There are many sermons to be preached on Jesus’s meeting at Jacob’s Well with a Woman from Samaria. This week I want us to think about this story as an example of Jesus engaging in personal evangelism – sharing the gospel in a private conversation one-to-one. And we can start with HOW Jesus shared the Good News with this individual.
1 Jesus mixed with people
Not just with respectable people, and religious people. Jesus mixed with all kinds of people.
5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give me a drink?’

This was not a respectable religious woman. She was an outcast from her own community. We know that because she was drawing water from the well at mid-day. Noel Coward was right – only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. But, for reasons we will discover in a few minutes, this woman was out by herself at the well in the heat of the midday sun because it was the only time the rest of the village would allow her to be there. Not only was she an outcast.

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’ (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

This woman was a Samaritan – somebody a respectable Jew would never speak to. But Jesus did. Jesus wasn’t concerned with the customs or taboos or prejudices of the time. This woman was a human being, and Jesus cared about her. So he spoke to her, even though in that society a man speaking to a woman he had not been introduced to was very unusual, even scandalous.
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, ‘What do you want?’ or ‘Why are you talking with her?’
Jesus mixed with people. Ordinary people. Even disreputable people. Jesus had a reputation for mixing with the wrong kind of people. Matthew 11:19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”

Jesus mixed with everybody and talked to everybody because he cared for people. God cares about people. All kinds of people. One reason many Christians find personal evangelism difficult is that we don’t really care about people enough to get to know them. Jesus says his disciples are the salt of the earth, but when you are cooking you want the salt mixed all the way through the food, not just clumped together in one lump. Jesus mixed with people and got to know people, and so should we, in our workplace or over the garden fence.
2 Jesus started where people are
10 Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’
11 ‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?’
Jesus was completely human. He was thirsty. So he asked for a drink. We can meet our neighbours in the everyday things of life and start from where they are in the common experiences of life we all share. But then Jesus took the conversation on to talk about spiritual things.
3 Jesus offered the woman eternal life.
13 Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’
Jesus started from physical thirst and moved on to talk about being thirsty for spiritual things. He didn’t get distracted by arguments about whether God exists but jumped straight to the point. I can offer you water which means you will never be thirsty again – a spring of water welling up to eternal life. He was promising the gift of work of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life.
John 7 37 On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.
Here is the promise that God the Holy Spirit will be like a river of living water in our lives bringing refreshment and even eternal life. We find that promise of the overflowing blessing God gives in the Old Testament in Isaiah 55.
‘Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.
3 Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live.
6 Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

Here is the wonderful salvation God offers us. Not just forgiveness of sins, but blessings of eternal life comparable with the finest of banquets.
Jesus said in John 10:10 “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
“Life in all its fullness.” “Abundant life.” “Rich and satisfying life.” (NLT) “Real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” (Message) That is the free gift from God which Jesus came to bring.
4 Jesus confronted sin
15 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.’

The woman’s interest was awakened. She was curious about this eternal life Jesus was offering her. But there were things in her life she would need to change. Sins she would need to repent of.

16 He told her, ‘Go, call your husband and come back.’
17 ‘I have no husband,’ she replied.
Jesus said to her, ‘You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.’

Here was the reason that the whole town would have nothing to do with this woman. She was a serial adulteress. But if she wanted to experience the new life Jesus was offering her, she would have to turn her back on that immoral way of life. So Jesus confronted the woman about her lifestyle. Jesus never turned a blind eye to sin. He offered forgiveness but expected repentance. Jesus challenged sin and called for repentance wherever he found it: in the Pharisees, or the Rich Young Ruler, or here in this Woman from Samaria. God has set standards of behavior and patterns for healthy human life, and the church must remain faithful to what God has commanded.
Jesus offers eternal life but he demands repentance. Notice the order here. The offer of life comes first and the call to change comes second. Sometimes the church have made a mistake in this. Christians have preached hellfire and damnation and the call to repent, and people haven’t stayed around long enough to hear God’s wonderful offer of eternal life. We should always proclaim the good news first. But we must not then duck from spelling out the cost of following Jesus. This was the message Jesus preached time and again. The good news – the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. But that demands a response – repent and believe the Good News.
5 Jesus answered people’s questions
19 ‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.’

We misunderstand this part of the conversation if we think this question was a red herring the woman raised just to avoid addressing her own sin. This was a genuine question in her mind. The Samaritans expected God’s salvation to come first to them, in Samaria. So how could Jesus possibly be a prophet if he was a Jew? We should always be prepared to answer the questions our friends have about our faith. How can we be sure that God exists? Was Jesus the only way to God? What about the problem of innocent suffering? What about Creation and Evolution? We need to prepare ourselves with answers in language people can understand to these kinds of difficult questions. So Jesus gave her an answer.
6 Jesus went to the heart of things.
21 ‘Woman,’ Jesus replied, ‘believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.’
The reason why many people never find God is that they are put off by external things – patterns of worship, rules and regulations. True worship is about Spirit and Truth. That is so important that I will give a whole sermon to “worshipping in Spirit and in Truth” in two weeks’ time. For today I will just say this. The heart of being a Christian is having a relationship with God and that relationship needs both the truth of God’s Word the Bible and the activity of God the Holy Spirit in our lives. Spirit AND truth.
7 Jesus himself is the answer
25 The woman said, ‘I know that Messiah’ (called Christ) ‘is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.’
26 Then Jesus declared, ‘I, the one speaking to you—I am he.’

The woman of Samaria was ready to ask God to forgive her sins. She was ready to change her life. She was ready to receive God’s gift of eternal life and the living waters of the Holy Spirit. And the key to all these wonderful blessings is Jesus Himself. Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Lord, Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, Jesus the Saviour. Jesus Himself is the answer!
So here we see Jesus’s approach to personal evangelism.
1. Jesus mixed with people
2. Jesus started where people are
3. Jesus offered eternal life
4. Jesus confronted sin
5. Jesus answered people’s questions
6. Jesus went to the heart of things
7. Jesus Himself is the answer
There are just a couple more things we can learn this morning from this amazing story. Why should we take every opportunity to share the Good News of Jesus with our friends and neighbours and colleagues? Well – for the same reason as Jesus proclaimed the gospel. Because he was doing His Father’s will.
34 ‘My food,’ said Jesus, ‘is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

Christians share the gospel because that is the will of God. It is what God wants us to be doing. The Harvest is ready.

35 Don’t you have a saying, “It’s still four months until harvest”? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.

The harvest is ready. People still need God – in many ways now more than ever before. Many people are looking for God but not finding him. Sometimes that is because people are looking for God in all the wrong places. But sometimes the problem is that instead of talking about Jesus, Christians are staying silent. The harvest is ready! But if we don’t reap the harvest when the harvest is ripe, then the crop will spoil!

This is how Jesus shared the Good News with one woman from Samaria. Let’s finish by seeing the difference that one conversation made, not just to the woman but to the whole town!

28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done. Could this be the Messiah?’ 30 They came out of the town and made their way towards him.

The woman didn’t have all the answers but she already knew that meeting with Jesus had changed her life forever. She went back to all the people who up until then wouldn’t have had anything to do with her and she told them about Jesus. And something about the woman must have seemed different to them because they listened to her and came to see Jesus for themselves.
39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I’ve ever done.’ 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
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 Saviour of the world.’

In that way, many people in the town came to share in their own lives the forgiveness and eternal life which the one woman had found in that conversation with Jesus. We won’t know how many lives might be changed by just one conversation when we tell other people about Jesus. But we know that if we don’t tell them about Jesus, nobody’s life will be changed.

This is the offer of eternal life which Jesus makes to us and to everybody we know.

13 Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’

May God make each one of us as enthusiastic as that woman from Samaria became about telling other people about Jesus!