The life and ministry of Jesus is filled with surprises, but everything we have read so far in the Gospel of John seems like a reasonable action for the Messiah to take. Certainly, Jesus is the one who has descended from heaven (John 3:13), so his teaching and his ministry often challenge our preconceptions; however, on the whole, the nature of Jesus’ ministry since the day John the Baptist revealed him to Israel has been a steady increase of public ministry. If we were to imagine what the story of Jesus might look like from the end of John 3 onward, we would probably expect a pretty steady stream of stories like the ones we have already seen, filled with Jesus’ teaching, the world’s misunderstanding, and a lot of conflict. John 4, however, throws us a curveball.

When Jesus starts to attract the attention of the Jewish authorities, Jesus avoids further conflict at this time by leaving Judea altogether to go to Galilee (John 4:3), and on his way, he stops for rest in a small town in Samaria called Sychar (John 4:4). The Jews despised the Samaritans (John 4:9), but Jesus goes out of his way to have a conversation with a sinful Samaritan woman anyway. Jesus should have avoided her altogether, but he instead offers the woman fuller revelation about himself than he had even with the respectable religious teacher Nicodemus. In this story, we see God’s heart for the world—a heart shaped by overflowing grace and mercy toward those whom we seem the least deserving. In this scandalous story, Jesus reveals the full extent of God’s gift of grace to the world.

---

This morning, open your Bibles with me, if you would, to John chapter four. We are going to be looking at Jesus in the story of the Samaritan woman. So we're in John chapter four, and we're going to break this text up into two weeks. Lord willing, we're going to take the first 26 verses of this story this morning, and lord willing, we'll take the next part of this story next week. So let's read together this story, and we'll read first through the first 10 verses.

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 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.
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 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.) 10 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.”
John 4:1-10, ESV

We'll pause there for a moment and pick up the reading and a little bit. So those of you who are children, I have a question for you. Have you ever been on the playground and it's time to play a game, a sport, and you are the one, the captain of the team, about to choose who should be on your team? Ever been in this situation? Maybe you are faced with this dilemma where you have a choice. You see clearly the best athlete over here. You could choose him or her for your team, and that just makes your team all that much better. Or then you look over and you see your best friend, their best athlete, best friend.

That's a difficult choice to make, isn't it? We've probably all been there. We have to weigh it out what exactly we want. Do we want to win the thrill of victory? Well, if we do that, is it worth the inevitable reconciliation of the relationship, mending things up, trying to assure that we really do care about our best friend that's going to go on from that point? Or do we just say, you know what, win or lose, I don't want to invoke this person's wrath upon me, so I'll choose my best friend. What's it going to be?

We have to weigh, there two things that we want. Two more or less legitimate things. When you're playing a game, the point is to win, it's not a bad thing to try to compete hard to win. You also have to care for your friend, right? So what are you supposed to do? You have to figure out what exactly you're seeking, what exactly it is that you're after.

This story here in the gospel of john, we find lots of different goals, lots of different desires that inter cross and intersect on this one converges in this story where Jesus, led by his Father in heaven, encounters and engages in a conversation with a Samaritan woman.

So this text that we're going to look at again all the way through to verse twenty six, we'll pick up the next half Lord willing next week. We're going to see three things, three goals that are intersecting and converging in this story.

1. We've got to first see what Jesus is seeking that brings him here.
2. We have to figure out as we get a little bit deeper into the conversation with this woman, what this woman throughout the course of her lifetime has been seeking.
3. We need to see what brought about this conversation in the first place, which is to say what is God the Father seeking out of this conversation?
What's Jesus seeking? What's this woman seeking and what's God the Father seeking in this passage?

So let's start with Jesus. One of the fascinating things about this passage, in particular, is the way in which the needs of Jesus set up the story that takes place here. You know, sometimes and this is not just us, but this is all Christians throughout the ages. Sometimes it's difficult for us to really wrestle with and get our minds around the fact that Jesus is fully God, but that he is also fully human. As such, he has real physical bodily needs that he has to attend to.

We see glimpses of this every once in a while. Often, we just think that, well, Jesus is God. He can just sort of wave his hands and things will just pop into place. His fatigue will wear away, his thirst will be quenched and that's that. In fact, the real picture we get of Jesus is of a real human just like you and me. In addition to fully being God, come into this world to bring sinners into a right relationship with his father.

So look, to start off with, we see that Jesus actually pursues a need of safety. In the first verse, we find out we have this ominous phrase in the first verse that it was when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making in baptizing more disciples than John. Although John, that's John the Baptist, but then John the evangelist writing this tells us that it wasn't Jesus himself who was baptizing, but actually his disciples were doing it on his behalf.

When he learns that the Pharisees knew this about him, that a whole bunch of people were coming to him, that a whole bunch of people were being baptized through his disciples. We read that at that point, he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. Now, why is that? Well, earlier in the gospel of John, we saw what the Pharisees were up to. The Pharisees in the beginning when it was just John the Baptist before Jesus had been revealed in public, the Pharisees sent a delegation to John the Baptist to ask him, who are you? Why are you out in the middle of the wilderness preaching and baptizing people? Are you the Christ? Are you a prophet? Are you Elijah? Who are you?

Well, here now that Jesus has started to ascend beyond the ministry of John the Baptist, the Pharisees again start to wonder, well, OK, now there's another person that we have to pay attention to out in the wilderness. The Pharisees are concerned because if they let someone start to gather what looks like an insurrection, they might have to deal with the Romans. Because once certain things like this start happening, the Romans are sure to investigate what exactly is happening. When the Romans get involved, the imperial overlords during this day, when they get involved, bad things happen. You don't want that to happen. So they're going to go investigate Jesus before the Romans can come into this situation.

Jesus, before the Pharisees can come, gets out of town. The day is coming, not too far from this point when the Pharisees will have their time to interrogate Jesus, to find out exactly who Jesus is. However that day has not yet come and to avoid this situation, Jesus gets out of town. He pursues physical safety. He will not always do this, of course, he will eventually go to the cross, but that hour has not yet come.

The second thing we find out is that Jesus is wearied. That's what we find out in verse six. That as they're going north from Judea to Galilee, the straightest, most direct path was directly through Samaria and on this journey, Jesus gets tired, he gets worn out. That's not just something that happens to you, too. It happened to the incarnate son of God, he got tired, he needed to take rest. Jesus came to the end of his strength, and so he sat down by this well for rest.

Well, then in the seventh verse, we realized that Jesus is thirsty because he asks, give me a drink. So Jesus has thirst as well. Then in verse eight, we find out that his disciples, the whole reason that he is alone with this woman to have this conversation is that his disciples had gone into the city to buy food. Why? Because Jesus is hungry. The first thing the disciples do when they return with this food is they try to get Jesus to eat. Probably the reason they went is that Jesus was hungry and they were going to get food for him. We read that a little bit more in versus thirty-one to thirty-three, which will look at next week, Lord willing.

So Jesus is seeking safety, he's exhausted, he's hungry and he's thirsty. All of these physical needs do everything in this story to set up the conversation that is about to take place. There is something else that Jesus is seeking, it's not just to minister to his physical needs, as important as that is.

The thing that Jesus is seeking, the real thing that brings him here, is that he has come to do the will of his father in heaven. That's what he says again later in this passage that we'll look at next week, I'm just going to mention it for now. Look at verse 34, if you just sort of peek ahead. Jesus, by the way, won't eat when they bring him food because he's had this fulfilling conversation with this woman. In verse 34, Jesus says to them, "my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work."

The reason Jesus is on this journey, I mean part of it is the physical element. The reason that Jesus sat down at this spot, part of it is the physical element. The reason that Jesus asked for a drink, and part of it is the physical element. The reason that Jesus was alone and his disciples had gone away, part of that was the physical element. However part of it was because Jesus came to do his father's will, and that included this divine appointment with this woman. Jesus came to seek to do his father's will, and that led him to this place.

Now I want to make an observation, notice here that this is not ministry that takes place in the context of strength for Jesus. This isn't Jesus fully rested, fully recharged, just had a big meal, took a big nap. It's the cool of the day, he has time to sit back and unwind, and now is the opportune time for ministry. That's not the way God orchestrates this. God brings this woman to Jesus at a very low point in his strength.

Sometimes in the church, we think that ministry ought to happen sort of some day off in the imaginary future when we have all of our ducks in a row and when everything is perfect. I'll talk to that person once I get my house cleaned or once maybe my children are a little bit older or once I finally get that promotion, then things should sort of slow down for me at work and I won't have to work as hard. Or maybe when the kids are out of the house or when at least I'm not traveling with them for sports as much. Or maybe who knows, fill in the blank, whatever it is for you.

We imagine that someday we're going to be ministering from a position of strength. We've got our lives cleaned up, the situation is in order, and we will be able to come and engage in the ministry as though we were Moses coming down on high from Mount Sinai with a beaming face and people will just be drawn to us. That's not how God works. That's not what Jesus does here.

Of course, this isn't the only place where Jesus will minister from a place of weakness. Another story, much later in this same gospel, we will find Jesus again asking for something to drink, where hanging on the cross, he says, "I thirst." Also where we will see Jesus, again, coming to the end of his strength to finish his father's work, where right before he gives up his life on the cross for you and for me, he says, "It is finished."

On the other hand, if you're not maybe a believer, if you're trying to figure out who exactly this Jesus is. This story also helps us to dispel a false notion of what the gospel is. You may think that what the gospel says that what these Christians believe is that once you reach sort of a level of qualification that reset and we find acceptable, once you sort of get your life cleaned up to that point. That's the point, once you hop over the bar that we set for you, that's the point when you can come and enter into our fellowship. That's the point when you, when you make it, when you arrive, when we sort of say, well done, you finally deserve to be in the ranks of Christians.

Well, I hope a cursory look around the room, you can sort of recognize that we are a ragamuffin bunch. We're a ragtag group of people. We're coming from a lot of different places. We say this every week. Some very painful places. Some very sinful places. So that none of us is coming from a position of strength. What the gospel is, and we'll get to what it is in a moment, it appeals not to the strong, not to those who have their lives together, not to those who have all their ducks in a row, but to those who are broken and weak and weary.

Well, Jesus, coming into this situation, meets this woman and after asking for a drink notice that he doesn't ever get the drink and he doesn't actually eat food, because he's got a new mission now that he's on the scene. Right away, rather than insisting that this woman actually go about and give him a drink, because she's pointed out that, there's this giant racial tension between Samaritans and Jews and why would you be asking this of me? Jesus presses forward and rather than scolding her or berating her or telling her, don’t you know who I am? Well, he sort of says that, but in a much different way. He says, if you knew who I was, something you would jump to attention and do all that I ask you, if you knew that I was you would ask me to give you a gift. You would ask for what you need from me, from what you have been seeking, though you haven't known it your entire life, because I am the only one who has the power to give it to you.

So from here let's read versus eleven through eighteen.

11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.” 15 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.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” John 4:11-18, ESV

Well, that conversation progressed pretty quickly. The woman at first, when Jesus is talking to her and promising living water. I mean, living water, there's a spiritual meaning, but it's important to get the physical meaning in mind. Jesus is talking about sort of an ever moving spring. It's not something that's in a bucket or in a container or in a well, he's talking about something that is ever flowing. That's what living water is. He's using that to symbolize what he's about to talk about, which again we'll get to in just a moment.

He talks about this living water, and she says, well, even if you found a running stream or something, you don't have a bucket or a container or even a cup to draw from. How exactly are you going to get this? She asks questions not to deny the fact that she needs living water, but to actually inquire, can this man give it to me? This crazy Jewish man who's just started talking to me at the well, this has never happened before, can he actually do what he's telling me he can?

Not only does he not have a container, but in verse 12, she asks this question, are you greater than our father, Jacob? Now in our day and age, we think that great people sort of follow after us. So we think that the greatness is coming in the future, especially as we progress technologically and as a society. You know, we sort of have the Star Trek mindset that someday technology and alien races are going to come together and we're going to all have peace and prosperity forevermore, forevermore.

What the Bible actually says is that sin will a never let that happen and the great ones are the ones who actually come before us. Ancient peoples understood this. The great ones have actually paved the way for us. This woman is appealing to that. Every ancient people thought this, that the ones who are great are the ones who came in the past. Are you saying, you who just appeared on the street here, who doesn't seem to be older than about 30 years old, you are greater than Jacob, the grandson of the great Abraham, with whom God made a covenant? You're greater than he is?

Well, Jesus then starts to make a contrast, and this is what he does throughout the entire gospel of John. If in the Synoptic gospels, Jesus is consistently using parables in the gospel of John Jesus is constantly drawing comparisons. Whether comparing his body as the temple compared to the physical temple or comparing the new birth to the old birth, the natural birth that all of us undergo. He's always making comparisons to bring spiritual truths to light. When he says, look this water as good as it is, I mean, coming all the way from millennia ago, from Jacob himself. As much as you have drawn and drank from this water, you're going to get thirsty every time you drink this. What you're returning to will never quench your thirst.

Now he's turning the conversation here. I don't know how much she knows; John doesn't tell us how much she's aware of what's happening here, but he's saying there's another water, a living water that I have to give you, and whoever drinks of the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. In fact, the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up into eternal life. So you drink this water and it just keeps flowing up and up and up.

Now, Jesus is making a point that's made throughout the Old Testament. We sang a lot of songs this morning that reflected this, and a lot of the scripture in our liturgy reflected this. Throughout the Old Testament, god is described as a source of living water. Here's the picture that we're the God is trying to give to us, that you and I were made to be vessels containers. You and I were made to be filled with something. Specifically, you and I were made to be filled with God's Holy Spirit. You are not complete until God fills up the vessel of you with his Holy Spirit.

The reason that you were lonely. The reason that you feel dissatisfied. The reason that your soul yearns for something that you don't quite know, what it is, is because you're not filled. You may be able to sample from some waters and those may satisfy your thirst for a time, but the day comes and probably pretty quickly after drinking from those wells that you find yourself thirsty again. In fact, the problem is even worse than where it started.

The confession of sin that we read today from Jeremiah chapter two God says, "My people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters." In other words, I could provide them endless waters that would flow out from the depths of their soul so they would never be thirsty again, but they haven't drunk of me. "Instead, they've hewed out, they've dug for themselves, other systems. But these are broken systems that can hold no water."

What Jesus is telling this woman, what he's telling us, is the reason that we have longings that we cannot find fulfillment for is that you and I were made to be filled up to overflowing with God himself, with the infinite love and grace and mercy and kindness of God himself. Until that happens, you and I are always going to be lacking. We're always going to be searching, seeking, trying to find something, anything to slake our thirst. Like the poem water water everywhere, but because it's salt water, there's not a drop of that that we can drink to our health.

Later on in John, chapter seven, Jesus is going to talk about the fact that this living water, in John 7:39, actually refers to the Holy Spirit. You and I were meant to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is actually not saying that he is a living water, he's saying he gives the living water. He gives the spirit who in dwells us and fills us up to overflowing.

Now, in verse 15, the woman responds to Jesus, saying, "Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water." Not really sure exactly what she believes at this point. She may be still saying right, right, Mr. Crazy Jewish Man, why don't you give me some of this water so I don't have to come here again? Or she may be intrigued. This man does not seem like he's crazy, other than the outlandish things he's saying and the fact that he's even talking to me. Maybe he does know where this living water is. Can you give it to me so that I may not have to come here and draw water? She doesn't entirely understand what she's saying, but she may or may not be starting to believe in Jesus. We don't really know.

At this point in verse 16, Jesus turns the corner. This is where the story really gets interesting, I suppose, because Jesus tells her, "Go and call your husband and come here." The woman answers, "I have no husband." Jesus says, "You're right, because you've actually had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband, what you have said is true."

In a moment, Jesus exposes this woman's sexual sins. This woman now has a choice. It's a different kind of choice than Nicodemus had in John chapter three. You see, Nicodemus was an extremely influential, powerful rich, he was called a ruler of the Jews and the teacher of Israel. When he talked, people listened. In order for him to follow Jesus, what did he have to do? He had to renounce his place, his privilege, his position, to come and instead, walking away from all of that because the Pharisees wouldn't let him follow Jesus and retain his position in the Sanhedrin, he had to give up everything he had. That was not who he was, he didn't deserve that, he wasn't an expert, in order to follow Jesus.

This woman has to do something different. Instead of losing something that doesn't actually belong to her, this woman has to embrace what does belong to her, her sin. That is a deeply vulnerable, frightening place to be. Why did Jesus do this? This woman is telling him that she wants this living water, she's interested, the hook has been baited. To some degree, she's going along with what he has to say. Now he suddenly drops the hammer on her.

The question that all of us have to face is, you know, maybe you were someone who comes from a place of privilege and you're saying, can I walk away from that to follow Jesus? But maybe some of you were saying, Pastor, if you knew who I was, it wouldn't be a question of whether I can follow Jesus because God would never want me. If you knew my sins, if you knew the depth of my depravity, if you knew all that I had committed, you would know that God would never receive me, never take me in.

Well, if that's what you're thinking, if that's what you're wrestling with, the question you have to ask is. What does God want? What is God seeking? Is it perfect happy people who have their lives together, who can present their perfect lives to him, that he can pat this on the heads and say fantastic, I'd love to add you to my collection? Or does God look upon every last one of us and recognize our brokenness, recognize our broken cisterns, recognize our dryness, our thirst, our emptiness. Then God prompted, not by some goodness he sees in us, but purely out of unconditional love, come to seek and to save us.

What does the father seek? The woman in verse 19, changes the subject. Let's read 19 through 26.

19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 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. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 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.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
John 4:19-26, ESV

Some people think that the reason the woman changes the subject here is to avoid the uncomfortable awkwardness of talking about her sexual sins, her history, her past. I'm not convinced that that's the case. Other people disagree with me, if you disagree with it, not fine, come talk to me afterwards, I'd love to know the scriptures better. Here's how I read this. Up to this point they haven't been talking about religion. They've been talking about some strange living water that this odd man has been just talking to her about, and she doesn't really know exactly what he's talking about.

If she wanted to get out from under the weight of the guilt of having her sins exposed, change the subject to anything but religion. Anything, anything at all. I mean, talk about the weather. Talk about King Herod. Talk about politics. Talk about sports, tennis. Anything make up a subject? Don't go to religion, because the moment you go to religion, what happens? Oh, very quickly you find condemnation. This woman instead, though, that's directly where she goes and she asks about true worship.

So, the question is, would she do this if she were trying to squirm away from this subject? Well, she might escape the frying pan, but she'll jump directly into the fire with this change of subject. Certainly there are people who prattle on endlessly about theological minutia in order to avoid dealing with their souls, but again, that's not what they've been talking about. She wants to go to this topic.

The second reason I think that she's actually asking a sincere question is that if you've ever talked to someone who is actually grievously anxious for their soul. That they understand that they stand condemned and guilty before a holy, righteous, infinite God. This is exactly the turn in the conversation they go. They don't go back to their sins in order to try to justify them. Well, the reason this happened was because of this, I had to do this because of that. Instead, they sort of plead no contest. Of course I did that, but let's get on to the next subject, what must I do to be saved?

The same thing happens in Acts chapter two when Peter is preaching on the day of Pentecost and telling them, "Let all the House of Israel know this Jesus whom you crucified God has made both Lord and Christ. He's Lord, he possesses all authority and he's Christ. This is the anointed one whom God sent. And what did you do with him? You crucified him." What do they say? They say, "Brothers, what must we do? What has to happen?" Peter points them to worship.

The woman is asking about the question of how do I become pure? How do I become clean? How do I become reconciled to the God who stands to condemn me, rightly correctly, justly, righteously? I know what I've done. I know who I am. Everybody knows who I am. We're living in a day when gossip travels in our small town faster than high speed internet will travel in the future. Everyone knows who I am. What must I do? How can I become clean?

So Jesus, notice he doesn't say, oh, let's go back to your sins. No he answers her question. He says the thing you need is to worship. Now, it's not a matter of place. In the past it was and the old covenant God said that place was of central importance. He said you shall only worship me in the name that I choose to make my name dwell. In other words, you can only come to worship and offer sacrifices in my tabernacle and in my temple.

Jesus tells her, Look, you Samaritans were indeed wrong that we Jews know what we worship. You Samaritans don't. God did, in fact, choose the temple at Mount Zion, not Mount Gerasene like you Samaritans think. Yet understand that's beside the point, because the hour is coming and is now here when place is no longer central. Instead true worship is essential.

Remember, the reason the place was so important was because God's spirit dwelt in the tabernacle that God had chosen. Now God is omnipresent. He's everywhere all at once, but God chose to dwell in a specific place in the temple and in the tabernacle. So that's why they had to come to him in the specific place that he had chosen. What Jesus is hinting at, he doesn't get out here. The day is coming when God is going to take his spirit, when Jesus is going to give the gift of living waters, the spirit who wells up into eternal life and is going to put them directly put the spirit directly in people. That's the privilege we have as new covenant believers. That God gives us his spirit, so that we can acknowledge our sins. So that we can trust that God loves us enough to send his son to die for us so that we can be cleansed in the blood of Jesus Christ.

A gospel that we don't have to reach a bar of qualification to get in, but that God's son did it for us. That the whole reason he did this was to reconcile worshippers to himself. Who worship not just with our heads, according to truth, and not just with our hearts according to a spirit that actually wants God and doesn't just go through the motions. We worship God in spirit and in truth.

Now again, I said earlier today, and I just want to point this out because I don't want to use this text as a proof text for our new mission statement, but if we are a people who are reconciled to worship, understand what that means. That that idea comes from passages like this, that we are a church, which means first and foremost, we are not a social club. We are not a political activist entity. We are not anything that the world might want us to be that makes more sense to the world. We are a place, a body of people, a community that proclaims that there is reconciliation through Jesus Christ, who went to the cross as a substitute for your sins and for my sins. To all who look to Jesus, who ask God for forgiveness in Jesus for our sins, we're washed, were cleansed, were made pure, and Jesus sends his living water spirit to give us life that wells up eternally.

The woman very tentatively asks and by verse 25, she's understanding. She's hoping against hope. This is a woman who doesn't have a very easy life. When she woke up that morning the last thing on her mind was by the end of the day, I'm going to have met the Christ. Here she is suddenly encountered by him because God the Father wanted Jesus to meet her. She starts to wonder, she doesn't even ask it directly, I know that when the Messiah comes, he was called the Christ, he will show us all things. Jesus picks it up from there and says, I who speak to you is he.

Are you looking for living waters? Are you looking for satisfaction? For peace for hope? Have you sampled from all the lakes and rivers and streams that the world has to offer to find that they only make more problems, only make more cracks in your cisterns, only leave you drier than you were before? Jesus says come. Come to the waters of life. The living waters that don't have a purchase price, that don't have a requirement, you don't have to scale the highest mountain to bring back water from this stream, God brings it to you in Jesus Christ.

To all those who take the bold risk of saying OK, God's spirit is leading me to drink from the rivers of life that Jesus gives. I'm going to dare to acknowledge who I am, entrusting the riskiness of my past, my sins, my history to Jesus and believing that his attitude toward me, that God's desire is not to condemn and crush me, but to embrace me as his child through what Jesus Christ did for me. That's the promise of the gospel.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, God, as we come to this text, this is such an amazing, unexpected encounter that your son has with this woman. God, if any of us found us in the shoes of this woman, it would be equally as surprising, as unnerving, as awe inspiring as it must have been for her. Father, you come to us in your word to tell us that this is not just a story about something that happened 2000 years ago. That you still hold forth, Jesus Christ as the hope of the world. Jesus Christ, still reigning at your right hand, Father, sends his Holy Spirit to give living waters to those who trust in Jesus for salvation. Father, I pray that if there are those who don't know Jesus, that you would open eyes to see the beauty of Christ. That you would allow people to drink deeply from the well of your spirit. Father, fill us up to overflowing. It doesn't mean that we won't struggle or have pain or suffering in this lifetime, but Father, you promised that we are drinking from the same river that will nourish and feed the new city of Jerusalem in the new creation throughout all of eternity. That will cause plants to grow, that will be for the healing of the nations. Father, let us drink from this river. We pray this in your son, Jesus. Amen.