Scripture referenced 6 passages
The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.
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Ephesians 6 the word of God called the sword, mentioned by the lay leader before reading 2 Timothy
1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
2 “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with a promise:
3 “that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth.”
4 You fathers, don’t provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
5 Servants, be obedient to those who according to the flesh are your masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as to Christ;
6 not in the way of service only when eyes are on you, as men pleasers; but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;
7 with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men;
8 knowing that whatever good thing each one does, he will receive the same again from the Lord, whether he is bound or free.
9 You masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him.
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might.
11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
12 For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
13 Therefore put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having the utility belt of truth buckled around your waist, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
15 and having fitted your feet with the preparation of the Good News of peace;
16 above all, taking up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one.
17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;
18 with all prayer and requests, praying at all times in the Spirit, and being watchful to this end in all perseverance and requests for all the saints:
19 on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the Good News,
20 for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
21 But that you also may know my affairs, how I am doing, Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will make known to you all things;
22 whom I have sent to you for this very purpose, that you may know our state, and that he may comfort your hearts.
23 Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
24 Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love. Amen.
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Keep this verse
2 Timothy 3:15-17
read aloud by the lay leader to connect scripture to the Gideons' Bible distribution ministry
15 From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.
16 Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness,
17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
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John 3:34-36
read as the closing verses of chapter three before moving into chapter four
34 For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for God gives the Spirit without measure.
35 The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand.
36 One who believes in the Son has eternal life, but one who disobeys the Son won’t see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
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John 4:1-54
read in full as the main text, covering the Samaritan woman at the well and the healing of the nobleman's son
1 Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John
2 (although Jesus himself didn’t baptize, but his disciples),
3 he left Judea, and departed into Galilee.
4 He needed to pass through Samaria.
5 So he came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph.
6 Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down 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 The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered 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. So where do you get that living water?
12 Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, as did his children, and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
17 The woman answered, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I have no husband,’
18 for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
20 Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour comes, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, will you worship the Father.
22 You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews.
23 But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshipers.
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 comes, he who is called Christ. When he has come, he will declare to us all things.”
26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who speaks to you.”
27 At this, his disciples came. They marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, “What are you looking for?” or, “Why do you speak with her?”
28 So the woman left her water pot, and went away into the city, and said to the people,
29 “Come, see a man who told me everything that I did. Can this be the Christ?”
30 They went out of the city, and were coming to him.
31 In the meanwhile, the disciples urged him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”
33 The disciples therefore 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 Don’t you say, ‘There are yet four months until the harvest?’ Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already.
36 He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to eternal life; that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
37 For in this the saying is true, ‘One sows, and another reaps.’
38 I sent you to reap that for which you haven’t labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 From that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified, “He told me everything that I did.”
40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed there two days.
41 Many more believed because of his word.
42 They said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
43 After the two days he went out from there and went into Galilee.
44 For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
45 So when he came into Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem at the feast, for they also went to the feast.
46 Jesus came therefore again to Cana of Galilee, where he made the water into wine. There was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum.
47 When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to him, and begged him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.
48 Jesus therefore said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will in no way believe.”
49 The nobleman said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”
50 Jesus said to him, “Go your way. Your son lives.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way.
51 As he was now going down, his servants met him and reported, saying “Your child lives!”
52 So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. They said therefore to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour, the fever left him.”
53 So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, “Your son lives.” He believed, as did his whole house.
54 This is again the second sign that Jesus did, having come out of Judea into Galilee.
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Numbers 21
referenced as the Old Testament background Pastor Ray had used when preaching on Nicodemus the previous week
1 The Canaanite, the king of Arad, who lived in the South, heard that Israel came by the way of Atharim. He fought against Israel, and took some of them captive.
2 Israel vowed a vow to Yahweh, and said, “If you will indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities.”
3 Yahweh listened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities. The name of the place was called Hormah.
4 They traveled from Mount Hor by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom The soul of the people was very discouraged because of the journey.
5 The people spoke against God, and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, and there is no water; and our soul loathes this disgusting bread.”
6 Yahweh sent venomous snakes among the people, and they bit the people. Many people of Israel died.
7 The people came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against Yahweh, and against you. Pray to Yahweh, that he take away the serpents from us.” Moses prayed for the people.
8 Yahweh said to Moses, “Make a venomous snake, and set it on a pole. It shall happen, that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.”
9 Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it on the pole. If a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked at the serpent of brass, he lived.
10 The children of Israel traveled, and encamped in Oboth.
11 They traveled from Oboth, and encamped at Iyeabarim, in the wilderness which is before Moab, toward the sunrise.
12 From there they traveled, and encamped in the valley of Zered.
13 From there they traveled, and encamped on the other side of the Arnon, which is in the wilderness, that comes out of the border of the Amorites: for the Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites.
14 Therefore it is said in the book of the Wars of Yahweh, “Vaheb in Suphah, the valleys of the Arnon,
15 the slope of the valleys that incline toward the dwelling of Ar, leans on the border of Moab.”
16 From there they traveled to Beer; that is the well of which Yahweh said to Moses, “Gather the people together, and I will give them water.”
17 Then Israel sang this song: “Spring up, well! Sing to it,
18 the well, which the princes dug, which the nobles of the people dug, with the scepter, and with their poles.” From the wilderness they traveled to Mattanah;
19 and from Mattanah to Nahaliel; and from Nahaliel to Bamoth;
20 and from Bamoth to the valley that is in the field of Moab, to the top of Pisgah, which looks down on the desert.
21 Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, saying,
22 “Let me pass through your land. We will not turn away into field or vineyard. We will not drink of the water of the wells. We will go by the king’s highway, until we have passed your border.”
23 Sihon would not allow Israel to pass through his border, but Sihon gathered all his people together, and went out against Israel into the wilderness, and came to Jahaz. He fought against Israel.
24 Israel struck him with the edge of the sword, and possessed his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, even to the children of Ammon; for the border of the children of Ammon was strong.
25 Israel took all these cities. Israel lived in all the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all its villages.
26 For Heshbon was the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab, and taken all his land out of his hand, even to the Arnon.
27 Therefore those who speak in proverbs say, “Come to Heshbon. Let the city of Sihon be built and established;
28 for a fire has gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon. It has devoured Ar of Moab, The lords of the high places of the Arnon.
29 Woe to you, Moab! You are undone, people of Chemosh! He has given his sons as fugitives, and his daughters into captivity, to Sihon king of the Amorites.
30 We have shot at them. Heshbon has perished even to Dibon. We have laid waste even to Nophah, Which reaches to Medeba.”
31 Thus Israel lived in the land of the Amorites.
32 Moses sent to spy out Jazer. They took its villages, and drove out the Amorites who were there.
33 They turned and went up by the way of Bashan. Og the king of Bashan went out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei.
34 Yahweh said to Moses, “Don’t fear him, for I have delivered him into your hand, with all his people, and his land. You shall do to him as you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon.”
35 So they struck him, with his sons and all his people, until there were no survivors; and they possessed his land.
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John 19
cited as evidence that Nicodemus eventually accepted Jesus
1 So Pilate then took Jesus, and flogged him.
2 The soldiers twisted thorns into a crown, and put it on his head, and dressed him in a purple garment.
3 They kept saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and they kept slapping him.
4 Then Pilate went out again, and said to them, “Behold, I bring him out to you, that you may know that I find no basis for a charge against him.”
5 Jesus therefore came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple garment. Pilate said to them, “Behold, the man!”
6 When therefore the chief priests and the officers saw him, they shouted, saying, “Crucify! Crucify!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves, and crucify him, for I find no basis for a charge against him.”
7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.”
8 When therefore Pilate heard this saying, he was more afraid.
9 He entered into the Praetorium again, and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer.
10 Pilate therefore said to him, “Aren’t you speaking to me? Don’t you know that I have power to release you, and have power to crucify you?”
11 Jesus answered, “You would have no power at all against me, unless it were given to you from above. Therefore he who delivered me to you has greater sin.”
12 At this, Pilate was seeking to release him, but the Jews cried out, saying, “If you release this man, you aren’t Caesar’s friend! Everyone who makes himself a king speaks against Caesar!”
13 When Pilate therefore heard these words, he brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called “The Pavement”, but in Hebrew, “Gabbatha.”
14 Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, at about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold, your King!”
15 They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar!”
16 So then he delivered him to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus and led him away.
17 He went out, bearing his cross, to the place called “The Place of a Skull”, which is called in Hebrew, “Golgotha”,
18 where they crucified him, and with him two others, on either side one, and Jesus in the middle.
19 Pilate wrote a title also, and put it on the cross. There was written, “JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.”
20 Therefore many of the Jews read this title, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek.
21 The chief priests of the Jews therefore said to Pilate, “Don’t write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘he said, “I am King of the Jews.”’”
22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
23 Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also the coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.
24 Then they said to one another, “Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to decide whose it will be,” that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which says, “They parted my garments among them. For my cloak they cast lots.” Therefore the soldiers did these things.
25 But there were standing by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
26 Therefore when Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing there, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”
27 Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” From that hour, the disciple took her to his own home.
28 After this, Jesus, seeing that all things were now finished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I am thirsty.”
29 Now a vessel full of vinegar was set there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop, and held it at his mouth.
30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished.” He bowed his head, and gave up his spirit.
31 Therefore the Jews, because it was the Preparation Day, so that the bodies wouldn’t remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a special one), asked of Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
32 Therefore the soldiers came, and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who was crucified with him;
33 but when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was already dead, they didn’t break his legs.
34 However one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out.
35 He who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, that you may believe.
36 For these things happened, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, “A bone of him will not be broken.”
37 Again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they pierced.”
38 After these things, Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked of Pilate that he might take away Jesus’ body. Pilate gave him permission. He came therefore and took away his body.
39 Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred Roman pounds.
40 So they took Jesus’ body, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury.
41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden. In the garden was a new tomb in which no man had ever yet been laid.
42 Then because of the Jews’ Preparation Day (for the tomb was near at hand) they laid Jesus there.
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Recap
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
A planned Gideon Sunday became an ordinary Sunday when the visiting speaker was turned back by a blizzard on the rim, so Pastor Ray preached instead. He wove together a reflection on the Gideon ministry and its confidence in the power of Scripture with a close reading of John 4, the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. The two threads held together naturally, because both come down to the same conviction: God's word, placed in someone's hands or spoken directly to them, will do its work.
What was said
Pastor Ray opened by reading from 2 Timothy 3, the passage about all Scripture being breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, correction and training. A Gideon himself, he connected that text to a story he had heard the night before at a Gideons meeting: a man in jail who had been tearing pages from a Gideon Bible to roll cigarettes eventually started reading it, and came to faith. That story set the frame for everything that followed. The word does not return void, he said, and the sermon kept coming back to that.
Before going to the passage, he described his years doing OSHA safety training in Georgia for Spanish-speaking workers, mostly Mexican immigrants, many of them illiterate. Unable to say what he wanted to say in his broken Spanish, he kept a case of Spanish New Testaments in his truck and handed them out after every session. That practice went on for years before anyone pointed out that he was already doing what the Gideons do.
The sermon then moved through John 3 and into John 4, reading the full chapter aloud. Pastor Ray focused on three figures: Nicodemus, a religious teacher of good standing who came to Jesus at night; the Samaritan woman, who came to draw water alone at midday; and the nobleman whose son was dying twenty miles away. Each one came from a completely different place, and Jesus met each of them differently.
With the Samaritan woman, Pastor Ray traced five moves Jesus made. He opened conversation without drawing attention to the barriers she immediately named. He tapped into what he called a latent spiritual longing, the God-shaped void that Augustine, Pascal and Billy Graham have all described in their own words. He confronted her sinful condition without abandoning scriptural truth, noting that she had changed the subject and Jesus had not followed her off it. He acknowledged what was true in what she said before correcting what was false. And he called her directly to a decision about who he was.
On the woman's reputation, Pastor Ray asked the congregation to read the story with eyes of mercy. Women in that culture without a husband had very few options. Husband number one may have been the love of her life. He described an art professor he knew who had been married five times trying to recapture a marriage ended by cancer, and said he thinks the Samaritan woman's story may have had something like that in it. She was sinful, he said, as everyone is, but circumstances of life had beaten her down, and Jesus did not start by saying so.
The nobleman came last. Where Nicodemus had religion and the woman had longing mixed with loss, the nobleman had desperation. He had been everywhere else first. He met Jesus twenty miles from home because he could not wait. Jesus did not ask him for belief or confrontation or a decision. He simply said, go, your son lives, and the man believed the word. Pastor Ray pointed to the water-into-wine miracle as Jesus showing mastery over time, and this healing as mastery over space. He spoke it into being from twenty miles away.
The sermon closed around the woman's response. She left her water jar, went back into a town where she had a bad reputation, and told people to come see a man who told her everything she had ever done. Pastor Ray said her story was a broken, everyday story, and that was exactly the point. She simply told people what had happened to her. He applied that directly: the Samaritan woman made the page, he said, because she shared her story, and sharing a broken story is how the word keeps moving. His wife Tanya, he told the congregation, became a Christian by reading the Bible alone, with no one else in her family believing at the time.
Doing a Bible study?
Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages in order, questions for the group, and room to write.
- Pastor Ray described the Samaritan woman as someone whose circumstances had beaten her down, and said he was 'reading it with eyes of mercy.' How does approaching someone's sin and brokenness with mercy rather than judgment change the way we engage with them?
- Jesus met Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, and the nobleman each in a way that connected with where they were. Can you think of a time when someone shared the gospel with you or someone else in a way that met them right where they were? What made it effective?
and 3 more questions in the guide
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