Mar. 15, 2026

What do a successful religious leader and a social outcast have in common? More than you'd think—and Jesus came for both of them.

Pastor Dave's sermon begins at 26:19 min into the video. The music " I Love To Tell The Story (Eaton Square)", " Fill My Cup Lord", " Holy, Holy, Holy!", " Majesty", “I Stand in Awe of You”, and "Once Again" are licensed under CCLI Copyright #2723035 and Streaming Media #22024223 licenses.

This week Pastor Dave opened the first in a new series drawn from the Gospel of John, focusing on two encounters Jesus had with two very different people—Nicodemus in chapter 3 and the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4. The heartbeat of the whole message came straight from Luke 19:10: Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, and that mission has not changed one bit.

1. Jesus and Nicodemus: You Must Be Born Again

Nicodemus had everything going for him. He was a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, a respected teacher of the Old Testament—devout, moral, and successful by any measure of his day. Yet when he came to Jesus at night with his questions, Jesus gave him something he didn't expect: a direct challenge. As Pastor Dave summarized it, Jesus told this religious, respected, successful man that being religious was simply not enough: you must be born again. That conversation led straight into what is perhaps the most recognized verse in all of Scripture:

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)

Pastor Dave's point landed with weight: familiarity with a verse can dull its impact. Outside of Christ, we're all perishing. Religion, morality, and respectability are not substitutes for a genuine spiritual birth through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

2. Jesus and the Woman at the Well: Living Water for the Outcast

The contrast in John 4 was deliberate. The Samaritan woman was everything Nicodemus was not—the wrong ethnicity in Jewish eyes, the wrong gender by the cultural standards of the day, and carrying the weight of five marriages plus a current live-in relationship that wasn't one. She came to the well at noon, alone, almost certainly because the other women had shunned her. Yet Jesus "needed" to go through Samaria—not because it was His only route, but because He had a divine appointment with this one woman.

Jesus spoke to her across every cultural barrier and offered her living water—eternal life. And in what is likely the first time in the Gospels that Jesus openly declared Himself the Messiah, He chose to reveal it to her. "Think about all the people He could have chosen first," Pastor Dave noted. "He chose this woman."

3. Divine Appointments Are Everywhere

Pastor Dave brought the message home with a story from that very week. An unplanned trip to Walmart—Pam wasn't feeling well and had skipped her Bible study—turned into a divine appointment when he ran into a man he knew in the store aisle. The man stopped him, and with tears, shared that he had put his faith in Christ. "What we thought was an interruption," Pastor Dave said with a grin, "God used." It was, he noted with a laugh, a little like needing to go through Samaria.

The application was clear: Jesus goes where people are, and He uses us to carry that same message—to the up-and-comers like Nicodemus and to the down-and-outers like the woman at the well. He's no respecter of persons. Whosoever believes has everlasting life, and the invitation remains wide open.

 The service closed with a reminder from Zephaniah 3:17:

"The Lord your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with singing." (Zephaniah 3:17)