Over the last several weeks we have been focusing on the stories of Jesus’ compassionate attentiveness to ‘the one’.
Are you willing to follow Jesus in His steps, to take on Jesus’ missional strategy, to go for ‘the one’ He has put in your life? Jesus was intentional to have a relationship with ‘the one’.
Definitely pray for the person, and begin to listen to the Holy Spirit to give you His guidance and to provide you opportunities to have conversations with ‘your one’.
I have a personal story, about a young woman that I have known since 2019. Our first conversation was through a glass. She is with us today.
I asked her permission to share, and she said “Pastor Terry, it’s okay. I want people to know how you were there for me to point me to Jesus.”
I met Amy when she was in Hotel Middle River; and for those of you who do not know, I call the local Middle River Jail the Hotel Middle River.
I visit individuals one-on-one at Middle River.
When visiting the ladies, they quickly learn that I am on a pursuit to point all people to Jesus. Each one of the ladies know that they are “my one”.
I faithfully journeyed with Amy from Middle River and then to various prisons.
While in Middle River, Amy found a “Building Your Faith” book that was left behind by another lady who had moved to another Correctional Facility, and it had my name, the church of the Nazarene address, and my phone number written in the front of the book. The ladies, are not allowed to take personal possessions to their next location.
Amy said as soon as she saw the contact information, she wrote me a letter. Within a month, she said the officer on duty called to say “You have a Pastor visitor”, and Amy thought it was her pastor from her home church.
Amy said her most vivid memory was the first day that she met me, I was smiling at her through the glass and talking to her on the phone, and saying “Jesus loves you!”
It was during COVID, and she had already served two years, and everything was shut down for family or friends to visit.
Amy said she was depressed, and stressed out. She said that being locked up that time around was really hard for her, and it was very different.
She is now living a new life, the old self is gone, and she is filled with the hope of Jesus.
When I visited Amy one-on-one:
- We talked.
- We prayed together.
- Sometimes she would cry.
- I would share a short message.
- And, I always told Amy that Jesus loved her, and that He would never leave her.
My heart was burdened for Amy to come to know Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior. During our visits, I watched her grow spiritually. I remember when she prayed and asked Jesus to forgive her and come live in her heart.
Since that day, I have witnessed Amy continuing to grow in her faith and to have a thirst to know Him more and to love Him more. She has left the old self behind.
Amy arrived in Harrisonburg in January 2023. She started to East Rock with me the first Sunday she was in Harrisonburg, and she has been with us ever since.
Amy attends Celebrate Recovery at our Harrisonburg Campus, and she recently completed her Step Study so she is ready to be a Celebrate Recovery leader.
Amy has a job, and she attends AA meetings regularly. She is serving on a ministry team which are advocates for the ‘Homeless, Lower Income, and People who are in Need’.
Amy is growing in her faith, and she desires to share her story so that all will know that nothing is impossible with Jesus. She wants people to know what Christ has done for her. Amy is now enjoying a relationship with her mom, and her two sons.
Amy knows there will still be difficult days ahead, but the thought of living her life for Christ spurs her onward.
Who is your one? (Pause)
Our hope is that we have stirred in your heart the awareness that Jesus is for ‘the one’, and He uses you and me, to reach the world, one person at a time.
In the back, on the high top tables are the ‘for one’ cards. If you have not picked up a card, please do so today, and be certain to write ‘your one’s name’ on the card.
Put your card where you will see it, to help you remember to pray for ‘your one’, and to ask Jesus to give you opportunities to spend time with ‘your one’ and for you to share Jesus with them.
We are going to look at one more story from the life of Jesus where he pursued ‘the one’. In His pursuit of this one, Jesus crossed all sorts of social and cultural boundaries.
Last week Pastor Jared taught about Nicodemus, a well-known teacher and leader in Israel. Today’s story is completely different. We turn to the story of one known only as “The Samaritan woman.”
Today we are going to be in John Chapter 4, but before we read and unpack it, let us pray.
Please join me in praying this prayer:
“Dear God, I pray for a world that doesn’t know you in a personal way. I pray for those who are lost. I pray for Your mercy and grace, not just upon my loved ones and me, but for all those who are lost, hurting, hopeless, and needy. Lord, please help me to go for ‘the one’. Prepare the way for me, to bring hope to all that I encounter today and forever. I love You Lord. In Jesus Name we pray, Amen.”
John 4:1-28 is long and involved. Use your senses to enter into the passage so you can see and hear the conversation going on, and you can feel it unfolding.
This passage teaches us that the Good News is for every person, no matter their race, social position or past sins.
In the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus crossed all barriers to share the Good News, and we who follow Jesus must be willing to do the same.
I am going to unpack the passage. We are going to read, unpack it, and read some more.
Verses 1-5: Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
In 722 B.C. Assyria conquered Israel and took most of its people into captivity and its capital was Samaria, many Jews were deported to Assyria. Foreigners, those known as gentiles, were brought in to settle the land and help keep the peace.
The intermarriage between the foreigners, and the remaining Jews resulted in a mixed race called the Samaritans. The Samaritans began to worship the pagan idols alongside the God of Israel. The Jews saw the mixed race as impure.
The Jews did everything possible to avoid traveling through Samaria.
Thus, we MUST understand, that when the scripture said “He had to go through Samaria” that Jesus made a determined choice to go through Samaria. The Jews would have gone a different route.
Jesus wasn’t concerned about the cultural divisions. He chose to go to Samaria, because He was on mission to reach ‘the one’, the lady at the well.
Verses 6, 7 and 8: 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
We learn from these two verses that He meets the woman at the well at noon. The detail of noon must not be missed.
Twice each day, morning and evening, women came to draw water. Noon is an unusual time to go get water because it is the hottest part of the day, and time for a noon meal.
The Samaritan woman came at noon because she came to be alone, to avoid eyes fixed on her and piercing whispers of shame and condemnation from the others.
Jesus began the conversation with the woman at a point she could understand, at a point she was already thinking. He asks for a drink of water.
Jesus is in need, fully God, and fully man. He sat down in need of rest and in need of a drink of water.
Verse 9: 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
The response from the woman was natural because of the historical feud between the Jews and the Samaritans. The woman was part of the hated mixed race.
There was also the shock of the custom that Jesus, the man, would ask a strange woman for an act of kindness.
In the day, no respectable Jewish man would talk to a woman under such circumstances. But Jesus looked beyond all those things to see the one standing in front of him.
Verse 10: 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
Jesus begins to shift the conversation away from physical water to something more. Something he knew the woman desperately needed.
Jesus was speaking of living water, a free gift with no cultural, or social strings attached.
Verses 11 and 12: 11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?
12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
The woman still did not know what Jesus was talking about. Focused on the task at hand, she misses the implication of Jesus’ words.
Not offended by her questions, Jesus continues.
Verses 13 and 14: 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Jesus carefully leads the woman from the place she was thinking, ‘about the water in Jacobs Well’, to ‘a higher and more satisfying thought’, the thought of an unfailing source and eternal life.
The contrast on the old way which represented Jacobs Well, and the new way which represented Jesus, the living water.
Verse 15: 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
The woman seems to still be thinking of her physical need of water, but Jesus is about to make it very clear- He sees a greater need in her life than just water from a well.
Verses 16, 17 and 18: 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband.
18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
Jesus suddenly changes the conversation-”Go and get your husband and come back…”
The woman who came at noon to hide from her past, suddenly finds herself reliving it again.
Her confession was simple and true. “I have no husband.”
Commentators through the centuries have differing interpretations of her story.
Many focus on the woman’s gender and marriages, describing her as a sinner, an adulterer.
We must be careful not to let the lady’s marital history overtake the rest of the narrative.
We have no idea if the husbands died, if she was divorced, if Levirate marriage was involved which the law required a widow to marry her deceased husband’s brother.
Whatever this woman’s past, she has been through a lot. And Jesus sees her.
The nameless woman, engages in the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the Bible. We know that Jesus’ language is not judgmental
The main point involves Jesus and this woman having a deep, rich theological debate that allows them to form an intimate connection across real and perceived differences.
Jesus reveals that he is more than a thirsty Jewish traveler. The probe was sharp and deep, searching out her whole past, but this is not about shame or condemnation, it’s about redemption.
Jesus wanted to cross the racial barriers, the religious barriers and the gender barriers, and to say that God is for everyone.
Verses 19 and 20: 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
The woman recognizes Jesus’ knowledge about her, and she changes the topic of conversation to one that would be safer for her.
The woman acknowledges her own religion when she said our ‘fathers worshipped on this mountain’.
The Samaritans made their sacrifices and celebrated their holy days on Mt. Gerizim, while Jews considered Jerusalem the Holy City and any other site was blasphemous.
The Samaritans disagreed with most Jews on the idea of resurrection after death.
The Samaritans accepted only the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) as Holy Scripture.
They considered the Levite priests to be the highest religious authority, and the Jews looked to the rabbis as their interpreters of the law.
Verses 21, 22, 23 and 24: 21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.
23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is Spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
The woman’s question was a smoke screen to keep Jesus away from her deepest need. The location of worship is not nearly as important as the attitude of the worshipers.
Jesus makes it clear that soon, worship won’t be a matter of temples and location, but spirit and truth.
Verses 25 and 26: 25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
The woman’s mention of the Messiah opened the door for Jesus’ great self-disclosure, “I, the one speaking to you–I am He!”
In a Samaritan region, to a broken woman, with nobody else around, Jesus says I am the Messiah”. Jesus didn’t just share that news with anyone, but to ‘the one’, he was crystal clear-“I am He”.
Verses 28 and 29: 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”
Jesus saw her, and knew everything about her and that is exactly how she knew He was the Messiah.
Because Jesus went for ‘the one’ in a personal way, the woman at the well encountered Christ, and even though He knew everything she had ever done, He still loved her. She goes joyfully and evangelizes her community.
Here is a clip of how it may have looked: The Lady at the well video. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/c0du4zcvao5e4rjig443t/Lady-at-the-Well-v2-5_40.mp4?rlkey=2vpj4y6ba3wh7u5ri90vr7fts&st=hv0zgjmm&dl=0
The conversation had ended. The woman left her water pot behind, forsaking her old life, and a meaningless religion. She would never need it again as she had an inexhaustible well of water.
Jesus went for “the one”. Jesus crossed ALL barriers to reach this one, the Samaritan woman.
He crossed:
- Racial barriers
- Religious barriers
- Gender barriers
Jesus is for YOU, and YOU, and YOU, YOU!!! (Point to people)
He is for EVERYONE!
And Jesus’ commitment to reach ‘the one’ changed everything for this woman. And friends, He can still change everything for people in your life and mine. Just like the story of Amy, God is still rescuing people one at a time.
(Conclusion)
Church family, we must not sit back and hope for the conversion of the world. We must go “for the one” as Jesus did.
Deep within your soul are you moved to feel compassion “for your one”?
What are you doing to reach “your one”?
Believers, the Story of the Samaritan woman calls the reader to encounter Jesus, believe in Him, testify to the ways He brings abundant life to everyone, and to invite others to “come and see” for themselves.
Please go for “the one” that God is calling you to faithfully pray for, and give your time and energy to be a part of their lives, so that they will come to know Jesus.
Let us pray:
“Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of ‘my one’. Thank You for trusting me to pray for them, and to reach out to them. I ask that they may know Your will and be obedient to You.
Give them clarity, acceptance, and understanding of Your purpose for their life. May they come to know You, may they trust in you, and may they know joy in the midst of difficulties and obstacles.
I pray they may have a humble heart that seeks forgiveness and allows them to boldly accept Your unconditional love.
I pray that I can be a source of safety and encouragement for them. Give me the courage to trust that you are working. Please protect and lead them. Show me how to love them better.
We love You Lord. In Jesus Name, Amen.”