Jesus and the Thirsty Woman

Thirsty Woman (Excerpted from the message “Tradition”)
One of my favorite women in the Bible is the Samaritan woman in Jn. 4. When she met Jesus at the well, she was pretty messed up. Scriptures says she had had 5 husbands, and the sixth man she was with was not even her husband. But looking into her story, we find that she was a girl who was very religious. She grew up learning all about the formalities of worship, she knew all about prophets and prophecies, and she even knew about the Messiah that was to come. But all these things weren’t able to save the woman’s 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th marriage! Though she knew of God’s word, it had little effect on her because the word she received was wrapped in a shroud of tradition. That tradition nullified the word of God, making it powerless and ineffective in her life. It is a lesson to all of us that if tradition does not die in the church, things could get ugly.

Jesus spent most of the conversation with this woman challenging her traditional thinking. Then he gave her a word, “I who speak to you am He.” When she heard that, it caused something to move inside her that she never experienced before. When tradition was relpaced with truth, the word became alive within her. She was rescued from the religious traditions of her people on that day, and she was also sent as a missionary to her own people on that day, with great effect. (To receive messages like this every month, sign up for the Monday Morning Newsletter above.)