Jesus and the Samaritan woman

at the well of Sychar:

1. She was a Samaritan
2. A single man did not strike up a conversation with a lone woman and
3. She had a pretty loose moral history. She had been married five times and now was living with a man who wasn’t her husband.

Yet Jesus defied convention.

Why? Because he saw a person who needed the Gospel.

Jesus touched her at her point of need.

His courteous questions awakened her spiritual need.

As you follow the story, you get the feeling that Jesus is like an angler fishing for trout.

First, Jesus casts his bait by asking her for a drink and then follows it up by saying:

“If you knew …..who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water” (Jn 4:10)

And before she realises it – she’s hooked into a religious conversation.

And then he reels her in slowly.

He invites her to drink from “a spring of water that will well up to eternal life.” (Jn 4:13) and she responds by asking Jesus to give her that water.

Suddenly Jesus changes tack and with one deft touch lands his catch. He asks her to fetch her husband. And she replies by telling him that she has no husband. Jesus replies:

“You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is that you have had five husbands and the man you are now have is not your husband.”

It is when he speaks prophetically like that that she realises that he is no ordinary traveller. She suddenly realises who Jesus is – the Messiah.

Look at her response - the first thing she does is to go and tell others in the village that she has met the Messiah. You might say she was one of the first Christian missionaries.

What was the outcome of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman. A mini-revival in this village in Samaria.

We read that the Samaritans from her village came with her to meet Jesus and when they had met and spoken with him, they said to her:

"We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world." (Jn 4:42)

Conclusion:

Jesus cared for people and saw their potential. She might have seemed the most unlikely person to start a revival in the village, but God often uses the most unlikely people.

The Welsh Revival of 1904 was led by a simple miner, Evan Roberts, with very little formal education and Bible training. Yet God used him to set Wales on fire.

Conventional wisdom would have said that Nicodemus the theologian would have been the better person to start a revival – but then God is not into conventional wisdom.

The Church was given a single Commission and that was to preach the Gospel. If we want to see growth in our churches, I think we can do no better than follow Jesus’ lead in preaching the Gospel yto people – by reaching people at their point of need.

Jesus cared for one social outcast and reached the whole of the Samaritan village.

The key to Jesus’ successful ministry was prayer. He spent a lot of time in prayer with the Father.

If we want to see great things happen in our church, then there is no shortcut. If we want to identify and meet people at their point of need, we will be able to do this effectively if we spend time, like Jesus did with his heavenly Father.

For me, I find that quite a challenge.