Into The World - Samaria

Into The World – Samaria
Dr. Rob Sidwell
8/15/2024

Well, good evening, again. It's good to see everyone out this evening. It's good to see that people are willing to give of their time to God. God loves the people who give praise. We have a song, Glorify His Name.

When we hear of someone that as a child had a drug problem because his mother drug him to church services, we laugh. That's not the right attitude. We must worship and praise God because of who and what he is, the one of a true God, but also because we want to, because we love him, because he is indeed a great savior. Think about the people and things you love. If you love something, you spend time with it, don't you? We were talking about the dedicated fans that Cleveland baseball has had. They had vintage posters up there on the wall at a local restaurant. I was told about the man who climbed a tree in 1949 claiming he'd never come down until the Indians won another World Series. He'd still be there.

Jesus said in Matthew 6:21, that we're going to spend time with the things, with the people that matter most to us.

Matthew 6:21, Jesus says, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

We should treasure our relationship with God. Tom was telling me he is doing a series about the cross and comparing Jesus’ sacrifice to Old Testament sacrifices. I'm sure that he will talk about how hard it was to approach God. We have easy access to God. We have easy access to his word. You can get God's word for free on your cell phone or tablet. We should treasure our relationship with God. We should know what a privilege it is to possess the word of God. Hopefully, one of the things we've gotten from this week is reassurance that the Bible is, in fact, the word of God.

Sometimes people, in their many attempts to pick apart the Bible, claim that the Old and New Testaments don't belong together. The Old Testament and the New Testament, they say are different books. They're not part of the same story. What we've already talked about this week, should have busted that idea if you already had it in your head.

Turn over to First Kings. At tonight's place, we're going to discuss how it affected God's plans throughout much of human history and how the people lived in it. That place is Samaria.

Samaria was originally a city, but it became the name of a region mentioned in both testaments. Where did the name come from? What's the first time we hear about Samaria? I'll read this from the English Standard.

This is after Solomon's death, and Israel and Judah became a new Israel and Judah. Judah had a few good kings. Israel had none. Here we are in Israel, as I would call it, Breakaway Israel. Ten Tribes of Israel broke away. In the first 20 verses of this chapter you see how they're killing each other. Their kings are killing each other and those who want to be king, kill each other. We're coming in the end of that Civil War here in verse 21.

First Kings 16:21. Then the people of Israel were divided into two parts. Half of the people followed Tibni the son of Ginath, to make him king, and half followed Omri. But the people who followed Omri overcame the people who followed Tibni the son of Ginath. So Tibni died, and Omri became king. In the thirty-first year of Asa king of Judah, Omri began to reign over Israel, and he reigned for twelve years; six years he reigned in Tirzah. He bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer for two talents of silver, and he fortified the hill and called the name of the city that he built Samaria, after the name of Shemer, the owner of the hill.

From that point onward, the city of Samaria was the capital of breakaway Northern Israel, the one that had absolutely no righteous kings. That includes Omre.

Look at verse 25. Omri did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did more evil than all who were before him. For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in the sins that he made Israel to sin, provoking the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger by their idols. Now the rest of the acts of Omri that he did, and the might that he showed, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

They said Omre is pretty bad. You probably haven't heard of him or at least you're may not be too familiar with him. I'm sure you heard of his son.

Verse 28. And Omri slept with his fathers and was buried in Samaria, and Ahab his son reigned in his place. In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel, and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.
Archeologists have found the site of the city of Samaria. They found ruins of temples one is believed to be that temple of Baal. Ahab was the worst in all breakaway, Israel. They had 19 kings. They all served idols. Samaria became a center of evil. What happened to Samaria?

What happens to a nation, what happens to individuals who do not follow in the ways of God? It's a simple lesson, but one that needs repeating and one that needs to be shown because a lot of people threaten this. God's patience eventually runs out. If you read through some of the prophets, most of them were sent to Judah, but some of the books of the prophets, for example, Hosea, warn and plead with Israel to stop their sins, to come back to God.

Did they? Turn over to Second Kings, chapter 17 and jump to verse 6, second Kings 17:6. This is the end of breakaway Northern, 10 tribe, Israel.

Second Kings 17:6 says, ESV again, In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

That's the end of Israel. Why? Just a couple more verses will tell you.

Verse 7, And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. And the people of Israel did secretly against the LORD their God things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, and there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the LORD carried away before them. And they did wicked things, provoking the LORD to anger, and they served idols, of which the LORD had said to them, “You shall not do this.” Yet the LORD warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.”

It continues in this light, For the sake of time, just look at the next five words in the ESV in verse 14. But they would not listen. It continues and lists their sins there in somewhat graphic detail. They would not listen. It's a sad commentary on a people who are wicked, the people who will not serve God. We sing number 256, God is love. God is also, song 59, Holy, Holy, Holy. God is good, but God is also holy, and because God is holy, he can and he will punish sin.

We need to not forget that. It's a sobering thought. I'm not saying we should get this nation's evil, we know God's going to get them. No, no, no. Nothing of that sort, but we need to keep that in mind, though. Always God's patience has limits. Someday time it will run out. That time runs out for nations. It runs out for individuals, and it's going to run out eventually for the world. Another song that is in the book, I know it's one of my favorites. It talks about quoting the prophet Amos. We need to prepare to meet God, because we are going to do that someday.

What happened to Samaria? We're still here in Second Kings 17. When you hear Samaria, when you hear the land of Samaria what or who do you probably think of? You probably think of the good Samaritan. Who are the Samaritans? Why did the Jews hate them so much?

Second King 17:24. It says, ESV again, And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. And at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord. Therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. So the king of Assyria was told, “The nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the god of the land. Therefore he has sent lions among them, and behold, they are killing them, because they do not know the law of the god of the land.” Then the king of Assyria commanded, “Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there, and let him go and dwell there and teach them the law of the god of the land.” So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord. But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived. The men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, the men of Cuth made Nergal, the men of Hamath made Ashima, and the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak; and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. They also feared the Lord and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places. So they feared the Lord but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away. To this day they do according to the former manner. They do not fear the Lord, and they do not follow the statutes or the rules or the law or the commandment that the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel.

Just to summarize that's the Samaritans. The Samaritans were foreigners. They were imported by the Assyrians, and they mixed with a few Jews who were left behind by the Assyrians. The two intermarried and produced the race of people known as the Samaritans. The Samaritans were part Jewish and part non-Jewish. The Assyrians had mixed them together. It didn't happen with Judah. If you read Israel and Nehemiah, that didn't happen with Judah, but it did happen with Israel.

We will talk about Jesus and his encounters with Samaritans. There's a point to be made here, too. Religiously, how are they? They are also mixed. They serve God, the Samaritans. They serve the one true God, but they also serve pagan gods. They added the one true God to their collection of gods. That became an issue in future centuries, all the way up to the time of Jesus.

Turn to Ezra. We just wanted some background here about just who are these people. We think about the Samaritans and see why is it such a, and it is going to be an enormous problem when Jesus interacts with Samaritans. Firstly, what did Samaria represent to Jews? Failure. Samaria represented the 10 northern tribes who were gone. They're lost, dispersed. Also, they represent, a mixed race of people, and there's hostility.

Ezra chapter 4, and I will just read the first six verses. Remember what happens in Ezra? Some Jewish exiles came back and began to rebuild the temple.

Here we are in Ezra 4:1. Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers' houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers' houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.

The rest of this chapter goes through their accusations, but we won't for the sake of time. Suffice it to say, there was bad blood between the Jews and the Samaritans. Samaria was no longer a capital of anything. Samaria gave its name to the whole region that had been Israel, north of Judah, north of Jerusalem, the land that it used to belong to, Ephraim, Manasseh, Asher, Gad, and so on.

There's a lot of hostility by Jesus’ time. Let's skip ahead to the New Testament. What does that have to do with us? We talked a little bit earlier this week about whether there people from bad places in this world? What do we do with people who are our enemies?

Let’s go to John 4:3, while you're turning there. What would we do if, say, a North Korean came in here. They're the enemy. Their government has been called a psychopathocracy because basically it exists to serve the Kim family. What would we going to do if an Iranian came in here? How do we deal with the enemy? Are they the enemy? Whose enemy are they?

How did the Jews deal with Samaritans? If you know the map of Palestine in Jesus’ day, Galilee was in the north, Judea with Jerusalem was in the south, and in between was Samaria. Most Jews traveled all the way around the east side of the Jordan River to get away from Samaria. Jews didn't even like to go through Samaria. Jesus did not.

Let's just pick it up here in John chapter 4, verse 3. We'll do this new King James. It says, He (Jesus) left Judea, departed again to Galilee, but he needed to go through Samaria.

Why do you need to? We're not told exactly why, but we can speculate here because he's going to do something that no Jewish teacher would do—interact with a Samaritan, and with a Samaritan woman.

Verse 5, So he came to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, and to the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied from his journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink,' for his disciples had gone away to the city to buy food. Then the woman of Samaria said to him, (notice the reaction) How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Perhaps you better understand why the Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Here Jesus set an example. Jesus was not concerned about social standing but spiritual status. He was willing to bring the wondering ones in, regardless of whether they were Jewish or Samaritan or Gentiles. Jesus was not concerned with politics, but with purity.

I am seeing all the yard signs pop up. I support the (I mix the parties up on purpose.) Demikans or the Republicrats. If you say I support the Republicrats someone could say, you must be evil because you back them. Jesus was not concerned with yard signs. Jesus was not overly concerned with history either in the term of people's histories. He didn't let that stand in his way.

Your people have always been hostile to our people. Maybe so, but what was important was this woman's spiritual status. He was thirsty. To top it off , we already talked to this earlier this week about how Jesus was at every point, in every respect, tempted like we are. It's hot outside. You get thirsty. Jesus was thirsty.

All these concerns, social, physical, and political is what he cared about most. He showed, he cared about this woman's spiritual status. We will read through their whole conversation, which I'm sure, you've done many times. He asks her some questions, and the questions start to get a little more personal. Her private life would not bear scrutiny. She tries to change the subject. We're still John 4, now verse 19. This is right after Jesus confronts her with the fact that she had a lot of husbands.

In verse 19 says, The woman said to him, Sure, I perceive that you are a prophet.' That was her way of changing the subject. Sure, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our Father is worshiped on this mountain and you Jews say that Jerusalem was the place for one ought to worship.'

Here's where Josephus, actually, explains what this is talking about. We read in Ezra how the Jews and Samaritans fought about rebuilding the temple when the Jews came back from Babylon. The Jews said no, because the Samaritans had all sorts of pagan influences. They worshiped the one true God and a bunch of false gods, too. When the Jews refused them, the Samaritans built their own temple, allegedly, to the one true God. They built it on a mountain in Samaria called Mount Gerizim.

That's what she's talking about here. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain. She was probably referring to Mount Gerizim, yet you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place for what ought to worship. You may say that's interesting for a historian, but what use is this to us in 2024? Where can we worship God in 2024? Does it have to be in this building? If you get a new building, you're allowed to worship God there, too. Are you allowed to worship God in your home? In your car? You're allowed to worship God while you're weeding your flowers?

In verse 21 Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

It's an issue of faith, not forms. Earlier this week, we talked about not worshiping things, or places. People still do that, perhaps. Is the church building itself more than anything else. People then, as now, try to stuff God into the building. Have you ever heard the expression, this is the Lord's house? Is God contained within these four walls? He's here while we're here.

He says, were two or three are gathered my name there I am in the midst of them. When you go out those doors, do you get away from him? He's not out there. That's what people think. Everyone's seen the movie Home Alone, where the little boy Kevin is trying to hide from the burglars. This is before all the traps. He hides in the nativity scene displayed in front of the Catholic Church building. The burglars say, where’d he go? I think he went in the church. One says, I'm not going there. Me neither. That's how much of the world thinks. If you don't go in that scary church building, then God can't find you. God is everywhere. God sees everything.

You should keep that as a sobering thought, but also a joyous thought because we can worship and we should worship God every day with our lives. God is too big and too grand for anything anyone could ever build. Remember, Solomon said that when he built the temple.

In the beginning of first Kings and second Chronicles he says, (I'm paraphrasing) the heavens can't contain you much less this temple that I've built. He's talking to God. You can't stuff God into a building.

What's the proper prayer position? Should you stand? Should you kneel? Should you face upward? Should you face downward? Do your hands have to be like this? Some people actually teach that, of course. I was talking about the college that's down Southeast. It's Presbyterian. They have a chapel. Back when I was in high school, they had us assemble there to take our pictures for valedictorians and such. Their pews have a rail. They'll pull out benches that you're supposed to kneel on when you're praying. Are we supposed to do that? Do we have to do that? Nowhere in the scriptures do you find any rule about what physical bodily position you have to be in to pray.

Practitioners of yoga practice various pretzel stretches and call their names your downward dog or angry cat. The proper position for prayer should be the humble heart position, whatever that looks like. Do you know where the shortest prayer in the Bible is? It's in Nehemiah Chapter 1. It's in the middle of a conversation. The king of Persia asked Nehemiah, Why are you so sad? That could have meant Nehemiah's head being separated from his shoulders. There's a short verse. It's a part of a verse. I prayed to the God of Israel. Before he answered Nehemiah prayed to God. Right there in conversation. Was he in a temple? No, there was no temple. It had been destroyed. Did he have time to think of an elaborate, hard-sounding phrase. Probably not.

The position of prayer needs to be the humble heart position. The real issues are spirit and truth. Are we worshiping God in spirit and truth? Not gender, nationality, politics, whether or not we have PowerPoint or not. The right relationship with God is far more important than any other issue. It has eternal consequences, but most people have yet to learn that. Peter was slow to pick up on it, too.

Turn over to Acts 10. We know from what Paul said in Galatians that Peter continued to struggle with this even after he was shown what was right, but for a while, anyway, he had it exactly right.

Acts 10:27, says, And as he talked with him, Peter went in and found many who had come together? He's going into the home of Cornelius. Cornelius was a Gentile. He was a Roman soldier. Not many Jews would even go into Gentiles’ houses for fear of being contaminated by them. Peter had the same reservations at first.

Verse 28, says, Then he (Peter) said to them you know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man, common or unclean. Therefore, I came without objection as soon as I was sent for. I asked them, 'For what reason have you sent for me? ' So Cornelius said, 'Four days ago, I was fasting until this hour, and at the ninth hour, I prayed in my house, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing and said, Cornelius, your prayer has been heard, and your alms are remembered in the sight of God. Send, therefore, to Joppa and call Simon here, whose surname is Peter. He is lodging in the house of Simon, a tanner, by the sea. When he comes, he will speak to you. So I send to you immediately, and you have done well to come. Now, therefore, we are all present before God to hear the things commanded you by God. Then Peter opened his mouth and said, In truth, I perceive that God shows no partiality.

The King James says, He has no respect for persons. Some versions say God shows no favoritism. He doesn't play favorites.

Verse 35 says, In every nation, whoever fears him and works righteousness, is accepted by him.

Jesus commanded us to go forth and carry the gospel, to bring them in from the fields of sin. What does righteousness mean, anyway? Jesus used several figures to describe righteousness. What's one of the most famous ones. Maybe that's the one you first thought when I mentioned where we're going to be tonight. He used a parable talking about a Good Samaritan.

Turn over to Luke, chapter 10. We'll spend most of the rest of our time discussing the parable of a Good Samaritan. That would have been a contradiction in terms. The Jews wouldn't have thought it possible that a Samaritan could ever be good. Jesus here tells a parable about a Samaritan who was more righteous than others.

Jesus had just been asked in verse 29, who is my neighbor? Why was he asking? It says, But he desiring to justify himself. Who are our neighbors? Our neighbors are, I'm using quotation marks here, good people. There's a line on a TV series in 1970s. I'm quoting, “It's nice to be nice to the nice.” Who's your neighbor? The good people? They are, yes. What about the not so good people? Jesus tells us this parable to answer that question.

Verse 30, New King James says, Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.

A priest is what? A priest is one of the religious elites. What does he do? Maybe he doesn't want to touch him. We can give him benefit of the doubt. Priests had all sorts of ceremonial cleanliness requirements, but there's no evidence that he called for help from someone. There’s evidence that he showed any concern at all. What did he do? He got as far away as he possibly could. He passed by on the other side. Okay, who's next?

Verse 32. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

He stayed as far away as he could get. The Levite would have no excuse whatsoever. Why didn't he help? Who didn't help here? The religious people, at least the Jews would have thought them so. The Jews would have thought the priests must be righteous, right? Look at the jobs they hold. Look at the family they come from. But what do they do when it comes to showing real compassion towards another human being? They don't do it.

How did Jesus summarize both testaments? What are the two great Commandments again? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, or with all your strength, or understanding. What's the second? To love your neighbor as yourself. There was someone sharing a picture on Facebook. It said people can’t say they love God treat other people like dirt. Paul says in Galatians lets us do good to everyone. That means the good people and the ones we think are not so good people. Who does help? You probably know who does help.

Verse 33 says, But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, 'He who showed mercy on him,' that Jesus said to him, 'Go and do likewise.'

When you hear Samaria, who or what comes to mind? How about the evilness of Israel? It doesn't come to mind now, does it? Is it the evilness of Omre and Ahab all the way through Hoshéa, through the end of the Kings of Israel? How about the people who worship God, but they don't do it correctly? Or do you think of the good Samaritan. The chosen people of God are not a nation, and they're not a race. They are those who choose to fear God and work righteousness. The apparently religious people in Jesus' parable were not the righteous ones.

Peter 2:9 says But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Is it for me, dear savior, thy glory and thy rest? Who here is weak and sinful? The scriptures making clear that we are. Is it for you and me? God's glory and God's rest? Indeed it is, if we'll do our best to follow after him. The issue is one of the heart. Are we willing to follow God with all of our heart and with all of our soul?

We all fall short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23, and are unfit for his kingdom. Yet, we can all quote John 3:16, God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him would not perish, would have an everlasting or eternal life.

God wants people in his kingdom. Revelation says that there are going to be people, an untold number of people. It is those people who fear God and do what is right, who are accepted by him.

As we begin to wrap our thoughts up, I ask, are you one of those people? What legacy are you leaving? What life are you living? Are you living a life of open defiance toward God like the original inhabitants of Samaria? A life of utter defiance toward God that leads eventually to the end of God's patience that will lead to destruction? Are you leading a life like too many people do? Like most Samaritans did? God is good, but the world has some stuff to offer, too. I'll just try to straddle the fence and worship God on Sundays and something else on Tuesdays and you get the idea.

Are we like the Samaritan woman who doesn't quite understand? Jesus was patient with her and he's patient with us. Are we like the Good Samaritan who did what he could to demonstrate love for his fellow man?

A couple of last references here. Matthew 28 verse 16, at the end of the Book of Matthew.

Matthew 28:16 says, ESV, Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[b] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

That commandment is to us. Did disciples follow it?

Acts 8:4, I'll read it for you. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

We're about to sing Whosoever Will. It's true, whosoever will may come. We're talking about how the gospel is for those who failed, those who know they failed, those who need help, and want help.

We all need God's help. You begin to get that by believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and be willing to confess your faith in him before men. Then be willing to repent of your sins, to turn away from them, which is what Jesus would command that Samaritan woman eventually to do. Then to be baptized, and to continue living a life of love for God, but also like the Good Samaritan, care for others.

Let's not be like Ahab. I'm not going to reject God. Let's not be like most Samaritans, most people actually, who don't follow God. They don't follow God in the way he's commanded them to follow him. Let's instead be willing to turn from our sins, be like the Samaritan woman who is willing to listen to Jesus, and be like the Good Samaritan who is willing to put faith into practice and do God's things God's way, to love God and to care for our fellow man.

If there's any need you have, make it known as we stand to sing this true song, Whosoever Will.