1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

It is a great joy to be with you this morning. It’s a privilege to open God’s Word and to explore this great theme of conversion, and specifically, conversion and how it relates to our mission in the world. Some of you may know that I’m a pastor’s kid. Actually, my dad served in the military for twenty years and then retired and became a pastor. He was a pastor in the Atlanta, GA area. One of the members of our church was a professional football player with the Atlanta Falcons. I remember Greg’s testimony really clearly when he shared with our youth group.

Greg came from a family of boys in Texas. They were all big football players. Greg played college ball at the University of Houston. He was a big man on campus. He seemed to have the world by the tail and had everything going for him. He admits that he did a lot of drinking, partying, and womanizing. He was the last person in the world you would ever think would become a Christian. But as he describes what he was like then he says, “There was an emptiness inside. There was a dissatisfaction with my life, though it looked like I had everything together.” Now he said partly due to the witness of a young co-ed who eventually became his wife, but who wouldn’t date him because he wasn’t a Christian. God can use everything! Partly through her witness, he surrendered his life to Jesus Christ. Then he couldn’t wait to tell other people about Jesus.

There was a dramatic change that happened and one of the first things was that he wanted to tell other people about Jesus. So it started with his brothers. These big guys, I forget how many. There were two or three brothers who were big football players from Texas. He locked them all in a room and said you’re not getting out of this room until you all commit your life to Jesus Christ. Needless to say, it didn’t work. So he had to start over. Needless to say, I’m not giving this as an example of how to share your faith. This is a bad example. But I am telling this story to point out that one of the chief evidences that a person has been born again through faith in Christ is that they want to tell others about Him.

There is a connection between conversion and witness. There is a connection between conversion and missions. The people who are sent are the people who have been transformed and they can’t wait to tell other people about Jesus. I mean, the fact is, when we really come to know Jesus as Savior, we want to tell the whole world about Him. That’s what we see in this beautiful account of Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well. It’s a picture of conversion leading to missions. First we see the emptiness of her life before Christ. Then we see her coming to faith in Jesus Christ. Then immediately she begins telling others about Him. It looked like an entire town was converted through her witness. It says they met Jesus Christ personally. So we begin looking at this passage with a picture of one person who was coming up empty in life.

1. Coming up empty (1-15)

The Samaritan woman was trying to fill her life with the things of this world, just like Greg Brezina was, and always coming up empty. In her particular case, we know from later in the passage that she had five husbands and was living with a sixth man. We don’t know all the details. It could be serial divorces. It could be that one or two died. But it’s clear that she was trying to fill something inside of her, this God-shaped hole that only God could fill. That’s only possible through Jesus Christ, but she didn’t know Him. What is so beautiful is that Jesus knew her situation. He knew her. He is omniscient. He not only knows our situation. He can look into our hearts and He loved her. He came for this Samaritan woman in particular.

4 And he had to pass through Samaria.

This is not just because it was the fastest route from Point A to Point B, from Judea to Galilee, though it may be. Scholars and historians may debate whether most Jews went around, crossed the Jordan and went up that way to avoid the Samaritans, or not. It really doesn’t matter. Jesus was intentional about what He did. He had a divine appointment with this woman. He had to pass through Samaria because He wanted to talk with this one person. John 3 has one of the most famous verses in the Bible.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

God sent His Son into the world so that we might be saved. He came to seek and to save the lost. But it’s not just the world in sort of this aggregate amorphous concept of humanity. God loved humanity, the aggregate of all these people, these faceless and nameless people. What we see in the gospel of John in particular, we see in chapter 3 in His conversation with Nicodemus. We see it here with the woman at the well. We see it elsewhere in the gospel of John. Friends, when it says that God loved the world, that Jesus was sent into the world, it means He was sent for individuals. He loves individuals like you and like me and like this Samaritan woman. He was sent to seek and to save the lost individuals like you and me. He was sent to this one Samaritan woman who was in need.

5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar,

He comes locally. He just comes to us. I love this! It has a name; Sychar.

near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

Three chapters earlier, the apostle John said the eternal Son of God, the Word of God was with God from eternity past. He was God. He is God. Through Him, all things were made. And the Word became flesh. The eternal Son of God took on our humanity and became fully human while remaining fully God. So we see here this beautiful picture of Jesus’ humanity. He was weary from His journey, thirsty, longing for a drink of water, just like you or I would have.

Jesus was like us in every way, except He didn’t sin. He sat down by the well around noon time, during the heat of the day and He longed for a drink of water. He experienced our weakness, our hunger, our thirst, our humanity so He could lift us up to become like Him, children of God, and experience the eternal life that only He can give. He was sent to give God’s greatest gift, the gift of eternal life, the very life of God. In Him was life, the apostle John said in chapter 1. He came to mediate that life, to give that to us, that eternal kind of life, that kingdom life. He came to give us a personal relationship with God, which is eternal life through Jesus.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Normally, women would come together. In that culture, in that time, they would come together to draw water either in the morning or the evening, when it was cool. She came alone at the heat of the day. There is a hint here of what we learn later. She was probably an outcast because of her checkered past. People didn’t want to be with her and probably, she didn’t want to be with them. But Jesus asks her for a drink.

Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”

She is surprised!

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

Literally this phrase means they don’t use dishes or utensils that Samaritans use because pious Jews considered Samaritans to be ritually unclean. So to drink from the water jar of a Samaritan if you were one of these really, really pious Jews, would have just been unthinkable. It would have made them unclean. So they avoided any contact with Samaritans.

For a little bit more background, we know from 1 Kings 17 that the King of Assyria had brought foreigners or Gentiles to settle in Samaria in 1722 BC. They intermarried with the Jews there. Over time, the Samaritans developed really, their own religion, based on the Old Testament. They basically just threw out most of the Old Testament and just held to the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch. Then they changed some of that, too. For example, in their Deuteronomy, it says that God said Mount Gerizim is the place God has chosen as the place of worship. But it doesn’t say that in the original manuscript. So both racially and religiously, they were despised by many Jews. The Jews avoided them as unclean, untouchable.

I think we can imagine if we think about people in our community or people in our world that we consider, in a sense, unclean or untouchable and we want to avoid them. We can’t imagine going to them to share the Gospel. I’d like to mention one people in particular. It’s the largest religion in the world, aside from Christianity; Islam. Muslims have modified the Old Testament Scriptures and the New Testament Scriptures. So they’ve taken a lot of it out and then they’ve changed some things and created, in a sense, a new religion, their own religion of works-righteousness and rituals.

But we all know that there are many westerners, including many western Christians who regard the Muslims like the Jews regarded the Samaritans. They despise them. They fear them. They avoid them. But Jesus shows us by example just what He told Peter in Acts 10. You shouldn’t call anyone unclean. That’s just not the way it is anymore. The Gospel is for all peoples, for all nations. It’s for the whole world, including those that we may consider untouchable or unclean. It’s for them because all people need the gift that Jesus came to bring, eternal life. So Jesus answers the Samaritan woman.

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

That term living water is so evocative. It’s so powerful because we need water to survive. Not only that, when you’re really thirsty, you crave it. When you get it, it’s so refreshing and satisfying physically. Of course, Jesus is meaning this in a deeper sense, in a spiritual sense. All over the Old Testament there are references to water as a powerful image of God Himself and His grace in eternal life.

Jeremiah 2:13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

The tragedy was God revealed Himself to His people and had given them what they most needed and what would be most satisfying and they just turned away from the source of life. They tried to hew out their own cisterns that couldn’t hold anything. It’s true of all people apart from Jesus Christ. It’s been true of each one of us. It may be true of you today. The living water is God Himself, His grace and the life that only He can give, eternal life. The eternal kind of life in Jesus is their life and He came to mediate that life to us.

Think of Saint Augustine, this famous quote in the 4th century. We’re made for God and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. It’s what Greg Brezina experienced. Nothing could fill that void. Not all the worldly success and the drinking, the womanizing, you name it. It was empty. For so many people I’ve talked with, this is the story. Nothing in this world can satisfy because we’re made for God and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. It’s only through Jesus that we can experience that relationship. The life of God comes to us through Him. So like spring water inside of us, it can then well up to eternal life.

13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,

Anything in this life will be unsatisfying.

14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

It’s very similar to the words that Jesus said in John 7. He said

John 7:37-39 …“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive,

In other words, we’ll never be satisfied without Him. God Himself mediated through Jesus Christ. But with Him, we have ultimate satisfaction now and for eternity. In other words, when we’re converted, when we’re changed from the inside out we experience this eternal life. The Holy Spirit who regenerates us and changes us takes up residence in our lives. So there is this beautiful image. It’s like there is a spring or a fountain inside of us that just wells up all the way to eternal life. Isn’t that a beautiful image? But the Samaritan woman still doesn’t get it.

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

So she is just thinking in these physical material terms. She doesn’t understand the nature of the living water that is being offered to her. So Jesus, in order to help her understand, has to turn on the spotlight in her life to see herself for who she is and Jesus for who He is, and therefore God, and who He is. So this is the second section we come to, which is a critical section.

2. Seeing the light (16-26)

The first step in receiving living water is understanding that you need it. That’s why Jesus gently and lovingly uncovers her sin and her brokenness.

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.”

She’s keeping it short, hoping He’ll never find out. Jesus surprises her.

Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

This is really important! John Calvin started his Institutes of the Christian Religion with these words. “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, true and sound wisdom, consists in two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” Those two things go together; knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves. We must see ourselves for who we really are. We’re sinful, broken, lost, unable to save ourselves. We have a God-shaped vacuum inside of us that nothing else can fill. We have to understand that. Even religion, even good works can’t do it. Going to church, reading the Bible, going to Small Group studies, all of those things are good and necessary, but they won’t save you. You can do those things and not be saved. You can do those things and not be converted. You must come to Christ to be filled.

Having lived in the Middle East, we’ve conversed with many Muslims. What you find is that they don’t understand their own sin. Therefore, they don’t understand who God really is. As it turns out, they have a low view of God and a high view of themselves. They think that God will accept them if they follow certain rules and rituals. All religion is built on that premise that I can somehow build a ladder and climb the ladder and get to God. But the fact is, it’s impossible. God has to come to us and He has done that in Christ. But we have to know that. Somehow we have to know that.

We had a friend named Betty McDonald, who was feeling unwell for some time, but she didn’t know what it was. She wasn’t too concerned. Finally, she decided to go to a doctor and get a diagnosis. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Within two weeks, she was gone. Two weeks! She had an incurable disease, but she didn’t know it. Because she didn’t know it, she didn’t seek the help that she needed. Jesus said,

Luke 5:32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

It’s not that there are any righteous people. He is saying, “I haven’t come to call the self-righteous, the people that think they’re righteous and that don’t need me. I’m like the ultimate doctor, but I can only help those who know that they need me. They have this incurable disease, but praise God! I can help. I can save.” The fact is everybody is in that state.

Romans 3:10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;

Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Everyone needs Jesus. But the woman avoided the spotlight that Jesus was shining on her need. She wants to debate religion. This often happens. When you get into a situation like this, the person will say, “Let’s talk religion. Let’s debate. Let’s discuss religion.”

19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain,

Remember, the Samaritans believed that worship was on this mountain that was just overlooking where they were, near ancient Shechem, Mount Gerizim.

but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

Jesus just completely does away with the whole discussion. He just says there is an entirely new system you need to know about. When the Messiah comes, and that’s me, the kingdom of God is going to blow all of that out of the water.

21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

It’s no longer about where you worship. It’s about who and how. Jesus says these very, very important words.

22 You worship what you do not know;

That’s a really important statement! You worship what you don’t know. That’s true of all other religions in the world.

22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

In other words, God has revealed the one true God in Scripture. The prophecies of the Messiah were crystal clear in the Old Testament and Jesus fulfilled them. So salvation comes from the Jews because Jesus was a Jew.

23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

So here is what Jesus is saying. God is a spirit. He doesn’t have a body. So what is important to God is not where, a particular place, but how and who. To worship in spirit means that since God is spirit, we worship from our spirit. We worship from our hearts, from the inside. That’s probably what Jesus means. But that’s only possible through the Holy Spirit or God’s Spirit. In our English translation, we would say small s or capital S, but both are true. It’s from our spirit, small s, but only possible through the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, capital S. The Holy Spirit comes in and turns the light on in our hearts so that then we can see God for who He is and see Jesus Christ for who He is. There is this beautiful statement in 2 Corinthians 4 where Paul says the reason why people don’t see Jesus for who He is and they don’t understand the Gospel is because the devil has blinded their eyes. But this how it works. Paul says

2 Corinthians 4:6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Isn’t that beautiful? Like the act of creation, God makes His light to shine in our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. It’s God the Holy Spirit who turns on the light so that we can see Jesus for who He is and therefore God for who He is, so we understand the Gospel. God sent His Son to live the perfect sinless life that we have never lived and could not live. Then He died the death that we deserve on the cross. It’s through His shed blood that our sins can be forgiven. That’s the only way. There is only one way to God. He is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him.

So when it says we worship in spirit and in truth, it’s the truth of who God is as revealed in Christ. It’s the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of truth. He turns on the light so we understand and see Him for who He is. It’s why D.A. Carson said, “To worship in spirit and truth is first and foremost a way of saying that we must worship God by means of Christ. In Him reality is dawned and the shadows are swept away.” The shadows of all those old religions, that way of trying to get to God by building a ladder to heaven and climbing the ladder to heaven is impossible. We can’t do it. God came to us in Christ and the Holy Spirit shines the light so that we see Jesus for who He is.

25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”

You almost wonder if there is a little glimmer of hope right here in this statement because the Samaritans did believe that a Messiah-like figure was going to come in fulfillment of Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 18. He said there was going to be a prophet like him and they believed that person was coming. Maybe there was just a little glimmer of hope there that this might be Him. Jesus confirms that.

26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

I am the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God. Salvation is found in me.

Now, we realize from the rest of the chapter that she saw the light. God’s light shined into her heart and she was converted. We know that from the rest of the passage. We don’t have time to look at it closely. We’re just going to skim through it. But let me just mention one thing about this light. It is transforming so that we have a tangible sense of who God is, of who Christ really is. Jonathan Edwards gave this example. He said, regeneration or the new birth, being born again by the Spirit, conversion is like a divine and supernatural light that is implanted in our souls. He said this is what happens when God does that. It’s not that we just know intellectually something about God and Jesus or the Gospel. It’s like we can taste it. We experience it. He gave this example. He said it’s like the difference between knowing that honey is sweet and actually tasting the sweetness. That’s what it’s like. The Bible says

Psalm 34:8 Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!

John 6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

There is that tangible experiential sense in which we have to close with Christ and come to Him and receive Him and it changes us. We are regenerated. We are born again by the Spirit. How do we know? Well, there is a dramatic transformation in our lives and all sorts of things happen. But because we don’t have all day, we’re just going to focus really quickly on what we see in the rest of this passage. That is, when you’re truly converted, you can’t help but tell others about Him. So the last part of this passage is

3. Spreading the news (27-42)

28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.

They were coming toward the well where Jesus was. Remember, this woman was an outcast. She wanted to stay away from people and they wanted her to stay away from them. That’s why she went to the well alone in the middle of the day. But now she is so transformed by her meeting with Jesus that she wants to tell other people about Him. It doesn’t matter to her anymore if they consider her an outcast. She wants to tell them the good news. So she ran to tell them the good news.

I like what F. F. Bruce says. “The living water the woman received from Jesus became an overflowing fountain in her life, and others were coming to share the refreshment.” We see how worship, true worship as we’ve talked about, which comes through conversion, leads to witness. The two always go together. Worshiping the one true God through Christ in spirit and in truth is something from the inside that just overflows in our life and leads to witness. They’re almost the same thing. We just want to praise and adore the one who has done so much for us. John Piper said “Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can’t commend what you don’t cherish.”

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.

So we can picture the townspeople now coming toward the well. The woman has been leading them. The outcast woman told them the good news and she was so believable that they say, “We need to check this out for ourselves.” They are coming and you can just see the crowd coming. So Jesus, ever quick for an object lesson, says, “Do you see that crowd of Samaritans coming? Open your eyes and look. There is this saying, four months more and the harvest. We have to wait four months.” He’s saying, “No, no, no. You don’t have to wait at all. The harvest is here. Look. The harvest is here.”

Friends, from that moment the church of Jesus Christ has been built in a phenomenal way. The Roman Empire was transformed in three centuries by people who were transformed by Jesus Christ, who received the Holy Spirit and went out and witnessed. From that time on the church has become the largest religion, we could say, in the world. But those who are truly transformed by Jesus Christ have experienced revival over the centuries. For the last two centuries the church has grown in a phenomenal way. It’s always been a link through revival. When I say revival, what I mean is that a lot of people in an extraordinary way, in a short period of time, being converted. They’re transformed in the way that we’re talking about. What happens is they just go out. They want to share their faith. The Great Awakening in the 18th century led to the modern missions movement. William Carey, for example, who was sent out from England in 1793 came out of that revival. Then there was the Second Great Awakening. So people started to go from the American shores. The modern missions movement is a result of God converting lots of people in a short period of time. There was revival.

In the 20th century it’s been even more. Mark Shaw reports in Global Awakening that in the phenomenal growth of the church now in the 20th century, the center of gravity has shifted so that there are now far more Christians in the south and the east than in the west. This has taken place just in the 20th century. He cites lots of conversions leading to God’s people going out in mission. So there is a revival associated with Jonathan Goforth in China that has contributed to the great growth of the church in China. There was a Korean revival in the early years of the 20th century which led to the Korean church now being the most active country in the world in sending out missionaries. There is a higher percentage of missionaries now going from Korea than from America. Some say maybe even the numbers are greater. God’s people are moving out. There has been a phenomenal growth of the church. Kenneth Scott Latourette said, “No fact of history is more amazing than the spread of the influence of Jesus.” So we come back to this picture in Samaria. This is so relevant for us. The Samaritans, those citizens, they hear the witness of this woman and they come to personal faith in Christ.

42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

In John’s gospel, there is a really interesting progression where Jesus is a witness to the gospel in Judea. We saw that in chapter 3 in His conversation with Nicodemus. He is a witness in Samaria. We see that here in chapter 4. We see Him reaching the Gentiles in chapter 6. Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. It’s the same pattern for us today. Jesus said to His disciples

Acts 1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

That’s our pattern, just as it was for Jesus. I love this vision in the book of Revelation. One day there are going to be people from every nation, every people, every language, every religion of the world is going to be worshiping the Lord God and the Lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ. John says

Revelation 7:9-10 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

I have one more example, very quickly. A person where we were serving came from a Muslim background. When she was twelve years old, she had a dream about the cross. For years, she felt dissatisfaction with the prevailing religion where she was. She had a sense that she couldn’t get to God through these works and these religious rituals. One day, somebody from a European country who was part of our church just had a conversation with her and sensed that she would be open and interested in coming to church. So she invited her. I’ll never forget when she came that Sunday and we talked after the service. Her eyes were like saucers. I think she was expecting some sort of magical incantations or hocus pocus going on at this Christian worship service. She had no idea what to expect. She said, “You just taught the Bible.” It was actually my colleague who was preaching that Sunday and she was just so moved by the fact that they taught the Bible there. She just kept coming to hear God’s Word. Through the worship services and the preaching of God’s Word and through the witness of people from our church, you could see God drawing her to Himself.

So one day after a service, she came to me and again she was very excited and had eyes like saucers. She said, “Can I meet with you this week?” I said, sure. That would be great! We set up a meeting for Friday. When she came on Friday, again, she had eyes like saucers. She was just so excited at what had happened. She said “On Wednesday, I missed a bus. I was standing there and I happened to look up. I saw something about the church.” To this day, I don’t know what this was because there aren’t a lot of believers or churches there. But she saw something and she went in. There was a national believer there who led her to Jesus Christ. She trusted Christ for salvation and she was so excited about what God had done. She explained it to me and we talked about it. It seemed to me that God had really been working in her life and brought her to repentance and faith in Christ.

One of the first things about this woman, I’ll just call her Anna. It’s not her real name. But one of the first things Anna wanted to do was to tell others about Him. In that part of the world, if you tell your family that you’ve converted to Christianity, you will be persecuted. One woman that we know, her brother said, “I’m going to kill you,” and it has happened. At the very least, they will be ostracized. They’ll try everything they can do to try to bring you back. But she just wanted to share. She had opportunities to share the Gospel on the street. I mean, literally, she is street preaching. She’d just have conversations with people and it would come up and she would mention Jesus. It was just amazing! Before we left, she had told her entire family. There were mixed results, but praise God! She was saved and her father was there for her baptism on our last Sunday there. She came to faith in Jesus Christ and she was changed.

The fact is it’s true for Anna. It’s true for Greg. It’s true for the Samaritan woman. It’s true for all of us that when we really come to know Jesus as Savior, we want the whole world to know. That’s what missions is. It’s just our going out to tell other people about what we’ve received, what we’ve experienced. It’s that tangible experience of the gospel changing us. So there are two things I’d like to leave you with by way of challenge and encouragement today.

First, are you truly born again? Have you been converted? Have you experienced what we’ve been talking about this morning and what this series is all about? Have you truly repented and trusted Christ alone for salvation so that you’ve experienced this dramatic change in your life and you want to tell others about Jesus? That’s the first. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been going to church for years or whatever. Your good works, your religious rituals will not save you. Christ alone, when you repent and trust Him alone, He will save you. He will come into your life and transform you from the inside out.

Then secondly, as you go out and tell others and you have all sorts of opportunities just as Jesus was traveling from Judea to Samaria and there was that woman, you have opportunities too, in your life. There may be people that are sort of untouchable or considered off limits. Maybe they are people of another religion. I want to challenge you to go to those people. I want to challenge you to sense your mission to go to them to share the gospel.

In a group this size, I know that there are some of you, probably not many, but there are some who God is touching you and saying, I want you to go cross-culturally. I want you to go overseas. I want you to be like that young man who just shared with Anna and brought her to church. He was not a professional missionary. He was a businessman. I’ve seen God using retired military personnel, retired attorneys and engineers and people working as engineers and educators and business people all over the world. Some of them are working in places you can’t get into as a professional missionary, but they’re there serving. God can use people like us, too. He can use people that go to Seminary and they work as pastors. Yes, He can use us if God is calling you to that. But God is calling some of you I know, to go. I’m asking you to look into your heart and consider, is that God’s will for me? Then pray and seek and keep moving and keep talking with people about that because He is calling some of you. I’m trusting and praying that you’ll respond to that call.