The Samaritan Principle: Come, See a Man!

The Mystery of Moses

Sometime ago, I watched a woman on a Christian TV boldly tell her story, the sordid story of a past life of drugs, sex, abortions, and human trafficking. She had become a Christian, and, interestingly, a minister. Can you guess what her ministry was about? Amazingly, it was, reaching out to young women entrapped in her past woes; and God was using her immensely.

Who else but a woman like that could passionately and compassionately reach out to that vulnerable category? Certainly not me from my pontifical podium proudly unsoiled with the abominations of her unenviable past. It will appear, in the great wisdom of God, that while the devil had been messing her up, he was unknowingly grooming the Moses that would later wreck his evil kingdom and break the ancestral chains upon her enslaved kind.

When that woman’s will aligned with God’s pleasure; when like Saul in surrender she said, “Lord,” she transited into a messianic role, to save others still entrapped in her past reprehensible captivity. If Pharaoh had known what Moses would become, he would never have allowed that infant into his palace, let alone make him a prince. I recall desperate Herod when the Star shone over Bethlehem (Matthew 2:3-12). None of Egypt’s powerful magicians saw it coming, or God wouldn’t let them see it. That means that Satan doesn’t know it all, for “had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). The loving Father, the “Lord of heaven and earth … hast hid these things from the wise and prudent” (Matthew 11:25).

The Making of a Messiah

High priests of God are usually chosen from among fellow feeble mortals rather than from mighty holy angels. Such a privileged priest, knowing his own frailties and the mercies of God that have sustained him, is able to “have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness” (Hebrews 5:2, NKJV). In other words, paradoxically, God’s high priest is one who has gained capacity and ability from previous disabilities, strengthened for the future by the weaknesses of his past, equipped by previous failures for future triumphs. It is the wisdom of God.

Jesus once said to a disciple about to have one of his greatest disasters in life and ministry, “So when you have repented and turned to me again, strengthen and build up the faith of your brothers” (Luke 22:32). It’s the story of Peter. God had it well programmed, that the apparent travails of Peter would aid the triumph of others. Peter was going to strengthen other weak folks with a personal past weakness that would have become strength. It is a mystery of the mercies of God to take a man with an ugly scare to heal those who have never been wounded but are gravely prone; very prone, but held back only by the hand of mercy. Take this, beloved: “But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” while you go through the present process (Luke 22:32). Amen. St Paul, from personal experience, tells us that “the Father of compassion … comforts us in ALL our troubles, SO THAT we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, NIV). So, some troubles have a mission: they are a certification for future assignment.

God doesn’t send bad things, but He can use them to our advantage when and where we let Him (James 1:13-15). All things might not be individually good, but when they come together with other things, they can “work together for good,” especially “to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). For example, oil stains, but ‘working together’ with sodium hydroxide, it becomes soap that washes away stains. Sodium hydroxide alone is dangerous, but it becomes cleansing soap when it ‘works together’ with oil and other ingredients.

God is not the author of evil, still He can let it work out for the good of those who let Him step in. That is one prominent theme in the story of Joseph: hated by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused and imprisoned in a foreign land … there he majestically steps into destiny from the most unlikely place of the prison where his haters had hoped he would rot away and disappear (Genesis 50:20; 45:7-8) “… because the Lord was with him” – even in prison (Genesis 39:2,21,23; Acts 7:9). Messiahs are usually marked by wounds; they are often made through the cross maliciously intended to eradicate them.

The Message of Men

In John chapter 4 is the interesting story of a woman whom Jesus met at a public place – a well; a woman who had had the misfortune of five failed marriages. Jesus said to her, “Go, call thy husband,” to which she replied, “I have no husband,” and Jesus said, “For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband” (John 4:16-18). That woman’s entire life seemed to have been characterized by men; she was a story of men: five men who had used her and dumped her, a sixth man who was in the same process, without any assurance of future commitment, and the many other unaccounted men who also tried but didn’t make it that far with her. She became the topic of public gossip. It got so embarrassing that she avoided meeting with folks, and chose her outings carefully. She often went to the well at noon when she was sure to meet nobody. Strangely, during one of such careful outings, she met another Man; the Man that eventually changed her story. I ask, What in the Compass of Destiny so often charted her path to meet men, many of them unfortunately wrong, until she met the one right Man after the many wrong ones?

When at the well she met the Seventh Man in her recorded list, she was initially evasive, parrying Him off with her religiosity and pride. Many men had ruined her. Was this another of them, or was He the One Man for whom her soul had searched all her life? When at last she drank from the well of that New Man, her life was transformed. She became a preacher, with a unique message.

What was her message: “Come, see A MAN…” (v.29). Short but powerful – like Jonah’s, with national consequence (Jonah 3:4-6; John 4:39). Who were her audience? Men – the same category that apparently had made her life a mess: “The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to THE MEN…” (v.28). Failed by many men, she met a Man who inspired her with a message to men about A Man. The Bible was strikingly specific with the details.

Why was she apparently being ‘sent’ to men? That was ‘her territory.’ The same folks who had known her past were going to see her transformed present and future glory, as if to also say, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies” (Psalm 23:5). She had dealt much with men to be able to talk to them and about them; and the men knew it too. They might have responded less massively if that message had come from a different woman, or from a man like them who knew less about men.

Alas, a woman with such a large national mandate, seeking identity and fulfilment in the narrow bedrooms of erratic men – until she met the Man! How sometimes precious jewels miss their place, distracted and wounded by those that look like it but are not!

Many men had wasted her life, then she met a Man who gave her a message to men about ‘a Man,’ a different Man. I call it the Samaritan principle, where your mess becomes your message, where the very bondage holds the key out of it. We are told in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that God does not let us face an examination we cannot pass, but uses the same examination to promote us to a higher class; that in the very examination of life that we dread and bemoan is the key and certificate to a grander tomorrow.

“God is faithful” – not unfaithful. He does not send temptations, but He uses them all the same, and “will with the temptation also make A WAY to escape.” In other words, according to 1 Corinthians 10:13, in every temptation, there is A WAY of escape – a way. Every temptation comes with a pre-installed exit gate, if only we would be patient to find it. Now I recall the song: “God will MAKE A WAY…” The way out of the trouble is often inside it. He will “ALSO make a way” – with the very temptation. Hallelujah!

Don’t waste your pains; invest them. Make gains from your pains. Sometimes it is the wounds you can show that make you believable. Thomas said, very seriously, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). That is why, sometimes, Resurrection might restore life but not erase the wounds, so that you may have marks to show, and be able to say, like Paul, “From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus (Galatians 6:17). God who raised Jesus from the dead could also have healed the wounds from the cross, but He left those, as the visible ID in the courts of sincere sceptics like Thomas. Woundless preachers cannot help a wounded generation. The shallow wells of the psychedelic gospel cannot quench the deep thirsts of yearning souls. “Fill my cup, Lord; I lift it up, Lord…”

Don’t lament your past so suicidally. It was ivy league – choice training. Now that you have graduated, search out your unique congregation. There is a message we wait to hear from you – “The Gospel According to You.” God is not the author of bad things, but He still uses them. The path you trod before getting here could be Destiny’s orientation plan for your future mandate. Don’t waste it. The men are waiting to hear your voice. It is the Samaritan principle.

A Prayer

My Father and my God, at Your altar this day I surrender the treasures of my Samaritan past. As I drink now from Your well, I receive strength to heal those that severely pruned me yesterday. Here I stand, unsilenced and unquenchable, on the podium of my scars, like a thunderous stubborn trumpet lifting my voice to announce, “Come see a Man…!” Hallelujahhhh…!

… A message out of your mess… Hallelujahhhh…!

From The Preacher’s diary,
November 21, 2024.