Thread by @glprater

#GeraldsDevotional
The Unexpected Gift of Discipleship to Nobody

Today we will look at one of many examples where Jesus used someone who everyone thought was nobody to do great things in His kingdom. As He was traveling with His disciples, Jesus needed to pass through the region of Samaria. His disciples and other Jews didn’t like the

Samaritans and preferred not to inter-mingle with them (if given the choice, they would have taken the long journey to go around it). Nevertheless, Jesus said that they needed to go through the region.

Today we will look at the famous encounter that He had with a Samaritan woman

at Jacob’s well. It is important to note the history of the Samaritans. They were actually Jewish descendants from the northern kingdom of Israel (remember our recent study of Hosea). They had intermingled and married with the Assyrians and the Jews from the Southern Kingdom

considered them to be half-breeds and wanted nothing to do with them.

The Samaritans knew very well that the Jews thought that they were beneath them and not worthy of being included in God’s kingdom. But Jesus saw things very differently and actually went out of His way to

reach out to and to interact with them. In this case, this little person was able to see and understand something that many who thought they were wise simply could not see. She was able to see and understand that He was the well and the fountain of truth. Jesus was about to use a

“nobody” to do great things for the kingdom of God.

Now let’s review and consider this famous scene from the Gospel of John in chapter 4:

5 So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Now Jacob’s well was

there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman of 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 Then the woman of Samaria

said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says 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 with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? 12 Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and

his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into

everlasting life.”

15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I

have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. - John 4:5-19

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