Our scripture reading this morning is taken from John 4, verses 1 to 26. John 4, verses 1 to 26. John 4, verses 1 to 26, and we read the following word in scripture. Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize but his disciples, he left Judea and departed again to Galilee. But he needed to go through Samaria. So he came to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being weary from his journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Then the woman of Samaria said to him, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. And Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says 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 then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock? Jesus answered and said to her, Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw. Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband, and come here. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You have well said, I have no husband. For you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband. In that you spoke truly. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where the one ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to Him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When He comes, He'll tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I, who speak to you, am He." Our text is taken from John 4, verses 13 and 14, where we read these words. John 4, 13 and 14, Jesus answered and said to her, whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst, but the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life. The congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ There are certain times of the year, especially during the rainy season, when silt will come down from the mountains of Maduras and fill up the water system. And what happens then is, when we turn the taps on in the kitchen, muddy water will come out of the tap. And we see then that the water system has been contaminated. There'll be other times of the year when we'll hear that because of the water, many become sick with various diseases. Therefore, especially in latter years, the bottled water industry has grown quite largely, and most people that are able to, buy bottled water. Basically, we see then the importance of having good water to drink. We know then that science counsels us, or doctors counsel us, we must drink so many glasses of water per day. Water is essential to life. We see in the passage before us that Jesus also speaks about water. And here He comes to us and He speaks about water that wells up unto eternal life. First of all, we see as we begin chapter 4 that Jesus Christ would be ministering in Judea, that He'd be proclaiming the Word of God. When we go to the Bible, we know that the essence of that Word was that one must follow Him, that they must repent and believe and receive eternal life. Jesus Christ Himself is that light, that light that had come unto the world. Later on, John the Baptist proclaims Jesus Christ, saying, he himself, John the Baptist, baptized with water. But Jesus would come and baptize with the Holy Spirit. Again then, that bringing unto life. Bringing unto life, not just through water, physical life, but bringing unto life through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In chapter 3 we see Jesus speaking with Nicodemus, and saying to Nicodemus, in order to see the kingdom of God, or to enter into the kingdom of God, one must be born again. When Nicodemus asks about this, what does it mean to be born again? Jesus Christ explains, one must be born of the water and of the spirit. And only through the spirit that blows as a wind, we know not where it comes from, nor whether it goes, but only through the spirit can indeed one be born again. It's not of our flesh. It's not of our blood, it's not of our will, but it's the will of God that one can indeed live a life truly in God. That was the essence then of the proclamation of Jesus Christ. But even as Jesus Christ comes unto His own, as He came to the Jewish people proclaiming that message, we see that Jesus Christ came unto His own, but His own received Him not. They refused to listen. The Jews, the leaders of the Jews, the scribes, the Pharisees, The leaders of the synagogue resisted that message of Jesus Christ and rather returned to what they were teaching, those external laws made on top of the laws of God. These laws that they held were necessary, were necessary in order that one could live. That without these laws, Without this way of living, one could not attain life. In other words, a man-made type of religion that was presented as in accord with the law of Moses, that this is what the law and the prophets were teaching. And therefore, when the fulfillment of what the Law and the Prophets were pointing towards, the coming of the Messiah, when the Messiah came, they refused to acknowledge Him, they refused to receive Him, and they refused to recognize the Light, the Light that was in Him. So it says in verse 1 in chapter 4, Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John. So it says in verse 2, Although Jesus Christ himself did not baptize, but his disciples. When Jesus Christ knew that not only that they had heard, but that they resisted him. That they were basically rising up against him. Then it says in verse 3 that he leaves Judea and departed again to Galilee, that it was not yet his time to confront these Pharisees. And so he leaves Judea, and we know when we look at the map of Israel, we see Judea in the south, we see Galilee in the north, and we also know that Samaria is between the two areas. We have this well-known story, a story that we've read many times, the story of the Samaritan woman. So Jesus Christ leaves Judea and he goes into the land of the Samaritans. And as we study about the Samaritans, we find out who they are. Basically, a people of mixed race. A mixture of Jews and other people that had been brought into the land ever since the Israelites had separated themselves from the Jews, that division had been between Israel and Judah. And then later on in the exile, when the people of Israel are exiled, and other nations are brought into the country. You can read about that. And then wild beasts. start to attack the people, and priests are brought back into Israel to teach the people about the religion of the Jews. But then the religion becomes mixed and contaminated. And so the Samaritans, in some way, had that which the Jews had as well. They recognized the law of God. They recognized the five books of Moses. And they recognized that one must worship God. But when we read about when Israel and Judah separated, that the king of Israel did not want the Israelites to go to Jerusalem to worship God. And then so places were made in Israel to worship God, and golden castles were made, altars were made, so the people would remain in Israel to worship God. And the contamination just went on and on throughout the centuries. To such a point that the Samaritans had their temple, or they had had their temple, to worship God in Mount Gerizim. That that was the Mount of Blessing. That that was the right way to worship God. And to worship God in Jerusalem was wrong. Now, we don't have to realize that enmity between people, between races, rises very quickly. We only have to turn on our TV to see the confrontation that there are between people of different races or the confrontation of people of different faiths, even though they may be of the same race. And we can only turn on TVs and see the hate that one people can have against another people just because they look a little different or because they believe differently. You think of the Sunni and the Shiites in Iraq and the hate that there is between these two groups of people and how they're willing to kill each other for religious matters. And so the Bible basically presents this hate that there was between the Samaritans and the Jews. There were no dealings between the Samaritans and the Jews because even though Samaria divided the land of Israel between Judea and Galilee. But here we see Jesus, in some ways, fleeing or going away from Judea, and He enters into this land of those who hated the Jews. And He comes to a well, and the Bible says very clearly, He comes to the well of Jacob. The well of Jacob that had been built many centuries before. And He rests by that well. And the disciples go into the city to look for food, to buy from the Samaritans. And there He's standing by the well, and as we know from the Bible, the well was a place where the ladies would go to draw water. That was their task. The ladies and the children had to draw water from these wells. It was a dry and thirsty land. And so there is Jesus Christ by Himself, standing by the well, this well that had given water for centuries and centuries, and then a woman comes, bearing her water pitch and her water pot, to draw water. And when we read verse 7, it seems like very normal words, where it says a woman that's married came to draw water, and she says to her, give me a drink, it's hot. I need a drink of water. You have the picture, you have the water pot. I need a drink of water. Can you draw me some water to drink? But as we read further on, we see that what Jesus Christ is doing is something very unusual. For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans, Samaritans have no dealings with Jews, and Jewish men don't speak with Samaritan women. Also, as we read further on, we realize that the sprite of the woman isn't that he is a man, but that he is a Jew, because she, yes, is accustomed to speak. Or maybe we can even use the word flirt with men. Verse 9, we have these words where the Samaritan woman confronts Jesus, Jesus saying, then the woman of Samaria said to him, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink of water? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. How is it you are asking me for water? How can it be? Do you know who I am? Do you know who you are? You are a Jew. I'm a Samaritan. How can you be asking me for water? That just doesn't happen. That's not what you do. And then we had these words of Jesus. Words that raised questions in the woman's mind. What's this man speaking about? Why is he speaking to me? What is he looking for? We had these words in verse 10. Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift If you knew the gift of God, and who is it that says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. By the way, Jesus Christ brings the conversation a little more deeper, to a little higher plane. He talks about the gift of God, that which God gives. Now, when we study Scripture, we know that when the Bible speaks about the gift of God, it's speaking about what God grants unto us. We use the word grace, that God saves us from our sins. purely by grace, it's all of grace, that He came to us and He saved ourselves, not because we are worthy, not by what we have done with our hands, not by our way of living, not by the commands that we have fulfilled, but that He comes to us and that He saves us through the blood of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ is the gift of God, to man, that without Him there is no salvation. And that when we look within ourselves, when we come to know ourselves, we realize that we are but sinners in need of a Savior. And that Savior is Jesus, the One who came to save His people of their sins. If you knew, if you knew the gift of God, By saying, if you knew the gift of God, Jesus is implying, there's something that you just don't know. You are lacking something. I'm asking water of you, but I have something that you don't know, that you just don't get. And who is it who says to you, give me a drink? You would have asked him. And He would have given you. Then Jesus Christ used these words, living water. Living water. What is this living water? What does it mean that water has life? Yes, we must drink water every day. The doctors counsel us to drink water. We know that if we don't get water, we get thirsty. We know that after a few days of not drinking water, we'll die. Yes, water is necessary to life, but what is living water? How can water live? And not only that, but there's the well. I have the picture. How are you going to give it to me? The water's down there, 30 meters, 50 meters down. How are you going to draw the water up? How are you going to give it to me? Where is this water? There you're standing. I don't see any water. The water's down there. How can you give me this water? Sir, you have nothing to draw it with. And the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than Jacob? He and his servants had to dig this well out. Are you greater than Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock? And since then, this well has been giving us water and water and more water. Are you greater than Jacob? And Jesus answers and says to her, whoever drinks of this water, whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. This water you have to come to every single day, every single day. You and the other women have to come to this water, to well. And you have to draw this water out and you have to take the water back to your families every single day. But the water, that I offer unto you, when you drink of this water, you'll never have to come back and ask for more. Once you have this water, you will have life forevermore, and you will not die. You'll live everlasting. You'll have life. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst, but the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water, springing up into everlasting life." A couple of chapters later, Jesus Christ explains, He speaks again of that water that one receives that becomes in him a fountain, a spring of water that flows. And flows and flows and flows, much as we see the vision of Ezekiel, when the water, when the little rivulet comes from underneath the temple, the construction of the temple. We see a little rivulet coming from underneath the Holy of Holies. And it starts to grow and grow and grow and grow, to become such a deep river that one can no longer cross. And later on in the book of Revelation, from the throne of God comes a small river that again grows and grows and grows to eternal life. There you receive life. Here too, Jesus Christ speaks of the Holy Spirit that flows within us and grants us life. And grants life to others who come into contact with that Holy Spirit. Who become in Him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life. Oh, the woman's interested. This sounds good. This guy's offering me something. I don't know how he's going to give it to me, but it sounds pretty good. It sounds pretty good. Calvin speaks that in some way she's mocking him. Here she has a water pitcher. There's the water in the well. She's able to get the water. He's offering her water. And she's saying, how? How? How? Finally, she says, give it to me. In verse 15, the woman said to him then, Sir, give me this water, give me the water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw. Up to this moment, the conversation is, he's over there, she's over here, there's nothing to it for her. He's offering her water, so she plays along with him. Okay, you're going to offer me water. Everlasting water. Water that wells up to eternal life. So she clarifies what he's offering to her, and finally she says, give me this water. Sure, I'll take this water. Nothing to lose. Everlasting life. Don't know how he's going to give it to me. Don't know where he's going to get it from. But I'll take some. And then Jesus Christ says those words in verse 16. And changes the conversation. when he says to her, go call your husband and come here. Now, I know that women who are accustomed to speaking with men usually don't like the husband, if they have a husband, brought into the conversation. But Jesus Christ says it with her. Go call your husband and come here. And the woman answered and said, I have no husband. I have no husband. And then Jesus Christ says these words to her. When he says these words, he rips her life apart and reveals who she is. Nothing but a sinful woman, full of sin. A woman who had lived with five different husbands, and the man she was living with was not her husband. For he said to her, You have well said, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband, in that you have spoken truly. This is who you are. You've tried living with men. Maybe she was a beautiful woman, but a difficult woman to live with. And so she would go from man to man to man to man. And you have to realize in those days there was nothing that we call today birth control. Often these women would get pregnant and have children. We have a woman in our own church that is 82 and has lived with different men and has had children with different men. She's come to know Jesus Christ and she's an elderly woman. And as she thinks back to her life, and as she sees the fruit of her womb, and she sees the children she has born, and the discord that there are between her children, and the lack of love that they show to her. She finds it just so difficult. All those years I've been with all these different men and all these different children, and no one loves me. No one cares for me. I'm just an old woman that no one cares about. Well, this is the life that this woman had. living with different men, knowing that in the end, no one really cared for her, that she had lived a life of ill repute. And Jesus Christ rips that life apart and says, this is who you are. You are a lady dead in your sin and trespasses. You, yes, you are in need of eternal life. You are in need of this life. This living water, this water that can grant life forevermore. So she says to him, give me this water, Jesus Christ said, and you need it. And you need it desperately, and I have it to give to you. And the woman realizes that she's not talking with one other man in her life. But she is indeed speaking with someone who has come from God. For she says to him, Lord, I perceive that you are a prophet. You are a prophet. You are a man of God. Tell me, tell me, tell me how we can come to know God. How can we worship? How can we truly worship God? You Jews, you Jews. You worship there in Jerusalem. You say that's the place where we ought to worship God. We Samaritans, we worship God in this mountain, Mount Gerizim. Where can we worship God? How can we come to know God? Because I don't know God. I've tried it all. I've lived life. But where is God? How can we come to know God? How can we come to live in God? And Jesus Christ then says these words to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. It's not just the five books of Moses. It's all the Law and the Prophets. And yes, Jerusalem is the place where one had to worship God. But the hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor in this mountain one will worship God. The Lord says in verse 23, but the hour is coming. And now is when the true worshippers worship the father in spirit and truth for the father seeking such to worship with him. God is spirit. And those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. What is Jesus Christ saying? Jesus Christ just had come from the land of Judea. There His fear was not. There, too, they just had an external form of worship, laws made by man. This is what you must do to be saved. As a young man said to Jesus Christ, all these commandments, all these commandments I have done since I was a youth. I've completed everything. What more must I do? What more must I do to be saved, to enter into the kingdom of God? And Jesus Christ says, sell all that you have. Give everything to the poor. Your life, the life that you have developed for yourself, your riches and your commandments, nothing that you do will save you. But come, follow me. For life is not in what we do. Life is in the Spirit and in the truth. And Jesus Christ then goes into land of Samaria, where again, a man-made religion had replaced the true worship of God. And therefore, he comes to the Samaritan woman and reveals to her, her nakedness before God, that she indeed was a woman full of sin and evil. It's interesting where Jesus Christ takes this woman. For he brings her to the depth of her agony, the depths of her frustration with life, the depth of her lack of knowledge, of knowing how one can live in God. What could the woman do? She had two choices. She could either walk away, saying, this conversation has just gotten beyond me, and return to the faith of her fathers. Or she can make that one step more. Confronting her sin, confronting her evil, she can recognize that she is indeed in the presence of God. For she says in verse 25, the woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming who is called Christ. When he comes, he'll tell us all things. And Jesus says to her, I will speak to you. and He I who speak to you, and He in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. God confronts us in the midst of our sinfulness, and He commands us to recognize who He is, that only in and through Him we can have life, that without Him there is no spirit, there is no truth, because God is spirit, and we must worship Him in spirit and in truth. I work in a country where the traditional religion was Roman Catholic Church, the apostolic Roman Catholic Church. Apostolic in the sense of being built upon Apostle Peter. And that church reigned, we could say, upon the spiritual life of the people for 400 years. And then evangelical churches started coming in. The first missionaries came in, carrying Bibles on the back of mules. And they came distributing the Word of God. And the first 50 years were hard going. The Roman Catholic Church resisted the presence of the Scripture in Honduras. resisted the idea that people could have the Bible in their hands, and prohibited it. And little by little, the evangelical church started making inroads. People were being converted, they were being confronted with their sinfulness, they were being confronted with this man-made religion that just couldn't save, and that salvation was found elsewhere, not in following rituals. Not in the Mass, not in the baptism, not in the sacraments, but salvation was found in God alone. That was the first wave. And then the Pentecostal wave came into Honduras, that started adding in to the whole matter of proclaiming the Bible that it must also be emotionally filled. And so then, they brought in the loud music, the large worship services with a lot of emotion. But now we're having the third wave, what you call the apostolic and prophetic wave, which I prayed about, where one must receive a direct vision of God, and these relations that then pour in speak that if you want to be prosperous, you must do this or that, and God will be satisfied with you, and He will grant you prosperity. In this prosperity, in this world sense, you'll get a new car, a new house, a pleasing marriage, pleasing children, have a healthy life. If you just do these things, most of these things that they talk about are making a covenant with God and promising to give to God so much per month. If you do this, then God will do this for you. And people flock, they pour into these ministries, seeking to attain something, because so many are so poor and broken. Jesus Christ comes and says, Receive of me, he who believes in me, he who confesses his sin, he who comes to me, he who follows me, I will give him the gift of God, eternal life in me alone. Repent and believe. It's so easy, and yet for so many it's so hard, because only possible in the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit may help us be born again. Only those who receive God through the will of God. And so people come to me and say, what must I do to become a member of a church? What must I do to be saved? Jesus Christ says, come unto me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will grant you rest. Come to the Savior. He is the only one who can save us. And your life? How is your life? Where are your sins? Do you seek to hide your sins? Do you seek to just put on a veneer of Christian living? This is what I do to be a Christian, to show that I'm a Christian? Or have you had your heart ripped open? by the Spirit of God where all that is within us is revealed and you've come to acknowledge that you are but a sinner in need of a Savior. May indeed our God grant us hope and life that when we come to Him When we confess our sins to Him, that He indeed is faithful and just to forgive all of our sins. Because He is our God and He has granted us the gift of eternal life. May God indeed reign supreme in our hearts and in our lives. Amen. Let's come to our God in prayer. O Heavenly Father, we do confess that You are our God, that You are our Lord, that You are our King. We also confess, Lord God, that often we find life difficult. We confess that we are but sinners, and even though we may confess that Jesus Christ is our Lord, Even though we may confess that we have drunk deeply of the Word of Life, and we also recognize that sanctification can be such a slow process, and that we too have sinned, and that we sin, and that we are so in need of confessing our sin, and confronting our sins, and recognize that Jesus Christ indeed is our life. And Lord God, we confess that at times we seek to deal with you, Now that I've confessed your sin, I'm going to live a good life to please you. And think if that can in some way offset our sinful mess. But Heavenly Father, help us to realize that it's through you, and through your Spirit, through your strength that we can live a good life. In Christ. Being one with Christ. Being united with Christ. Oh Lord God, help us there for each day anew to come to you. to recognize the light that we have in You, to receive of You and to walk in You, to recognize that all that You say in Your Word, all is good, that You are a good and a loving God, that You have chosen us even before the foundation of the world to be Your people. Bless us and keep us in Your care, we pray, in Jesus' name's sake. Amen.