As we prepare to hear from God's Word together today, as you make your way there, please take your Bibles, if you will. Turn with me to the Gospel of John, chapter 4. John 4. As you may have noticed from the bulletin insert today, today's passage is rather lengthy. We're going to cover it from verse 1 all the way down to verse 42. It's a tall order. But the whole section is one story, so we're going to try to do it in one go. We'll see how it goes. I know lunch is over there, so I'm aware of that. Because it's so long, though, we're actually going to break it up and read it in three smaller chunks so we can get a feel for the progression as we go. And if you're taking notes, Let me mention our three sections here at the outset, just so you know kind of where we're going today. They're going to be up on the screen behind me as well. And these are the three sections, the three points of today's message, the living water from verses one to 15, the true worshipers, which we'll see in verses 14, excuse me, verses 16 to 30 and the harvest work, which we'll see in verses 31 to 42. So the living water, the true worshipers, and the harvest work. Let's read this first section together. John 4, beginning at verse 1, and as we read each one of these, let's remember this is God's Word speaking to us today. John writes this. 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, 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, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well, It was 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? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. 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. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with, and 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. 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. 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. May the Lord bless the preaching of his word in our midst this morning. Well, I guess as you've heard and seen, today is Palm Sunday. It is the date on the Christian calendar each year that commemorates Christ's triumphant entry. And it really is what kicked off the most significant week in world history. The week of Jesus' arrest, His crucifixion, His burial, His death and burial, and His resurrection. Nothing before or since has ever come close to those few incredible days. But that week that we're celebrating here wasn't a separate event from Christ's public ministry. It's not like he started off on one track and then he got close to the cross and then jumped over and shifted to another gear. No, that's not the case at all. As we're going to see today, Passion Week, Passion Week, was the inevitable culmination of what Jesus was up to from the very start. It's the inevitable culmination, the redemption of his people. That was the mission he began on, and that is the mission that led him to the cross. And the richness of this passage, the richness of this passage, is that in it, we see his redeeming grace on display. And we see it on display in Samaria of all places? and towards this particular woman of all people." The redemption of his people was Jesus' mission from the start, and it is a beautiful thing to behold. There's a triumph in this entry as well. And in the first three verses, we arrive at another transition point in the story. Last week, we saw that John's disciples had gotten news of Jesus' growing influence and his prominence, right? They came and reported that to John. Well, apparently that word was getting out to a lot of places because the Pharisees have started to take notice as well. And as we know, they clearly aren't too happy about it. The last time they saw Jesus, I think he was clearing the temple, if I remember right. So they're not thrilled with that. And so Jesus, aware of some of the growing animosity and knowing that his hour had not yet come, he's not running from the Pharisees. This is the fact that his hour has not come. He decides to leave and head back to his home base. And the most direct route from Judea, where he was, up to Galilee is traveling north straight through Samaria. It's set right in between the two. Now to say that the relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans was complicated would be putting it nicely. In many ways they were kinfolk. They shared a joint heritage in the patriarchs in the early scriptures and in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. They were both descendants of Jacob's twelve sons. They both came from the twelve tribes of Israel. Yet as you and I know, Family is complicated, isn't it? Family can get a little complicated, can't it? And that's what happened here. The United Kingdom and the prosperity that they had shared in together was permanently shattered and fractured after the death of Solomon. What happened is Solomon's son, Rehoboam, took the throne. He inherited the throne after Solomon. And as young men often do, he made some arrogant and foolish decisions. And the ten tribes on the north side, Jewish tribes on the north side, seceded. They were probably early Texans. They seceded and decided to rebel and form their own nation, the Kingdom of Israel, and they set up Samaria as their capital. But when you set up your own nation, you have to kind of create and consolidate your own distinct identity, right? You can't have an identity that's part of another nation. And so they set up a competing place of worship. They set up a competing form of worship, and they had competing scriptures. The only problem is all that competition meant you had to kind of leave Yahweh to the side as well. And over time they became more and more pagan and less and less Jewish. They were losing their roots. Until finally they fell to the cruel Assyrian Empire in 722 BC. And the Assyrians, for their part, did not help matters. To keep these folks subjugated, they carried off a large chunk of the population. Once they conquered Samaria, they carried off a whole bunch of the people, and they replaced them with folks from other conquered nations to kind of do the whole toss salad thing. It was a malicious, malicious practice meant to eradicate a people's ethnicity, their history, and their culture. So what they had built was eliminated. and something really honestly the Samaritans never truly recovered from. And as a result, the Samaritans in Jesus' day were kind of stuck in between, right? They're not Jewish, but they're not really Gentile. They're stuck in between. That Gentile blood in their veins And that's something the Jews simply wouldn't tolerate. The Jews viewed them as impure, less than human, and a lost cause. And the feeling was somewhat mutual back towards the Jews. You have no part in us anymore. That's kind of the way things worked. The bridge has been burned. They shared a convoluted history and a cultural animosity. It was a complicated family mess, but on a national scale. That's what's happening here. And so the shock of what unfolds is that Jesus crosses multiple seemingly immovable barriers. Multiple seemingly immovable barriers. Whatever you name the ways that people can be divided, right? Personal. political, social, theological, you name it. However you can divide up people, they were divided and Jesus overcomes each and every one of those seemingly immovable barriers in this conversation. He removes, he overcomes what no one else could he overcomes. He cuts through centuries of history in a few sentences. He cuts through centuries. He cuts through a whole lifetime with this lady with a look for such is his authority and such is his affection because he is God's Messiah and he is on a mission. and notice the deliberate contrast that's being drawn here between this scene and the previous scene which we saw in Jerusalem. There, Jesus entered the temple where Jews worshipped. Where is he here? At the Samaritans' holy site. There, he was the one driving the action, full of energy and zeal, right? He fashioned a whip for crying out loud and drove out people. He was literally driving the action in that story. Here, he's sitting quietly, weary and needing a break. There, he spoke in guarded and veiled terms. Here, he speaks freely and openly. There, Nicodemus knowingly comes to him at night. Here, the woman unknowingly comes to him at noon. The two scenes could not be more contrasting. They're juxtaposed for a reason. Scholar D.A. Carson explicitly points out John's motive for drawing such a stark contrast in these first two scenes of Jesus' ministry when he writes this, John may intend a contrast between the woman of this narrative and Nicodemus of chapter three. He was learned, learned, powerful, respected, orthodox, theologically trained. She was unschooled, without influence, despised, capable only of folk religion. He was a man, a Jew, a ruler. She was a woman, a Samaritan, and a moral outcast. And both needed Jesus. Both needed Jesus. One of these characters is completely on one end of the spectrum, the other is on the completely opposite end of the spectrum. And guess where that leaves the rest of us? Somewhere in the middle, right? Somewhere in the middle. None of us is beyond Nicodemus' morality on one side, and none of us is beyond this dear lady's immorality on the other side. We all are in this story. We all are on this spectrum. We all need Jesus. That's the conclusion this contrast is meant to leave us with. There's nobody in this world who does not need to meet Jesus. We first meet her, this dear lady, in verse 7. She comes out to draw water from Jacob's well. She comes out in the middle of the day which communicates quite a lot without using many words. Women would typically go as a group in the cool of the morning or in the evening after the sunset to draw water. No one went to draw water at this hour. And the fact that she's alone and having to come at this time of day tells us she didn't have the best of reputations or a whole lot of friends. She was the one. the other women were gossiping about on their way to the well. She was the one no one else wanted anything to do with except for one thing. She was the one at the well at noon. It says a lot about her. And yet, look who's the only other one at the well. Look who's waiting to meet her. The one who came to see her. He says, give me a drink, which to us comes off as kind of rude, right? It's just kind of blunt. Give me a drink, right? It sounds kind of rude. But she's stunned for a completely different reason. Look there in verse 9. Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me? Let me explain how this works. Maybe you don't understand. What are you doing? I don't know if you understand the cultural ramifications of all this. She's flabbergasted that he would do this. Not only does he acknowledge her existence, he's asking for her assistance. That's mind-blowing to her. She's never encountered anything like it. But ironically, My guess is when she walked up to the well, she probably already had him in her mind. She'd already pegged him. Oh, you're a Jew. Clearly he looked like a Jew, because she called him one, right? You're a Jew. And she had all of the stereotypes and everything that she assumed were going to go with that. She'd already put him in that box. So when he asked her for a drink, he immediately is just breaking out of the box that she already had put him in. But ironically, his first statement is going to be the least shocking thing that he says this whole time. Literally asking for a drink is the least shocking thing he says. Verse 10, it gets wilder. Jesus answers her, if you knew, if you only knew the gift of God and who it is that's saying to you, give me a drink, then the roles would have been reversed. You would have asked him, And he, speaking about himself, would have given you living water." Imagine where this dear lady is. She's got to be thinking, what is this guy's deal, right? I just came to get water. Here we are. But as readers, she might be kind of just off her game a little bit at this point. But as readers, we have heard so much in John. about the life that Jesus brings, that we have been gifted an intuition that she still lacks. We've been gifted that at this point. We can pick up on the link between the gift of God that he makes in the first part of the verse and the living water at the end of it. The gift that Jesus is offering her is life. That's what he's offering. And that connection is validated by several references actually in Jeremiah, the Old Testament prophet. We only have time to look at one of them, but listen to this indictment from Jeremiah 2 verse 13. This is Jeremiah prophesying against Israel. For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of what? Living waters. and hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns at that, that can hold no water." This woman epitomizes that verse. Her life is a series, a series of broken cisterns, of attempted efforts to hewn out her own life, one after the other after the other. And guess what? Every single one of them keeps coming up dry as a bone. Every one of them keeps coming up that way. But for now, the light bulb of her thirst and who she's talking to Hasn't quite gone off yet. She takes him literally. She says, sir, which now there's a little more respect there. Sir, you do not have a bucket. Let me just point out again, let me point out the obvious to you. We're at a well, you did not bring a bucket and you're offering to give me water. I'm the one with the bucket here, right? You did not bring a bucket. You asked me for a drink and yet the well is deep. Are you gonna borrow my bucket to get the well? What's going on here? What are you talking about? And by the way, this well is still there. It's still there in the Holy Land. It's flowing. You could go there. People go there on pilgrimages to sit where Jesus sat. We're pretty, we're fairly confident. Scholars are confident. This is the exact location where Jacob actually bought this land, dug this well, and where Jesus sat. So, it turns out, if you go there, guess what? That well is super deep, it turns out. This lady spoke right. This is dead on history in this story. It's amazing. If you ever get a chance to look up something, just go, just look it up. It's incredible to see because people, I watched people drinking and the water is still crystal clear and cold and beautiful. But knowing that she doesn't understand, Jesus continues on to patiently explain what he means by this. He doesn't mean physical water. He doesn't mean physical water. You have forefathers. Jacob can provide physical water. He has done that for generations, for which we should honor him. If somebody can provide water in the desert, that's a wonderful thing. We honor Jacob. But Jesus doesn't mean physical water. He means spiritual water. And Jacob has none of that. Only Jesus, the true Jacob. We've seen that over and over again, right? The ladder and everything else. The true Jacob, the true Israel. Only Jesus can provide us the living water. As satisfying and as glorious. Somebody that is weak, if you ever go out and do yard work or do manual labor out in the mercilessly, the merciless Texas sun, right? Nothing tastes better. Nothing tastes better than when you walk inside and there's that ice cold, it's got sweat droplets on it, you know what I mean? And I like to put a little bit of lime in my fresh water. I don't know if you guys are that way, but I put a little spritz of lime in there and it just makes it come to life. And just that first gulp, how satisfying. How satisfying is that first gulp of physical water? It is incredible, isn't it? I mean, suddenly it's the greatest drink ever invented, right? It's the most amazing thing ever. And when I'm really thirsty, that's what I want. I want just, I just want water. I want satisfying cup of cold water. Well, that's how satisfying physical water is. Think about a fountain that never runs out. Think about this well springing up. That imagery is supposed to be popping into our minds. That feeling of thirst quenched is the sense that he's, it's a tiny little taste, but it is helping us grasp what he's talking about in this life. And theologian R.C. Sproul helps unpack this imagery that Jesus is using when he writes this. When Jesus spoke of this water springing up, He used a word that literally meant leaping up. The picture He painted was of water so alive, so dynamic, so energetic and powerful that it not only would assuage thirst for a moment, it would begin to pour out of the soul of the person and continue to nurture him day after day, year after year. Obviously, Jesus was using the element of water as a metaphor to describe a spiritual reality, something that would not just meet not just a need of the moment, but a need for all eternity. Jesus' emphasis here is on that quality of the water. It's not even on the duration of eternal life. It's on the origination of it. It's on the origination of it. Everlasting life begins when Jesus makes us new on the inside. It comes welling up. It's a life that springs up from inside of us. That's what he's unpacking. It's the same thing he was telling Nicodemus. He's telling to this woman and it leads us to the second point. This internal well. The true worshipers. The true worshipers, we're gonna see that in verses 16 to verse 30, so let's read that section next. Jesus said to her, go, call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. 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 now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people 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. When he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a 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. Can this be the Christ?" They went out of the town and were coming to him. We ended the last section with the Samaritan woman completely stumped. She's completely stumped at the end of the last one. We leave this section with her more clear-eyed than Jesus' own disciples. Her transformation, her transformation in encountering Jesus is exhibit A of what he's been talking about. This transformation is exhibit A. The progression in this conversation is so important. It's so crucial for our own spiritual journey too. Jesus starts off by getting to the real story, right? He gets to the real part of her life by asking about her husband. To which she coyly replies, I have no husband, just like us. She conveniently leaves out the somewhat embarrassing details. She's had five marriages, and each one of them has ended in heartbreak and disgrace. And clearly she's given up on marriage at this point altogether. She's longing for something, and clearly there have been plenty of guys lining up to take advantage of her insecurities. And Jesus was gently pressing on the point of her greatest shame, her deepest pain. He's bringing up stuff she does not want brought up. Leave it in the past, bury it, move on. His supernatural knowledge of her own story must have felt Like a searing knife cutting right to the core. She didn't come to the well to meet this today, right? Not today, you ever seen those t-shirts, not today? Probably how she's feeling. Miss Tufeli was cutting right to the core of her being. And yet notice that Jesus is not cutting like a butcher, he's cutting like a surgeon. He never wounds to harm but to heal. He doesn't do it to condemn, but to convey grace. And notice, too, that John, I didn't notice this, but notice that John never mentions her by name. I think he just is preserving her dignity in the pages of history. He'll never call her out. He preserves it, too. He respects that. And yet, I also don't think he names her because it could be any one of us sitting in that hot seat, too, right? She's anonymous because she could be us. She is us. Don't we all have parts of our story we'd rather keep out of sight and out of mind? Don't we all carry points of pain and shame that we keep wrapped up under as many protective layers as possible that nobody is ever getting in there? We all have that, don't we? That inner, inner, inner sanction. We have our own secret holy of holies in our world, don't we? And doesn't Jesus always seem to find them? Doesn't He know exactly what that is? It's like He knows. And when He finds them, it isn't pleasant, is it? We don't want that brought up. That was the case for her. In Jesus' presence, things have gotten very real very quickly. And so again, I love the humanness of the story. She does exactly what we would do. She quickly changes the subject. That's what I would do, right? Uncomfortable, awkward, let's just move on. I don't really want to deal with that. That's painful. She does it partly to deflect, I think. I also think that she partly is now convinced that he knows a thing or two because she calls him a prophet, right? And she has some genuinely unanswered spiritual questions. And for the first time in life, in her life, there is someone there is taking the time that will actually answer them for her. And so she's going to ask, wait, why not? This is your shot. Who has it right? Been wanting this my whole life. I grew up in Samaria. Who has it right? You Jews? You Jews? Are you getting it right? Or is it us Samaritans? Which way is the way? Jesus does not hesitate. He says, well, the Jews have it right. He doesn't hesitate on that. The Jews have it right. Just as he validated the Jerusalem temple that actually, the Jerusalem temple is God's house. How did he validate it in chapter 2? He cleansed it. That showed that it was actually God's house. He validated by cleansing it. And he once again validates the Jewish system here by saying, we worship what we know. We know. And yet, The strong emphasis here is that the disagreements between Jew and Samaritan, Jew and Gentile, Jew and pagan, are about to be rendered moot. For there's a new era coming, one that transforms and transcends the old. There's a new era underway. Verses 23 and 24, look at those again. The hour is coming, second time he said it. And he adds one more thing, and is now here. Is now here. Not in the future, not a week from Tuesday, it is now here. It is standing right in front of you. When the true worshipers, the true worshipers are going to worship the Father in spirit and truth. Not in spirit and in truth, in spirit and truth. One, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth, one. The significance of those two verses can't be overstated. They can't be overstated for salvation history and they can't be overstated for us personally. God is about, he is seeking a new kind of people. a people comprised of the true worshipers. And what qualifies someone as a true worshiper? It's not what ethnicity you are. It's not how much Bible knowledge you have. It's not what external rules you keep or don't keep. No, what qualifies someone as a true worshiper is that he or she worships in spirit and truth. In other words, it's the worship of those who have been truly born of the Spirit and who truly know the truth of God through his self-revelation, Jesus Christ." That's what it means. The worship of those who have been truly born of the Spirit and who truly know the truth of God through his self-revelation, Jesus Christ. And notice that these two things are indivisible. Right? Indivisible. We hold this truth to be indivisible. It's spirit and truth. To be born of the Spirit is to know God in Christ. To know God in Christ is to be born again. Those two things go together. You can't split one off from the other. And the result, such a miraculous intertwined work in a person's heart, is that they then, in turn, worship the Father in an overflow of praise and adoration. We see a triune God revealed in this salvation. Triune God revealed in this people. Those are the people who God is seeking. And guess what? That's why Jesus is at this well. He is looking for one of these worshipers, the one that no one else wanted. Jesus said, come here, I am coming to find you. The hour has now come. And that's exactly where this conversation is heading. Given what all Jesus has been able to tell her about her own life, and about God's ultimate purposes. You can almost sense something of an anticipation starting to build in her. She hears this and she says this statement in verse 25. It actually functions less like a statement and more like an open invitation. This is your chance to say something. You ever have those where you're not actually asking a question, you make a statement, but it's more of an invitation? This is your opportunity. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Verse 25, I know that Messiah is coming. He who is called Christ, when he comes, he will tell us all things. She meets him and she says, it's hard to imagine meeting somebody that could tell me what you've told me. I might wonder. Let me just throw that bait in the water and see if it gets a bite. And with one declarative sentence, Jesus instantly changes her life forever. He answers her question, her invitation. I who speak to you. Am he. Your king is coming to you. And with that news, she immediately leaves her bucket. She runs back to the same town, but surely not as the same woman. She has a brand new start on life. Her past is now dealt with in the past. She is forgiven and renewed and a brand new person from the inside out. The well burst forth. She becomes an evangelist and a very good one at that. inviting anyone and everyone who will listen. This is the message. This is the message that we have. This is the message that we have to go tell. Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Could this guy be the Christ? He will tell us all things. Could this guy be the Christ? And it leads to our third and final point today, the harvest work from verses 31 to 42. All that's going on, meanwhile, remember, you ever seen those good stories where like, meanwhile, over here, right? All that's going on, John, being one of these disciples, knows exactly what's happening. Meanwhile, over here, the disciples were urging him, saying, Rabbi, eat. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. So the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him anything to eat? Love these questions. Just like what we would say, where we get the food from, right? Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 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 sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, one sows, 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. 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. We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior. the world Again we see an exhausted Jesus notice. He still hasn't had anything to eat or drink Which by the way an exhausted thirsty Jesus at the sixth hour something we're gonna see again And he's tirelessly ministering to others This is no nine-to-five clock in clock out Savior. He's the give-it-all kind and and accomplishing his father's will, finding those worshipers, seeking out those ladies that come to the well at noon by themselves. That's his very food. And just like everyone else who keeps whiffing on the spiritual metaphors, we've struck out on the metaphors at this point in John, right? He keeps using metaphors, and it's like the change-up that nobody can hit, right? We all just keep missing. His disciples miss it this time. Their minds are so fixated on the material and the social realms, they're completely oblivious to what God is doing in the spiritual realm. which is why Jesus mildly rebukes them by saying, look, lift up your eyes. Anytime Jesus says that, he means you aren't paying attention to what's really happening here. Let me help explain it to you. These people These people represent more than just Samaritans coming out to talk to us. They're not just some despised people that we're trying to build a relationship with. No, they are the beginnings. They're coming out to me. They are the beginnings of the harvest that the Bible has been promising and pointing towards. The hour has now come. They are, you are, look around, lift up your eyes, you are in the fields. You are now in the fields. See these people, see the fields. Many have gone before and you are now getting to participate in what the fruition, the harvest, the fulfillment of what they were diligently working for and what they were waiting to come. And it's happening in Samaria. And once again, our friend Carson hits the nail squarely on the head when he comments this way. Granted the fact that John the Baptist had recently ministered in this area, chapter three, verse 23, it's hard to resist the conclusion that Jesus is insisting John is the last in the succession of prophets and of others who sowed the seed, but did not live long enough to participate in the harvest. Jesus and his followers arrive at that moment in redemptive history when the eschatological, that means end times, harvest begins. Whatever the precise reference, no Christian harvester can ever justly forget that one, success in reaping normally depends on the work of those who have gone before, and that two, in those rare instances where sowing and reaping seem to go hand in hand, it is but the foretaste of the eschatological blessings still to come. That's what's happening here. She's sowing, and harvest is all happening at the same time. Her compelling testimony, the testimony of an outcast, the townspeople come to see for themselves. Sowing, and we have every reason to believe their faith in Christ is the real deal, harvesting. Unlike the fickle faith of the Passover crowds where Jesus did not entrust himself to them, on this occasion he remained with them for two days. Who has two days to block out of your schedule unannounced? Apparently Jesus does, the most busy man in the world. And just like he did with his first disciples, again, he is in no hurry. They said, where are you staying? He said, come and you're gonna see. He stays two more days. We begin to understand. He's been talking about food and mission. And we see him slow down. And we begin to see that these are the thirsty that he came to satisfy. They're not getting in the way of his mission, they are his mission. These are the worshipers the father is seeking. For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life, worshiping this father. And this, Northern kingdom that seceded, that lost its identity, and that has no future. These people that were part of that kingdom. This is the kingdom whose hour has now come. It's a true story. It's a true story, centuries in the making. The harvests begin to come in, and a story this dramatic demands an equally emphatic ending. It has to finish. It has to finish right with a glorious stamp of endorsement. What has this whole thing been about? And it sure does in there. Verse 42, they, the Samaritans, those people, you people, said to this dear woman, no longer because of what you said that we believe we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is this man is indeed the Savior of the world we know it One conversation with Jesus, that's all it took. Two days in His presence, that was enough. And the fountains of the deep burst forth. Their spiritual heritage which had been lost was restored. The shame this woman could not scrub off from her story was redeemed. The souls who were shriveled up and dead in the heat regenerated. All because the Savior came looking for her. She was the mission. And his mission has not ended. It has not ended. It's only grown. She was but the start. This town was but the first installment. How many other places has the message of Christ and the spirit of Christ blown? How many other towns, how many other people have drunk from this well? Have we not? And I wonder if he's not passing through our way yet again this morning. Looking for some who may be right here in our midst. It's not that we're seeking him, it's that he's seeking us. To find us right where we find ourselves. Right in that situation that we've now put ourselves in that we have no way out of. And maybe he has his finger on some deep area of your life right now. Those places that nobody else knows about, but it sure seems like he knows about them. Maybe it's like you can almost hear his voice audibly speaking to your own heart. I who speak to you am he. Respond. Respond to that inward prompting. Call on him. Ask him for the gift of God today, for he is the only one who can give it, and he is the one who gladly does give it. Young people, if that's you, listen to me. If you hear him speaking to you this morning, respond to that. Folks, if you do not know the Lord Jesus, listen, your brokenness is no barrier. Whatever barriers are in your life, your brokenness is no barrier to him. Your sin is why he came. And your situation is not too far gone. That's what God is up to in this world. This broken world full of headlines that bring us to tears. that we don't know which way's up sometimes. That's what he's up to in this world, finding people right where they are. That's what he's up to in your life. Our story meeting his glory. His mission is still ongoing. And so let me ask you, are you thirsty today? Are you thirsty? Do you need a savior this morning? There is a redemption, and there is a redeemer beyond your wildest dreams. And he invites you to come. Drink freely. Come worship in spirit and truth. Come experience life forevermore. May we all look at these doors. to tell anyone and everyone that we meet the exact same testimony of the seemingly lost and hopeless town. No longer, no longer because of what other people have said about Jesus that we believe. Let me tell you, I've heard him myself. And I can tell you from my own experience and from the well that I have drunk from, this is indeed the savior of the world. He's the savior of my life. Let me invite you to come too. We can say that, can't we? What a chance to worship this week. What a chance to worship in the days to come. Born of the Spirit, knowing the truth of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Amen, let's pray. Heavenly Father, every one of these gospel encounters There's so many levels and elements going on, and yet the common thread, what at a human level, Father, at a national level, in every possible way, what's going on in all these levels, what ties them together is redeeming grace. It reminds us that none of history is lost to you. None of the history that was written this week is lost to you. None of our story, none of our story is lost. And you come and reveal yourself. You come and find us. You come and show who you are, the Messiah, Lord Jesus, the Son of God. And it transforms everything about us. I pray for anyone here that doesn't know you, doesn't have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray today or this week that that would be real to them, that they would call on your name have this gift of life. And for the rest of us, empower us, equip us, remind us of our own story. Remind us of where we were when you came and called our name. And help us to go tell others of your goodness and your love. Prepare our hearts for Good Friday and for Resurrection Sunday. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.