Reaching the Lost: Lessons from John 4

"Reaching the Lost: Lessons from John 4 on the Lord's Day"

Again, I bring you greetings in the name of our Lord. Good to be with your friends for this session. I invite you to turn in your New Testament to the Gospel of John chapter 4. My goal for this Lord's day is to cover three personalities from the Gospel of John. And if you were here during the Sunday School Hour, the first personality that we covered was Nicodemus, a very highly educated and sophisticated man, not lost. And the Lord explained to him a message of the New Birth. Now, because of the length of this passage, which will be from chapter 4 verses 1 through 19, I'm just going to ask you to follow along as we go through.

Before we start, let's ask the Lord's blessing. Our Father, we thank thee for the Lord's day, as chance we have together as believers and those who fear God. And Lord, again, we pray that the Spirit of God would be our teacher, that they would use the wonderful Word of God to bless our hearts, to encourage us, to exhort us and to comfort us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Israel at this point in their history was in a deplorable spiritual condition. The priesthood, as evidenced from Nicodemus' life, was spiritually blind. Were they religious? Oh, yes. Very religious, but lost. Their religion had become commercialized, which led to the Lord cleansing the temple. That would have been quite a scene as he went in there with a short whip and tables were flying and coins were flying and animals were running for their lives. Because money changers were all over the place and doves were being sold and animals. He said, you've made this a commercial enterprise. I mean, at a Walmart, this should be a house of prayer. The Sanhedrin, that group of 70 members, the leaders of Israel, were spiritually blind, chapter 3 and verse 7. On Lord's testimony, chapter 3 and verse 32 was rejected as the scripture indicated, no man received his testimony.

Israel as a nation had a cold and heartless indifference toward their neighbors who were semi-heathen. I don't know if you've heard the word, boy. Some of you may have. Boy, he's plural. That's what a Jew would call a Gentile. They would call them the boy or the boys. And they were very indifferent to their neighbors who weren't Jews, no concern for their souls, no love for their welfare. And in this story that we're covering, our Lord shows himself to be the Savior, not just of Israel, but of all men, Savior of the world. In this story our Lord gives an example of reaching out to souls who are despised by so many for whom no one gives a care. And the Samaritans would become the first fruits of the Lord's harvest in the Gentile world.

Now if you're there in chapter 4, notice in verses 1 through 8, our Lord takes that detour. In this detour was necessitated verses 1 through 3 because of hatred. Verse 1, when the Lord knew that the Lord became aware of hostility, especially from the Pharisees, they hated him. They didn't like him or his ministry. Why was that? Well, jealousy primarily because our Lord's ministry was a resounding success. He made disciples, as it says here, and by the way, were made disciples, were not born that way. The Pharisees were very frustrated at his success. They weren't having the success he did. And in fact, they were enraged. If anyone has a following around here, it ought to be us, having the following, not that guy.

Verse 2, Jesus himself baptized not. He preached, he taught, he prayed, he administered the Lord's supper, but he never baptized. Now why is that? Well, I think one reason is that baptism is not a part of the gospel. It's certainly something that we should do when a person is saved. The first thing they should do is get baptized. That's their first act of obedience to the Lord to be baptized. And when you think of baptism, may I suggest that you think of the word identification. When a person is baptized as a believer, they choose to be baptized by this local assembly who pastor would baptize them, and they have chosen to identify with the cause of Christ through this local church. Just think of the word identification. So baptism has nothing to do with salvation. It's an act of obedience, as I said, after salvation.

In fact, the thief on the cross is an emblem of that. In Luke chapter 23 and verse 43, we have this conversation going on between the thief, one of the thieves on the cross and our Lord. Both thieves at first had a wrong attitude, but the one had a change of heart remarkably so. In fact, he said, Lord, notice the first word he used, Lord, remember me when you come to your kingdom. And our Lord's response was today, not tomorrow, today, and I'll still be with thee in paradise. That word paradise is a precious word. It's a Persian word. It's used three times in our New Testament. It refers to a high walled, beautiful, beyond comprehension garden in which you would invite your most intimate friends to spend time together. Isn't that a precious picture?

In our town of Warsaw, Indiana, where we've lived for decades, this is in years past, we would take our small animals to a veterinarian, Dr. Clark. He was rough as a cob, that guy. He took care of the army mules in World War II that tells you something about him. And he married his wife, Mabel, she was an army nurse, so she was his wife. And when I come, I start to tell him about the Lord. And as soon as I open my mouth about the Lord, he's Mabel, come take care of this guy, and he'd leave. And invariably, every time I went, I tried to share the gospel and Mabel helped us. He would not hear a testimony about Christ. And then finally, I heard he was in the hospital. Ah, captive audience. So I went up there to see him and I said, Dr. Clark, you knew enough about medicine to know that you're dying. That's how we talk. And I gave him this precious story about the thief on the cross who, in the closing moments of his life, came to a saving knowledge of Christ. And wouldn't you know that old rough as a cob guy got saved right there at his hospital bed? In fact, the next family members that came to see him, I just got saved. And his funeral, which was going to be a dirge, it was going to be so solemn and sobering, now was a time of joy for the family, because many of them were saved and born again. But the thief on the cross didn't have an opportunity to get baptized, because like I said, it's not a part of the gospel.

Now verse three, it says, our Lord left Judea. We see some pathos here. This is sadness. His time was not yet come to die. Now why is he leaving? Well, because he wouldn't stay to cast pearls before swine. There comes a time when we need to leave is sometimes not only wise, but our duty to flee from persecution, sometimes a humble withdrawal is more difficult than a proud glorious resistance. In fact, some of the early Christians purposely put themselves in the Colosseum. Why? They would meet horrible deaths. Yes, but they would have a better resurrection. That's what they were looking forward to.

Now in verse three, he uses a word left, L-E-F-T left. This particular word means he left something to its own fate. He left these people to their own devices. From now on, the bulk of our Lord's ministry will be from Galilee and elsewhere, Galilee of the nations. That was a Western province, so to speak, where all kinds of different people were out there. In fact, they had a special language. That's why the servant girl at the door recognized Peter as being a Galilean. I heard you talk here from Galilee. It's like in our country, when you get down below the Mason-Dixon line, you don't know if F-A-R means flames or distance because of the particular eccentricities of each group of geographical groups. So he leaves Jerusalem and Judea to themselves. You know my friends, the most frightening prospect in the world is to have the Lord Jesus leave you to your own devices. That would be horrifying. It reminds us of Romans chapter one where the Lord gave them up. He gave them over. He does that to some people when they say no to the Lord too many times.

Now this detour is taken, he is also an assessment of verse four, not only because of hatred, but because of mercy. Notice it says here, he must needs go. This is a moral need. He didn't pull out a map of Palestine. It was a shorter distance here. Now this was a geographical thing. This was a moral thing. In fact, this was settled before the foundation of the world. Now if you expect me to explain that, I'll have to defer to Pastor Lift to explain that. Some of these things I don't comprehend.

Normally, the Jews to avoid Samaria, how much they hated the Samaritans. They would travel across the Jordan River to the east and then go south through Gilead and then recross the Jordan River to avoid Samaria. That's the lengths to which they would go to avoid these what they call people they didn't like. Samaria was bounded on the south by Judea, on the north by Galilee, on the west by the Mediterranean and on the east by the Jordan River. And Samaria was given to Ephraim in the half tribe of Manasseh under the first five-star general of the Israeli defense forces, General Joshua. And after the division of the kingdom, Samaria follows Jeroboam in idolatry. You remember that Jeroboam and his minions and his followers said, well, you don't have to go all the way up to Jerusalem. That's not a mountain for Kratalad yet. It's a mountain Zion to get there. It's a long ways. And we have a perfectly good golden calf here at Bethel. That's only 11 miles north of Jerusalem. And then at Dan, the uppermost geographical part of Israel. So they had two golden calves that they worship, one in Bethel, one in Dan.

And the Assyrians brought five nations back to Samaria who intermarried with the remaining Jews forming this strange amalgamation, a religion with the basics of Judaism, combining with the false doctrine of the idolaters. And it yielded this. And in Second Kings, 17 verse 32, the Bible says, they feared the Lord and served their own gods. Now, that's what you and I would call cognitive dissonance. That's inconsistent thoughts and beliefs and attitudes. So they were idolaters is what they were. And when the Jews returned under Ezra, the Samaritans said, well, I heard you're going to build a temple. We'll be glad to help you all now. You've got an impure bloodline. And you've got impure theology. You're not going to have anything to do with our temple. And so they were rejected.

Now the Samaritans received the Torah. The Torah is the first five books of our Old Testament. But they wouldn't receive the historical books. So their neighbors, their Jewish neighbors considered them impure bloodlines, impure religious practices. So they wouldn't receive Christ when they saw that he was going to go to Jerusalem. So that was enough for them. And when the Jews castigated Jesus, they could think of nothing worse to call him, but you're a Samaritan. It was like a cuss word to them.

So this detour our Lord's taking was associated because of the hatred of the Pharisees. You're going to give mercy to this Samaritan. And it's because of ministry verses five through eight. What was the place of this ministry as it says here in verse six, Jacob's well, Jacob, the yachos that word means may God protect. In Palestine, if you were going to, for example, provide a grip for your dead loved one, let's say your parent died and you're going to have some way to place the body. They would approach a solid piece of stone with a hammer and chisels. Can you imagine the labor and the time to finally get enough space in there, but a human body? But that's what they did. Jacob's well was dug that way. Now this was a formidable challenge because this well was 105 feet deep. That's more than a 10 story building. I can't imagine the labor that went into this. There's nine feet in diameter, 15 feet of water in the bottom. That was what we call the wellhead.

Now there's type and symbol in this portion recovering here this morning. What's the symbol here? Jesus was Jacob's well. In the Old Testament, Jehovah is compared to a well, Deuteronomy 33 and verse 28, the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine. Also, his heaven shall drop down with dew. So Christ, the God man was now sitting on the edge of this well as it says here in verse 6, being wearied. Now wait a minute, you say he's God. That's right. Well, how could he get tired then because he was man? Now wait a minute, you're confusing me. Well, this is what theologians call the hypostatic union. What? Hypostatic union. In other words, our Lord Jesus was man. Yes, but he was also God Almighty. Absolutely unique in the world in the universe. God and man in one personality.

And that's why when some people, if you ever heard this, but some people would say, Lord Jesus, you don't understand what I have to go through. You understand what it's like to live this life? And it's hard hard hard hard hard hard hard. You don't understand. Oh, yes, he does. According to John 5:27, because he does understand he's going to be our judge. He does know what it's like to go through the tears in the heart experience. And that's why he can be a very accurate judge at the end of time. And he will be.

So he was a true man, but he was a poor man. When he gave the illustration of the coin, he had to ask for one. He had that one. He spent many a night out of doors primarily on the Mount of Olives. We'll talk more about that later. But he spent many a night in the out of doors. He'd never fancy house. He didn't have a go cart. He didn't have a golf cart. Now sometimes he would ride an animal when it was provided for him. But for most of the most he walked, one place to another. He's touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He's fully human, but not exempt from fatigue. So he was not exempt from hunger, thirst, pain, tears.

And once the typical significance of his ministry here, he sat thus on the well. Now there's type and shadow here. This well was a picture of Christ. It's water an emblem of his salvation. How do you get that from the primary writing craft of the Old Testament was Isaiah? Isaiah chapter 12 and verse 3 says this, therefore with joy shall you draw water out of the wells of salvation. For considered Genesis 21, the story of Hagar, you'll remember with me that Abraham and Sarah were just so looking forward to having a child that a child never arrived. And they waited and waited and waited until there was getting up in years. I think Abraham that the Lord wants us to do this. You marry my servant, girl Hagar and have a child by her and that'll be our child. Well, I don't know. It's fine. But let's do it, AB. And so they did it. And Ishmael was born. The father of the Arab nations, a wild ass's colt.

Well, then finally when Sarah was 90 years old and Abraham 100, ah, she's, AB, I'm pregnant. What? Yeah, I can't believe this. But I'm pregnant. I'm expecting a little one. And so, wouldn't you know, this, this, this, uh, Isaac was born and Ishmael is watching all of this. He's saying, uh-oh, it's not came on the scene. It's not going to be laughter. And so he developed a bad attitude because he saw his inheritance was going up in smoke when that child was born. So he got a bad attitude and Sarah wouldn't stand for that. You need to get rid of her, AB. What was your idea? Let's get rid of her, AB. And so they gave us the water and some food and, and, uh, Ishmael and off they went. And so finally the water was expended. There was no more food. And she said him over there because she didn't want to see him die. And here she is sitting. She's an outcast whose water was spent. She said weeping, a picture of the despairing sinner, and God opened her eyes to see a well. And that well of course for you and me is Christ, which was there all the time. What's the lesson? God opens our eyes to see him.

Now in verse 7 and 8, we see ministry without prejudice. Here's this woman of Samaria. Our Lord has turned away from the elite, educated, sophisticated, scribes and Pharisees, Herodians, as seen the Sadducees, to see this wicked woman. But she was a lost sheep. What's the time? It says here the sixth hour, according to Jewish reckoning, that would be 12 noon. Now wait a minute. I thought the ladies would get their water in the morning in the evening. They did. Well then what's she doing there at noon? She didn't want to meet the ladies. They would call attention to her lifestyle. They would call attention to the way she chose to live, which was pretty bad. And so she purposely came at noon. She expected the well to be deserted and she wanted to contempt in the sneers of the neighbor ladies. Well the Lord was there first. Isaiah 65:1, I am found of them that sought me not and found of them that sought me not. So salvation is not only unmerited, it is unsought. Romans 3:11, there's none that seeketh after God. None.

The same with the idolatress Abraham. Abraham was an idolatress. He sure was. He lived there in Padan Aram, land between the rivers. The Tigris and the Euphrates, the rivers. And his father, Terah, was an abject idolater, but the Lord appeared to him in his mercy. And Abraham became a believer in Jehovah God. Now can you imagine this conversation? Abraham approaches his wife Sarah. Sarah honey, yes, A.B. we're leaving. We are. Yes. I thought we're leaving here. No, we're leaving. When? Tomorrow. What? Where are we going? I'm not sure. Oh, I'm going to be there. I'm not sure about that either. They began a life of faith. That would be quite a conversation to have in that marriage.

So at the same of Moses as he tended to sheep an Acts chapter 7 in verse 2, he saw this bush burning which would not be consumed. The same with Jacob as he fled from his brother, fearing for his life. And at 90 saw this picture of a ladder stretching from earth to heaven, angels ascending and descending picture of salvation. The same as Zacchaeus as he watched from a tree, the same as Saul of Tarsus as he went to Damascus to arrest believers. The same with Lydia making dye from her shellfish. We love him because he first loved us.

Now let's go back to our conversation here between this woman and our Lord Jesus verse 7. Notice our Lord's polite. It gave me to drink. Water is the cheapest gift that the world can offer. But to speak with a Samaritan woman as an earth or a gift was unthinkable. And an observant Jew would have taken that cup of water and thrown it to the ground. She couldn't give him anything. He was leading her to see her helplessness. And when she saw him sitting on the well as a Jew, she was indignant. What's that guy doing on our well? Why don't he go get his Jewish well? Now how could she tell he was a Jew? And she's thinking if he says anything I'll give it right back to him. And she's getting ready for a fight. Well, Jesus was alone verse 8 because on this particular day, there was the disciples were gone. There was $2 for $8 at the Arby's, something like that. But there was no coincidence. Their presence would have interfered with this very personal conversation. And he's alone in John. He's alone with sinners more than any other gospel. He was alone with Nicodemus at night on a rooftop. He was alone with Samaritan woman at a well. He was alone with a convicted adulteress. He's alone with a man whose eyes he opened. Being alone with the Lord is exactly where the needy and sinful soul needs to get.

Now our Lord's taking this detour, verses 1 through 8. Now for 9 through 20, he gets in this discussion. Verse that's about water, verses 9 through 15. How is it? It just, can you just see if you probably stamped her, how is it? You're as a Jew sitting on our well, our Samaritan well. Now how did she know he was well, his physical appearance was Jewish? His speech was Jewish. He had that Aramaic dialect. But what was the dead giveaway? A ribbon of blue around the fringes of his garment. Well what has that got to do with anything? Numbers 15:38 is the reminder of an observant Jew's obligation to obey God's law. So an observant Jew would have a ribbon of blue around the fringes of his garment. And that would have been the dead giveaway.

In verse 4 of chapter 3, the first word Nicodemus to Christ was how? And it's the same with this woman. But Nicodemus, he manifests himself as the truth. Oh, this woman is the grace of God. And we all meet the truth of God in its majesty and glory in a hell. How can that be? How can this be? That's questioning spirit. We reason instead of believing the truth. Our heart is born closed against the Lord. We listen to the lies in the nonsense of the devil and men. But when God speaks, we say, well, how can that be? We see in him no beauty that we should desire him. And she only saw the old prejudices. She saw a Jewish man on their Samaritan well, and she's getting ready for a fight. When a sinner comes into God's presence, all they can do is to prevaricate, raise objections. Because the enmity of our carnal mind is raised up.

Now, verse 9, the Jews have no dealing with Samaritans. Drinking water from a Samaritan vessel would have made that Jew unclean. She had smarted under the cruel treatment. The Jewish countrymen all of her life more than once you had heard these words, get away from me, you mangy Samaritan. Whoever ate a Samaritan's bread was as him who ate swine's flesh. The Jews thought more of the Gentiles than they did of Samaritans. And on verse 10, we learn about gift of God. This is Christ Himself. Isaiah 9:6 unto us, the Son is given. Salvation is a gift. It's free. If the Lord would have put a price on it, we couldn't afford it. Who is this seth unto the verse 10? And man doesn't know his need nor the one who can meet that need. Grace is an unknown concept. It's unknown language to lost people. What's this thing called grace? That's the power and desire to do his will. So she neither knew him nor understood his condescension. He was ready to give if she would become a receiver.

Verse 10 says, thou would have asked of him, the only thing between a sinner and eternal life is an ask. But asking proceeds from knowing and that lost soul has to see his desperate state as looming danger. His awful fate, his rags, his filthiness, his bankruptcy condition that he spiritually bankrupt. I know when I was the loss of people called me a sinner, who you call a sinner, I get all upset with them. Before we ask on us to deal with our conscience and enlighten our understanding, so do our will and open our heart and our eyes. Verse 10 just talks about living water. That's new life through the spirit, living water. It's explained in John 7 verses 37 through 39. At the feast of the Tabernacles, observant Jews would carry water from the pool of Siloam. At the end of Hezekiah's tunnel, and they would pour it into a silver basin by the altar of the burnt offering for the first seven days of the feast of Tabernacles. The feast of the Jews had seven festivals that they observed, three of which were called mandatory. And every observant Jew had to come for those three. And that would include sons and daughters who had old enough to have their bat mitzvah or their bar mitzvah, so they'd be 13 and above. And so historians tell us that for those two months around those high, high, holy days, those pilgrim festivals, there could be as many as a million people in the city of Jerusalem. I find that hard to believe that's what they say.

So what is this living water? Well, that's a fountain as opposed to a well, a source that constantly reproduces itself. Revelation 22:1, and he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. Now this woman returning to her, she's listening to him, go, well, now it's nothing to draw with. Like Nicodemus, she takes him literally, and now accurately she portrays our own blinded natural state. Her mind like ours is centered on wells and buckets and material things. She didn't know who he was or what he was saying, but you can't get water without any bucket in the wells deep. And Satan uses material things to keep the soul from Christ, water pots, pleasures, palaces, electronic screens. Oh my. In the last few decades, electronic screens have just absolutely captivated our nation, especially young hearts and souls.

Now I've had some parents say, well, my child's not addicted to that. Oh, is that right? Take it away from them and see what happens. You ever heard of a hissy fit? That's what would happen. We had a girl's home for five decades, and had it not been for this mother going down the upstairs hallway of their home at three in the morning, God only knows what would have happened. They had made the mistake of giving their only daughter a private computer in their private bedroom on which she met dangerous people. And she was literally making plans to murder her parents. I'm not exaggerating. In the peril of the sewer, the things of this world are the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches. So this Samaritan woman is concerned with the means, not the end. And many are concerned with their own efforts and not the Lord's. So she was limiting Christ. You can't draw water with old buckets. And you know, well, I can only be saved in this or that church. I can't be saved until this or that happens. I'm not of the elect. I've sinned beyond reclamation. Many and more excuses are made to keep someone from Christ.

So what does he do verses 13, 14 and 15? He appeals to her inner thirst. The seed of spiritual thirst in man lies too deep for water to quench. And Solomon found out that wealth, opulence, luxury, indulgences, immorality, excess, abandon, does not satisfy. Well, what does it do? He gives you vanity and vexation of spirit. The rich man, Luke 16 portrays as he fared sumptuously every day of his life, went to a devil's hell. Christless, hopeless, speechless, returnative. What's the lesson? Don't go to the wells of this world. That's the lesson. The electronic screens. Lost man, try everything this world has to offer and never get peace in their hearts. Why is that? Because our hearts have been created for eternity, not temporary pleasures. Verse 14 shall never thirst. That satisfaction for the soul.

Now in verse 14, if you would look at that place, you'll see eternal security there. If it were somehow possible for a believer to throw away his salvation, verse 14 is a lie. Now verse 15, this woman's been listening to him now. She's listening, listening, listening. And she doesn't, right now, know what to say, give me this water. She doesn't know what this water is, but it sounds pretty special. She still doesn't discern that he's speaking of eternal life. She's now willing to be indebted to a Jew. So this is really something, a transformation, taking place in her heart and her soul. Her prejudice has been overcome, but her consciousness, to be reached, a sense of need needs to be created here.

Verse 16 through 19, the discussion now about her need. What's the Lord going to do to awaken her conscience? Okay, go call thy husband. Ooh, the red button was pushed. You could just see the red forming on her face and she dropped her head. She didn't comprehend the meaning of living water, so the Lord turns the conversation to her morals. So she would see her need as a sinner. And this was her hot button issue. This was her sin that she lived with on a daily basis. No one will seek salvation who doesn't see their need. And what's your response? Verse 17, I have no husband. Even though she had been legally married five times, this present union was immoral and illicit. In other words, illegal. She was trying to close this conversation while masking the guilt and the hurt and the pain. But the Lord wouldn't stop. Verse 18, now I said, five husbands. Now is that, well, the rabbis would allow two maybe three, but not more than that. The implication is that this is a dissolution of these five previous marriages was her responsibility.

And in her five marriages and the sixth one now being illegal, she's representative of her nation. Samaria as a nation was in a five-fold spiritual marriage to idols. Assyria brought five nations back, people from Babylon, Kutha, Ava, Hamath, Sepharvaim. Each had its own idol God, their equivalent of a husband. And her sixth man was not her husband. Just as Samaria was not legitimately connected with God, because earlier she said to the Lord, well, our fathers worshiped on this mountain. He said, no, no, salvation's of the Jews. So she's stunned. She speechless, not knowing what to say. Who is this man who is so accurately revealed my hall of shame and my guilty past? Her conscience now is very awake. It's been stirred to its depths. This tells us something, my friends. Our Lord keeps accurate books about us.

Did you ever thought, ever think this thought that I have secret sins because we do? Solomon put it this way, there's not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not. Not one. Every individual in this auditorium and around the world has secret sin. According to that message. So these are things we choose to forget. We don't want to remember, but the Lord remembers them. I perceive right verse 19 that thou art a prophet. So she blurts out this response, not knowing what else to say. How do you know this about me? And have we seen ourselves as guilty and lost and undeserving and bound for a devil's hell? The question of sin and righteousness has to be settled in the presence of God. And it was through her awakened conscience that she finally saw herself as a hellbound sinner.

Spiritual illumination comes more through the heart than through the mind. First, she calls him a Jew, then sir and now a prophet. Notice the contrasts between chapter 3 and chapter 4. A man named Nicodemus as opposed to an unnamed woman. A man of rank compared to one of no rank privately drawing her own water at 12 noon. A favored Jew compared to a despised Samaritan. A man of high reputation compared to a woman of bad reputation in moral fast and loose. Nicodemus saw Christ, Christ saw this woman. Nicodemus came by night, Jesus speaks to her at noon. But both Nicodemus and this woman saw obscurity. You must be born again to the sinful woman. He explains the gift of God's grace. Both needed to look at the serpent raised up, the voice in the burning bush, to the fourth man in the fire. Every sin-bitten soul needs to look in simple faith at Christ crucified. You and I can have what Adam in innocency never possessed and the law of Moses never provided. What's that? Eternal life.

Nicodemus was at the top of the ladder a respected master of Israel. She was at the bottom. A despised Samaritan adulteress. Both are on the same level of God. And notice spiritual truth doesn't always immediately come to us in an instant. Like this woman, we experience it by degrees. And notice the tact and the courtesy of our Lord in dealing with this flagrant sinner. They're not going to voluntarily come to our church or to our door. We must go to them in friendly courtesy and use creative and wise ways to get their attention and don't act superior because we're not. And notice if a sinner is willing to ask Christ is willing to give salvation, even though they had no thought of Him. And notice the necessity of conviction of sin before a soul can be converted. No matter what our past life has been, as vile, as wretched, as wicked or evil, there's hope for salvation and forgiveness in Christ.

But we all have to go through Samaria. That's a type of this world. And as we do, don't provoke them. Don't be polluted by them. Be kind and loving to them. Reach out to them. May I suggest that when you get up in the morning, put tracts in your pocket and pray this prayer, Lord, lead me to a seeking soul today. Or give me opportunity to get rid of these tracts in a productive and positive way. And who knows how God might bless your efforts?

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this very dramatic story of an adulteress, a Samaritan wicked woman being approached by our Lord and coming to a knowledge of Christ, a beautiful, beautiful story. And Lord, I pray that anyone here in this auditorium that doesn't know Him would be very soon to come to Him in salvation and help us, Lord, as believers, to reach out to those around us. We pray in Jesus' name.