The Sequel

Well, if you notice how it seems to be the trend in Hollywood that movies come out in threes, those that are pictured for you here on the screen, all have come out in threes, Star Wars did a trilogy, and that did so well, they decided to go back and do another trilogy. They did six movies. X-Men came out in a trilogy. Lord of the Rings came out in a trilogy. Pirates of the Caribbean is in the middle of their trilogy right now, and there are others like the Matrix and others that have come out in threes. In the newspaper this week, that Spider-Man is going to come out with a third movie next year, and so everything seems to go in threes. The genius of that is that the first movie only takes you up to a certain point of the story, and leaves you anxious to come back for the sequel. And then of course, the sequel takes you to a certain point, leaves you anxious to come back for the final movie in the trilogy. So it's brilliant. If the first one does well, they know they've got a ready-made blockbuster for the second one, and the third one. It's a brilliant strategy. So we pulled the same strategy last week with John chapter 4. We started into John chapter 4, we left you hanging. Anxious to come back for the sequel. I thought I'd get at least one amen out of that. I was hoping I would anyway, but you're here anyway, whether your anxious or not. The only danger of doing that with a sermon is that you never have quite the same crowd for both Sundays or the three Sundays you're going to do that. For instance, how many of you were not here last week? Okay, a number of you were not here last week. How many of you were here last week and you're not here today? Yeah, I thought. A few of you. Okay, this is going to be a tough crowd today I can tell. Well, last week we started into John 4, and we want to finish it up today, but because some of you weren't here, I want to go back and kind of lead you up to the point where we begin today with the sequel to John chapter 4. Keys to effective rescues. I hope you have your Bible open to John 4. That's where we'll be in just a moment. But let me bring you up to speed. You remember it's the story of Jesus' amazing rescue mission. To a little village of Cicare, and it begins with one woman. As Jesus is resting outside the city, since His disciples to go in and get some food, Jesus is resting, and a woman shows up at the well. And we saw that He engages her in conversations such that she finally comes to realize He is the Messiah. Jesus' Savior, and eventually a lot of the village comes to no Christ. Last week we saw three keys to effective rescues in the first part of the story. The first one was enter their world. In order to reach Samaritans, you got to go to Samaria. We saw that we have to go to people. We have to go outside the walls of this church. We have to go to where people are. This church must be outreach oriented beyond our walls, reaching out to other people. To enter their world. Second key that we saw last week was focus on one person. Jesus did not go into the village and hold street wide campaigns and big meetings. There's a place for that, but Jesus started with one woman. And that spread and multiplied to others. And that seems to be God's evangelistic strategy quite often. The third strategy or key that we saw last week was to create spiritual curiosity. Jesus created a spiritual curiosity in this woman's heart by starting with some common ground. Remember, she's there to get water. He's there and he's thirsty. So water is the thing they have in common, so that's where he begins. He starts by talking about water, creates some curiosity, goes on from there to talk about living water, creates more curiosity about what he's talking about. So that's where we pick up in the story today. Today is the sequel. We're going to finish the story today and find three more keys to effective rescues spiritually. The first one I want to look at today is found in verses 13 to 15 and it's this. Start with a need they recognize. Now before we get into the verses, I want to anticipate an objection. Some may say, well, John, shouldn't we start with sin? Isn't that where we're supposed to start with people when we start witnessing to them? And certainly that's typically where we have been taught to start. Most of our evangelistic strategies and training techniques say start with sin. Start with the issue of sin. If you're trained in the Romans road concept, the idea is the first verse you share is Romans 323 for all of sin and come short of the glory of God. So start with sin. Now obviously it's important to deal with sin. Jesus died for our sins and we've got to get to that. But I'm not convinced in the culture that we live in today that's the best place to start. For this reason, we live in a culture a lot like Paul ministered in. Remember we saw some time ago in Acts 17 that Paul started with what people could understand and grasp and moved on from there. The day in which we live is a day in which people do not very well understand the whole concept of sin. The reason is more and more people in our culture have accepted the religion of tolerance and pluralism. In other words, most people today, unchurched people, unsaved people, have bought into what we've been taught in our culture that there are no absolute rights or wrongs. There's no absolute true and false. If you believe something, that's okay for you. It may not be the right thing for me. No absolute rights or wrongs. No absolute true or false. A lot of people have bought into that mindset of tolerance. Every view has equal value. So every view is equal. If it's good for you, fine. Another one may work for me. So people don't clearly understand black and white concepts of sin and righteousness. So I think although we have to get to that and we will this morning, we have to back up a step and start a step earlier than that. That's exactly what Jesus does here with the woman at the well. Now let's look at verses 13 to 15 and we'll see where Jesus started. Where Jesus started is found in these verses, verse 13. Jesus answered, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. Now Jesus had started talking with her about physical water. Give me a drink he had said. And she said, you know, how can you being a Jew talk to me? I'm a Samaritan. We don't deal with each other. And Jesus had gone on to say, well, if you only knew who I was, you would ask me and I would give you water. That arousal curiosity even more and the conversation shifts by the time we come to verse 13 to the kind of water that he is offering. He's offering a different kind of water. Not physical water to quench physical thirst, he's offering a spiritual kind of water to quench spiritual thirst. And I think that's what he's talking about in verse 13. When he says to this woman, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. I think he's beginning to shift over into spiritual things. And that statement that he makes is so true of every person outside of Jesus Christ. And that is that everything in this world will leave you thirsty again. You can come to the wells of this world for whatever you're looking for and you will go away thirsty again. You will not be satisfied. Because every relationship in this world leaves you thirsty for more. Every accomplishment in this world leaves you thirsty for more. Every possession in this world leaves you thirsty for more. That's something this woman could relate to. She'd gone through five relationships and she was in her sixth. This woman could relate to that. She understood what it meant to be thirsty again, to be unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Because Jesus is not talking here about a physical thirst. He's talking about a soul thirst. He's talking about an inner thirst, a spiritual emptiness that can only be filled with a relationship with God. See, only way this thirst can be filled. And so Jesus is now offering her a living water, he says, that will quench this spiritual thirst, this desire, this lack of fulfillment, this emptiness deep down inside of her. You know, when people get cancer, the cancer is the real problem. That's the real disease. But people don't recognize that at first. They don't understand that at first. They go to a doctor with a symptom that they don't understand. There's a persistent pain, headache, persistent cough, there's bleeding that is unexplained, they found a lump. You know, there's some symptom that they don't fully understand yet, but it doesn't seem right. And so they go to the doctor. Now, when you go to the doctor, you don't walk in and say, hey, doc, I got cancer, let's talk about treatment options. No. You go to the doctor complaining about the pain or describing the unusual bleeding or describing the lump you've felt. And so you go describing the symptom. It's his job to take the symptom and diagnose the disease and tell you what's wrong. Now same thing is true spiritually. People far from God, people who don't know the Lord, people without Christ, lost people may not understand or recognize the disease of sin, but they're suffering from the symptoms. And they will understand when you talk about the symptoms, what they're feeling, what they're experiencing, what they're going through, what's happening on the inside. And so with most people today who do not have a church background may not understand the concept clearly of sin, that is where we need to start. So let me give you some modern day symptoms that you may use to connect with people and start with people on because I firmly believe that every life without Christ is experiencing some symptom of the disease of sin. They're experiencing something. They may not be able to put their finger on it, but they're experiencing the symptoms of sin because sin cuts us off from the one that we were made for. And whenever that happens there's got to be something wrong inside. There's an emptiness inside. The Bible says it this way in Colossians chapter 1, the end of verse 16, it says all things were created by Him and for Him. Everything in this world, every person in this world exists because God put it into existence or that person into existence and all of it was created for Him. We are made for Him. We are made to have a relationship with God. But the Bible very clearly tells us, the prophet Isaiah tells us, in Isaiah 59, but your iniquities have separated you from your God. Your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear. So you see the problem is we were made for God but we're separated from Him and the reason is sin. Now whenever people are living that way, made for something but not experiencing it, there's a disconnect there. There are going to be some symptoms of that in their lives. Let me give you five real quickly. Five symptoms that I think a lot of unsaved people struggle with. You can really connect with people on these five. The first one is loneliness. A lot of folks are just playing lonely, you know why? Because what they thought a relationship would give them hasn't happened. They found that relationships are quite often very shallow, unsatisfying. They've grown up with broken relationships or they've experienced in their adult life, broken relationships or relationships that are in the process of breaking. And what they thought was going to be the happily ever after hasn't happened. They're extremely lonely. They've got an emptiness inside. That's one. A second one is restlessness. I believe one of the symptoms of a deeper spiritual disease in our culture today is restlessness. That's where people get to a destination in life. You come to a destination in life that you thought would fulfill you. But you still don't have the peace you thought you'd have when you got there. Maybe again, it's a relationship. You found that what you thought's that perfect person. And you court and you get engaged and you have the wonderful wedding and all of a sudden it's not quite like you thought it was going to be. Now those relationships, if they're lived out as God intends them to be, can be great relationships. You have family relationships, but it's not the fairy tale story. You thought it was going to be. There's some real life in there that's hard. So there's a restlessness. Maybe it's that accomplishment you finally did. You got to that place in life. You got that degree. You earned that position. Or maybe it's the job you'd always dreamed of having and you finally got it or the income level that you used to think, if I could only reach that income level, man, that would be great and I'd be peaceful and happy and fulfilled. Or maybe it's that perfect house you always dreamed about. And finally you've got it. But somehow it doesn't work. It just doesn't feel the need. You thought it was going to feel. And there's still this restlessness there. Unsaved people grapple with that every day of their lives. Restlessness. A third thing I think a lot of folks grapple with is hopelessness. That's when people kind of come to the realization that, you know, I've been battling this issue in my life for a long time and I just don't think I'm going to be able to conquer it. I just don't think I'm going to be able to do anything about this temper problem I have. I thought when I got a little older it would get better or I'd gain mastery over it. I'm not. Or my mouth. Or my selfishness or this depression or this addiction. And I thought by now I would have had a handle on this and you look down the road and things get kind of hopeless. And you think it's just not going to work. Life is just not working for me. A lot of unsaved people are living with hopelessness. It's a symptom of a deeper problem. A fourth symptom that a lot of people struggle with is insecurity. Just plain insecurity. I'm talking about a knowing sense of unease about the future. Or a knowing sense of unease about our finances or about our family or just about the world's situation. You know you kind of look and you say what in the world is ever going to happen with this terrorism thing? This doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel here. Is this going to be an endless battle? A war that can't be won and you just kind of people get very insecure about that. In the Middle East is that ever going to heal itself and get corrected? You see, for people who don't know the end of the book, for people who haven't come to Christ and know how it all ends, that can be a very insecure prospect. They think the whole world's cabling in around them. So it's a lot of insecurity, a lot of insecurity among unbelievers. A fifth symptom of deeper sin problems is pointlessness. In other words, a lack of purpose, a lack of direction in life. A few years ago, USA Today did a survey. They do a lot of that kind of thing and some of them are very interesting insights into our culture today. I think it was 1999. I remember clipping it out. They did this survey and I doubt that it's changed much. The question was this, if you could ask God one question, any question, what would it be? They got all these responses and tabulated them and had a bunch of different responses, but I was just going to give you the top three. The third one on the list, 16% of people said, why do bad things happen? In other words, if I had one opportunity to ask God a question, I'd ask him, why do bad things happen? 16% of people said something like that. 19% of people said something like this. I would ask, what about life after death? That concerns a lot of people. What about life after death? But you know what the number one answer was? 34% almost twice as many as any other response. What is the purpose of my life? In other words, what am I here for? And you see, I think that one is kind of a result of all these others that we've talked about, the insecurity, the hopelessness, the loneliness, the restlessness, when people deal with that long enough, they finally throw up their hands and say, what is life about anyway? I don't understand what real purpose there is in life. I just get up and go do my job every day and come home and eat supper and watch a little television, say, hi to the wife and kids and go to bed and do it again the next day. Is there any real purpose in meaning in life beyond that? A lot of people struggle with directionlessness, with pointlessness, attitudes in their lives. So begin with people where they are. Start with a need they recognize. When you sense some of that kind of feeling coming out, start there. Jesus started with this woman with a spiritual thirst in her heart that could only be quenched with a living water. Keep coming to this well. You'll be thirsty again. You'll keep going away thirsty. But I can give you something that will quench the deepest thirst in your heart. Start there. Second principle, key to effective rescues today is this. Help them see their real need. Help them see their real need. Now we begin with a need they can recognize, a symptom, but we've eventually got to get to the real disease. And notice how Jesus masterfully does this in verse 16. Verse 16, he told her, go call your husband and come back. I have no husband. Jesus replied, Jesus said to her, you are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you've had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true. Sir the woman said, I can see that you are a prophet. Now what Jesus is doing here is getting to the real disease. Now I fully recognize that there is a danger in dealing with symptoms if that's where you stop. The danger in dealing with symptoms is, let's go back to the doctor's office. You go into the doctor's office, you explain the symptoms and he says, oh, I got something. I got a shot, some pills I can give you that I think will make that lump go down. I think we can probably stop that bleeding. I believe I got some medicine here that will take that pain away. You know what you'd be thinking? That doesn't help. I need to know why I have these things. I need some kind of diagnosis as to the deeper problem behind these things so that that can be addressed. Because if you address the deeper problem, the symptoms will disappear. But if you just take care of the symptoms, I've still got something wrong underneath all that. And that's exactly what happens spiritually. You see if you start talking to a person about their loneliness to tell them that, well, Jesus loves you and he'll be your best friend. That's true, but that doesn't get to the real issue. If you get to the real issue, then they'll find that to be true also. Jesus is their best friend and he will love them like nobody else can. But you've got to get to the real issue and that is our real need and our real need is our sin. That's what our real need is. Our real need is our sin. The real issue is not the lump of loneliness or the ache of hopelessness. The real issue is the cancer of sin. All the other stuff is just symptoms. The real issue is the cancer of sin. And that's where Jesus gets to because he's got to treat the disease in order for the symptoms to go away. So Jesus gets down to the real issue. Now, let's look again carefully at how He does it. In verse 16, He said to the woman, go call your husband and come back. That just kind of comes out of the blue. To this point, He has raised her curiosity in what He has to give her that can quench the thirst in her life. In all of a sudden, now the blue He says, go call your husband and come back. Now you see, what He's doing is He's saying, okay, now it's time. We've raised the symptom issue up. Now it's time to get to the real disease. It's time for you to see the issue of sin in your life. So His command for her to bring her husband was to actually bring her face to face with her sinful lifestyle. And she very curtly, and I think maybe almost under her breath, I can almost hear her muttering this, says, I have no husband. You see, He's touched on a very uncomfortable part of her life. He's touched on something that she's raising her guard about, backing off from. Biblically we would call that conviction. That's when the Holy Spirit is starting to put His finger on the issue of your life that you need to face up to in order to come before Holy God. And you get scared about it or defensive about it or wanting to back off or raise your guard about it, that's conviction. And so Jesus doesn't let that little comment go by. He bores right in on the issue. And that's why He says in verse 18, you're right. You've had five husbands. And the man you're living with now is not your husband. You see what He's doing? He's pointing out to her very clearly. She's living an immoral lifestyle. She's living in sin. And He's bringing her face to face, no apologies for that. He's bringing her face to face with the issue that she is a sinner and she's living a sinful lifestyle. What He's doing, He's probing deeply into her heart to get at the real issue of her lifestyle and her sinfulness. And you know God has a way of doing that. And if we're going to reach people with the gospel, we've got to get to that point. It may not be where we start. They may need to understand some other issues that sin is the real disease that causes all these other symptoms. And the reason you're feeling this loneliness in your life, the reason you're feeling this restlessness or whatever hopelessness, whatever else it may be, is because the Bible teaches you were made for a relationship with God. But there is something that has cut you off from that relationship and it's called sin. You've got to get to that point. And Jesus does that with this woman. You know the Bible is able to do that as we simply share God's word with people. As we talk about biblical principles, Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12 says it this way, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. Now, hold up right there. It doesn't mean that the Bible literally separates between your soul and spirit or between the joints and marrow of your body. It doesn't mean the Bible literally does. It's just saying the Bible goes to the very deepest part of your being. It'd be spiritually physical, but the deepest core of your being, the Bible goes straight to that. And notice the end of the verse. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. So God does His probing with us today through His word. And His word is able to get into the deepest recesses of our soul and our hearts that maybe we've kept hidden from everybody else. From layer by layer, unravels and boars in on the real problem of sin in our lives. And so when she realizes what's happening and this man knows more about her inner life than she thought anybody could ever know, she says in verse 19, sir, I can see that you're a prophet. Now, that's the closest she's going to come, at least outwardly here, to what we would call a confession of her sin. And in reality, it is because even in her mind, a prophet is someone who has a message from God and shoots straight, tells it like it is, gives the truth. And what she's literally saying is, you're right. What you're saying is right about me. By the way, the word for confession in the Bible is a two-part word that literally means to say the same thing. The idea is that we understand what God's saying about us and we say you're right. I say the same thing about myself that you're saying, God, I admit you're right about who I am and what I've done. That's what she's doing. She's saying you're a prophet. You know. You know my life. You know my sin. You know where I've been and what I'm living like. And you are right. I think it's confession of her sin. And so Jesus, after starting with a need she can relate to, she can recognize, helps her to see her real need. And her real need is she is a sinner and she's lived a sinful lifestyle. Well, where does he go next? Well, what Jesus does next gives us our last key to effective rescues and that is keep the focus on Christ. Because it's at this point that the woman, even though she said you're right about me, she wants to get the spotlight off of her sinful life. And so she begins to change the subject. And she does it a couple of times in these next few verses. She wants to change the subject. And the way Jesus handles that shows us that we must keep the focus on Christ. In fact, there are three things that we need to remember. As far as keeping the focus on Christ is concerned. The first one in verse 20 is avoid religious traps. I want you to see what the woman does in verse 20. Our Father's worshiped on this mountain and you Jews claimed that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. That's pretty slick, isn't it? I mean, she's just said you're a prophet, you're right. And our Father said that we should worship in this mountain and she goes right, without any break, goes right into that. She's trying to get the spotlight off of her sin, even though she has confess that he's right, that's an uncomfortable place to be. And so she's trying to change the subject. One of Satan's tricks, as people here in the gospel, is to detour spiritual conversations into religious debates. And Satan always wants you to get involved in some kind of religious debate with people. For this woman, it was, okay, let's talk about where's the appropriate place to worship. You know what will happen for you sometimes when you're witnessing to someone or trying to share the gospel with someone, they'll say, you're a Baptist, aren't you? Aren't you those people that believe once saved always saved and they want to get off on eternal security? Something like that. Or they want to get off on baptism. You know, I was baptized as a baby, but they baptized different ways in different places. Does that really matter? They want to get off on talking about baptism or denominations. Why are there so many denominations anyway? Who's right and who's wrong? Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholics, Baptists, who's right and who's wrong? Why? They want to get off on denominations. Or sometimes even translations or worship styles or something like that. Anything to get the focus off of where it needs to be. And that is on Christ. Don't go for those detours. Avoid religious traps. Now the way Jesus does that leads us to the second thing that we need to remember. And that is the focus, the focus must be on relationships, not religion. Don't let people get you off on religious questions. Keep the focus on the relationship that's needed with God. Notice how masterfully Jesus does this in verses 21 to 24. Jesus declared, believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. See what he's doing? He's saying the important issue is who you worship, not where you worship. The important issue is not whether it's this mountain or Jerusalem, a time is coming and it would come very soon when Jesus died and the mosaic law was set aside. And Jesus fulfilled all of that and the true issue is who you're worshipping. And notice how he really boars in on this now in verse 22. He says, you Samaritans worship what you do not know, we worship what we do know for salvation is from the Jews. Basically what he's saying there is, see the Samaritans only accepted five books of the Old Testament, first five books of Moses. She didn't have a clue what the Psalms said or what Isaiah said or anything like that. Basically he's saying, lady, I'm sorry, but you just don't have enough information. You don't have the right information. But that's not the issue and he gets right back in verse 23. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. Notice the emphasis on worshipping the Father, who you worship, the relationship twice in that verse. He emphasizes that. And he emphasizes the issue is not where you worship, lady. The issue is how you worship, worship in spirit and in truth, the two biblical guidelines for worship, worship in spirit. He repeats that in verse 24. God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. Worship in spirit, that literally means from within, with all that you have, friend, I hope when you are in a worship service, you give God everything. Then hold back. Don't sit there looking through something else. Don't have your mind somewhere else. Give God everything. The worship he's seeking earnestly is with our whole spirit, with everything within us, worship him and then worship in truth in line with God's truth. That's what worship should be. The important thing is not which mountain it's at or where it's city or what style or those kinds of things. Not the issue, the issue is the relationship with God and worshiping him. That's the key thing. We've had a great week this past week in our family. We've had another dose of what it means to have close family relationships. We've had Ruth and Robert here from Chicago and Reina, the really important one in the family, was here. And so we've just had a great time almost every evening. We've been together and Amy and her family have come over. So we spent a lot of time this week with our three kids and our three grandkids spent one evening with my parents and a couple of my sisters came over. It's just a great time. We've focused on relationships this week. The most important thing that we have as humans with one another is our relationships. And by the way, tonight I get to baptize my granddaughter, Holly, at the church where they attend, down in Spanish. I won't be here tonight. Sorry about that. But I have once in a lifetime opportunity to baptize my granddaughter and then we're going to all get together again one last time before Ruth and Robert go back and enjoy relationship again. And that's what it's all about in a family, isn't it? It's not about who does what and how they do. It's about relationships. And in the family of God, it's all about relationship with God. It's not about how you worship, where you worship, which style, what translation, whether you do this or that. It's about the relationship with God. And unsafe people will get you off on everything but that, like a heat seeking missile, focus on the relationship. You remember back in the first Gulf War when we first, as Americans, we first got an opportunity to see high-tech weapons being used. You know, they didn't have this kind of technology back in the Vietnam War, but in 1991 we saw it for the first time, the kind of laser-guided missiles and controlled by computer technology. I don't know if you remember this or not, but I remember so vividly watching a report, a news report on television, they showed a missile that had come over Baghdad and had changed direction because it was a little off course. And then it went down the chimney of a military installation. I mean, that precise, be like that in your witnessing. Let people get you off course on something else. Be like a laser-guided computer-directed missile that will not get off target. Stay on the focus. But the third thing quickly that Jesus teaches us is that this relationship with God is possible only through Christ. It's possible only through Christ. No other way. Now notice, this is the second detour this woman tries in verse 25. The woman said, I know that Messiah called Christ is coming when he comes, he will explain everything to us. Now do you get what she's saying there? She's saying, okay, all right, the issue of where we worship. That's probably not something you and I can decide here today. Somebody bigger than us is going to have to do that. By the way, I know that Messiah is supposed to come someday. He'll straighten all that out. Boy did she ever walk into that one. Verse 26 must have hit her like a thunderbolt. And Jesus declared, I who speak to you and he. Whoa. Wow. And I think at that point it all came together. I think at that point she realized, yeah, he's got to be the Messiah. He's the one who's told me all about my past. Never met this man before and he tells me exactly what kind of lifestyle I'm living. And he talks about the relationship with God being so important. He must be the Messiah. When she runs off into town and the Bible says that when she starts telling people in the village about what she's experienced, she's not talking about, you know we had this really nice conversation about where you're supposed to worship. You know what she told people in town? Come see a man who's told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? She's talking about Christ. She got it. She got it. The point, the focus is on Jesus Christ. Only He can save you. Only He can forgive your sins. Only He did what God demanded for our sin to be paid for. And that is a perfect sacrifice being a substitute for you and your sin. Only Jesus Christ did that. Muhammad didn't do that. Confucius didn't do that. Buddha didn't do that. Only Jesus Christ did that. So keep the focus on Jesus Christ. Don't let him get you off in religion. Keep the focus on Christ. Now just so you don't think there's a third message in this, you know this trilogy, I want to go ahead and finish it up. Okay, just take about a minute. The end of the story is in verses 28 to 30 where she goes into the town, says to the people, verse 29, come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? I think she's already convinced she's planning the seed in their minds. Could this be the Christ raising their spiritual curiosity to get out and see Him? So verse 30, they came out of the town and made their way toward Him. Now verse 39, many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman's testimony. He told me everything I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to Him, they urged Him to stay with them and He stayed two days and because of His words, many more became believers. That is a great story. That is a great ending. Here Jesus started with this one woman and a lot of the city, a lot of that town comes to know Him after a couple of days as a result. You know I really believe, I really do believe that a great harvest could be on the horizon for us. I don't know, I'm not God, I'm not the Holy Spirit, I don't know the future. But I really believe a great harvest could be on the horizon. If we take this seriously, if we follow the example of Jesus, enter their world, just focus on one person, create spiritual curiosity, start with a need, they can understand and grasp, move from there to the real need of sin and keep the focus on Christ. And if you'll do that in your day-to-day relationships as God opens up opportunities for you, I believe there will be a lot of other people in this town that will hear about Jesus and will come to Him and we could see a great harvest. That would please God, would you bow with me in prayer. Father thank you that you've given us these kinds of examples, the example of your own son to encourage us as to what we should do as witnesses for you. Not supposed to be faithful to be witnesses wherever we are, whenever we have an opportunity not to let it slip by, to sow some seed or to water that seed, maybe to see a harvest. Lord I pray today that you might bring us to a realization of our need to do exactly what Jesus did in reaching lost people. What's in His name we pray. Amen.