John 4:1-30 - Never The Same
Main Idea: We must have a life-changing encounter with Jesus.
AN ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS BRINGS NEW LIFE (vs. 7-15)
His life is for everyone.
His life is found in God alone.
His life is endless.
AN ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS IS UNCOMFORTABLY
PERSONAL (vs. 16-19)
He sees the real you.
He calls your sin “sin”.
AN ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS ISN’T ABOUT RELIGION (vs.
20-26)
Religious practices won’t save you.
Religious dogma isn’t a relationship with God.
To know Jesus is to surpass religious categories.
AN ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS IS CONTAGIOUS (vs. 27-30)
With Jesus, outsiders are welcomed in.
With Jesus, sharing your faith is simple.
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)
We are in John chapter 4. I've gotta turn my Bible over here. Okay, we've been in a study called The Word Became Flesh, and we've been looking at Jesus and the fact that he really did come to earth.
This isn't just a myth or a story. Jesus was like no other person.
He was incarnate God, that God, because of our sin, because we have all thought and said and done things that break God's law, that go against God's character and his nature, we are under God's, what he calls his wrath, his condemnation, that in God
is life, in God is safety, in God is love. And because we have all gone out of the way, we are not within that safety. Because of that, because of our wrongs, there has to be justice.
Because we have violated the laws of the sovereign ruler of the universe, there must be punishment.
But Jesus came and took all of that punishment on himself voluntarily, so that we would not receive punishment, but so that we would be children of God. Forever reconciled to him, never again under any condemnation, but forever the Lord's.
And in John 1-4, we've been seeing the eyewitness testimony of John the Apostle is he says, this is what Jesus was like. This is what he said, this is what he did. This is how he interacted with people.
Here's how people did not believe in him, even though he explained exactly who he was. Here are some of the miracles that he did and the conversations that he had with people.
And today, we are going to be looking at one of the more well-known conversations and stories that Jesus has in the Gospel of John. The title for the message today is never the same, and there's actually, Owen, a picture right before this.
And this is the very first picture that is ever-existent between me and my wife. This was in the piano practice rooms at college. As you can see, I've got just as much energy today as I did on that day.
Actually, no, I probably had some more energy back then. And my wife, fully smiling. At that point, she hadn't known me that long.
She was probably laughing at a few more of my jokes than she would today. But man, as I think back to my relationship with her, things have never been the same. My life was forever changed because I encountered her.
If you guys haven't heard the story before, we met because I went to the spring banquet with her roommate slash like lifelong best friend from like fifth grade. And her friend after the banquet, Samantha had a terrible date.
And when they got back to their room that night, Samantha was like, hey, how did your date go? And the girl was like, he's like a brother, but you'd really like him though, which is exactly the kind of like approval you want from someone.
Yeah, I don't know if you guys knew about that. So my life has never been the same since having met her and having a relationship with her.
There are plenty of people you interact with, and you are exactly the same after the end of knowing them or after a conversation with them. But today we're going to be looking in John 4 verses 1 through 30 at an encounter that a woman had with Jesus.
And she was never the same. And the town that she was in was never the same as a result of this encounter.
We're going to read verses 1 through 6 of the passage to start off with, and then we'll look at some of the different points and rest of the passage for today.
John chapter 4 and verse 1 says this, When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John, though Jesus himself was not baptizing but his disciples were, he left Judea and went again to Galilee.
Jesus wasn't interested in playing the whole comparison game. He knew what he was about as we read last week in John chapter 3. John knew that there wasn't any competition.
He wanted Jesus to increase and himself to decrease. He was concerned about Jesus. Verse number 4 says he had to travel through Samaria.
So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there and Jesus worn out from his journey, sat down at the well and it was about new.
Jesus, as we'll read today, he impacts the life of a woman and the lives of some townspeople and they would never be the same again.
But Jesus wants to impact your life today and this week, whether you've known him as Savior for many years, or if you have no idea what the Bible and Christianity is all about.
In fact, as we look at John 4 this morning, we'll see that like the woman at the well, we must have a life changing encounter with Jesus. Let's pray. We'll get into our message.
Dear God, thank you that you didn't just start off the universe and then leave us alone. You have been with us each moment of our lives.
When we have strayed far from you, when others have mistreated us, when we have been unloved and felt abandoned and forgotten, you have maintained us. You have kept us alive each moment. You have given us the clothes on our body.
You've given us the breath in our lungs. You have given us friends, family, places to be able to be, even this roof over our heads right now. But God, we don't just need to know about what you have done in general, or in the past, or for others.
We need to experience you today. And God, I ask that that would be true for people here. Lord, if there's someone today that does not know you're a Savior, they have never accepted you as their Lord.
They have never experienced the forgiveness that you offer freely through the cross. I ask that today they would make that decision to follow you. We love you, God, and pray all of this in your name.
Amen. We're going to see four aspects of a life-changing encounter with Jesus today. Four ways in which a life-changing encounter, like things we can count on.
An encounter with Jesus is not going to be 99.9% of the time, a giant light shining from heaven being like, hey, Daryl, I love you and I want you to follow me with your life.
Most of the time, a life-changing encounter with Jesus is going to be much like we see it today. It's going to be a conversation. It's going to be hearing from God's Word.
It's going to be realizing how God views us and what we're called to do as a result of the fact that God knows us. And the first of these is, we'll see today that an encounter with Jesus brings new life, an encounter with Jesus brings new life.
You can see this in verses number seven through 15. And the first of these things is that Jesus' new life is for everyone. Verse number seven, a woman of Samaria came to draw water.
The verse previous had told us this was at noon. This was the hot part of the day.
If you're gonna go get water, you're gonna go get water at like 6 a.m., 7 a.m., especially back in these times when, you know, you didn't have alarm clocks, you want to go at the coolest part of the day, not the hottest part of the day.
So this tells us something's different. This isn't like a group of people, a group of women that are coming. This is just one individual.
She came to draw water. Give me a drink, Jesus said to her, because his disciples had gone into town to buy food. So Jesus is sitting at the well.
Jesus doesn't have a bucket to draw out some of the water from. They didn't have water bottles back then, and not in every place did you have, you know, streams that would bring water to you. So a lot of times, there would be a well.
This particular well is actually still existent today, and nowadays is about 100 feet deep, and many people think it would have been even deeper during the time of Christ. So he asks for water, because his disciples had gone into town to buy food.
I think it's so interesting here. Anyone else in this exact same circumstance is not going to have an encounter with this woman like Jesus does. Number one, Jesus, it says, was worn out from his journey.
Some of you have met me when I'm tired and worn out. I've met some of you when you're tired and worn out. Our immediate thought is not, I want to bring new life.
I want to talk about the gospel with these people around me. Number two, not only was Jesus worn out, he was thirsty and he was hungry. Hence why the disciples went to buy food.
At the very end of the story, they come back, they have food and they're like, hey, like we need to make sure that Jesus eats. So Jesus in absolute necessity of everything that he would need. They've been walking, they've been going.
Jesus is exhausted and depleted in every single way. And yet, he takes time to talk to and love and care for this woman at the well. When you are depleted, how are you treating others?
How are you talking to others? How are you interacting with them? Are you treating them with love and care, even though you're kind of at the end of your rope?
Like Jesus was. The woman responds to Jesus. How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?
She asked him, for Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Her natural response is not like, yes, I'll get you a drink, or no, I won't get you a drink. She was just shocked that this man, this Jewish man, would talk to her.
During this time period, the region of Samaria was absolutely hated by the Jews during the first century. This was due to several centuries of conflict between the groups of people.
The Samaritans had once upon a time, ancestrally been Jews that had then intermarried with other peoples. They had incorporated like some false religions and false gods into their worship.
And so there was a lot of hatred between the Samaritans and the Jews. It was so bad that the Jews would often call the Samaritans dogs. If you know the story of Jesus giving the parable of the good Samaritan, it was a shocking thing.
Like perhaps a adequate comparison for us today would be as if Jesus gave the Samaritan of the good suicide bomber. Like that's how shocking it was that there would be these people that we look down on, that we view as terrible.
These are the enemies of us as God's people. And here Jesus is talking to this woman. He does not view her as his national enemy.
He does not view her as his racial enemy, as many people in that time would.
What's very interesting when it says that Jesus needed to go through Samaria is most of the time the good Jews, they did not pass through Samaria on their way from Jerusalem and Judea up to Galilee.
Normally, they crossed the Jordan, went up and then crossed the Jordan again over into Galilee, bypassing Samaria entirely. That's what was normal. But Jesus didn't view it this way.
He didn't go out of his way to avoid people. He went out of his way to engage with people, to talk with them, to share love with them. So this woman is shocked that this man, this Jewish man is asking for something from her.
Can I tell you today? Jesus' new life is for everyone. It doesn't matter if other people look down on you because of your background or because of your religious history or because of the actions that you've done or words that you've said.
Jesus loves you and he wants a relationship with you.
He wants to give you a new life so that you have the Holy Spirit, God's own presence living inside of you at all moments, that you would have a new spiritual family, that you would know that your sins are forgiven forever, that either when you die or
when Jesus returns, you have a home with him eternally. Jesus offers new life to everyone. But secondly, Jesus' new life is found in God alone. We can see this in verses 10 through 12.
Jesus answered, if you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, give me a drink, you would ask him and he would give you living water. Now, we might ask, what in the world is living water?
Some of us have been around the Baltimore Bay and we think through some algae that we've seen some living water before. What Jesus is talking about here is this is a source of new life.
This is fresh experience of reality in light of who God is and what he created this world to be. It's seeing life from the way that God views life.
It is a life that is able to experience love and joy and peace and thankfulness and gratitude, not because circumstances are perfect, but because we know the one who's in control of it all and we know how the story ends.
This particular claim that Jesus has of, I will give you living water, is a claim to deity.
In Jeremiah chapter two and verse 13, Jeremiah seven and verse 13, and in Zechariah 14 and verse eight, this was something in the Old Testament that the prophet said, this is what God will do.
God is the source of living water, of this fresh new life. So Jesus is Yahweh, the source of life, and he was the one that was coming to rule over all of the earth. Jesus is here making a statement, I am God, and I will give you new life.
Sir, in verse 11, said the woman, you don't even have a bucket, and the well is deep, so where do you get this living water? You aren't greater than our father Jacob, are you?
He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. So here the woman says, this living water thing, like you're not getting it from this well, and where in the world? She's misunderstanding here.
She's thinking he's talking about something physical, just as in the previous couple of chapters, if you'll remember the head of the banquet feast that Jesus was at at the wedding in Cain of Galilee.
He thought that there was brand new wine, but it was something, or he thought that there was the good old wine, and Jesus had made it in an instant.
You have the people at the temple where Jesus says, I will give you a sign of my authority, tear down this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up.
And they thought he was talking about the full temple complex behind them, and they said this took 46 years to build, and you're going to build it in three days. But he was talking about the spiritual.
He was talking about his body, his life, that he would give for us. Then in two weeks ago, we looked at the story of Nicodemus, and where he's interacting with Jesus, and Jesus says, you must be born again.
And Nicodemus thinks he's talking physically, and he says, can I go like a second time into my mom and be born again when I'm old? He's thinking physically, Jesus is explaining spiritual things.
Here, this exact same thing is happening with the woman. She goes, where in the world are you going to get this living water? She says, I've got people that I look up to.
She says, Jacob gave us this well, we live in this area, we're descendants of Jacob. And so that's a person that I look up to. That's a person that can get some stuff done.
I don't think you can accomplish the job, Jesus. But new life wasn't found in that well. It wasn't found in this woman's religion.
It wasn't found in even the religious leaders in Jerusalem, as we read at the very beginning, that the Pharisees are trying to stoke up this battle between Jesus and John the baptizer. And Jesus leaves and says, I'm not about that.
It's not about all of those things. New life is found in God alone. Jesus is the source of life.
He cannot do anything contrary to his nature, so he cannot have any other source of life. It is who he is and who he is exclusively. And he lets this woman know this.
But not only is Jesus' new life for everyone, and not only is new life found in God alone, but Jesus' new life is endless. We can read this in verses 13 through 15. Jesus said, everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again.
But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.
Verse number 15, sir, the woman said, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and come here to draw water. So again, she's still kind of thinking along the physical lines here, even though he's explaining it.
Jesus' new life is not just for one moment. It's not just that you maybe pray the sinner's prayer. You say, Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner.
I know that Jesus died and was buried and was raised again to pay for my sins. And I'm making you Lord of my life. Jesus' new life doesn't just end there.
It is, as the old song says, day by day and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here, trusting in my Father's wise bestowment. I have no cause for worry or for fear.
He whose heart is kind beyond all measure gives unto each day what he deems best. Lovingly, it's part of pain and pleasure, mingling toil with peace and rest. That Jesus' new life was not just for you if you've been saved 40 years.
Jesus wants to have that new well of living water spring up in you today. That the way you interact with people this afternoon or evening or tomorrow morning is reflective of the fact that you know Jesus, that you have been made new by him.
It's not just a once upon a time thing. It is an endless life. The Holy Spirit's work in you begins the day that you get saved, but he wants to work in you every single day of your life.
With the Holy Spirit in you, that well is springing up consistently, never ever running dry of the grace and strength and forgiveness you need for the moments in your life.
I love in Great is Thy Faithfulness that his mercies are new every morning, morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I've needed, Your hand has provided. Great is Your Faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
But from this, from his interaction with the woman, not only do we see that an encounter with Jesus is, that it brings new life, but an encounter with Jesus is uncomfortably personal. We can see this in verses number 16 through 19.
First today, that Jesus sees the real you. Verse number 16, go call your husband, Jesus told her, and come back here. I don't have a husband, she answered.
You've correctly said, I don't have a husband, Jesus said. We'll continue in verse 18 in one moment. Jesus knew who this woman was behind all of her objections, deflections, half-truths, and lies.
Yet his knowledge of who she really was, like her relationships, her personhood, he knew all of it.
Knowing who she really was didn't drive him away from her, or cause him to hate her, or judge her, but to love her enough to still call her to new life. Jesus is not calling out to you because he doesn't know how messed up you are.
He's calling out to you today, Christian or non-Christian, because he knows that you are a sinner in need of a savior.
You are a person consistently fighting through this life, not always doing everything right, but he loves you enough to see the real you. Very rarely do we open ourselves up fully to other people. People see our best face.
They see our social media side. They get the, how are you doing today? Oh, great.
They get that conversation at church. We don't often get to say, here's who I really am. Here are all of my doubts.
Here's where I'm struggling. Here's where I'm failing. But God sees the real you and he loves the real you.
Today, like bring it to Jesus. Bring it to the altar to say, God, you know that I'm struggling with this right now, but God, I know that you will not abandon me or forsake me because of my sin. So God, will you cleanse me?
Will you heal me? Will you restore me? Will you help me to bring this into the light?
Think of 1 John chapter 1 and verse number 9, where it says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
But an encounter with Jesus is uncomfortably personal, not just because he sees the real you, but because he calls your sin, sin. Verse number 18, he says, you've correctly said I don't have a husband, for you've had five husbands.
And the man you now have is not your husband. What you've said is true. Sir, the woman replied, I see that you are a prophet.
Certainly when you interact with someone you've never met before, and they can tell you how many marriages that you've had and your current living situation, you as well might go, yeah, I think this guy might be a prophet.
That or someone from the Las Vegas area. Won't get into that. What's so interesting about this woman, obviously much has been said about the woman over the years, sometimes warranted, sometimes not warranted.
Here, it doesn't specify whether this woman had been divorced five times, or if all five of her husbands had passed, or some combination of deaths or divorcements that had happened.
In ancient Israel in the first century, only men could initiate divorce. So what sometimes has been painted about this woman as, oh, she was just going through people all the time, isn't necessarily warranted from the text.
What we can know is that there was a lot of hardship and difficulty in this woman's life. For a person in the first century, especially a woman, as you're living your life, you don't have some of the opportunities that we have today here in America.
You lose a spouse, you can go to work, you can try and have like child care things. There's different government assistance programs. You don't have that in the first century.
You're kind of on your own and you're very reliant on a spouse to be able to provide some security and safety for you. And this woman had had five husbands. Jesus saw her and he still cared for her and loved her.
During that time period, some of the rabbis in Judaism, in Babylon, had said that a woman could only have three husbands.
That was the rule that they said, okay, even if they die, even if they get divorced, there is no more than three marriages allowed for a woman. As taken from the story of Judas' three sons in Tamar was kind of how they had arrived at that.
So this woman is already at 166% over her allotted amount of husbands back in the day. And whether she'd had five husbands that had died or was a five-time widow, Scripture doesn't tell us.
But Jesus does not simply let her know that he knew the difficulties in her past. He's not just saying, hey, I know about the five husbands that you've had.
He makes her aware that he knows the sin that she's currently engaged in, that she's living with a person that she is not married to in a cohabiting relationship. And certainly though our world does not view that as sin today, the Bible does.
But that didn't sway Jesus from saying, I want to love you and I want to save you and I want to help you. He lets her know, I know who you are, warts and all.
I know where your sin is, I know where your difficulties in your past are, and yet I am still offering you living water. If you're going to genuinely encounter Jesus today, then he will make you aware of what is wrong in your heart and your life.
When people get saved, especially adults, they often discover that they are much more cognizant of their failures, bad attitudes, and cruel words than they were before they accepted Christ.
This is because of what Isaiah the prophet discovered when he entered God's presence, is he enters the throne room of God, and he sees God in all of his majesty.
He sees the angels encircling the throne, crying out, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory.
And it causes Isaiah, a prophet, like a pastor in ancient Israel, to go, oh my goodness, woe is me, because I am an unclean person in the middle of a bunch of unclean people, and I've seen how amazing God is.
To know pure holiness and perfection shows you in shocking detail how imperfect and unholy you are. To interact with someone who is love will show you how unloving you are.
To genuinely encounter Jesus today, whether you're just accepting Christ, or whether you've been saved for 60 years, to genuinely encounter Jesus is to acknowledge your sins and your flaws and to confess that God is right in his declaration of our
faults. To deny our sin or to ignore it will result in us not having a life-changing encounter with Jesus, but merely having a useless conversation in which no one benefits. If we're not willing to say, God, I was wrong. I sinned.
I know that I sinned. I am in agreeance with you. That's that confessing.
It's saying the same thing about our sins that God does. That confession and repentance is the only way to have a genuine life-changing encounter with Jesus. Today, what does God want you to see that he knows about you?
That maybe you've whitewashed over a ton of different times. I've got our apartment before we moved in.
You know, there's tons of things that can often be worked on in your apartment, or if you throw a coat of paint over it, then you can't see it for a while. And certainly that was the case for different things in our apartment.
That was just like, okay, yeah, we'll just paint over this, and this is some future tenants' problem. I do want to make clear, I'm not the one that paints it, someone else paints it. But if we're not willing to say, God, will you know me?
Will you cleanse me from my sin? Then we're not going to have a real encounter with Him.
Third Lady Day, an encounter with Jesus, not only does it bring new life, and not only is it uncomfortably personal, none of us want to be wrong, none of us want to be told that we have sin or messed up in some way.
But an encounter with Jesus isn't about religion. So after the woman says, okay, sir, I perceive that you're a prophet.
She says in verses 20 and 21, as we look at religious practices not being able to save us, she says, our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, on Mount Gerizim. She says, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.
She now knows that Jesus knows all of her past, knows her present, knows what she's doing, and she tries to say, well, we're just from different religions. And so let's get off of me. Like we can have a religious conversation between the two of us.
And Jesus says in verse 21, believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. What he tells her is knowing God is far more important than where you worship.
Jesus re-centered her on what the actual conversation was about. That she did not need a new religious experience. She didn't need a new location.
She needed an encounter with God. She needed to know the God who had made her and loved her and wanted to offer her new life and living water. Today for you, you can pray a thousand Hail Marys.
You can get married in the Mormon temple. You can knock a hundred thousand doors with the Jehovah's Witnesses. You can get baptized as a Baptist, sprinkled as a Presbyterian, and give all of your possessions away to benefit others.
But without a personal relationship with Jesus, nothing matters. God is not primarily concerned with what you do, though he certainly wants you to do good and avoid sin.
God cares the most about your relationship with him, which isn't based on what you do.
If you were paralyzed for the rest of your life and rendered unable to speak forever, God would love you just as much as if you dedicated every minute of the rest of your life to full-time vocational ministry as a missionary to Southeast Asia.
Jesus isn't after a new religious experience for you. He's after your heart. But not only will religious practices not save us, but religious dogma isn't a relationship with God either.
Verse 22, Jesus says, you Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know because salvation is from the Jews.
Here in this time period, the Samaritans had mixed the worship of the God of the Old Testament with some pagan gods, and it was all kind of a giant stew. Whereas the Jewish people had relied on what God had said in the Old Testament.
They weren't practicing idolatry. They were following the different feasts and things that God had.
And so here, that's what Jesus is saying to the woman, that the truth of the Jewish religion that Jesus was in at that point, of saying, this is the God of the Old Testament and all of his promises about the Messiah that came true in Jesus Christ,
and why we have the New Testament. He says, that part's true.
But I think it is interesting that even as he says this to the woman, he started this journey down to, or upwards to Samaria, because the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees, the ones that knew what they worshiped, they didn't have a relationship with
Jesus. They were focused on doing all the right things and not on knowing God personally. Many self-professed Christians are in that exact same boat today. They know things about Jesus and the Bible and salvation.
Might be able to tell you about them. But they have never surrendered their lives to Jesus and made him their Lord. Jesus said it this way in Matthew 7.
Not everyone who says to me in that day, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven, which as we would know from the rest of scripture, is accepting Christ as our Savior.
He says, on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name? Then I will announce to them, I never knew you. You can cast out demons.
You can preach for 60 years. It's not the same as knowing Jesus. Search your heart today.
God, has there ever been a time where I've turned from my sin and I've turned to you to say, God, I can't have this relationship with you on my own. This is only gonna come through the work of Jesus.
I believe in Jesus and what he did, his payment for my sin. Once we know Jesus, certainly there is a whole world of opportunities for us to do good and to follow God. But it has to stem from knowing Jesus.
Next, to know Jesus, it's not about religion. To know Jesus is to surpass religious categories.
Jesus goes on to say in verses 23 through 26, But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. The woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.
She says, hey, you're explaining to me a lot about like God and the future, your prophesy in my past. I know that the Messiah is going to tell us everything when he shows up. You're telling me a whole lot of everything.
Jesus says in verse number 26, Jesus told her, I, the one speaking to you, am he. He says, you've got it.
As we looked in John chapter 3, where Jesus says, hey, like we are testifying of the truth, and he tells Nicodemus, you guys aren't receiving our testimony.
But here, this woman from a hated race, a hated religion, not the right gender to talk to by first century standards, a person that was ostracized in God through hardship, she recognized what even the religious leaders could not, that it was about
Jesus. Religion says, what do I need to do? Truly knowing Jesus and experiencing his new life means that we ask, how can who I am reflect the one who loves me? Christianity isn't primarily about performing lists of actions.
It's about becoming like Jesus in our attitudes, our thoughts, our words, our actions, our giving, our singing, and every other part of who we are. This isn't something that can be manufactured.
It's something that the Holy Spirit does inside of us as we follow the truth we know about God from his word.
This is what Jesus tells the woman, that those that worship God must worship him from who they really are, their spirit, and that they must worship the actual God and not counterfeits in any way. They must worship in truth.
So an encounter with Jesus, it brings new life. It's uncomfortably personal. It isn't about religion.
And lastly today, an encounter with Jesus is contagious. First, with Jesus, outsiders are welcomed in. Verse number 27, just then his disciples arrived and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman.
Yet no one said, what do you want? Or why are you talking with her? Some of the Jewish teachings at that time in the Mishnah cautioned against talking too much with women.
The rationale was that doing so was asking for trouble, and it wasted time better spent studying scripture. In the Mishnah, spending too much time with women instead of the scripture would result in eternal condemnation.
Jesus, however, didn't care what the Mishnah said, or that no respectable rabbi would be seen talking with a woman in public. He cared about the outsider, the sinner, the one with the hard life. Whoever you are today, God loves you.
You are not beyond his reach. You may feel like you're alienated from other people. You may feel like you don't fit into a church crowd.
But Jesus loves you. He died for you. Right now, he is offering you that same new life that he offered this woman.
Jesus loves outsiders. Can I tell you, who can you invite to Jesus this week? Don't question if someone is too conservative, too liberal, too young, too old, too atheist or too religious.
Jesus wants everyone. You're a Republican co-worker. Jesus died for him and wants a relationship with him.
You're Democrat niece. Jesus loves her with an everlasting love and wants to bring her into God's kingdom forever. There is no one outside the scope of Jesus' love and forgiveness.
So welcome in the outsiders to have a personal encounter with Jesus. And lastly today, with Jesus, sharing your faith is simple.
Verse 28, Then the woman left her water jar, went into town and told the people, come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? They left the town and made their way to him.
If your faith is real and healthy, the natural outflow is to share it with others. And can I be honest? This is a hard one.
As a people pleaser and as an imperfect person, it's hard for me in my sinfulness to risk bringing up to people that God loves them and wants to know them and has a wonderful plan for their life and eternity.
It's hard for me to tell people that I've messed up in front of or been unkind to that I serve a God who is perfect, even though I'm definitely not.
But the truth for us today, the Jesus calls our sins in, the truth is the only alternative to sharing Jesus is disobedience.
We often think about praying and reading our Bibles and going to church as regular healthy Christian activities, and they are.
But we should never discount the obedient task of telling other people what Jesus has done for us and what he wants to do for them. This woman at the well never took an apologetics or evangelism class. She could not have passed a theology exam.
She wasn't a pastor or a deaconess or a formal evangelist. But as soon as she knew who Jesus was, she couldn't help telling other people. When was the last time that you told someone about Jesus?
Not about church or about your political views based on the Bible. When was the last time you actually talked about Jesus and how he saved you?
If it's been a while, can I encourage you, when we go to pray here in just a moment, first, ask God to forgive you for neglecting to share the good news with others. Second, ask God to remind you of what it felt like when you first accepted Jesus.
Ask him to re-instill that first love, that fiery, impulsive, excited devotion to Jesus that you once had, and that it would motivate you to share Christ with your world. Today, we must have a life-changing encounter with Jesus.
Have you found new life in Jesus?
If you've never experienced that, as I'm talking about salvation, asking Christ to save you eternally that he would be your Lord, and you have no idea what that's about, I would love to talk with you after the service about how you can know that
Jesus is your Savior and that you have new life in him. For the believer today, are you going back to Jesus again and again for more new life?
When was the last time that you were aware of what God calls sin in your life, and you chose to abandon that sin? We really like looking at the sins of others and pointing them out and saying how everyone else needs to change and shape up.
When was the last time we had an encounter with Jesus that we went, oh, I was a jerk here, I lied here, I shouldn't be doing this, I shouldn't have said that? When was the last time that you encountered Jesus and what he calls sin in your life?
Today, are you more focused on traditions, practices, dogma, programs or on encountering Jesus and helping others encounter him as well? Who's one person that you can share Jesus with in this upcoming week?
If God's bringing a name to your mind, start plodding through. How am I going to have that conversation with him? When's it going to happen?
What day? How can I take time to put an importance on what Jesus did for this woman, on what Jesus did for me? How can I share Jesus with others?
We're going to go to a moment of prayer, time of invitation to ask you however God spoke to you today.
If there was something that was highlighted from the passage, something that God brought to your mind, maybe that wasn't even said, will you respond to God in obedience? God brought up a sin that you've been holding on to.
Repent, turn from it, and turn to Jesus and His new life. If you don't know Jesus today, again, please talk to me after service. I would love to open up a Bible and show you exactly how the Bible says that you can receive His free gift of salvation.
