John, Chapter 4

John 4

John 4 contains one of my favorite stories in the Bible and has been a go-to story as I have traveled and preached in churches around Missouri. If you are a regular reader of Out of My Hat, this may sound familiar today, as I posted something very similar a couple of years ago.

In summary --

The story of the Woman at the Well finds Jesus breaking many of the social and cultural norms of the day.
As a Jew, he shouldn't be associating with Samaritans.
As a Mideastern man, he shouldn't be speaking with an unaccompanied Mideastern woman, especially one with a poor moral reputation.
And he never should have accepted their invitation to stay in their village, eat their food, and live with them for several days!

I'm not going to go into much of the underlying story because I'm sure that many of you have heard it. If you need more background, send me a message or leave a comment and I'll get back to you.
But Jesus uses the one person in town with the lowest status or reputation to reach an entire community with the message that God loves you and the Messiah has come!

My favorite verse --

42 They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world."

Too often, we have the idea that we need to convince other people that they need Jesus. I think that we need to take this simple woman's approach and bring them to Jesus and let him do the talking and convincing. She went to the people and said, "Come and see a man that told me all that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"
The people came because of what she said, but they believed because of what Jesus taught.

Something to think about --

I know that talking to people about our beliefs in God can be difficult, but we don't really need to convince them of anything. The woman simply told what Jesus did for her! We can do the same.
Students can tell what they're learning about Jesus in their Sunday classes. If friends have question that you can't answer, use the woman's approach -- Come and see for yourself. There's an old guy in our class that might be able to answer your questions!

For parents, adults, and all of you reading this, the same goes for you. Introduce them to Jesus the best way you know how. Invite them to church. Invite them to coffee with you and your pastor (or me if you're in southwest MO).
And if you have questions -- ASK!
Be like Nicodemus from yesterday's story. The teacher of Israel asked questions of Jesus.
Together, we can search the teachings of Jesus to find your answers.

John <><
Note: If you want to check out that previous post, you can find it here.