The Gospel Transcends Borders

The Gospel of John 4 and the P45 Series

If you'll turn your Bibles with me, please, to the Gospel of John, Chapter 4. The Gospel of John, Chapter 4. And before we look to the Word of God, let us ask the Lord's blessing one more time. Our great Heavenly Father, we do, once again, give you great thanks for the possession of your Word.

We give you thanks that you have given us a place to gather together to study your Word, to hear from you by your Spirit. We ask that by your Spirit you would gather with us this day. All the preparation, all the wisdom of man can accomplish nothing unless your Spirit writes upon our hearts your truth.

And so, protect us from distraction. Allow us to focus upon your truth so that we might be better servants of yours. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. For those of you who have been here regularly, you know that a number of months ago we began a series of sermons based upon an ancient manuscript of the New Testament called P45.

And if you could make sure that door closes all the way, brother, I'd appreciate it. Give it a good push. Otherwise, everyone's going to be standing around staring at that door the whole time. There you go.

And last Sunday evening, I gave a brief introduction to the fact that we are going to take a look at John chapters 4 and 5 as a part of this series. And I mentioned that we can do that because there is a teeny, teeny, tiny little fragment, so teeny and tiny, I don't even have a picture of it.

I've got those wonderful, beautiful pictures that I've been providing to you, but I can't even find this one. I'm going to keep looking. I know where it is in Europe. I ain't going to try to go all the way over to Europe to find a picture of it.

But there are approximately 58 letters, a grand total, between John 4 and John 5 on the front and back of this teeny, tiny little scrap that's from P45. But you know what? That's enough to allow us to cover John 4 and 5.

I make up the rules, so we get to cover John chapters 4 and 5. That's stretching it just a little bit, but I think it's perfectly fine because there is some tremendous material to be found in God's Word in these particular chapters.

We may be going backwards a little bit, but I don't think that anyone should have any grounds for too much complaint concerning that. So we began last Sunday evening, and I recognize we had a much smaller group Sunday evening than we have this morning, so I hope those of you who are here don't mind if I remind us of at least a few things in the process of looking at John chapter 4, especially in light of the fact that we might make some application to this morning that we would not have made only a week ago.

The Samaritan-Jewish Divide Behind John 4

And what do I mean by that? Well, we spent most of our time Sunday evening of last week looking at the odd and strange relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans, and specifically the fact that when we look down at verse 9, we are told that the Jews do not have any dealings with, do not have any interaction with the Samaritans.

And behind the whole narrative, the tension that gives rise to John chapter 4 and the encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well is half a millennium of racial tension. It wasn't really purely racial tension.

It was religio-racial tension. And we told the story, we mentioned the fact that the Assyrians had as a mechanism for breaking down religious sensitivities amongst the people they would conquer, the idea of deporting a number of people and making them live someplace else and doing the same thing, deporting someone from another part of the empire and bringing them into an area causing intermarriage and breaking down the native populations that if they were left intact would tend to be hotbeds of rebellion, hotbeds of resistance against Assyrian rule.

And obviously in those days that would also involve a breaking down of religious commitments and sensitivities amongst the people in those areas. And so when people had been brought into the former northern tribes of Israel, their land, and had intermarried with the survivors there, from the Jewish perspective, this created what in essence they referred to as half-breeds.

Yes, they had a Jewish heritage, and yes, they continued to honor Moses and Abraham, but as we see, for example, in Nehemiah, as we see in the rebuilding of the temple, there was great concern about having a proper priestly lineage, about having the proper people ministering in the temple there.

And we see actually in the ministry of Nehemiah in that time period, in the rebuilding of the temple, the beginnings of what would eventually become Phariseeism. And it started off with the proper concerns.

We have God's law, God's law says this, we need to do this. And so much of what the Pharisees did was based upon initially an appropriate concern about the purity of God's law. But what has happened in regards to the Samaritans has been a settled development of an ethnic and religious animosity between close neighbors.

So much so that when the people from Galilee would come down to Jerusalem to worship, they would not go through Samaria. They would not go through that area. They would cross the Jordan and they would actually enter into Gentile areas rather than going through the area of Samaria, even though this added time and difficulty to their trip.

And we noted last time the fact that this only added to the offensiveness of Jesus' teaching on the good Samaritan. There was something behind that. It had nothing to do with the name of the local hospital that you may have even been born at or maybe your kids were born at or something like that.

No, it had nothing to do with that. The idea of the good Samaritan in the Jewish mind was the good half-breed, the good heretic. That's what it really said to the people who heard that. It was, in some people's mind, unnecessarily offensive.

But in Jesus' mind, it was necessarily offensive. Because even though something may have started off with a proper motivation, what we can plainly see is over centuries, there had developed a religious bigotry that existed amongst the people of Israel.

It didn't change the fact that Jesus is going to say to the woman, salvation is of the Jews. It didn't change the fact that the traditions that the Samaritans had developed about Moses and basically changing history and changing the scriptural reality wasn't true.

But none of that is a sufficient basis for the animosity that existed. And we cannot help but see, not only in the woman's response to Jesus' request for a drink of water, but in the evident discomfort of the disciples, who surely, when Jesus took the wrong turn, because the disciples knew the right turn to get across the Jordan and go down and go around, and Jesus says it's necessary to go through Samaria, and he takes the non-Jewish turn.

I'm reminded of a signpost that I have seen posted a number of times on the internet. You may not be aware of this, but there are certain cities in Saudi Arabia that non-Muslims are not allowed to go into.

You can't go and visit Mecca as a non-Muslim. And as you're driving on the very broad highways that have both Arabic and English signs on them, I've seen many times the exit sign that says non-Muslims.

Non-Muslims, exit here. Because if you keep going, you're going to violate the holy city of Mecca. And that's not going to be overly well appreciated. And so you have to turn here. Well, this was sort of the other way.

It was Jews, go this direction. Samaritans, go this direction. Well, Jesus took the wrong turn. He says it is necessary that he goes through Samaria. And certainly, you have to wonder what the disciples were thinking, not only at that point.

And this is not something that had developed a few decades earlier. Centuries had gone past since this split had developed. Entire religious traditions had developed, especially amongst the Samaritans at this point in time.

And the bigotry and the bias on both sides of this issue was only heightened and then justified by religion. By saying, well, I have to have this attitude toward the Samaritans. Because they're religiously wrong.

And so they don't have anything to do with them. You know, you think it would have been a good thing, maybe, for someone to go, you know, we have certain truths about how God has dealt with the people of Israel and these promises and the coming of the Messiah and things like that.

And we share so much with these people because they, too, have very similar traditions. But, you know, maybe if we didn't show hatred toward one another, we could talk about these things. And no, that didn't seem to be happening.

And so when you add religion to bigotry, the result, well, in the history of the world, has often not only been silence across very short borders, but sadly, war and death and poverty and all sorts of things that go along with that.

So this is the background that we see here in John chapter 4. Now the reason for Jesus' leaving is because the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John. And from their perspective, this shifted the focus of the opposition to them from John to Jesus.

And we read elsewhere of John's own testimony that he must increase, I must decrease. Even though it is interesting that John mentions, even though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were the ones that were doing the baptizing.

And so Jesus leaves Judea and he again goes into Galilee. But to get there, again, he takes the wrong road. And when we look at verse 4, it was necessary. The same term that is used when Jesus says it is necessary that the Son of Man go to Jerusalem and be betrayed and be mistreated and killed and rise again the third day.

Necessary. Now I suppose we could come up with the idea that there may have been some reason why he had to take the route that he took. I can't imagine what it would be. I can't imagine whether it would be weather or some local conflict.

We're not told. It seems to me, in light of the conversation that takes place between Jesus and the woman at the well, that the best way to understand it is necessary is that it was spiritually necessary.

It was providentially necessary. Jesus had an appointment. He had an appointment with a woman that most of us would not want to get overly close to. A woman who had a reputation even amongst her own people.

And he had an appointment with her. And so it's necessary. And when we think of any one of us, when we think of the mechanism that God used to bring the gospel into our lives, well, for some of us, it wasn't all that earth-shattering.

We were raised in Christian families and so heard the gospel as one of the first things we can even remember in our lives is being in church and hearing about Jesus and hearing about the cross and the resurrection and the need of repentance and faith.

But for some of you, some of you, that was the last thing you experienced in your life. Or some of you may have been in false religions and you were given falsehoods about those things. Or maybe you just will admit you were just plain old pagan.

And you didn't really have any concern about any of these things. And you can think about the process by which people were brought into your life that brought that message to you. And even if you are, like me, one that would say, well, I was raised in a Christian family and my first memories are of a call to believe upon Jesus Christ to repent of my sins.

Still, when you trace that spiritual lineage back, there were people, there were incidents, there were examples of the divine sovereignty of God that brought that gospel message into the lives of those who then brought it to others, brought others, and eventually to you.

It was never just a natural thing. God has always been in charge of bringing that message. And when we think about it, it's either just a wildly fortuitous thing, or, as the scriptures teach, God is the one who works all things after the counsel of his will.

And here, the second person of the divine trinity who has become incarnate, who is going to give himself on Calvary's tree, yet in the midst even of his own ministry, he engages in an act that's going to be looked back upon by his disciples under the influence of the Holy Spirit of God and seen as justification, seen as an encouragement to recognize that the gospel has to go from Jerusalem to Samaria, to the Gentile lands, under the uttermost parts of the earth, and his people continue to be obedient to that impulse, to that call, to this very day.

It was necessary for him to go through Samaria. Not because a bridge was out or a road was out, but because there was a divine appointment with a woman at a well, and Jesus fulfills that appointment. And so they come to a city of the Samaritans which is called Sychar.

The Humanity of Christ and the Sixth Hour

And what's interesting is, John notes the importance of this city in the history of the people of Israel. I think, again, it is this demonstration that this division that had taken place between the Samaritans and the Jews was lamentable.

They shared so much in common. So many of their traditions were the same, going back to the same people. We have Jacob, we have Joseph. It's a parcel of land that had been given by Jacob to his son Joseph.

And there was the well of Jacob. And you have to wonder at times if the Jews had not given consideration to the fact that there were so many important places of their own religious history within this area.

It would be nice to be able to go visit those places. We read about it in our scriptures. It would be nice to do that. But boy, I can't get dirtied by being around those people, around those nasty Samaritans that have come up with those bad traditions, bad, bad people that they are.

And so they come to this well. And we have in verse 6 one of those texts. I'm not going to dwell upon it, but I always want to make sure that especially our people, that we are balanced, that we are properly instructed.

There are two imbalanced positions concerning our Lord Jesus that many Christians fall into. And church history shows us that people have fallen into both of these areas and to the point of what we would call rank heresy.

And that is there is a tendency on one part to see Jesus as such a superhuman, divine figure that his humanity is done away with, that he simply becomes a being that floats about two inches above the ground.

And he's really not here. He's not the son of man. He's not truly the incarnate one. He isn't the son of David. He just, you know, if you really tried to shake his hand, there really wouldn't be anything there.

He's just this superhuman, divine mixture of things. And on the other hand, we have those who reject the biblical testimony as to the incarnation, the fact that the Word became flesh. And you have merely a moral teacher, a man pretty much like everybody else of his age, but maybe elevated in his understanding or his particular morality or whatever else it might be.

John, who gives us so strong a testimony of the deity of Christ, likewise gives to us a very strong testimony of the reality of the humanity of Christ. John, more than anyone else, forces us to be balanced in our understanding of who Jesus is.

Because we are told in verse 6 that Jesus was wearied by his traveling. It's a long walk. We don't know what time of year it was, but it can get pretty warm there. It wouldn't even matter if it was a cool time of year.

It's still tough to walk long distances. And Jesus was wearied from the traveling. He wasn't pretending to be wearied. It's so easy for us to go, well, now, you know, you've already said that Jesus had an appointment, that Jesus knew what was coming in the sense of the necessity of his interaction with this woman.

So, if you've gone that far, how real can his weariness be? Well, it was real weariness. He was tired. We see this more than once. Remember, the disciples have to wake him up in the middle of the storm at the sea, when they're on the Sea of Galilee.

They have to wake him up. Don't you care that we're perishing? He had been teaching all day long. Believe me, when you teach all day long, you become very, very physically weary. And we don't know how many miles, stadia, I guess, to use the terminology of the day, that the disciple band had traveled.

But Jesus is weary, and he sits down. He doesn't want to keep standing. We've all felt like this. Believe me, I'm going to feel like this by the time I get to Birmingham on Monday. Because when you land at Heathrow, I love Heathrow Airport.

It really is a great airport. It's a great place. And I love people with English accents. They sound so much more intelligent than we do over here. But I don't know why it is. It doesn't matter what gate you come into.

I don't know how far it is. But you have to walk and walk and walk to get to what's called border control. And by the time you drag, you know, you've been on a plane for nine hours or so, and you drag your carry-ons with you, and you walk and you walk and you walk, and you get through the line.

And we finally found a way. I'm now what's called a registered traveler. So I don't have to stand in the long, long foreign passport line anymore. I go through the EU line. It's pretty fast, pretty quick.

We did it the last time. Man, that's great. So much fun. But straight in, and now you've got to pick up your check luggage. And by the time you get out to either meet somebody, or I'm going to have to be dragging that to the tube and then on to a train, and then from there to another station, and then off of that and on to another train, and then two and a half hours to Birmingham.

By the time I get off of all that, I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to want to sit down, and I'm going to want to take a load off, and I'm not going to want to walk anymore. My little step counter will be going, Yeah, you're good today.

You're good for a week. No problem. You can take me off for a while, all this well, because I'll be tired. And that's just simply how it works. It's not necessarily the intensity. It's just how long you've been doing it.

And we all know the feeling of sitting down upon the well and taking a load off, and that's exactly what has taken place here. Jesus was a true man. He didn't float to Sychar. He walked to Sychar. And I mention that.

I emphasize that. You might go, Well, we don't need to hear any more about that. There is such a tendency on people's part to turn Jesus into somebody who just sort of floated through the Gospels, rather than someone who was truly incarnate, truly took on that human nature.

And so he sits down upon the well, and we are told that it's the sixth hour. Hmm. Well, what's the sixth hour? Well, as you know, there are issues in regards to telling time in the New Testament. It seems that the Synoptic Gospels primarily utilize the Jewish reckoning in regards to the time of day.

And so sunrise is the beginning of the hour. Remember, they divided the day into two 12-hour segments, which meant back then an hour was not a fixed period of time. It's just simply a division. So if you have the winter and you have a short day period, then the hours are going to be smaller.

There's still going to be 12 of them, but they're going to be shorter. And at night, they're longer. Obviously, during the summer, it's the opposite of that. And so the sixth hour would be toward noon.

Or it seems that John uses Roman timing. And this comes out when we look at the hour of the crucifixion. When you compare John's account with the Synoptic account, it seems that John is using the Roman timing rather than Jewish timing because then the times coincide with one another rather than being contradictory to one another.

And the Romans, like us, had a midnight and then a noon. And so this would be 6 o 'clock in the afternoon. It seems to be more likely the time simply because the amount of travel and going to get food, probably for the evening meal type of a situation, find some place to bed down for the night.

But it's the sixth hour, and there comes a woman of the Samaritans to draw water. And once again, for all of us, when was the last time you thanked God for running water in your home? Probably the last time that the plumbing stopped working.

That's probably about the only time that any of us give thanks to that because we live in a day where, man, if you don't have that, then you're extremely poor or something along those lines. But we need to realize that mankind, for the vast majority of its existence, would look at us, every single one of us, as if we were absolute royalty in what we have and how easy our lives are.

And you young people, let me tell you something. You've got it easy. I know you're sitting there saying, No, man, I've got to clean up my room. Yeah, well, most people never even had as much stuff as you've got in your room to clean up.

And for many, many years, just to go have some water to drink and to cook with and maybe to clean yourself with just a little bit, you had to go get it out of the ground. You didn't just turn a knob or slide a switch or do whatever else.

It didn't just come that way. Yes, there were some super fancy folks in some of the major cities that had a form of running water. I wouldn't want to have put a tester into any of that running water as to what it had in it.

We've got all sorts of things take care of that kind of stuff today, too. But this is just simply how human beings lived. And so the woman comes, and she's going to have to put that bucket down in there, and she's going to have to pull that stuff up.

In case you haven't noticed, if you haven't had to carry it recently, some of you are kind enough to. One of the jobs we have around here, one of the tough jobs we have around here is changing the water thing on the, not water fountain, but bottled water in there in the other room.

And have you ever noticed those bottles are, now George does this with them. He tosses them around like that. But for us regular human beings, it's pretty easy to drop one of those things. They're pretty heavy.

They're not easy to wrestle around. And so you get a big old bucket full of water, and you had to work pretty hard. It probably didn't help her nails or anything like that as she was pulling that rope up and trying to bring that water up out of the well.

And during certain times of the day, there'd be a whole line there. Of course, that's when ladies would normally have lengthy discussion about what was going on in the city and share some of the facts that were going on.

This was the early form of Facebook. It was the line outside the well while you were getting your water. But given what we find out about this woman later on, I get the feeling that there wasn't a line when she came.

I get the feeling that she maybe came at an inopportune time. Maybe so she could avoid the Facebook line and being on everybody else's Facebook wall. Because she didn't have the best reputation, and there was a reason for that.

Probably didn't have a lot of friends amongst the women of that town for that very reason. And so she comes to draw water from the well. She's doing just a regular thing. She has no idea of who's waiting for her.

She is not aware of the fact that in the sovereign decree of God, God has chosen this day to bring His Son, the promised Messiah, across her path. In fact, to be honest with you, it probably never crossed her mind that even if the Messiah came, the Messiah would have anything to do with someone like her.

Here is not someone who is looking for the Messiah. Here is not someone who thinks the Messiah would ever have any concern for her at all. Think about that. Think about all of us in that sense. And so the woman comes, and she is going to draw water from the well.

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

And so Jesus speaks to her, and He asks to be given a drink. Now you just need to understand, Jesus just violated any number of social taboos. He's spoken to a Samaritan woman. This was shocking behavior.

But was it shocking behavior in light of God's law? Or was it shocking behavior in light of men's traditions that had grown up outside of, and in contradiction to, God's law? That really becomes the question.

You know, a lot of people will take texts like this. A lot of the people that we used to call liberals, we live in such a day now where what used to be liberalism has become leftism, that the words no longer mean things that they used to mean.

But back in the olden days, what people would do is say, well, you know, Jesus was a rebel. And He was always breaking all the taboos and all the rules. Well, there is an element of truth to that. You've got this right here.

But what they always did with that was they would then expand that out and say, and that means that we can go ahead, and we cannot concern ourselves about the clear teachings of Scripture and what it says in regards to who men are, who women are, what marriage is, what is good and wrong and sexual morality or anything else.

They leapt from the fact that Jesus did recognize the difference between God's law and men's interpretations and traditions about it. They leapt from that reality all the way into, and therefore we don't have to worry about God's law.

There was never any logical basis for them doing so, but they did it, and they did it all the time. There is no question when it came to man's traditions that Jesus was willing to break those traditions.

We see it all the time in the people He was willing to associate with, and here we see it in His being willing to bring the message of salvation to a woman that from the viewpoint of any Pharisee in Jerusalem or Galilee was utterly outside the realm of the grace of God.

You see, I've mentioned to you before, the Pharisees had a phrase, the Am Ha 'aretz. Am Ha 'aretz. Am means people. Ha 'aretz, the land. The people, the land. The Am Ha 'aretz. They were referring to Jewish people, so the people that you would meet in Judea, in Capernaum.

They themselves may have been Pharisees in their theology, but because they had to make a living and were scratching out a bare existence, they could not do what the scribes and Pharisees did in the ornate clothes and the tassels and the scrupulous observation of over 600 laws to be seen and observed every single day.

And so from the elevated position of the scribes and Pharisees, they would look down upon the Am Ha 'aretz, the people of the land, and from their perspective, they were beyond the grace of God. The grace of God was for the Pharisee.

The grace of God was for the person who, because God had blessed them with the ability to do this, that's how God proves his blessing, is he's given you the ability to do these things and to engage in these activities, and that proves God's approval of you, and these other people that can't do that, well, you know, they're just beyond God's grace.

They didn't even give consideration to the idea of the Gentiles, and certainly not those half-breed Samaritans. And so from an orthodox, Pharisaical perspective, what Jesus is doing here is not only utterly a violation of everything that any real rabbi would do.

Remember what Simon thought in his mind? If he was a real prophet, he'd know what that woman's like. And you're not supposed to have anything to do with people like that. We all know that. From any orthodox, Pharisaical perspective, total waste of time.

Violation of any kind of appropriate behavior for a Jewish leader. Jesus says it is necessary, and he speaks to her. And he asks for a drink. He asks, give to me to drink. And then John has to explain something.

Why would Jesus ask a woman, who is a Samaritan, when the disciples are standing around, who could have easily given Jesus a drink? Well, because they weren't there. For his disciples had gone away into the city.

They were buying dinner. Now, I can guarantee you, they were as uncomfortable as they could possibly be. But, when they went into that Samaritan town, they only talked to Samaritan men. If they were, you know, Jesus had dragged them in here, and they were already, I mean, everybody's like, can you imagine what's happened as they walk by?

People just stop and stare. You can't sneak in to the Samaritan town, when you're dressed as a Jew. It's like you've got Christmas lights on, and they're flashing. Hi, we're a Jew, we're a Jew. Hi, how are you?

And we're going to try to buy food from you. And, of course, we're very uncomfortable doing this, because we're really not sure if it's really actually kosher, and we really don't want to be around you anyways, and we know you don't want us to be around anyhow.

It was not a comfortable situation. But they had obeyed, and they had gone away. And so, not only does he not have his disciples with him, but he's alone, talking to a Samaritan woman. And so, his disciples have gone away, and the woman's response to him is fully understandable.

How is it that you, being a Jew, are asking a drink from me, who is a Samaritan woman? And then John makes the statement that we have looked at already a number of times. For the Jews do not have dealings with, relationship with the Samaritans.

She is shocked. She can't, who is this guy? Why in the world is he talking to me? So, it's not like the Samaritans are sitting around going, man, we'd really like to have better relationships with the Jews, you know.

It would be really nice. No, this is a two-sided wall. This wall was built with Jewish stones and Samaritan stones. And it's easy for us to hear the parable of the good Samaritan, and just assume, well, all Samaritans were good.

There's a reason he was called a good Samaritan. Because there were bad Samaritans, too. And there was animosity on both sides. And this woman is shocked, and appropriately so, that a Jewish man has spoken to her in this fashion.

But we'll finish up just sort of as a looking into the future of what we'll be considering. Jesus' answer to her is one that does not, now she's going to want to debate. She's going to want to debate.

She's going to bring stuff up, and she's going to want to debate about where the proper place for the temple is, whether it's Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim and all that. She's going to bring all this stuff up.

Jesus knows what needs to be communicated, and he's focused upon it like the proverbial laser beam. Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God, and who it is who's speaking to you, and saying to you, give me to drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given to you living water.

So it's fascinating to me that Jesus can take a normal, perfectly understandable request. He's tired. He's sitting on the edge of the well. He doesn't have a bucket. She does. And he asks for a drink.

And when she responds in shock at how amazing this is, Jesus' answer is not to start debating who has the proper traditions. He isn't going to revile her for questioning this, or nothing like that. Instead what he does is, if you'd known who was talking to you, and asking you for a drink, you would have asked him, he would have given you living water.

Living water. See, the water from a well is still water. It's not running water, living water as you would have. And of course John loves the double entendre, living water, flowing water, or water that results in life.

A spiritual aspect to this kind of water. So Jesus immediately raises in the woman's mind, by his initial response, a question about what it is that he can offer to her. You can offer to me, you're asking me for a drink, but you're also telling me that if I knew who you were, you could give me something I can't get for myself.

By the nature of the response, Jesus guarantees the direction of the conversation, and that it's going to be focused upon him. Because notice what he says, if you knew who you were speaking with, there is great wisdom here.

How many times have you been sitting in a situation, and you've actually maybe even prayed, Lord, I'd love to have an opportunity of getting a conversation started here, but you just feel so uncomfortable, and you're just not sure how to get going.

Not sure how to start. Isn't it amazing how Jesus begins conversations? He does so with such wisdom, such insight, as to be able to lead this woman, even though there are barriers between them, and even though she's going to raise some of these barriers.

She's going to want to wander off into the arguments that Samaritans and Jews have been having for a long, long time. But by the way he starts, he focuses upon how he is unique, who he is, and what he can provide.

And we are wise when we recognize that our message should be focused upon who Jesus is, how he is unique, and how only he can provide what he provides, and that is peace with God. Now, you say, but I might be talking to someone, unless the Spirit of God is working in their lives, unless the Spirit of God is doing something in their lives, it doesn't matter what kind of opening line I might use.

That's true. We are always dependent upon the Spirit of God. But when the Spirit of God is working in someone's life, we will never go wrong to start off by focusing upon our Lord, by focusing upon his uniqueness, his glory, who he is.

You'll never go wrong when you start off with Jesus. That's what Jesus does in this divine appointment with the woman at the well. And as we work through it, we're going to see how he masterfully deals with the objections and the sin in her life to bring about something that I can guarantee you, when Jesus took the wrong Jewish turn, and the disciples started looking at each other, they could never have dreamed what was going to be the result of that visit that was going to take place at that well.