Ministry of the Word, I invite you, please take your Bibles and turn to the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John chapter 4. You may be looking, if you saw the other side of the bulletin, the reading for this afternoon is sort of encapsulated in the reading for this morning. You're thinking, has he lost his mind? Is he going to preach the same message again? It's like, no, there's a method to my madness. But John 4, and I'll be reading verses 27 through 38. but I'm going to skip over verse 31-38, sorry, 27-42, but I will skip over verses 31-38 because we'll treat that this afternoon. But before we read God's Word, please let us go before the Lord to ask for His blessing upon our time this morning. Let us pray. Almighty Heavenly Father, Lord, as we get now ready to hear Your Word read and proclaimed, we know that Your Word is powerful. We pray, Lord, that this powerful Word will go forth and accomplish all that You have set it out to accomplish. That it will come and bring new life to dead hearts. That it will bring regeneration to those who are dead in their sins and trespasses. That it will accomplish Your good and glorious work as it goes forth. Lord, we pray for everyone here who hears this word, that they will have ears to hear and eyes to see the glorious truth of Jesus Christ that is proclaimed from these passages this morning. And we pray, Lord, for myself, your servant who reads and proclaims your word, Lord, that you will give me spirit-empowered ability to proclaim your truth boldly and unapologetically. Lord, we thank You for this time that we can spend in Your Word, and we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. So John 4, starting in verse 27. Please give your attention as God's Word is read. And at this point, His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman, yet no one said, what do you seek? Or, why are you talking with her? The woman then left her water pot and went away into the city and said to the men, Come, see a man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ? Then they went out of the city and came to him." Now please skip down to verse 39. And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified, he told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans had come to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his own word. Then they said to the woman, Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him, and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our Lord endures forever. Amen. So what could be the best possible news you have ever heard? It could be a long-expected graduation, perhaps an engagement announcement, or maybe a 50th wedding anniversary as you celebrate 50 years of covenant faithfulness in marriage. Or perhaps the announcement of a birth of a child, perhaps as a young married couple trying to have children, they announce that they are pregnant with their first child, or in my case, my first grandchild earlier this year. All of these things and many more could motivate us to go and tell our friends, our family members on the phone, via text, via social media, all of these things and spread the news. And as wonderful as all of these events are, the birth of children, the birth of grandchildren, wedding announcements, anniversary announcements, as Christians, we have far better news to share with the world. Because as Christians, we have the cure for the greatest existential threat known to man, which is sin. In the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news is a message we not only should share with the world, it's a message that we ought to want to share with the world. Yet we all, and myself included, don't witness or testify to all the things we have seen and heard to the waiting world. Now, there are many reasons that we don't share the Good News as enthusiastically as we ought, and it's not my intention here to guilt you into doing more and trying harder. That's not the point here. But my prayer is as we go through this passage this morning and the companion passage this afternoon, that we have a deepened love for Christ. That we will see Jesus in a fresh light. And that will motivate us then to want to go forth and share the best news possible. So as we look at this passage this morning, we're going to see three things. In verses 27-30, we're going to see here how the Samaritans are told about Jesus. And then as we skip down to verses 39-40, we're going to see how the Samaritans come out to Jesus. And then finally, in verses 41 and 42, we're going to see the Samaritans believe in Jesus. And the big idea for this morning is simply this, that Jesus invites us to come and see that He is the Savior of the world. Now, as always, I've been preaching through John at Emmanuel, so they have all the context, because we've gone from John 1-1 all the way up to this point. But just so we have a little bit of context here, so we're not just looking at this passage and ripping it out of its context, in John 4, Jesus really at the end of chapter 3, he has finished ministering in Jerusalem and he heads on his way back from Judea, which is in the south, he heads on his way back north to Galilee. Now normally what a Jew would do is if he's going from Judea to Galilee is he would go around Samaria. They wouldn't go through Samaria, they would actually take days out of their way to go from Judea to Galilee by skipping around Samaria because they didn't want to pollute themselves by walking through the land of unbelievers. But Jesus here, we're told at the beginning of chapter 4, says that he had to go through Samaria. In verse 4, chapter 4, he said he needed to go through Samaria. So Jesus is on his way home to Galilee, he goes through Samaria, and then he has an encounter with the woman at the well. Well, now where we are picking up here right now in verse 27, He has just finished His conversation with the woman at the well, and His disciples, which had gone out to get food in a town, are now returning back to where Jesus is. And that's where we pick up right now in our passage. So Jesus, having concluded His conversation with the woman by revealing to her His messianic identity, sees His disciples returning from the town of Sychar. And we see in verse 27 that His disciples, at this point, His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman. Yet no one said, what do you seek? Or, why are you talking with her? Now note that phrase there, at this point, because the disciples are arriving right at the moment where in the verses earlier, in verse 26, Jesus says to the woman, when she says, are you the Christ? He says to her, I who speak to you am He. And that is the moment when the disciples come. They hear Jesus announce to the woman that He is the Messiah. Now, is this a coincidence? How many people think that this is a coincidence? How many people think there are coincidences in the Bible? There are no coincidences in the Bible. Remember, he had to go through Samaria. He had to speak with this woman at the well. And his disciples return at the very moment that he is revealing to her that he is the Christ. Now, when the disciples return and they see Jesus speaking with a woman, and not just a woman, He is speaking with a Samaritan woman, they are amazed at this. Now you might ask the question, why were they amazed? Well, a couple of reasons. First, as we learned earlier in John chapter 4 and verse 9, we learned that the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. The Jews avoided the Samaritans. The Jews looked at the Samaritan people as half-breeds, as people who didn't worship the right way. And second reason why they were shocked is Jewish men, in particular Jewish rabbis, don't usually speak with women. It was something that was considered a waste of time to the rabbi. So the disciples come, they see Jesus speaking with this woman, they're shocked and amazed, and they're sitting there wondering, why is Jesus speaking to this woman? Why is Jesus allowing this woman into our boys-only club? We don't want any women in our treehouse. So the disciples are amazed, but none of them dare speak out and rebuke Jesus. None of them had the courage to say, why are you speaking with her? Or what do you seek with this woman? Now again, we're going to come back to the disciples this afternoon and their reaction to how Jesus talks with them in verses 31 to 38. But far more interesting here for our purposes this morning is this woman's response in verses 28 and 29. So after the disciples arrive, the woman then leaves her water pot. and went away into the city and said to the men, Come, see a man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" So Jesus had just revealed to her that the one who is offering you the living water is the Messiah. And so excited about hearing this news, the woman leaves her water pot behind and runs into the town to tell everybody about the fact that she had met the Messiah. Now, most sources and commentators, when they talk about this water pot, we're not talking like a little pitcher or anything. This is like a big earthenware pot that she would fill with water and have to carry on her shoulder back to town. So she just left that there and ran to town to talk to the people to say that she had met the Messiah. She came for earthly water. She met the living water. And then she was so excited, she didn't care about earthly water anymore. And she runs to the men in the town and said to the men, another interesting fact, because again, why would the men listen to her? If you know anything about this woman, she was a woman of ill repute. She was out there in the middle of the day when she could go alone to draw water and not go with the other women of the town. So the men would not have treated her any differently than Jewish men would have treated women. But the woman here goes to the men in the town and confesses with her mouth that she met a man who told me all the things that I have done. Now, a little bit of hyperbole, right? She didn't tell her literally everything that she had done. But everything about her life that was sort of secret, things that shamed her, Jesus knew about those things and told her about them. And then she speculates. Could this be the Christ? Now, she had asked the question and Jesus told her, so we're not sure. Is she doubting Christ's identity? I don't think so. I think clearly what happened here is Jesus made such an impression on this woman, so much so that she left her water pot back at the well, that she had to run and go and tell the people in the town. And this teaches us a very important lesson in regard to sharing our faith with others, that we don't have to know everything there is to know about Jesus in order to share the good news of Jesus with the outside world, with the unbelieving world. This woman was a believer for all of, what, about maybe three minutes? And she's already running and telling everybody about Jesus. And we see here now in verse 30 that the townsfolk, intrigued by what she has to say, they went out of the city and came to Him. Now this begs the question, I believe, This, which is, are we still excited about Jesus? Are we still excited about Jesus? Or put it another way, have we become jaded by Jesus? Have we become used to Jesus? Are we sort of accustomed to grace that we're no longer amazed by grace? Now, I don't know about yourselves, but for me, I came to faith later in life. And maybe if you came to faith later in life, do you remember how excited you might have been when the first time you heard the good news that Jesus died to forgive you for your sins? That you can now spend eternity with the Son of Man, the Lord of Lords, and the King of Kings? That was exciting news! That your sins are forgiven. That your sin debts are wiped out. not just set to zero, but you are given a positive account of righteousness from Christ as He gives you His righteousness by faith. Or maybe if you were brought up in the church, raised in the church, catechized and confirmed in the church, maybe that first time you truly understood what Jesus means, what He did for you, how He satisfied the wrath of God for you. I hope we hear this story again and that it reignites our passion for Jesus for all He said and did for us. So now skipping down to verse 39, we see here the Samaritans come out to see Jesus. And in verse 39, we see that many of them believed. And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, He told me all that I ever did. Now again, if we are correct about this woman's moral standing within the town of Sychar, why would the men believe her? Again, she is a woman who has had five husbands, and the man that she is living with is not her husband, and she is, again, a woman of ill repute. Why would the men believe her? Because she's a woman that's already strike one, and she's a woman of ill repute that strikes two and three. Why would they believe her? And here we see that key word. It's a key word in John's Gospel. That word, testimony. Sometimes you see testimony. Sometimes you see the word witness. Sometimes you see the word bearing witness. It's a very important word in John's Gospel. That word appears 72 times in the New Testament, 44 times in the Gospels, and 31 times in John's Gospel. And the first time we see that word testimony or witness is in John 1.7, speaking of John the Baptist, who testified or bore witness to the light that was coming into the world. And three more times we see John the Baptist testifying about Jesus Christ. In John 1.15, that Jesus ranks higher than him. In John 1.32, that he saw the Spirit descend upon Christ at His baptism. And then in John 1.34, that He is the Son of God. So this woman here testified, she bore witness to the men of Sychar, that Jesus told her all the things that she had done. And here again, we see this woman so changed by Jesus Christ, she didn't care about her reputation anymore. She didn't care about what the people thought of her. All she wanted to do was go into the town and tell the men about the Christ, the Messiah that she had seen. The one that they had all been waiting for. Here she is, spreading the news. She had been in the presence of Jesus. She had been in the presence of the eternal, incarnate Word of God, and it changed her life. And moreover, the men of the town are intrigued by the change in this woman, so they reservedly believe her testimony. Now we see earlier again in John's Gospel, there's that period in verses 35 and 42 of chapter 1 where John the Baptist declares that Jesus is the Lamb of God and then two of his disciples begin to follow Jesus. And then after spending a day with Jesus, Andrew, one of those disciples, runs to find his brother Peter to say to Peter, look, we have found the Messiah. We have found the one who was testified in the Old Testament. We see a similar thing later on in the next section when Philip goes to Nathanael and tells him, we have found the one whom Moses wrote about. And after speaking with Jesus, Nathanael then declares, you are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel. And we see the same thing here with this woman. She has met the Messiah and it changed her life and she cannot help but testify to the people this glorious truth. And again, I go back to what I said earlier. Are we still excited by Jesus? But maybe to expand on that, are we still excited to the point that we testify to others? Because Jesus isn't around to speak to us anymore, is He? Or is He? He is in His Word. He speaks to us through His Word. So have you been moved lately, spiritually or emotionally, by something you've read about Jesus? And has that response then motivated you to share the riches of glory and honor of Jesus with others? Now again, please hear me. I'm not here to try to guilt trip anyone into doing more and trying harder. I just pray that the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see the beauty of Christ and opens our hearts to want to then just have that flow out to others. I particularly like the story in Acts 4 where Peter and John are at the temple and they are proclaiming the Gospel and then they are arrested by the Pharisees and they bring them before the Sanhedrin. And the Sanhedrin says, you are turning Jerusalem upside down with your teaching. Stop it! And Peter and John look to the Sanhedrin and are like, well, okay, if you think we should obey you rather than God, that's for you to tell. But you know what? We cannot help but speak of what we have seen and heard. That's the response. You cannot but help but speak about what you have seen and heard. So the Samaritans then, coming out to see Jesus, they ask Jesus to stay with them. So intrigued by this woman's testimony, the men of Sychar invite Jesus to stay, and we see this in verse 40. So when the Samaritans had come to Him, they urged Him to stay with them, and He stayed there two days. Clearly, the Holy Spirit is working on these people. They come to Jesus, and after spending just a few moments with Him, they say, can you stay with us? I mean, that's what we're all about, right? That's what the church is all about. The presence of God among His people. And here is God in flesh with the people here. The God-man, the very incarnate Son of God, hanging out with a bunch of half-breed Samaritans. The very people that the Jewish custom taught them to avoid. I think that's an awesome thing. When you ask Jesus to stay with you and Jesus says, sure, I'll stay with you for a few days. What an awesome thing that is. And note how Jesus had no problem spending time with the very people that the Jews found detestable. And this underscores another very important Gospel fact. And that is that the Gospel is for everyone. It's for everyone. It's not for those you think might believe. It's not for the right people. It is for everyone. The Jews would never have accepted the Samaritans into their worship community. But here is the very incarnate Word of God, eating, sleeping, talking with, teaching, fellowshipping with, the least of these. These outcast Samaritans. And it always causes us to remember that God stoops down to meet us, right? God condescends to meet us. He comes to us in our brokenness to gather us to himself. Well, finally, let us look now at verses 41 and 42 as we see the Samaritans believe in Jesus. After spending some time with Jesus, the Samaritans begin to believe. Look at verse 41. And many more believed because of His own Word. So while the testimony of this woman piqued their interest, spending two days in the very presence of God sealed the deal. Notice too that they believed because of His Word. They believed because of His Word. It's hard to resist when God is talking. It's like that old commercial for E.F. Hutton. When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen. Well, when God speaks, people listen. The Word of God has power to bring life to those who are dead in their trespasses and sins. And so intrigued, they confessed to the woman in v. 42, they said to the woman, now we believe not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him. And we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. So it was the woman's testimony, her excited sharing the good news of finding the Messiah that brought them out there, but then spending two days with Jesus sealed the deal for them. Now they know, they have tasted and seen that the Lord is indeed good. And again, this verse highlights another very important gospel truth. True saving faith is personal. True saving faith is personal. You're not saved because your parents believe. You're not saved because you were raised in a church. You're not saved because you can recite the catechism. You're not saved because you were confirmed. You're not saved because your spouse believes, your friends believe, or anybody else believes. You have to believe. Each one of us must repent of their sin and embrace Christ by faith for themselves. And here we see the Samaritans believed because they heard His Word. No longer did they solely believe only on the testimony of the Samaritan woman. But as we know about John's Gospel, he makes his purpose statement very clear at the end of his Gospel where he says, I have written these things to show you, those who see and read and hear this, that you may know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing that, have life in His name. And that's John's purpose. So it's not enough just to believe in Jesus. You have to believe the right things about Jesus. And in the case of the Samaritans, they now believe that this One is indeed the Savior of the world. The very purpose of John's Gospel is to get people to make that confession. This One is indeed the Savior of the world. But again, as we said earlier, Jesus didn't come only to save the Jews. He came as a token of the Father's love for the whole world. for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And John the Baptist in chapter 1, verse 29 says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the Jews. Right? That's what it says. No. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And John the Apostle says it himself in 1 John 4.14, We have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. And it goes back to that little verse we saw earlier in verse 4 where it said that Jesus had to, or Jesus needed to go through Samaria. He had to pass through Samaria. All of this was a divinely appointed task by the Father carried out by the Son. And we'll look at this a little more this afternoon when we look at those verses we kind of skipped over. But here Jesus talks about the fields that are white for harvest. And here Jesus goes through Samaria because He had to. He needed to go through because He had to meet that woman. He had to save that woman. And He had to save these Samaritans. He was on a divine rescue mission for that very purpose. And again, one final lesson we can take away from this is that never assume someone won't believe the Gospel. It would have been very easy to write the Samaritans off as unclean half-breeds who don't worship right. Surely they won't believe the Gospel. Why waste the breath in our lungs and the time of our day to go speak to them? But that's not what God has called us to do. The parable of the sower in Matthew 13, we see that the person who sows the seed, he takes the seed and he's scattering it all over the place. He doesn't really care where the seed lands. All his job is to scatter seed. And we are to be indiscriminate seed scatterers. That's our job as the mission of the church is to go and make disciples. We do so by indiscriminately scattering the seed of the Word of God to wherever it lands, and then let the Holy Spirit take care of the growth. Don't worry where the seed falls. Just scatter the seed of the Gospel. Because you never know, a person you might never think would ever respond to the Gospel just might be ready to hear the words of Jesus and believe. Well, good news is meant to be spread. That's the nature of good news. And this dear woman here heard the best news available and she could not not share it. You might be thinking, well, I'm not good at sharing my faith. And I understand that. But you know what? How good do you think this woman was at sharing her faith? Right? Again, she was a believer for like three minutes. How good was she? Did she go to an evangelism class? Did she take a three-credit-hour seminary course on missions and evangelism? No! She saw Jesus. He told her everything there was to know about her. He confirmed that He was the Messiah, and then she just went and told people. She had been given the living water. And it gushed up into her for eternal life. And so changed was she that she left that water pot by the well. She didn't need the stagnant well water any longer. She had the living water. Well, maybe you might be thinking to yourself, well, I don't know much about Jesus. My theology is not very full. I just don't know enough about the Bible. And again, I ask you, how much did this woman really know about her faith? And she didn't let that be an impediment to her. She shared her faith with the men of Samaria. Men who would have shunned her any other day of the week because of who she was. As one commentator writes on this verse, he says, instead of being hindered by what she did not know, she witnessed to what she did know. The man she met at the well was a true prophet, and what is more, he had revealed himself as the long-awaited Messiah. Don't worry about what you don't know. Testify to what you do know. Do you know Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God? Then testify to that. Just witness to Jesus and let the Holy Spirit do the rest. Now, witnessing to Jesus can seem daunting, right? How will we be received? What will people think? Well, they think I'm weird. Well, I lose my job, my friends, my family. All good questions. But when one has tasted and seen that the Lord is good, one cannot help but share that good news. And really, it's just telling people about Jesus Christ. That He lived for righteousness, that He died for sins, and that by faith, we too can live and never die. Witness to Jesus and let the Holy Spirit take care of the rest. We plant the seed. You know, farmers here, you know this metaphor, right? You plant the seed, someone else waters the seed, and God provides the growth. Because you never know when you might be that person whom God has divinely appointed to share the best news available to anyone, when He uses you as a tool to bring the good news to an unbelieving world. Let's rise and pray for application this morning. And then we will recite the Lord's Prayer after. Almighty, gracious, heavenly Father, Lord, You have called us to share the good news of the Gospel. Lord, this is a Mission Fest Sunday, and Lord, the mission of the church is not something somebody does in the country halfway across the globe, but it is something we do each and every day as we leave through the doors of the church. We enter the mission field. It could be an unbelieving friend, an unbelieving member of your family, or a co-worker, or your neighbor. or someone you just speak to on the street. You never know when that person might be the person that God has put in your path to share that good news. I pray, Lord, that we will have the courage to share the good news because it is indeed not just good news, it is the best news we could ever share with a dark and dying world. I pray, Lord, that we will all be indiscriminate seed scatterers sharing the good news of the Gospel wherever we go. Now let us continue to pray by saying the words our Lord Himself taught us to pray by saying, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Please be seated.