12; 2 Chron. 3:1). No amount of belief could compensate for worship that is in error (John 4:23).

But, perhaps the greatest wonder of the Lord's first visit to Samaria is that, after giving such corrective instruction, He should predict such an unlikely event: that the hour was coming when even Samaritans (John 4:21) would one day worship the Father, that is the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the fulfilment of that prophecy had to wait until, after Calvary, Philip the evangelist went down to Samaria (Acts 8:4-25). There he proclaimed the Christ, and the Samaritans believed. He preached the kingdom of God, and they were discipled, being baptised in water as proof of that (vv.6,12).

Finally, in Philip's footsteps, leaders came from Jerusalem who endorsed the work, jointly laying hands on each new disciple, each of whom miraculously received the Holy Spirit. Thus the Samaritan disciples were invisibly linked in the Spirit to the believers in Jerusalem who had previously undergone the self-same baptism in the Spirit (Acts 1:5,8, 2:1-4). By this means, both Jew and Gentile became members of that church later revealed in the Scriptures as 'the church, which is His' (Christ's) body (Eph. 1:22-23, 1 Cor. 12:13), a church in which is no sin (Eph. 5:27).

They were also linked visibly in testimony with their Judaean counterparts who had earlier passed through the same set of divine experiences (Acts 2:41) and were a visible church, the church of God in Jerusalem. In contrast to the one church, which is His Body, there was sin in these churches. Indeed, Peter's last recorded act in the city of Samaria was to discipline Simon the Sorcerer by admonition, as he earlier had judged a similar sin in Jerusalem (compare Acts 5:7-11 and 1 Cor. 5:12). Thus the Samaritans are understood to have been planted as the church of God in their city. It is surely a wonder that John who only a few years before asked if fire should be called down from heaven to destroy Samaritans (Luke 9:51-56), should now welcome them into the Lord's fellowship of assemblies (See Acts 1:8; 2:41; 1 Cor. 1:9).

Being so 'fitted together' with the comparable and visible church in Jerusalem they became part of the spiritual house of God, collectively to worship in the 'true' Mount Zion in heaven, there to enter into the Holies (Eph. 2:21,22; 1 Pet. 2:1-10; Heb. 12: 22-25). So, the Samaritans were able to worship in the Holy Spirit, and in the truth later to become known as 'the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ' which the Lord through His disciples delivered 'once for all' to the saints (Jude 3). By this means, the Lord's word to the woman was fulfilled as the Samaritans engaged in divine service with their Jewish brethren regardless of nation or race, and not merely on earth but in the 'true' sanctuary in heaven.

The Lord's ministry was approved of God by miracles: powers, wonders and signs (Acts 2:22), but it was not so in Samaria. Philip and the apostles exceeded the miracles done by the Lord in working the signs of an apostle in the foreign place where the Lord Himself did no miracle (1 Cor. 12:10, Heb. 2:3-4). Thus the fulfilment of the Lord's prophecy was part of that wonder of wonders, greater than any of His miracles (see John 14:12): His obedient disciples establishing first century churches of God not only in Judaea and Samaria but in many lands. Almost two millennia have passed, and in our day we see the same pattern of churches of God forming the house of God across the globe - possibly a final sample of the great original spiritual house built by the apostles and their fellows in obedience to the Lord's commands.

PENN, I.E. | Feb 2009
Wonders In Samaria