Pinecrest 2025 | Session 3/3 | Jerry Power

[0:00] Amen. What a great song. Everyone needs compassion. My God is mighty to save. He's mighty to save. Yeah.

[0:15] ! A great song for this message this morning. We've talked through how Christ is the fountain, that he provides the living water. We saw him do it to Hagar in the wilderness on two occasions, when she was just struggling through such hard times of loneliness, running away from difficulty.

[0:34] But God taught her that he's the God who both hears and sees. And then we saw it in God meeting the needs of those Israelites who were so thankless ultimately, but God knew they had a need and he met it.

[0:47] And that picture of Christ being the rock that was smitten. Yeah. God is mighty to save when we don't deserve it. And this morning we're going to spend some time just looking at the Lord.

[0:59] And I just think that line, everyone needs compassion. And we're going to see it, the woman at the well that Jesus meets. Man, what a picture of the compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ. What just a distinct need being met.

[1:13] So yeah, I hope it's been refreshing to you. You know, my prayer was that you might be refreshed in the word of God, but you guys have been a refreshment to me as well.

[1:24] I've been refreshed, just being able to just hang out, get to know many of you better. And just, yeah, being able to worship this morning, I share with a few brothers, just being able to come together and have a remembrance meeting with other believers is just such an encouragement.

[1:38] It's so good. So yeah, refreshing time. So you can open up with me to John chapter four, where we're going to find ourselves this morning. I love the gospel of John. You know, if we're reading through the gospels, the Lord just gave us such an intimate picture, a round picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[1:58] He could have done it in one gospel. He chose four. Why did he do that? We have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, because God is not hiding in the shadows, right? God is not, as some would like to suggest, maybe under atheism to be sure, but agnosticism where, where is this God?

[2:16] Why hasn't he made a clearer picture of salvation? Well, we have four gospels. And so I love the gospel of John because in it we see just a little bit different sliver of the Lord Jesus. We see him speaking just intimately with individuals.

[2:30] We see him calling Nathaniel, calling the disciples, calling, healing the official son, just a lot of intimate pictures. We see him talking with a Pharisee in, in John chapter three.

[2:44] We're not going to spend a lot of time here, but I guess a little homework or a challenge would be to study how Jesus interacts with the religious man, right? The Jew and how he reacts or how he, oh, that was a little distracting.

[2:59] Sorry, I heard a little music there. Thank you, Lord. But how he, how he reacts both with, how he deals with the Jewish man, the Pharisee Nicodemus in John three and how it parallels so neatly with how he deals with the Samaritan woman in John chapter four.

[3:15] He gives them kind of equal challenges if you read the parallel passages. We're going to just spend time in John four, but look at John three and see how that ends. That ends with the Pharisee Nicodemus who should know about being, what means to be born again and living in the spirit and these challenges that the Lord gives him.

[3:34] He leaves in silence and we're going to see a different response by the woman of Samaria, right? We're going to see a much different response. Parallel passages. Parallel passages.

[3:45] You know, the Samaritan woman's response to meeting Jesus. You guys are familiar with this, but we're going to dig into it a little bit and read it. But as we read it, I want you to consider that she's probably the world's greatest missionary from Samaria to the Samarians.

[4:00] It's just an interesting turn that happens in her life. And if you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, you have a similar story where you've been brought to a place of maybe religiosity, certainly sin, but you've met the Messiah.

[4:15] And hopefully you share that with others as well. So let's read the passage together before I get too far ahead of myself. So John chapter four. And it's a long section, so bear with me. But I think it's beneficial to read God's word rather than just rely on our memories of what the story is so that we can just kind of be on the same page.

[4:33] Literally. All right, John 4, 1. Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize but only his disciples, he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.

[4:48] And he had to pass through Samaria. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, weird as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

[5:04] It's about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

[5:21] For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. And Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

[5:36] The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with. The well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

[5:48] Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

[6:00] The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water again.

[6:12] Jesus said to her, go, call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, you were right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.

[6:26] What you have said is true. And the woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.

[6:37] Jesus said to her, woman, believe me. The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews, but the hour is coming and is here, now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

[6:58] For the Father is seeking such to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ.

[7:11] When he comes, he will tell us all things. And Jesus said to him, I who speak to you am he. Just then, his disciples came back.

[7:21] They marveled that he was talking with the woman, but no one said, what do you seek, or why are you talking with her? So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.

[7:33] Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to him. Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, saying, Rabbi, eat. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know.

[7:44] I have food to eat that you do not know about. So the disciples said to one another, has someone brought him something to eat? And Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

[7:55] Do you not say there are yet four months? Then comes the harvest. Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together.

[8:12] For here the saying holds true. One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored and you have entered into their labor. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.

[8:29] He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves.

[8:45] And we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. Let's go one more time before the Lord. Thank you, Lord, for your word, which is truth.

[8:56] Father, I thank you for just the gospel of John. This intimate picture that you give of this interaction with this woman from Samaria. That we can look at just your dealings with this woman.

[9:11] The divine appointment that you had with her. And Father, that we can see that you are a God who saves and saves to the uttermost. We just thank you that your compassion is on display here. Your love is on display here.

[9:22] And we pray that you just, yeah, throw us through it. Pray this through Jesus' name. Amen. So just a little history on Samaritans. I know many of you are familiar with the name, of course.

[9:33] We have the Good Samaritan that Jesus tells. But Samaria was a land, an area in Israel that's just kind of smack dab in the middle. So it has the Mediterranean coast on the west. It has the Jordan River on the east.

[9:46] And north kind of is the area of Galilee where Jesus was residing and doing most of his early preaching and his early ministry. And below that is Jericho and Jerusalem and kind of the hub of Judaism, right?

[9:57] And so Jesus, after baptizing stuff, he's actually heading north. So he's going back to Galilee. And the common path would have been to, for the pious Jews certainly, and for most Jews, any which way would be to go around this whole land.

[10:11] It would have been so much easier just to walk through it. There were roads. There were pathways to go through this city of Sychar that Jesus finds himself traveling. But they would have gone around. And of course, in this case, Jesus chooses a different path.

[10:24] But where did the Samaritans come from? They were a mixed race. So there's a racial component here. There's a despisement because they're just a different people. And so racism just was alive and well in that town.

[10:37] So there's a religious component because this was a mixed race. There were people who had taken, basically the split had come when the Babylon, or the Assyrians had come in and taken a large swath of the people and exiled them.

[10:50] And so the remaining poor, some who were left, intermarried with the people that were there. And that's kind of where the Samaritans come from. And so there's just this history of being different as both a race and then we're going to see, of course, as a religion.

[11:05] It wasn't anything so nefarious as idol worship, but they took kind of a hodgepodge. They kind of, you see, they go back to Jacob. Instead of kind of looking solely at Abraham and kind of progressing through the Mosaic law and kind of being aligned with Israel, they kind of just, they focus on Jacob, Jacob's well.

[11:22] They center their worship in this area called Mount Gerizim that they were actually within sight of. And so it was just this religious divide, this racial divide.

[11:33] And there was really true hatred. If you were a good Jew, you were not going to associate with a Samaritan. They would stain you. They would soil you. You don't want to go by them. So we see a different story here, though, for the Lord Jesus.

[11:47] He, I love how the King James Version says, he must needs go through Samaria. I mean, it's a weird language, but it somehow cements in my mind just the necessity that the Lord had.

[11:58] And why was it that he had to go? Because he had a divine appointment with this woman. He had conversations that had to be had for this woman who had even not yet set out for the well as Jesus starts to go into the land of Samaria.

[12:12] Samaria. I can't help but think about the difference between me and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord knew that this woman had a need and he purposed to go into this area that was difficult to reconcile perhaps with his Jewishness.

[12:29] Do I make roads to avoid conversations with people? That kind of convicts my heart, you know? Do I make a path around?

[12:40] Do I align my life so that I don't have to come into contact? I remember talking with one woman, just encouraging her to share her faith. And she said, well, I don't really come into contact with anyone who's not a Christian.

[12:52] I mean, I come to church and I don't really work. And my Bible study is here with other believers. And so I really don't, I don't meet anyone who's not saved. And I said, well, surely you go to the gas station, you fill up your car with gas or something.

[13:06] Maybe you go inside, you buy a candy bar, you're talking to someone there. Maybe they're not a Christian behind the side. She goes, no, I don't do that. I pay at the pump. So anyway, I just thought it's funny that, you know, we can look at our lives, but are we shaping our lives where we're avoiding, are we making the path around Samaria?

[13:27] I know we all come into contact with people who don't know the Lord. And I'm not asking for everyone to like maybe make that conversation happen in the line at the grocery store. But I think we can also maybe do a little bit of self-analysis and look and see, am I making a path around or am I going into Samaria?

[13:43] There's people who need to hear about the Lord Jesus Christ. The time is short. How much time do you have left? It's just a blink. And we're going to be in glory.

[13:54] Make the most use of the time. Go through Samaria. Try to have conversations because that's the pattern of my master. So I want to follow that pattern in any way that I can. So where do they find themselves?

[14:05] They find themselves in Sychar. So Sychar is aligned, you know, there's going to be a little debate from some theologians and scholars. But Sychar align with Shechem. So Shechem was a pretty big deal in the Old Testament. A lot of big things happened at Shechem.

[14:16] It was where Abraham made his covenant with God was at Shechem. It was where Jacob settled with his family. And of course, he gives land to Joseph.

[14:27] And that's what the woman is going to claim as well. That's why it's Jacob's well. We see Joshua making a covenant renewal with the people of Israel, which is really cool. But also at Shechem, we see that that is where Rehoboam was coronated.

[14:42] Rehoboam being the son of Solomon. Ultimately, the divide of Israel occurs there. It's interesting, right? It's where Israel divides. And we see all this struggles and war and terrible stuff that happens.

[14:54] Israel's never again reunited for their monarchy history. But this is the same spot that we see Jesus bringing peace. It's just a great picture.

[15:06] Division reigned for a long time, but peace is brought ultimately through Jesus. So what is going on? Jesus is coming. He's coming with the disciples. He's going through the land of Samaria. They come to this well.

[15:17] And Jesus is wearied from his journey. We see in that just a glimpse of the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, he is God. He did not have to lead, but he stooped.

[15:28] He became like one of us, fully experiencing the human condition so that he experienced thirst. He experienced hunger. He experienced weariness from his travels. And here we see him sitting down besides this well.

[15:41] The disciples all go off to get food into the city proper. And it's Jesus left alone. Which, has it ever struck you that there wasn't even one disciple who said, I'll stay with you, Lord.

[15:52] But the Lord knew this was an opportunity that the Lord had planned, a divine appointment, where it was just going to be him and this woman. There's going to be opportunity for a conversation that I don't think would have happened if any of the disciples had stayed.

[16:06] I just love that about the Lord. It's a divine appointment. He looked for opportunities. The Lord looked for opportunities in this situation where he could have a conversation and he initiates it.

[16:17] And what does he say? Can you give me a drink? Am I looking for opportunities to share my faith? When Moses was in the wilderness, he's with the sheep.

[16:31] This is the land of Midian, rather. It's before he's left Egypt and it's before he's been part of the redemption of Israel out of Egypt. He turns and sees a strange sight that caught his eye.

[16:45] And it was a burning bush, right? He says, I'm going to go over and see what to make of this thing. And God gave him this just amazing sight, this bush that wasn't consumed by fire, to kind of distract him from what he was doing all the time, which was tending sheep.

[17:00] Gave him this supernatural thing. But I think what we need to do is we also need to, the Lord sometimes provides us these moments of like clarity and like supernatural. Maybe we see a burning bush.

[17:11] But we need to be looking for the opportunities in the mundane. When we're weary and just thirsty. That might be an opportunity for the Lord to have us minister to someone else. I just say that almost to my own heart as well.

[17:23] Just kind of look for the opportunities to share your faith. You'll find that the Lord gives them more frequently than you think. You just need to be aware of them and looking for them. So as we go through this conversation, it's a back and forth.

[17:35] Jesus says like seven phrases to the woman. She responds with six. And then one time they both talk seven times, which is interesting. But we're going to see her perspective of Jesus change to this, which is really interesting.

[17:48] As the conversation, it's pretty brief. But who she thinks of Jesus is changes, right? She's going to first refer to Jesus as a Jew. Then she's going to refer to Jesus as someone greater than Jacob.

[18:01] Are you greater than Jacob? Then she's going to say, you're a prophet. And ultimately, what does she find out? Jesus, you're the Messiah. You're the Messiah. The Lord just kind of nudges her along through his grace and compassion and brings her from a place where she was living in sin to understanding that she has the Messiah.

[18:22] And Jesus started that with, give me a drink. Give me a drink. So Jesus needed a drink. The way to get water from a well would have been a leather pouch with a rope. And the disciples apparently walked away with it because Jesus is left without any way.

[18:36] The woman sees it. She's like, you don't even have a way to get a drink. So what is going on? But she asks an interesting question. She says, how is it that you, a Jew, it's her first understanding of who Jesus is.

[18:47] She recognizes that he's a Jew, maybe by how he's dressed or where he's coming up the road from. How is it that you, a Jew, are asking me for a drink, a woman of Samaria?

[18:58] And that just brings clarity to the situation. Not only was Jesus a Jew talking to a Samaritan, but she puts the finer point on it. She says, a woman from Samaria.

[19:09] The Lord was doing what was, well, would have been regarded as taboo, would have been regarded as evil perhaps by the Jews and the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees.

[19:21] He was talking to a Samaritan, but he was talking to a woman. Jesus would talk to Nicodemus in John 3, the elite of the elite, who comes by night because he doesn't want to be seen.

[19:37] And then he's going to talk to a Samaritan woman at what I suspect was noon. Why was she coming at noon? She's coming by noon because it would have been the time that not many were there.

[19:48] And as we look through the story, we're going to see that she is a woman who is of perhaps ill repute, right? That she's not accepted because she's had so many husbands. She's living with a man who is not her husband now.

[20:01] She would have been a sinful woman with regard to what the community thought. Even the Samaritans thought this. But I believe also she was a religious person as well. I think she was religious because we're going to see in her responses to Jesus that she has an understanding of what she needs to do to get right before God, at least in her eyes.

[20:21] And Jesus gently corrects that misunderstanding. But Jesus asked for a drink. Jesus' response, if you knew, if you knew, if you knew who you were talking about, you wouldn't ask just for water.

[20:36] You would ask for the living water. I love how Jesus phrases it. He calls it the gift of God. The gift of God. If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

[20:55] Of course, she turns this, right? Like she says, you have nothing to draw from. The well's deep, right? Now it would have been about 80 feet deep is what they think. But yeah, she just sees the physicality of it.

[21:06] The impossibility. Jesus, you don't have, you're a Jew. You're talking to me. That's weird. You don't have anything to draw water with. Yeah. She kind of misses the point of what Jesus asks initially.

[21:19] But she need only ask. She need only ask. Jesus says, if you only knew, you could ask. There's just that beautiful gospel parallel there, right?

[21:32] The Lord doesn't ask. He doesn't give us the pouch to lower into the well. He doesn't give us the strength and the means of our own to do it. We need only ask for what the Lord has already done.

[21:46] He's made the living water available. He just asks if we're thirsty. Are you thirsty? We read in Revelation 21 this morning, if you are thirsty, come, drink.

[22:00] Man, what an invitation because I am thirsty. I have that need of brokenness in my heart because of sin. I was born in a sin. I live in sin. But the Lord has provided salvation in his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

[22:13] And all I have to do is ask. That's what faith is. It's asking for the Lord to do what I cannot. Man. She need only ask.

[22:27] Part of the Samaritan religion, though, was based on their heritage, right? They had this heritage in Jacob and she returns that very quickly. Do you notice that? She goes right back to this kind of religion that she has come to, that she relies upon her association with Jacob, with Jacob's well, with the Samaritans, with Mount Gerizim.

[22:51] These are things that she associates with. And we see that readily enough with the world now, right? I associate with Catholicism. I associate with Islam. I associate with, yeah.

[23:03] I met a guy not too long ago, just in urgent care, and I was talking to him and he had a rosary around his neck. He had some Muslim tattoos on his forehead, which of course, right? Right, I'm seeing that and I'm like, okay, Lord, this is a conversation.

[23:16] This is almost a burning bush. So I turned aside to see. So I asked him, I said, so you look like you're a person of some faith. I said, what does that cross around your neck mean?

[23:26] And he goes, oh, I just saw it. A guy had it and I wanted it. Now this guy had just gotten out of prison and so I suspect him just wanting it might have meant he stole it. He has a rosary around his neck and I said, okay, I noticed some of your tattoos and your face.

[23:39] I said, those are kind of Islam tattoos, right? He said, yeah, well, I practice Islam. I just like the cross. Like, oh, okay. I said, so you read the Quran? Yeah, I'm supposed to.

[23:50] I'm like, oh, okay, you don't really read it? And he said, no, but I follow this and such and such. Like, it was some form of Islam I wasn't really familiar with but I said, oh, so you follow a guy online or something like that?

[24:01] And he said, yeah, I just kind of do that. And I said, well, I follow the one who hung on that cross. He doesn't require me to do anything. I don't have to read.

[24:11] I don't have to do anything other than just place my faith in what he's already done. So I was able to give him the gospel. His name is Justice. So, if you remember Justice, pray for Justice.

[24:23] Sounds a little funny saying it. Pray for Justice. Pray for Justice might be saved. Yeah. So, but he was one who just wanted to associate with religion, right?

[24:34] So much so that he would have Islamic tattoos on his forehead. He would claim faith in a false god, Allah, but he would also wear a rosary around his neck.

[24:44] He was trying to cover all the bases, I suppose. But this woman was making much of her heritage as a means of saving her. This is what I mean about her being religious, is she was going to that well, dipping for water, but she would see that mountain in the distance.

[25:04] She would associate with her heritage in Jacob. And I think she had a lot of guilt in her life. I think she was a woman who had tried multiple times with marriage to satisfy her, but it didn't satisfy her.

[25:18] Whether these men died, or we're not really given the backstory, but we know there's a desperateness in this woman that she would only find security in trying to be married in society that was a stability factor, but she would try to find just fulfillment in Jacob's well.

[25:39] A well that just would not satisfy her. I came across this older kind of poem I thought really fit well. It says, I tried the broken cisterns, Lord, but ah, the waters failed.

[25:53] E'en as I stooped a drink, they fled and mocked me as I wailed. Now none but Christ can satisfy. None other name for me. There's love and life and lasting joy.

[26:05] Lord Jesus found in thee. Have you tried broken cisterns? I have. I still go to them from time to time, thinking they're gonna provide me with the temporal happiness that sometimes they give, but they don't satisfy.

[26:21] And it's not always the bad things that I look for. Sometimes I'm looking for satisfaction in my marriage. And with my kids and these good things that God has given me, and I look for them to bring me the joy when sometimes I'm feeling in that season of lowness.

[26:35] But they cannot satisfy. Only Christ can. You might turn to alcohol to try to satisfy that emptiness. You might turn to drugs. You might turn to pornography.

[26:48] You might turn to any number of things that the world is holding up in some fashion before you as a means of satisfying the emptiness you feel in your heart, or maybe a moment of desperation, even if you're a believer.

[26:58] But don't buy into the lie. It will never satisfy. Only the Lord Jesus can. And if you don't believe it, try it. Ask the Lord to give you the living water.

[27:11] The invitation is right here in his word. It's offered to this woman of Samaria. Yet sometimes we just kind of over, we read over that quickly, and we don't believe that that promise is true. And it can provide us right now joy and peace in this life.

[27:28] The Lord Jesus gives life abundantly, we're told in John 10. Not just when we die, but here and now. And if you've not enjoyed that, ask the Lord for that joy.

[27:40] He wants to give it to you. You just need only ask. Jesus is going to flip her whole idea of religion on its head because he's going to speak into this space where she thought her faith was tied to a location.

[27:57] Right? And it's not. She thought it was on Mount Gerizam. And it's really going to be that the Lord is seeking out those who will worship him in spirit and truth. So the Samaritan, when I think about it, she had been cut off from God by her race and by her identity.

[28:11] And the Lord is going to change that. And that's kind of what he does here. But what did the woman have to do first? What did Jesus ask her to do? What was the first thing after the drink?

[28:24] He said, go get your husband. Go get your husband. And what is her response? She says, I don't have a husband. And she actually stops there. She doesn't confess anything more to him. But why did Jesus do that?

[28:36] Well, one, there's the social thing, where I can get your husband so that I can, you know, this would have been a more cultural appropriate thing to do is have your husband there with you and that kind of thing. The Lord, of course, then wanted other people to hear.

[28:50] But it was a conviction that she needed. She needed to be confronted, not only that she was following a false religion, but that she had sin in her life. She was a religious woman, to be sure, trying to answer her needs.

[29:02] But she needed to be convicted of the wrong living that she had. So the Lord says, get your husband. And that just kind of put a point right in her, finger right in her heart to convict her. Women, believe me.

[29:17] Jesus gives her a greater hope. You know, the Jewish people, Jesus had lots of interactions with Pharisees and Sadducees and all those people. They were the Jews.

[29:28] They were the one given the oracles of God. They had the truth, right? Because Jesus even tells her that we have the truth. But they weren't worshiping God with their hearts.

[29:39] They weren't worshiping in spirit. God is seeking those who will worship him, not just by lifting up of hands, by praying, by singing songs.

[29:52] God is looking for those who are gonna worship from their heart. He's seeking after this. And then you have the Samaritans who weren't worshiping in the truth, right?

[30:02] So Jesus is speaking to them as well. You are worshiping the wrong thing. You're looking for empty cisterns to fill you. You're looking for religiosity. You're going to Jacob's well.

[30:14] You're going to the wrong faith. And Jesus corrects them both. God is seeking those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. The woman's response when Jesus says, I am the Messiah.

[30:28] I am the one you're looking for. See, whether it was spirit-led or not, this woman recognized that she was looking for something more than the religiosity of Samaritanism could provide her. She's looking for the Messiah.

[30:40] She knew that. And so she speaks into that. She goes, perhaps when the Messiah comes, he's going to validate everything that you just said. Jesus says, I'm he. You have the Messiah, this one who sat down at this well, wearied and tired from his journey, the one whose disciples left him to get food.

[30:56] I am the Messiah. I am the Christ. Boy, and that changes her. Suddenly she understands hope. What does she do? She runs off without her jar.

[31:06] Something's so telling in that. Something that I need to learn a lesson about is sometimes I just cling on to that jar. These things that I, she used that what? To get water from that well. She didn't need that water anymore.

[31:17] She left that religion behind. She left all the fakeness and falsity and self-piety that she had accumulated over the years when she was dealing with these husbands and loss and desperation.

[31:31] And she left that jar and she ran off to the city. She ran off to the place where she had often experienced ridicule, perhaps, rebuke, perhaps, for being a woman who had six husbands and was living with another.

[31:43] She runs back to these people because in her joy of finding the Messiah, she wanted them to know as well. She had often probably hid in the shadows, but now she was going to go to the street corners.

[31:56] That's what the Lord Jesus did in her heart. And what's the response? Many Samaritans believed. I love that. The disciples had just gone into town, right?

[32:07] And you wonder what they had experienced. These guys, you know, Peter, James, John, all of them, we don't know the frame of mind that they went into town. They were certainly hungry. They were weird like Jesus from their journey. Maybe a little so. They're walking the sidecar.

[32:18] And they're Jews, right? You know, Peter, he's pretty judgmental guy. You have to think that the interactions he had with some of those Samaritans perhaps weren't the best. But here, the woman comes into town and says, you'll never believe what I just saw.

[32:35] I heard that this Messiah has come. And he's come to us, the Samaritans. And many believe just based upon her word. Like, really? Let's go.

[32:45] So they go out. And I love that the Lord Jesus stayed with them for two whole days. Two whole days. That's a long time.

[32:56] Jesus was going to pass through that land on his way back to Galilee. But he stays two days. What a picture of grace that we see. The Lord Jesus would teach them, oh, to be a fly on the wall and listen to him teach for two days to these Samaritans who felt that they were so far off.

[33:14] What a grace of God. The response of the Samaritans, many more are saved when they hear his word. There's nothing better that we can bring to people who are lost but God's word.

[33:26] I'm comforted so much, even as I encourage you to be evangelists for the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ, we don't have to be peddlers of the gospel. We don't have to be sales people for Jesus.

[33:38] We don't have to have all the right words, because I'll tell you, I mix them up a lot when I'm giving the gospel to people. Not that I've given them the wrong gospel, but I just, you know, you get past that conversation and say, ah, Lord, I should have said this.

[33:50] I should have made this more clear. Don't worry about that. The Holy Spirit convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgment. We can hold on to that promise. And so if you're fearful about saying the wrong thing, don't be.

[34:02] Don't be a salesperson for Jesus. Point people to God's word. Have God's word with you, whether it's just on your phone, have it a ready sword just to be used in that time when you can share it.

[34:13] Give people God's word. Many more people believe because Jesus spoke to them, and they learned. And they said, surely we understand what? That he's the savior of the world.

[34:24] He's the savior of the world. No longer were these Samaritans anchored in their own ideology, or where they lived, or antagonism with the Jews.

[34:35] They said, surely he is the savior of the world. And he is. Jesus is the savior of the world. And they got to just enjoy that. They stopped limiting God to a place or location.

[34:48] They understood that God is seeking those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. And amen, that's why we're saved. That's why us meeting in Fredericton, Missouri, so far removed by time and place from the Lord Jesus Christ, can call him savior, because he's the savior of the world.

[35:06] Oh, Christ, he is the fountain, the deep sweet well of love. The streams on earth I've tasted, more deep I'll drink above. But to there an ocean of fullness, his mercy doth expand, and glory, glory dwells in Emmanuel's land.

[35:23] We've considered hope for the hopeless when we looked at Hagar. We considered mercy for the masses with the water to the Israelites, and we considered salvation for the sinner.

[35:33] I'd also maybe call this one righteousness for the religious. God met her need in her sin, in her religiosity, and he showed her that he had living water.

[35:47] We can have that living water. Are you thirsty for him today? Be thirsty for him every day. Wake every day and drink from his word. Abide in Christ. He will sustain you, and we know that his promises are yes and amen in Christ.

[36:01] Let's pray. Father, you are the living water, and so often I forego drinking from you and being sustained by you.

[36:15] Father, I'm grateful that all it takes is just faith in the finished work, that Jesus is enough, that we are saved. Father, I pray that even as I'm saved by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and his work on Calvary, I can be sustained day by day by the living water.

[36:35] You say, that living water will well up within me and that that water can then be shared with others. Father, we want that kind of refreshment. I pray that you would just convict our hearts of the need to be walking through Samaria, sharing the love that you have for us with others who so desperately need it.

[36:55] I thank you for your goodness. I thank you just for this time with us people. Father, we look forward just to this afternoon. I lift up the lunch. I thank you for the food that we're about to share together, this last meal down here this weekend.

[37:09] Just thank you for just even all the help of the people who work full-time staff here and just thank you for their hands and their ministering to us. We pray that you'd minister to their hearts as well. We pray this in Jesus' name.

[37:20] Amen.