Many believed that the Savior of the World had come

Read John 4

Think back to the end of the encounter of Jesus and the woman at the well.  She left her water jar at the well and went into town proclaiming what had just happened.

This could be the Christ.  He knew everything about me.  Come and see for yourself.

They did.  As the disciples were hearing about being sustained by doing the will of the Father, some from the town were on the way to see Jesus.

Many of those who came already believed that this man they were on their way to see was the Christ.  After meeting Jesus, they invited him to stay with them for a while.

He did.  Imagine that!

Jesus stayed with the people of the town of Sychar for two days and many more believed.  After he left, the people told this woman—this woman who was not living a godly lifestyle, that while they may have believed initially because of her testimony, now they believed because they met Jesus.

There’s some human nature right there.  When I tell my story later, I don’t want to have to say that I believed Jesus was the Christ because of this floozy. I got my belief first hand.  That’s human nature.

But the result was that many believed that Jesus was the Savior of the world.  Now that’s God’s nature revealed in a place where no self-respecting Jew would want to be seen.  Jesus spent two nights there and many believed.

It’s an interesting twist that reveals our nature.  We are just as susceptible to the same thing today.  We want to go one up on a fellow believer. 

Hey!  I’ve got the real scoop on that.

This is the one and only way.  Yeah, I know that Jesus is the way, but you need Jesus plus…

Even James and John wanted reserved seating with the Master in the life to come.

That’s our human nature, but this time we see God’s nature revealed in the woman that Jesus met at the well. 

She left her jar and her daily mission and her seclusion at the well and went and proclaimed that the Christ was here.

At that point, her past didn’t matter.  Her standing or lack of it in the community didn’t matter.

What mattered?

The Christ had come and that’s not something you keep to yourself. 

We don’t see doubt debilitating this woman for sharing what she knew to share.

We don’t see shame getting in the way of her message.

Jesus revealed the truth to her and that set her in motion.  She shared the good news.

Before I challenged you to examine yourselves and see if in your relationship with God you were like the woman—evading the darkness in your life with trifling conversation.

Now, I challenge you to consider if you share the gospel with the same boldness as the woman we have come to know in this chapter.

Do we let our past slow us down?

Do we let the opinions of others dissuade us?

Do we use our life experiences as testimony to the Christ?

Jesus got to Galilee before the end of this chapter, but for now, consider the encounter of Jesus and this woman and how she went from avoiding the other women of the town to the one who brought them the good news.

You won’t hear this from many preachers or Bible commentators, but with regard to sharing good news, we should cast off everything that held us back before and boldly proclaim Christ.

We should be more like the woman who met Jesus at the well.

Amen.