At All Cost?

Last week, we studied the truth that God requires that we worship Him in Spirit and Truth. In fact, He tells us that this is the only way that true worshippers worship. We also learned that Jesus said that he is the truth and that the Scriptures are the truth. If we are to worship in truth, then we need to understand what the Bible tells us. We must be like the Ephesians in Revelations or the Bereans in Acts. We must test everything we hear against the scriptures. These churches were praised in the Bible. It is important that we do this as well.

Unfortunately, there are so many things we have heard about the Bible, that we aren’t even sure whether they are right or wrong anymore. For example:

Spare the rod, spoil the child

Everything in moderation

Money is the root of all evil

God helps those who helps themselves

Cleanliness is next to Godliness

God works in mysterious ways

The Seven Deadly Sins

The Three Wise Men

Are these things in the Bible? In today’s world of high speed searches, it shouldn’t be too hard to find that these are not. In some cases, these were nice sayings that have somehow made their way into our minds as coming from the Bible. In others, they come from biblical verses but are either misread or altered to be memorable. In others, they have been given to us by the church as a guide to biblical principles to help us walk the right path. However, in the end, these are all outside the Bible and we should understand when something is actually biblical or if it is from man. Just because it is from man, doesn’t make it wrong. But it doesn’t make it right – and that is the danger.

So as we enter into the Lenten season and we begin to discuss the circumstances surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus, it is important that we do this with an understanding of what is true and what is not. Let’s look at an example. I will show two different translations – the New International Version (NIV) and the New Living Translation (NLT). This will allow us to see the verses in two translations – one which is translated more word for word (NIV) and one that is translated more thought for thought (NLT).

John 4:6
Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. (NIV)
Jacob’s well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. (NLT)

We have historically viewed this conversation as occurring at noon. The New Living Translation actually translates this for us as “noontime”. We know this story and so we recognize that it was the shame of the Samaritan woman which would not allow her to draw water in the morning with the rest of the women and so she had to come out to draw water in the middle of the day, when the heat was at it’s strongest and so there were no others around.

But is this what the Bible teaches?

Let’s look at another example of the use of time in the Bible. Let’s look at the time of Jesus’ death.

Mark 15:25
It was the third hour when they crucified him. (NIV)
It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him.(NLT)

According to Mark, the crucifixion occurred at 9:00 AM. Hebrew time was based on sunrise to sunset. So 6:00AM was Zero Hour. From 6:00AM, we tell time by counting the hours. So the third hour is 9:00AM. The sixth hour is Noon. Going back to the Samaritan woman, we see where we get the noon time from.

So this all makes sense so far. Now, let’s take a look at what John says about the time of Jesus’ death?

John 19:14
It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour. "Here is your king," Pilate said to the Jews. (NIV)
It was now about noon on the day of preparation for the Passover. And Pilate said to the people, “Look, here is your king!” (NLT)

Now those of you who are sharp might have noticed something. If Pilate is asking the Jews about Jesus, it is before the Crucifixion. In fact, this is seen in the verses that follow immediately after.

John 19:15-16
15 “Away with him,” they yelled. “Away with him! Crucify him!”
“What? Crucify your king?” Pilate asked.
“We have no king but Caesar,” the leading priests shouted back.
16 Then Pilate turned Jesus over to them to be crucified.(NLT)

So we see that Jesus has not yet been crucified. Yet, according to John, it is the sixth hour. This would be noon, according to all we have said. This means there must be a contradiction in the Bible, because you can’t have Jesus crucified at 9:00 (according to Mark) but still not crucified at noon!

But there is something going on here that we need to recognize. John writes his gospel much later than the other gospels probably around 85-95 AD, and he also writes his gospel in Ephesus. John would not be writing to Jewish people but to Romans and Greeks. In his effort to write clearly to them, he uses Roman time. Roman time begins at midnight – like we do today. So the sixth hour that John mentions here is would be 6:00AM. 6:00AM totally fits with all the other gospel accounts and actually makes sense. Now we can see that all the false trials that were done illegally before the day had begun, the trial with Pilate and the all the other aspects of the crucifixion story fits perfectly. After this, Jesus will be convicted and carry his cross to Golgotha and be crucified – in three hours.

Now we have to go back. If John is telling us that the sixth hour is 6:00AM in chapter 19, then when we get to the sixth hour in John 4:6, we need to recognize that John is using Roman time. John wouldn’t be switching his audience or his manner of keeping time between these chapters. This would mean that the meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well occurred at 6:00AM. That would mean that Jesus and his disciples were traveling all night long. That might seem wrong, but it wouldn’t be the first or the last time we see this nighttime action.

In just the previous chapter, we see Jesus up all night teaching Nicodemus. We know that Jesus would go out in the middle of the night to pray. Jesus was in the Garden in Gethsemane in the middle of the night and that the trial would occur throughout the night (even though this was completely illegal by Jewish law) – which means that not only Jesus, but the Guards, Soldiers, Religious leaders (John 18:1-3) and witnesses were also up and about at these early morning hours (Matt 26:59-61). We see John and Peter going around that night coming across a bunch of people who were still interacting in the late hours (John 18:15-18). Later, we will see Paul teaching through the night in Acts, when one of the listeners gets so tired he actually falls asleep and falls out the window (Acts 20:7-12). So it would definitely be possible that Jesus would have begun his journey back home at night and come to this place at 6:00AM.

This would also explain why Jesus was so tired that he needed to rest and why the disciples were so hungry that they went to look for food. They had traveled all night and now were tired and since it was breakfast time, they were hungry.

The story of the Samaritan woman being shamed into coming to the well at noon is a great teaching story, and it has become so ingrained into the teaching of the church that we now think it is the fact. However, once the teaching changes the truth of the Bible, it is time to change back to the truth.

Similarly, Mary Magdalene, the woman who was the first to see Jesus resurrected was for centuries said to be a prostitute, and has been connected to the adulteress who was going to be stoned. This probably came to us from a sermon by Pope Gregory in 591. In this sermon, Pope Gregory was trying to convict his listeners that there was hope in Jesus for those sinners who would repent. It doesn’t matter that there is no biblical case for Mary being a prostitute nor that the Bible actually says that Mary was healed by Jesus of seven demons and that is why she became a disciple (Luke 8:2-3). What mattered was that there was some great teaching moments in the story of Mary the prostitute. But that is not what the Bible teaches and we need to get back to the truth.

Many people have now come to recognize that Mary was not a prostitute, though there are still multitudes who think this was so. In the same way, the woman at the well was not there because of shame. She was there because that was the time that everyone went to the well. The account of the woman at the well teaches us that God desires worship in spirit and in truth. To worship in truth, we need to know the truth.

Send mail to david@TheArkNY.org with questions about the church or comments about this site.
Last modified: Feb 28, 2009

The Ark Church - Ronkonkoma, Suffolk County, NY - A non-denominational church for Jesus Christ