Jesus lifting up his eyes and seeing the large crowd coming toward Him said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” But He was asking this to test him, for He knew what He was about to do. This question is reminiscent of the question Moses posed to God in the wilderness when the people looked for meat to eat. Unlike Moses, whose question was asked from a position of inadequacy, anxiety and confusion, Jesus the greater than Moses, the very God “knew what He was about to do. “He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs with His arm, And carry them in His bosom, And gently lead those who are with young.”

In describing the “greater works than these”, Jesus said that “For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.” Raising the dead and making alive are attributes of God. As the Father does the work of “raising” and “quickening”, the incarnate Son has the power to quicken whom He wills. For the man who hears it and believes, he experiences a moral change which is an actual passing out of death into life. This is the Resurrection of the Dead.

The world is already under the Judgment of God as a result of sin. Jesus Christ is the redeemer but implicitly the rejection of the Light of Jesus Christ also places Jesus as the harbinger of Judgment. Darkness without an offer of Light has an excuse. But when Light comes and men choose to remain in darkness, the Light acts as an indictment to the man in darkness. Truly, the Light judges them on the Day of Judgment.

The hour is coming and now is. Not only will the physically dead rise from their graves in the fullness and strength of life, but the spiritually dead in vast multitudes will pass from death into eternal life. They will know that the bitterness of death is over and that there shall be no more condemnation for them.

"Go, call thy husband," is the first stroke in breaking up the surface of sin and revealing the foulness of the life beneath it. The woman answered Jesus and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.” The stroke goes deeper. It lays bare the secrets of all those years over which she thought the veil of the past had forever been drawn. Before the Lord gives living waters, He must dig up every residue of sin. He digs a deep well. No hidden sin can continue.

Jesus says, “The hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.” Jesus did not say that either Samaritans or Jews were exclusively right in their preference for one local shrine or place of sacrificial worship. Still, He declared the sublime truth that the worship of the Father would soon prove itself to be independent of both alike and of all the limitations of place and ceremony. Every place would be as sacred and as hallowed as these notable shrines when the full character and real nature of the object of worship became fully known.

Jesus says to her, “I who speak to you am He.” Jesus utters to the Samaritan woman the truth about himself, which he withholds from the sensuous Galilaeans and the critical scribes. The truth communicated to this woman was of supreme importance and of universal interest.

No other worldview accords dignity, honour and respect to women other than the Christian worldview. The Samaritan woman had received a touch from the Saviour. Her heart is overflowing with Joy. Moreso, Jesus had talked to her. Although exposing her past and current sinful life. He gives her a renewed hope and with it a sense of dignity, self-worth and restoration of a battered life. The Light of Jesus shines to the weakest and the lowest.

The disciples of Jesus Christ, the followers of the Cross, have a given mandate of the Lord to go out and reap from the earth. We are mandated to gather men into Eternal Life. To do the Work of God is Great reward. Participating in the ordinary means of Grace by prayer and in the study of the Word and in sharing the Gospel is Food for the believer. As we share the Gospel and become Fools for Christ, we participate in His death until He comes.

The Jews, those who boasted in the Law and who were confident in their salvation by works because they had Abraham as their father had a false sense of security and hence were blinded to see their Messiah when He came. The very thing that they held as instruments for their salvation were the very things that blinded them from seeing their salvation. But the Samaritans had no such lineage to boast of; they, who were considered sinners and inferior in the eyes of the Jews, had a more contrite heart. Salvation is of the Jews, but the Samaritans have believed the Gospel.