This is Jesus’ second miracle at Cana* in Galilee**. Jesus has passed through Samaria (watch mountain) travelling from Judea (He shall be praised), on His way to Galilee. We can see from the definitions below that Cana and Galilee have significant names to point us in the right way of understanding.

You will see a great variety of infections in most Hebrew words, and we can see how certain meanings are derived. Cana implies upright and righteous, and Galilee strongly suggests trust.

It would take too long to go into a precise explanation word by word, but I hope that we can see that by following Jesus on His journey, that He is taking us from praising the Lord when we are born again in Judea, through the watchfulness and discernment of the Holy Spirit and learning of ‘the rivers of living water’ in Samaria to our landing at the place of light and righteousness and trust at Cana in Galilee.

The more we look at scripture, the greater the depths we are shown. Three times the nobleman encounters the words “your son lives.” — and we witness a wonderful healing miracle. We see that when the nobleman believed — and trusted — Jesus, his son was freed from the bondage of sickness.

How often when we pray for healing do we trust and believe — or do we expect great signs and wonders? Most of The Lord’s miracles — now as it was then — are performed quietly and unseen by the eyes of men. Jesus is not a showman. He doesn’t need to be. He just needs us to be upright and trusting; He will do the rest.

* h7070. קָנֶה qâneh; from 7069; a reed (as erect); by resemblance a rod (especially for measuring), shaft, tube, stem, the radius (of the arm), beam (of a steelyard): — balance, bone, branch, calamus, cane, reed, x spearman, stalk. reed, stalk, bone, balances, stalk, water-plant, reed, calamus (aromatic reed) derived meanings measuring-rod, reed (as unit of measure - 6 cubits), beam (of scales - for scales themselves), shaft (of lampstand), branches (of lampstand), shoulder-joint

** h1556. גָּלַל g̱âlal; a primitive root; to roll (literally or figuratively): — commit, remove, roll (away, down, together), run down, seek occasion, trust, wallow.

Fields are a type of the world. We have heard of those called to ‘the mission fields’, and what is a field but land which is ready to receive seed to bring about new growth and be a provision for the season ahead.

This allusion allows Jesus to talk of The Law of Sowing and Reaping — one of the big four ‘immutable laws’*. He tells us clearly here what the world (the field) is like. ‘One sows and another reaps.’, He says. We can see that He sowed seed with the Samaritan woman at the well, and reaped a harvest when other Samaritans heard of Him from her.

And many more believed because of His own word.
Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.”
[John 4:41-42 NKJV]

He sows the seed in us that we might bear fruit — and that fruit is passing on as seed to others, that they also may bear fruit. This is not our work; this is entirely and completely Jesus at work; we are mere vessels witnessing to His message. There will be a harvest, and we benefit from this amazing gift.

Jesus asks us to ‘look at the fields’; see the prophetic truth of His mission. Those fields are ‘already white for harvest!’; brilliant with the light of those coming to see the purity and holiness of The Lord.

* The main 4 Immutable Spiritual Laws (unchanging principles) in scripture are:

1. The Law of Forgiveness
2. The Law of Judgement
3. The Law of Sowing and Reaping
4. The Law of Idolatry

1 - Sowing the seed by the dawn-light fair,
Sowing the seed by the noonday glare,
Sowing the seed by the fading light,
Sowing the seed in the solemn night:
O what shall the harvest be?

Refrain:
Sown in the darkness or sown in the light,
Sown in our weakness or sown in our might,
Gathered in time or eternity,
Sure, ah! sure, will the harvest be.

2 - Sowing the seed by the wayside high,
Sowing the seed on the rocks to die,
Sowing the seed where the thorns will spoil,
Sowing the seed in the fertile soil:
O what shall the harvest be?

3 - Sowing the seed with an aching heart,
Sowing the seed while the tear-drops start,
Sowing in hope, till the reapers come,
Gladly to gather the harvest home:
O what shall the harvest be?

This is an aside to our study of John’s Gospel, but I feel is very relevant to what He is saying ‘in this hour’. John uses the phrase ‘the hour is coming’ five times, and in the form we see here ‘... and now is’ or ‘... has now come’, three times.

The import of the phrase is clearly ‘now is the hour’, with the emphasis on ‘now’.; this moment; immediately. And what happens now?

• true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth
• the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God;,and those who hear will live.
• that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave me alone.

These are prophetic utterances, each given in full understanding, knowing whose we are. Jesus knows who are true worshipers; who will hear Him, but also that we will be scattered. In other words, He has no illusions about us. He knows that we are fallible and will most likely — in this moment — abandon Him when it comes to the crunch. Are we so easily lost? Jesus goes on to say, in chapter 17:

“Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.
“I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.
Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.
While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
[John 17:7-14 NKJV]

What becomes clear after reading John 17, is that when Jesus talks of being alone, He is meaning His disciples then and now. There will be times when we leave Him alone, but He will not be downcast because He has kept us in Your name. We will want to leave Him alone, but He knows who will repent and return and none of them is lost except the son of perdition.

We are to Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. [Galatians 5:1 NKJV]

We can be eternally free now, when we choose Him.

See also “The Hour Is Now Come”

This passage from John chapter 4 is a wonderful evocation of the Holy Spirit — indeed the fountain is a powerful Holy Spirit symbol — and we feel refreshed just reading these words.

Again and again, allusions are made to the Holy Spirit — indeed, “in spirit and truth” is mentioned twice here;
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”
Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
[John 4:24-26 NKJV]

Water is essential for life. Our bodies are some 70% water and we can survive much longer without food than without water; but no mention is made in this physiological information of the spiritual dimension. How long can we live without spiritual nourishment?

Jesus, as always, provides an answer which transcends the question — not ‘how long can we live without?’, but ‘you will have life everlasting’ — turning a question into a statement. Is it a statement of fact? For the answer to that question, we must travel with Him from Samaria to Galilee.

Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), He left Judea and departed again to Galilee.
But He needed to go through Samaria.
So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
[John 4:1-6 NKJV]

When we lived in Ireland, Milady and I were trying to get from Dublin to Powerscourt House to set up for a wedding. We wanted to find the southbound carriageway of the M50 – the Dublin city bypass – which would take us there. Coming out of the city we were diligently following the roadsigns for the M50 south, until they suddenly stopped at a crucial point and we found ourselves heading away from the motorway onto a small back road to a place called Lost.

Lost is very like Amach — directions to which can be found on every motorway in Ireland, until I realised that Amach was the Irish for 'exit'.

Gill suggested that we ask for directions and stopped to ask a local pedestrian the way to the southbound carriageway of the M50. “I'm going there meself,” says he. Plainly a lie as he was walking and appeared to be ‘a little the worse for drink’; but letting that pass, we asked how he would get there as we'd had considerable difficulty. “You're right there,” was the reply. “It's a problem, but if it were me, I'd go north and turn round.” You cannot fault logic like that.

In a sense this is what Jesus did here. He set out for Galilee, but later on in the chapter He appears in Jerusalem, which seems to have been his destination after all. He went north to Galilee before going south to Jerusalem. However, Jesus needed to go through Samaria — the most direct route from Judea to Galilee, but every step that Jesus took was purposed to teach us something about Kingdom life.

Jesus wanted to avoid the Pharisees, and representing as they do, an adherance to religious form — which seeks to stop Jesus’ work in us before it properly begins — they are the very antithesis of walking in the Spirit; thus He leads us away, leaving all form and religiousness behind us to find Samaria (from a root meaning to keep, guard, keep watch and ward, protect).

In Samaria we go through the keeping and guarding by the Holy Spirit, because we can have spiritual eyes to see Jesus clearly, discerning the way ahead.

But as we shall see, Jesus also had an appointment to keep.

John The Baptist is the one who heralded Jesus’ appearing to the world, and the apostle John now switches his account from what Jesus said about Himself to what The Baptist concluded, which was that Jesus was ‘The Bridegroom’, that is, ‘He who comes from heaven’.

John is presenting us here with the growing body of testimony that Jesus is ‘The Anointed One’; ‘The Christ’, and that he, Nicodemus and John the Baptist all hold it that Jesus was and is The Messiah, the gateway to everlasting life. His citing of two independent witnesses who state the truth of this assertion, could have been seen as sufficient in law to prove the case for Jesus.

However, this passage is most significant in the life of a believer for the statement — attributed to John the Baptist — that “He must increase, but I must decrease.” This very effectively sums up in few words what happens in every one who truly follows Jesus.

• It declares the process — we are not immediately perfected in Him, but ‘going on to perfection’
• It is a statement that Jesus is the focus of our spiritual life and that our own motivations and desires are, at best, secondary and also of diminishing importance.
• It clearly establishes the attitude of heart that marks out the true believer in Jesus as the Son of God.

And we can see that in verse 36, we are being offered the promise of everlasting life, and that without Jesus Christ, we shall not see that life. He is the only life that will carry us through, and that life must abide in us.

He who believes in Him is not condemned. This one sentence sums up the case. It stresses that we are not condemned, provided always that we believe in Jesus.

It goes on to say that if I don’t believe — well, I am already condemned ... not by Jesus, but by my unbelief. By refusing Jesus Christ, I am refusing His salvation.

This word is amplifying and delving deeper into the ‘born again’ statements immediately before. We are getting now to the ‘terms and conditions’, the truth of life in the Lord’s presence.

Condemnation is judgement*; so, if I am not condemned, can I say that I am not judged by God? No, I cannot, because I know that God is a God of judgement. What I must see is that judgement is inescapable ...
For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? [1 Peter 4:17 NKJV]

Is this then the contradiction it appears to be? What seems to be happening here is that a differentiation is made depending on whether we are exposed to the light or choose to remain in darkness. Judgement happens either way; but if I am judged in the light (by abiding in Jesus Christ) then I am shown mercy in the court of heaven — not because of who I am, but because of who Christ is. This is God’s truth.

Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven. [Psalm 85:10-11 NKJV]

Now it seems that Jesus meeting with Nicodemus was Him pointing The Way, which we now see is walking in The Truth. If this analogy holds true, then what follows will reveal that Jesus is indeed who He says He is, and will show us The Life.

* condemnation: κρίσις krisis; decision (subjectively or objectively, for or against); by extension, a tribunal; by implication, justice (especially, divine law): — accusation, condemnation, damnation, judgment.

Verse 11 is the third time in John chapter 3, that Jesus uses the expression “most assuredly”*. He speaks to Nicodemus (conqueror; victorious among his people), a member of the Sanhedrin and thus a man of learning and Jesus is ‘assuring’ and reassuring him of the Truth.

The passage quoted above is the more complex exposition resulting from Jesus’ talk of being born again, and contains what is possibly the most quoted verse in the Bible — John 3:16 — For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Jesus is impressing on Nicodemus the incontrovertible veracity of every word He says — and using the expression three times in quick succession— as Jesus does here — is our guarantee that Jesus speaks from the throne of God.

Nicodemus is convinced — and we know this because He appears later in John’s Gospel (7:50, 19:39) as loyal to Jesus. John is building his case to show clearly to all that Jesus is who He says He is, and this piece is clearly aimed at the Jews; showing that a member of the Sanhedrin — the legal hierarchy; a high-ranking judge — finds the evidence for Jesus compelling, and most assuredly the truth. Jesus is new life.