Evangelism Requires Right Thinking
September 7, 2014
John 4:3-39
3He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. 4And He had to pass through Samaria. 5So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; 6and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 8For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” 11She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? 12You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?” 13Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; 14but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” 16He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” 17The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” 19The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” 21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” 26Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
27At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why do You speak with her?” 28So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, 29″Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” 30They went out of the city, and were coming to Him.
31Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” 34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. 35Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. 36Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37For in this case the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.”
39From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.”