5 Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
6 Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.
7 There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.
8 (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.)
9 Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.
10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.
Introduction
We announced this morning that beginning next Sunday we will give emphasis on the “Share Jesus Now” initiative in our church and throughout the state of Texas. We are joining together with churches all across the Baptist General Convention of Texas to enlist 89,000 Texas Baptists to train and prepare themselves and commit themselves to share their faith personally with at least one million of the more than seven million unchurched people in our state. I thought I would get a jump on that emphasis and talk to you tonight about witnessing and soul winning. And then next Sunday morning will be soul-winning commitment day. I am going to ask you to commit yourself to doing everything possible to share your personal witness—to share your testimony with somebody who does not know Christ as Savior.
I think perhaps the hardest thing that any pastor could ask a congregation to do is to become personal witnesses and to share their faith with somebody who is not a believer. If you ask people, “Why don’t you witness? Why don’t you share your faith with others?” you would get a lot of different answers. Some would say, “I don’t know how.” Others would say, “That’s not my job. That’s why we pay the pastor. That’s why we call a staff to the church.” Others would say, “I am afraid that I might offend somebody else or that they might ask me a question that I can’t answer.” Others would say, “I try to live my religion. I show people by the life I live what it means to be a Christian and I don’t need to tell them about it.” Others would say, “I just don’t know enough. If I knew the Bible better, and if I had a better understanding of the techniques of witnessing, then I might do it. But I just don’t know enough about the Bible. I don’t know enough about witnessing to other people.”
Some people are afraid of rejection. They would say. “I don’t know what people would say. I don’t know how people would respond to me.” Out of fear of being rejected, they keep silent about their faith. Then others would say, “There are plenty of other people in the church who could do a better job than me.” You could go on and on with the excuses, the reasons that people give for not witnessing. But the bottom Iine is that if we do not share our faith with other people, we simply lack the motivation that we ought to have. I am persuaded that witnessing and sharing your faith with another person ought to be the spontaneous result of being converted to Jesus Christ. When we really come to know him as Savior, something has happened inside of us that is worth sharing and we want other people to know about it. As we grow older in the Christian faith, our experience becomes more commonplace to us. We tend to lose some of that zeal and some of that early excitement. But I’m still convinced that if we really have an experience with Jesus Christ, there is down deep inside of every one of us a longing to share that experience with somebody else and we need simply the right kind of motivation.
You have in the experience of the woman of Samaria being converted, an example of what I am talking about. Let me rehearse that entire experience with you. I want you to see how after this woman was converted she immediately went out to share her experience with other people. But in addition to that, I want you to see some things about Jesus that caused him to share personally with this lady so that she could come to faith and trust in the Savior.
Jesus and his disciples had been in Jerusalem. They were on their way to Galilee and the Bible said that they had to pass through Samaria. Jesus was a man who was on a divine mission and he obviously sought the will of God in every decision that he made. And he found a compulsion from God to go through the land of Samaria.
There was a deep division between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Jews looked upon the Samaritans as half-breeds. They were a result of intermarriage between the Assyrians who had occupied that territory at one time and the Jews who had remained behind after one of the captivities and the exiles. And so they frowned upon these half-breed people—these Jews and Assyrians who had intermarried. So intense was the hatred and the prejudice between the Jews and the Samaritans that ordinarily a Jew traveling from Jerusalem to Galilee would not take the shortest route and go through Samaria. He would rather go over to the Jordan River many miles to the east and then travel up the eastern side of the Jordan River. When he got adjacent to Galilee he would cross the Jordan River again. It was a journey that took three days longer than the shorter route, but many Jews so despised the Samaritans that they would take that longer route rather than travel through that land.
The Bible says that Jesus had to pass through Samaria. So he and his disciples traveled through Samaria. They came outside the little city of Sychar and Jesus was tired. It was about noon and he stopped to rest and sent the disciples into town to buy some food. While he sat there by the well a lady came out to fetch water. Ordinarily the ladies would come in the evening time when it was cool. This woman came at midday. Ordinarily the women came in groups. This was a time when they talked about the events of the day. It was a social activity to travel to the water well together, in the cool of the day, to fetch their water and take it back to their homes. This woman not only traveled out there at midday, but she traveled by herself.
No doubt she was ostracized by the other women in the town because we know from the further information in the story that she had been married and divorced five times and she was now living with a man she was not married to. Probably the other ladies had shut her out of their fellowship and out of their lives. So she traveled out there by herself. When she came to the water well Jesus entered into a conversation with her and he asked her to give him a drink.
Now she was surprised. She was very familiar with the prejudice that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans and she asked, “How is it that you being a Jew ask me, a Samaritan, for something to drink?” John even makes the footnote that the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered the woman, “Woman, if you just knew the gift of God and if you knew who was talking to you, then you would be asking me for a drink of water.” The Greek word that is translated gift is used always in the book of Acts and in the epistles for a divine gift. It is something that comes from God.
I want you to notice that when Jesus first talked with her he spoke about the gift of God and said, “If you just knew me. If you just knew who was talking to you.” And then later in the conversation he said, “If you would drink the water that I would give.” And he uses the word “I” twice as he shares with her about the water of life. She said, “Well, sir, if I’ll never have to come out here and draw water again. Give it to me.” And Jesus then said to the woman, “I want you to go and bring your husband so I can talk with him.” With that statement Jesus brought this woman face to face with herself. She had to face the fact that she did not have a husband and she was living in an adulterous relationship. So she said freely to Jesus. “I do not have a husband.” And Jesus said, “That’s right. You have been married five times and the man you are living with now is not your husband.”
Jesus saw through her heart into the deep need of her life and with his statement he brought her face to face with herself. She said to him, “I perceive that you are a prophet.” And then she immediately changed the conversation. She began to talk to him about worship. She said, “Our fathers worship over here on Mount Gerizim.” It was not far away and it could be seen probably in the distance. But you Jews say that a person should worship down in Jerusalem. What the lady was trying to do was to take the spotlight off of her own moral condition, her own sinful life, and to get Jesus involved in a theological debate concerning worship. But Jesus refused to be diverted from his main task and that was of introducing this lady to himself, to the Messiah. So he said to her, “The hour will come. In fact the hour now is when they who worship the Father shall worship him in spirit, and in truth.”
Lady, it really doesn’t matter about the place of worship. Whether you try to worship God at Mount Gerizim or whether you try to worship God down in Jerusalem, the place of worship is not the significant thing. The important thing is that you must worship God in spirit. Your spirit, heart, and mind must be open to him. It must be according to truth. It must be in keeping with the teachings of God’s word.
The woman was greatly interested in what Jesus had to offer. And in this conversation she said to him, “I know the Messiah is going to come, and when the Messiah comes he will teach us all these things we need to know about worship, the things you have just been talking about.” And in verse 26, Jesus said unto her, “I that speak unto thee am he.” Jesus said, “I am the Messiah that you are looking for.”
About that time the disciples came back from the city. They had gone there to buy food. The Bible says, “Immediately, this lady left her water pots and went into the city and began to tell the men of that city, because she was more familiar with the men than with the women.” She began to tell the men in that city, “I have met a man who had told me all the things that I have done.” Obviously she also shared with them the fact that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, and in response to her witness, to her testimony, that spontaneous sharing of what had happened to her the people of that city came out to that water well to see and to hear for themselves. When they met Jesus they asked him if he would stay in their city and Jesus stayed there for two days. He preached and taught the people and at the end of those two days, many more believed in Jesus. As Jesus prepared to leave, the people of the city said to this lady, “We believed it first because of your witness, but now we believe because we have seen and we have heard him for ourselves.”
What happened in the life of that Samaritan lady, that motivation that spurred her to go back to town and to share with other people what the Lord had done for her and who Jesus Christ was, ought to characterize all the people of God. We ought to have a longing in our heart to let other people know what God has done for us.
In the witnessing of Jesus, in his sharing of his faith with that woman, we are allowed to see some things I think that we need to know if we are to be good witnesses for him.
Let me share with you five or six things that are important for every person who is going to share his faith with another.
1. Jesus showed compassion.
First is compassion for all people. Jesus obviously cared about this woman. And it was out of his deep compassion and deep love for her that he shared with her about the water of life. In spite of the fact that there was a deep division between Jews and the Samaritans, in spite of the fact that many people would criticize him for having any association with this Samaritan lady, Jesus still shared his faith. He refused to be hampered by the prejudices of other people and by the prejudices of society and he went right straight to the heart of this lady’s need and shared with her about the water of life.
The actions of Jesus stand in sharp contrast with the actions of those apostles. They had gone into the city of Sychar. They had shopped in one of the grocery stores. No doubt they had come in contact with a lot of other people, but there is no indication that they made any attempt to share their faith with anybody else. In fact when they came back and found Jesus talking to this lady, they were surprised and they asked him what he was doing, what he was driving at, what his purpose was. It was the farthest thing from their mind to share their faith with these Samaritan people because of the deep prejudices that were in their heart and in their life. I think we must rid ourselves of any of our prejudices, our preconceived ideas about people, and be willing to share the water of life with all men everywhere if we are going to be the kind of witnesses that Christ was and the kind of witness that he wants us to be. Any attitude toward another person that keeps us from seeing them as God sees them is wrong.
God sees everybody as an object of his love and of his redemption. If we do not see all people in that light, then there is something wrong in our heart. We must never limit our witnessing to our kind of people. We must not become so preoccupied with ourselves that we forget about people that we often overlook—the maid who cleans our house, the landscaper who keeps our yard, the service station attendant who pumps the gas, the janitor in the building where we work. We must not become so concerned about sharing only with our kind that we overlook those people who are different from us.
So the first thing that I want you to remember about Jesus and his witnessing is that he had a love and concern for all people and that his compassion caused him to reach to a person that other people overlooked, who other people seem to care nothing about.
2. Jesus was alert to witnessing opportunities.
Second, he was always alert to witnessing opportunities. Jesus witnessed here and in many other instances to people he met along the way in life. The point is that we need to be witnesses where we are, and witnessing must not be viewed as an activity that is separate from life. You see so often when we think about witnessing, we think of going down to the church and getting some prospect cards, and then going out to witness. When you look at the life of Jesus and you see that witnessing was woven into the very fabric of his living. Wherever he went, wherever he came in contact with people, wherever he found them he sought an opportunity right there to share with them about the water of life, or about being born again, or whatever the deep spiritual need of their life happened to be.
Jesus was ever and always alert to opportunities to witness. We have to be careful in our own lives that we don’t let participation in church visitation become a substitute for talking with people we meet along life’s way—our neighbors, our relatives, people we go to school with, or people we work with. If we are always visiting down at the church and through the church we are going to miss an awful lot of people. So the Lord Jesus had a deep passion for all people, even the outcasts and the rejects of society, and he was constantly on the alert to seize those opportunities that came his way in the normal activities of life.
3. Jesus noticed the needs of others.
Third, he looked for a need in the life of this lady. He began by making a request: “Give me water to drink.” But then very quickly he moved from his need to her need and began to talk to her about the water of life because Jesus was able to see that in her life there was a deep dissatisfaction with what had happened to her, that life had been rough up until that time, and that her flitting from man to man and marriage to marriage was an indication of the deep spiritual dissatisfaction within her. The best witnessing that we can do is always at the point of the need in a person’s life. Every person you will ever meet either has a need or a problem or they live near one.
Sam Shoemaker, the great Episcopalian preacher and evangelist, used to say, “Every man is like an island and if you will row around him several times you will find a place to put in.” In every person’s life there is a problem or a need or they live near one. If you can identify that need and begin to talk to them about that need and how God and Christ can meet that need, they will be interested in what you have to say. If we are always talking about the church and the activities of the church, then we will discover that many of them do not feel a need for the church and they are not the least bit interested in the church.
I have been reading a book entitled Marketing the Church. The author of that book asks a question that I think is worth asking to every one of us. He said, “How many of you have ever met an unsaved person who is craving for a sermon? Or how many of you have ever met an unsaved person who has sought diligently a place where they can sing ‘The Old Rugged Cross’?”
Dear friends, people out there aren’t craving a sermon, so it doesn’t do any good for you to tell them how wonderful your pastor is and how marvelous his sermons are. They are not craving sermons. And they are not looking for a place where they can sing “The Old Rugged Cross,” so there’s no need to tell them about the marvelous choir program at your church. But they do have needs, and if you can identify that need in their life and share with them how Jesus Christ can meet that need, you will find them intensely interested in what you have to say. All around us there are people who are lonely, and there are people who are empty, and there are people who are depressed, and there are people who are weighted down with guilt, and there are people who are seeking direction in their life. There are people whose marriages are troubled and who are having problems with their children. If you can identify those needs and show them how God through Jesus Christ can meet those basic needs in their life, you will have their ears.
When Jesus talked about living water that could quench that inner thirst, suddenly the lady said, “Sir, give me that water I wanted.”
So we not only care about people and meet people where they are, but we try to discover the needs in their life and share with them how Christ can meet their needs.
4. Jesus refused to argue.
Fourth, Jesus refused to be argumentative with this lady. When he began to touch those tender spots in her life about her morality or her immorality she immediately wanted to change the subject. She was not interested in talking about her five husbands and her live-in boyfriend. She wanted to talk about theological issues. Let’s talk about worship. Should we worship in Jerusalem or is it all right to worship here in Samaria? But Jesus refused to fall for her diversion tactic and get into an argument with this woman. It is never wise, nor is it ever profitable to try to argue with people about spiritual things. We never argue a person into the kingdom of God. We simply share with them out of our own experience. We try to meet them at the point of their need and keep the conversation centered on Jesus Christ. In this experience with the woman at the well, the Lord keeps talking to her about himself. His whole conversation was to bring her to faith and trust in himself. Don’t ever be diverted into theological arguments. Don’t worry about having to answer every question a person has. Keep the conversation centered in Christ. That’s what he did and the woman came to faith.
5. Jesus used simple language.
Fifth, Jesus spoke to her in simple language. In fact he made it a practice to use words that people understood. He didn’t use theological terminology. When he witnessed to this lady he never once used the word sin. Never once did he use the word repentance. Never once did he use the word faith. How in the world can you lead a person to faith in Christ without using the word sin, without using the word repentance, and without using the word faith? Jesus did. He talked in terms that she could understand. He talked about living water and she knew what water could do to physical thirst. He said, “What water can do for your physical thirst, I can do for your soul.” That’s all she needed to understand. If he could do that for her, she wanted it. Simple terms, uncomplicated language, illustrations and analogies people can understand. That’s the way the Lord witnessed.
6. Jesus gently and strategically revealed people’s sin.
One last thing—Jesus helped the Samaritan woman to see herself first and then to see God. She had to see that she was a sinner, though he did not use that word. She had to see that there was a thirst within her for something that another affair or another escapade that could not satisfy. By a few questions, by the simple admonition to “go and bring your husband here,” he confronted this woman with herself and then with God. Before she could see the living water and before she could be saved, she had to realize that she needed it. Jesus pointed out that deep inner thirst in her soul, and when she saw that, she said, “I want the living water.”
Jesus Christ always helps us see ourselves first. And then after we see ourselves, he helps us to see God. When the woman met Christ through his simple witness, because he loved her, because he captured the moment of opportunity, because he saw her need and he spoke a language that she could understand, because he refused to be diverted by her tactics, and because he kept zeroing in on her spiritual need for the Messiah, the Bible says that she left her water pots and went back into the city and began to share with those people what Christ had done for her and what he had said for her.
She left her water pots for two reasons. She left them first of all because she was in a hurry. She had something worth sharing and she wanted them to know it. And second, she intended to come back. She went into town not just to share what had happened, but to say to them, “Come and see for yourself!” And when they came and saw and heard for themselves, they believed and they received Jesus as the Messiah.
It is frightening, and it is the hardest thing you will ever do, but God has given to us the matchless privilege of being his witnesses. If we will follow the techniques of Jesus, we will encounter somebody tomorrow who does not know about this living water, but they do know that they thirst. They do know they have a longing and a need. If they just knew where that thirst could be quenched, they would be interested in what you have to say.
I want to encourage you to give serious thought to becoming a personal witness for Jesus Christ. It is a privilege and a responsibility that he gives to us.