Don't Change the Subject

The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus *said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” The woman *said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
John 4:17-20


When Jesus confronted the Samaritan woman at the well with her immoral lifestyle, she used an age-old defense mechanism. She tried to change the subject. Isn't that what still happens today when people are confronted with their sin? They try to change the subject to something else. We just don't like it when someone points out the truth of our pitiful condition. Jesus doesn't bring up our sinfulness to condemn us. He brings it up to change us. He knows how destructive sin is and how it keeps us separated from Him. By the end of her conversation with Jesus, the woman at the well had come to recognize Him as the Son of God and she called others in her village to meet Him. “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?" (v. 29) When we humble ourselves to the truth of who we really are, we see the truth of who God really is.