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The Gospel of John | John 4:1-26 · Bayside Davis Podcast

0:04
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bayside Davis podcast.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: You are now listening to our current teaching series in the Gospel of John.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: We have been in a series in John.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: John is really special because it's written last of the four Gospels.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: It's a bit more poetic, it's a bit more dramatic than the other Gospels.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: And so the writer himself already knew the other three narratives that have been circulating about Jesus.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: So why write yet another account?
0:40
SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna write the story again a fourth time, you better have something new, a different angle.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: And so, what were the elements that the writer wanted to bring attention to?
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, John tells us plainly in chapter 20, verse 30 and 31.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name, so that you may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: And so, how will we in this story see Jesus move from being a man to a prophet to the Messiah?
1:29
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna find out in the account of the Samaritan woman at the well.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: This is the longest recorded dialogue between Jesus and any other.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: And before we get there, we have some important business to attend to.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: This is an iconic story, and it's easy to skip past the first three verses where it says, Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making more and baptizing more than John, and he departed.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: Verses one through three tells us that Jesus is not interested in the crowds.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Jesus goes deliberately to the one.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: This is a powerful reminder for me, even as a campus missionary.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: I consistently face the temptation to grow, to scale, to make numbers in our student ministry the metric of my success.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm moving this summer to start a new Chi Alpha chapter.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: Already I've been thinking, what will our ministry look like at year zero, at year one, at year two?
2:33
SPEAKER_00: And I'm tempted to look at things numerically.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: And personally, I hope to be famous one day.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but at the very least, I hope that I get to have influence like the likes of Tim Keller, Elijah Lamb, John Mark Homer, Tim Mackey, Wesley Town, even the small popularity that I have in Davis is something I can get a buzz on.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: It feeds something in me, probably exposing a spiritual poverty.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is not like that.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: He leaves the masses and goes deliberately to the one.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Now he had to go through Samaria.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: We have to wait right here.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Because any observant Jew would have immediately raised eyebrows.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: He had to go through Samaria.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: That's that's like if us and David saying we have to get to Sacramento, we have to go through woodland to get to Sacramento.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't make any sense.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: You just hop on the I-80, the causeway.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: Why would you take a detour to Woodland and then finally get to Sacramento?
3:39
SPEAKER_00: You would only do this if you needed to intentionally avoid the causeway.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: And so it was the trek from Judea to Galilee.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: Here's a map.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Down here, this is Judea, this is Jerusalem.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: And they gotta get up there to Galilee.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: And you can see there's three paths.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: There's this one directly in the middle, they pass through Samaria, and then there's an alternate path.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: This middle path would have taken about three days walking journey.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: So why then do most Jews know of the alternate eastern path that would have taken five to seven days?
4:17
SPEAKER_00: Because there is a deep historic, racial, and theological divide between the Jews and the Samaritans.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: So when the text says that he had to go through Samaria, we know that this was because Jesus was on a specific mission.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: A specific mission that would lead to the most scandalous exchange between Jesus and an individual.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5 and 6, Jesus comes near a well.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Jacob's well.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Jacob's well, which is near Mount Gerizim, the religious site for the Samaritans.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: This was, in a sense, at the heart of the Samaritan faith.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus sits there weary.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: Jesus as a man.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: And no matter your stance on Christianity, there is robust evidence that a man truly named Jesus lived in the first century.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: At minimum, a historical figure that has significant influence in which we still feel the echoes of today.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Today is the year 2026, 2026 years since what?
5:21
SPEAKER_00: Since someone named Jesus.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: This is a real man, weary.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: And it is the sixth hour, it is noontime, the hottest time of day, the brightest time of day.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7: a woman from Samaria comes to draw water.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Why to draw water does she arrive at noon?
5:41
SPEAKER_00: Did she just wake up late like some of us did today?
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Not likely.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: In fact, as we read, we'll see exactly, or maybe why she came to draw water at noon instead of the early morning, like the other ladies would have.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: The historical divide.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, we have King David, and after King David, we have King Solomon.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: After King Solomon, the kingdom starts to fall apart, it splits into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: The southern kingdom held Jerusalem as its capital, whereas the northern kingdom held Samaria as its capital.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: And there were civil wars, and eventually a group called the Assyrians came and they decimated the northern kingdom.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: That's some history.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: And so the Assyrians they end up killing or deporting most of the people in the northern kingdom and replacing them with foreigners from other conquered lands.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: And so the surviving remnant of mostly women and children from the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, they began to intermingle with these foreigners.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: And this intermingling is what caused the Samaritan people.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Whereas in the Southern Kingdom, the Assyrians did not destroy them.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: And so the Southern Kingdom, the Judeans there, they got to continue to marry with one another.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this racial tension of a pure Jewish heritage and a mixed Samaritan.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: There's a historical divide, a racial divide.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: There's also a theological divide.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritans only held to the first five books of the Torah and emphasized true worship could only occur on Mount Gerizim, which is in Samaria.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the Jews held that the only proper worship would be acceptable at the Temple Mount, which is in Jerusalem.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: And so both sides, Samaria and Jerusalem, are looking at each other, saying, We are the true worshipers.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: So the tension is thick as this Jewish man asked for a drink from a Samaritan woman.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: But we had to know, but we know that Jesus had to go through Samaria.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus, he steps across the tension of history, race, and theology, and he sets this up.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: He says, If you knew what this gift was, if you knew who I was, here I imagine the writer of John just getting giddy, thinking about this setup, because his whole point is to show that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: If only she knew who Jesus was.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: But right now, Jesus is just a man, just a man, a Jewish man.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus presents an interesting offer, living water, a gift, he calls it, not something to be earned, but something to be freely received, a gift of living water, which could be translated as just simply running water or moving water.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: There's a double entendre, and it's important to understand that she points out that if you had a bucket and rope, you could give me this moving water, saying, Sir, if you have nothing to draw with the well is deep, where can you get this living water?
9:24
SPEAKER_00: She's understanding things in the natural sense.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: Does that remind you of Nicodemus saying, To be born again, do I just enter into my mother's womb a second time?
9:35
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, if Jesus had a bucket and rope, he could bring that bucket all the way down and get moving water, which actually set me down a rabbit hole of how do ancient wells even work?
9:48
SPEAKER_00: I had no idea.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Because I thought even if Jesus did have a bucket, if he scooped water down there, it would be still water, right?
9:56
SPEAKER_00: That's not moving water.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: What I understood is actually that's a cistern.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: A cistern just simply collects rainwater and it's definitely still water, not living water.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: But this is the well of Jacob.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: This is what's called a spring-fed well.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: I watched a whole video on this.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: I'll try to summarize it.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: It's rainwater collected, it's filtered through soil and rocks until it hits a material at the bottom that it can't pass through like clay, and the water begins to collect, so it's a water table, and it's going down a gravity gradient, so it's falling, so it is moving.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: Spring-fed wells have moving water, although very slowly.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: It's still moving and living, and Jacob's well today still produces water.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: This blew my mind because it re-emphasized the importance of these wells where life could happen, where there's clean water, there's something for humanity, and it's essential for religious worship to have access to clean water, is to have access for ritual cleansing and ceremony.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: So Jacob's well becomes incredibly important because it became a place to provide for his children, giving them access to life.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: Continuing, verse 12, are you greater than our father Jacob?
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Touching back on that racial and theological tension, are you saying that you're better than our great patriarch?
11:18
SPEAKER_00: This well has given us life to his sons and life's off.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: This is where things started.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13 and 14, Jesus does not take the debate bait, or in Gen Z terms, Jesus does not get rage baited.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: Instead, again, he says, Whoever drinks this water will never be thirsty again.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: The water that I will give him will become a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Jesus saying, This moving water, this living water, will actually become in of itself a spring of water that will keep giving, that will keep producing all the way up to eternal life.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: In Genesis 2, we read of the first time there's a river of water that flows out of Eden, which watered the garden, giving life.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Humans were able to enjoy freely, but in their thirst for wisdom and self-preservation and choosing their own ways, they forfeited their access to this living water, choosing sin.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: Then again, Jacob in Genesis 3, where he buys this plot of land for this well, this well that would give life to the family, that continues the biblical storyline.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: But these humans too would thirst for their own power and their own self-preservation spiral into pain and violence.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: The human story is predictable.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: So when we get to John 4, we meet this man at this well, a man, a prophet, or a messiah who's offering living water.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: Could it be that this spring of living water could finally stop the human thirst?
12:55
SPEAKER_00: Could it be the Messiah himself?
12:57
SPEAKER_00: Could it be like Revelation 22, the last page of the Bible, the river of water, the life bright as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb?
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Could it be?
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Maybe she's wondering.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: So she says in verse 15, Sir, give me this water that I will not be thirsty or have to come back here.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: Notice she doesn't address the eternal life part yet.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna assume, I'm just gonna input my interpretation.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: I think all she heard was the immediate never thirst, never come back.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: I think that she immediately got sent back to her own reputation, her own immediate and earthly needs.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: She knows that if she were to never thirst again, she would never have to come back to this place of scorn.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: She knows that when she comes here at noon, she's at noon to avoid the morning crowd.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: She heard that there's a fix for her own reputation.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: She knew she could get something out of this, but would this truly quench her real thirst?
14:00
SPEAKER_00: Jesus isn't satisfied with meeting our earthly needs.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows what our real spiritual needs are.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: He's about to go for what her soul truly needs.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: And so we get go and call your husband and come here.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine the woman at the height of hearing a possible fix for her most immediate need, her reputation?
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine her blood running ice cold as she hears this man say to her, go and call your husband?
14:40
SPEAKER_00: I have no husband.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Can you continue to use your imagination with me?
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Your sanctified imagination.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: I know this is not great, exegesis, but just imagine with me.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: How many times do you think she's practiced that line?
14:54
SPEAKER_00: I have no husband.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Was it after the first time?
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Was it after the second time, the third time?
15:05
SPEAKER_00: Jesus responds, verse 18, 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.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: What you have said is true.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine the ocean of shame washing over her, how exposed she feels.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, it's assumptive to automatically conclude that she must have just been immoral five times.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: Divorce culture in the ancient Near Eastern world is not initiated by a woman.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Nonetheless, she carries the shame of brokenness, avoiding the normal time to draw water, to come at noon where the sun is hottest.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: My own parents went through divorce, so now it's in fifth grade.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: I remember my mom and I going to separate churches so that she wouldn't have to deal with the eyes and the crawling questions of why she shows up with the son and no husband.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: I know secondhand the shame and pain attached.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: But she presses on.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: She says, Sir, I perceive you are a prophet.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Our fathers worshiped on this mountain.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: But you say that in Jerusalem, the place is where you're supposed to worship.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is beginning to move from being a man to being a prophet.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: She's saying that Jesus is not merely a man, but something more, someone elevated.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: And she brings up her own religious and ethnic heritage, again, appealing to the patriarchs of her religion, showing the divide between her and the Jews.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Again, she's masterful at changing the conversation from her husband to worship sites.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: Deflection may be something she's practiced too many times.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Jesus in verse 21 again does not take the debate bait.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: It says, he said, instead, he says, the hour is coming where neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem you will worship the Father.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: What?
16:57
SPEAKER_00: I understand the first part, neither on this mountain to say we have one up on you on the Samaritan.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: It's not on this mountain, it is gonna be in Jerusalem.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: But he says, instead, nor in Jerusalem.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: What is he saying?
17:10
SPEAKER_00: He's beginning to flip the script.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: But let's continue reading.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Verses 22 to 24.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: The hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: For the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: Let's slow down here for a second.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21 presents that it's not on their mountain, and it's not on the Jewish mountain or the mountain in Jerusalem.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: This seems to level the playing field.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: But then in verse 22, we see that salvation is from the Jews.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: So is there a preference for the Jews?
17:53
SPEAKER_00: Help me a lot to understand this.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not platforming one to be better worshipers.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: There is an important, but there is an important distinction that the Jews have been the ones that God entrusted with, with the covenant, the laws, the prophets, and the promises.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: God did make his promise to a particular group of people and Jew and Jesus himself is Jewish.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus acknowledges the divide between Samaritan and Jews, but he goes on to show that God, that what God is doing through the Jews, the Jew, is now available beyond the Jews.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: But he goes on to show that what God is doing through the Jews is now available beyond the Jews, and it's starting with her, a Samaritan, to bring for the first time in history between Samaritans and Jews reconciliation because true worship is not about a place, but about a person.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: True worship is not about an ethnic identity, but the identity of Jesus as the Messiah.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: It is beyond custom, ritual, ceremony, going through the motions.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: And what does it mean that the true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth?
19:04
SPEAKER_00: That God is spirit.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: I believe to worship in spirit is to worship God with an authentic heart attitude, not just an empty routine or a ritual, not tied to a location, but involving the whole heart, soul, and mind.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: That is to worship God with our spirit in spirit.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: But we know the tension is that in our in our natural flesh we can't do this.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: We see the predictable human story, how we thirst for power and self-preservation.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: Our choices spiral into pain and violence.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: We need the Holy Spirit.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, this living water is in direct connection to the Holy Spirit.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: We cannot worship in spirit and in truth without the Holy Spirit.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: We know in our own strength and flesh we fall short in choosing God's way, but praise God, for we see the Holy Spirit being poured out on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, 50 days after Easter, which is today.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: Today is Pentecost Sunday.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Today the Holy Spirit is available to you.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: This living water is available to you.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 36, 26 and 27.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: I will give you a new heart.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: A new spirit I will put within you.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statues and being careful to obey my rules.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: This new spirit that's poured out in Acts 2 will result in a new heart, a new life.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit inside us, like a river of water, leading us to walk according to his ways, no longer according to the flesh, that by yielding to the Holy Spirit will bear much fruit, like it says in Galatians 5.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: Against such things, there is no law.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: To worship in spirit and to worship in truth, to worship God according to who God is in Scripture, to worship in alignment to what the word says and not what we feel.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: That we should worship according to what his terms are, not what our terms are.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: The woman said to him, verse 26 and 27, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: When he comes, he will tell us all things.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritans, although they only held to the first five books and so didn't accept Isaiah, Ezekiel, or Jeremiah, they still put their hope in a coming Messiah.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: This is out of Deuteronomy 18 18.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: I will raise up.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: For them, a prophet like you among their brothers.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritans, too, were awaiting a Messiah.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: The woman, too, was longing for someone to set things right.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: A Messiah, meaning a leader, a king, a savior who will put all power back to this rightful owner, someone that they would submit to with complete allegiance, not just a man, not just a prophet, but the one who would save.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, in a rare moment, shares his identity.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: He is who she has been looking for.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: And she gets it.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: She gets it.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is being moved from a man to a prophet to the Messiah.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: This is astounding because this is in contrast with just the last chapter, Nicodemus, who we don't see getting it.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: This is a Samaritan, not a Jew.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: This is a woman, not a man.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: This is an unnamed person, not Nicodemus.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: This is an outcast with a tattered reputation.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus is influential with a strong reputation.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: This is a religious outsider, not a religious insider, and yet the person that gets it is the Samaritan woman, Jesus as the Messiah.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: That's what John wants us to know.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritan woman understands this.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: This happens thematically all over the gospels.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: The religious supposed to be close to Jesus, not getting it, but the religious outsider understanding the lepers, the prostitutes, the immoral, the outcast.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: This serves as a helpful reminder for any of us in the room today who can immediately identify with the weight of brokenness, like this Samaritan woman.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is able to reveal himself freely.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: This is where I was in 2017 when I was broken by my own choices, choosing my own ways.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: When I came before Jesus, I know I had nothing to offer him.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: And yet he met me with living water.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: I believe that it's in our broken state that we are finally able to enter a humble posture of which Jesus is able to freely reveal himself in a way we won't deny.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritan woman had no choice in managing her encounter.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: She had nothing left to hide.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: She must face Jesus in her vulnerability.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: And here Jesus finds the space to reveal who he is as he teases.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: I who speak to you am He.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: This is a teaser for what we're going to read later in John chapter 8, 58, as Jesus is being questioned by the Pharisees if he's greater than their father Abraham.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: And it's like he's talking about Abraham as if he knew him.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: And so they say, You are not yet 50 years old.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen Abraham?
24:28
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: A direct call back to Exodus 3.14 of God's great declaration of who he is.
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SPEAKER_00: He says, I am that I am.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritan woman gets this.
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SPEAKER_00: So this is a hopeful reminder for those of us who are struggling, downtrodden, broken by sin, but there is yet also a reminder to the religious.
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SPEAKER_00: Some of us, most of us, can probably relate better to Nicodemus.
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SPEAKER_00: You're educated, you're morally serious, you're helping others.
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SPEAKER_00: You grew up in church, you've heard this sermon a million times, you've protected your reputation, but you're not sure if you've quite gotten it.
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SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus, unlike the Samaritan woman, is able to come at night.
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SPEAKER_00: He's able to carefully control his own reputation.
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SPEAKER_00: In other words, he came on his own terms.
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SPEAKER_00: We, especially like those of Nicodemus, are in a more dangerous spot.
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SPEAKER_00: We who grew up in church, we must carefully assess if we're showing up to Jesus only with what we're comfortable with.
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SPEAKER_00: Jesus is able to reveal himself when we are fully vulnerable.
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SPEAKER_00: And later we do see Nicodemus.
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SPEAKER_00: He finally does understand who Jesus is by his involvement to bury the body of Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: But unlike Nicodemus, you don't have to get it later.
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SPEAKER_00: You can get it now.
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SPEAKER_00: You can get it today.
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SPEAKER_00: To see Jesus as Messiah, it's to see him as the one who died for us, that by his death and resurrection we can have true living water.
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SPEAKER_00: One last imagery about the water.
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SPEAKER_00: It's in John 19, 34, as Jesus is up on the cross, hanging for us, dying, a Roman soldier pierces his side with a spear.
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SPEAKER_00: John records both blood and water flowing out.
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SPEAKER_00: The water to symbolize purification, life, and the Holy Spirit, and the blood to symbolize sacrifice and forgiveness, for without the shedding of blood, there cannot be a forgiveness of sins, it says in Hebrews 9 22.
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SPEAKER_00: So can I ask for you personally, just like the Samaritan woman, has Jesus moved from a man to a prophet, a teacher to the Messiah of each of your own lives?
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SPEAKER_00: Not just a historical figure, not just someone great, but the one who came to save us from ourselves, from our sins, from our brokenness.
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SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows exactly what our spiritual needs are, not just the physical ones.
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SPEAKER_00: He knows exactly what to save us from.
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SPEAKER_00: He is ready to break through any barrier, theological, historical, racial.
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SPEAKER_00: He's ready to break through shame and pain.
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SPEAKER_00: So we don't have to be afraid to come near Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to verse 16.
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SPEAKER_00: The most exposing statement Jesus makes to the Samaritan woman.
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SPEAKER_00: He doesn't solve our problems the way we think.
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SPEAKER_00: So going back to verse 16, go and call your husband.
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SPEAKER_00: Let us consider what statement would Jesus say to you that would make your blood go ice cold?
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SPEAKER_00: What is your equivalent to go and call your husband?
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SPEAKER_00: Is it go and call the family that's been falling apart?
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SPEAKER_00: Is it go and call your heartbreak?
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SPEAKER_00: Is it go and call your depression?
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SPEAKER_00: Is it go and call your friends who ghosted you or your failed class or not knowing what you're doing next year or your search history or whatever it is?
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SPEAKER_00: What is your go and call your husband?
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SPEAKER_00: Your most hurting, most parched, the most thirsty part of your life.
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SPEAKER_00: Can you hear him asking now?
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SPEAKER_00: I believe he asks in order to tell you I who speak to you am He.
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SPEAKER_00: I am here to give you living water.