May 1, 2010

Jesus Uses A Samaritan Woman to Bring The Message of Salvation

The Lord through His Holy Spirit is just amazing. I say this because as I was reading a passage of Scripture that I have read many times over and a new and wonder insight came out of it.

I am referring to the passage of Scripture found in the Book of John chapter 4 where Jesus is talking with the Samaritan woman at the well. There are many insights that one can gain from Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman, but what impressed me was what the crowd said to this woman at the end in verse 42.

“They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

For the past number of days I have found myself mediating on this single verse and I am amazed by how the Lord gives to us His most powerful statements of truth regarding His glory for salvation in Him alone in the most simple and straight forward ways with so few words and verse 42 is one such passage.

After the woman came to the realization that Jesus is the Messiah, that was foretold by the prophets, she ran back into town to tell everyone that she had seen and talked to “The Messiah” and on top of that she could lead them all too where he was that very moment! And that’s exactly what she did.

Now let’s take a moment to look at this Samaritan woman. She is lowly because she has no servant to bring her water and she is immoral because she has had 5 previous husbands and is, at the moment she meets Jesus, living with a man out of wedlock, she is a “woman”, and to top it off Jesus is willingly talking to a Samaritan which are a group of people that the Jews hated and thought of as lower than dogs.

This accounting has always been used to show how much Jesus came to bring salvation to not only the Jews, but to the whole world. But this is not what I was getting out of this accounting this time.

During all of this, where did Jesus send his disciples (future apostles) to go and get food? Jesus sent them into the same town that the Samaritan woman had just walked from to get the water from the well that Jesus was sitting by! It is just amazing that here Jesus’ disciples the very men who completely believed that Jesus is the Son of God and had witnessed miracles already by Him, were in the same town, for quite sometime, and never once thought of preaching the good news of Jesus the Messiah and that He was sitting at the towns well for all to come to and see!

At this time Jesus’ disciples are considered to be clean because they believe and have Jesus with them, right now here on earth. On all accounts it is the disciples of Jesus who should only have the authority to tell the Samaritans about Jesus and to be the official guides or path leaders to Jesus, not you think.

Well, this is what modern day apostles are teaching, and preaching and want us to think that it is only through them as the official (clean) representatives of Jesus the Christ that mankind can come to Jesus by hearing only them speak the words of Jesus from the Bible and of themselves, as the “mouth of God”, the “man of God”, or the “Elected of God”.

But no, who is it that brings the message of good news about the Messiah, and brings the Samaritans to Jesus, all while the clean-official disciples of Jesus are in the town, a lowly, immoral, Samaritan woman. Can you image that!

IT IS THIS JUST AMAZING, that Jesus the Messiah chooses to use this Samaritan woman to bring so many people to Himself, the Messiah, God in the flesh, at one time and does not use his own disciples!

To go back to the verse 42, let’s now read again what her fellow town’s people said to her.

“They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

I ask you, did this lowly, immoral woman having any power to give to the message that she brought to her towns people? No, she did not have any power, but because she believed that Jesus is the Messiah she now had the authority to bring the message.

And how do we know that she had the authority, because Jesus would have stopped her from speaking when she left her water vessel at the well and ran back into town. Jesus knew she was going to become so excited about this revelation before all of this even happen, He’s God! He would have stopped her or even just avoided her all together.

In verse 42 John the apostle quoted exactly what the people said to her to confirm this: “now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world." The people believed what she was telling them. She led them to Jesus, but then she step back letting Jesus the Messiah do his work which is to preach the Word of God the Father for salvation.

From that day to the present, this is exactly what anyone of us lowly, sin born, mortal, filthy rages of human are doing when by faith we believe that Jesus is the Lord and are saved. We all have the authority to speak His words and to lead others to His Word, the Holy Bible. For the Bible is the very words of Jesus, because He is GOD! It is His words that will convict people of their sins and cause them look to Him for their salvation!

This is the message of the New Testament as brought to us by the Holy Spirit through Jesus’ original apostles and disciples. They all, without a doubt, declared that they too are lowly, mortal, filthy rages of humans that in and of themselves are powerless for salvation, but it is the Message that was first brought by the Father’s Apostle, Jesus the Messiah, and which he brought to us, like the Samaritan woman, to then spread to all of the world. The message THAT SAVES US! Amen

And who is it that to this very day gives The Message its POWER? The author of it, the Word made flesh – Lord Jesus the Messiah!

3 comments:

  1. Interesting I never thought about that. praise God for this insight. The bible does say that we should be able to teach others what we learn. wasnt it a couple(man and women) who had to better teach Paul or Apollos?

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  2. Dear Anonymous - God's blessings to you. Thank you for taking a moment of your time to comment on what the Holy Spirit has to say to us.

    You are correct about the couple (Priscilla, Aquila). Aquila, the husband of Priscilla, had met Paul (Acts chapter 18)in Corinth after him, his wife and many other Jews were kick-out of Roma. After Aquila and his wife came to believe in the message the Paul was preaching they followed Paul to Ephesus to continue learning of the Lord Jesus and with Word of salvation.

    Apollos was the Jew to whom Aquila and Priscilla spoke to about the complete story of salvation through Jesus the Christ. Apollos was a very educated man in both Jewish Law as well as Greek/Roman Law. He came to believe in the Kingdom of God, but only upto John the Baptists teachings about the coming of the Messiah. At the time he met Aquila and his wife, Apollos was not aware that the Messiah had already come and was sacrificed on the cross, was raisin from the dead and ascended into heaven for the forgiveness of sins.

    Once Apollos heard the rest of the story, he was even more outspoken for the Kingdom of God and continued to go into the Synagogues of the Jews not just preaching and teaching of the Kingdom of God was at hand, but knows your sins are forgiven because of Jesus the Messiah.

    So, here was an everyday, hard working, tent making couple just like all of us who are not professional pastors, teaching to the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

    Many Christians are under the impression that it is pastors of their congregations (churches) job to preach the gospel of salvation unto the world. This is a false impression. It is the job of the pastors to teach, equip and encourage the members of the congregations to go out into the world and preach the gospel.

    I give all praise to the Holy Spirit for your kind words and I pray that you too will continue to read, and read, and read the Holy Bible. This insight from the Holy Spirit came to me only after having read the Gospel of John over and over again for the past 7 years.

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  3. good insight chris, so thats the pastors job. never thought of it like that

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