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[0:00] Before I get into the sermon, I wanted to, Dave kind of touched on it, I wanted to use this opportunity for some prayer, and I wanted to talk about the desperate necessity we have for prayer just within the body as we live our lives as God has called us to.

[0:26] And it was interesting, just last night I spent the evening with Daniela and many of her friends that she lives with in Langley, and one of the questions that the husbands had asked me quite a bit, how were you when Daniela was in the hospital? And I said, I think I was okay. And I said, if anything went really bad, I guess it would be up to the church to pick up the pieces.

[0:56] But what I was containing, I said, you know, I think what really got us through that was the power of prayer, just the love that we've received just through that time. And not only am I thanking you again for that time, and of course, for all the wonderful chocolates that Daniela didn't eat, but I wanted to call our attention to some of those in our body that do desperately need prayer right now. And I thought we would take a little bit of a prayer meeting. So just this morning, Tracy Devlin has been taken to the hospital. Ryan's kind of leaving it open-ended, but she believes it might be a blood clot. So that's why Dave's not here. So Dave is with Tracy right now at the hospital. So I want to pray for Tracy. I also want to pray for Janet Van Zeele.

[1:51] That's tough. There's no cure for what she has. And just the emotional, just for her and Henry as they go through. Pray for Kevin, just as he was just sharing this morning. They say his heart's okay.

[2:06] So sometimes it's just you got to wait till things happen before the doctors address it in the best way possible. So we're going to pray for patients and God's loving kindness on them. Do you remember Kevin Kovacs? He was the one you guys were going to hire before me. Do you remember him when he came out here?

[2:29] Do you guys have any memory of him? Jason Kovacs, sorry. Anyhow, they don't know him, Dave. Okay, anyway, he was the pastor that they had talked about, but it turned out they couldn't come here.

[2:40] He's got a wife, Shonda, that's now at a special medical clinic. So Jason is highly involved with Dave in the biblical counseling. And he's one of the guys who's spearheading the biblical counseling movement in Canada. They had to move down back to the States because of his wife's health, but I was just talking with him yesterday. So now she's down in Mexico and she's at a special clinic.

[3:03] Not only is she allergic to mold, but there's a whole bunch of other things that are beating down on her. So he asked for prayer in the last one that I just got word yesterday, just praying for Jezel.

[3:16] She's got to see a surgeon very soon because they found some, as you know, Jezel just survived leukemia and dealing with cancer. So anyway, we have some people that are in some pain during this time.

[3:42] So I thought we could come as a body and pray for each and every one of those saints that gather here. You guys with me on this? All right, let's go before the King of Kings.

[3:56] Dear Lord, Heavenly Father, who we just, these are the people that you have called your own. These are the people that you love and know more than we do. Many of them are walking through, some people have been walking through some storms of life for a while, and they continue to trust on you. Some people are kind of in and out of the storms and these trials that happened. And some just come out of nowhere. Lord, we just lift up Tracy this morning right now at the hospital. I pray for wisdom and that the doctors have the very best people there that are able to identify and figure out what comes next, oh Lord. Pray for David just as he's with her.

[4:50] But we pray that it isn't what she thinks it is. But we pray for your mercies as they go forward, trying to deal with what comes next, oh God. I pray for the love of this church to continue pouring out on them as they wonderfully poured out on me and my wife, especially during this time of our need. Father, lift up Janet just as she is home, but here with us in spirit and with us on video and demonstrating true resilience with the knowledge that the Lord is calling her home.

[5:39] Pray that you would encourage her heart, strengthen her heart. May she cherish every time that she gets with her grandchildren and her children during this time. Lift up Shonda just as she needs to live in Mexico to get the treatment.

[6:00] I pray that you will provide the money for the Kovacs family so that they would be able to meet their financial needs. That you would give Jason just the wherewithal of caring for his kids and managing life in California and getting down to be with his wife as often as he can just to care and love her.

[6:28] Lift up Kevin, oh Father, in just the mystery of the heart in so many ways. Father, now it seems that he feels strong, but I pray that whatever show itself would keep Kevin safe and healthy and give the doctors a clear path to go in order to figure out what to do to help him and strengthen him.

[6:54] And last, we just lift up Jezel. Just as she expects her husband to be moving back here to be with her this very month.

[7:09] Pray you'd strengthen, that you would give the tests would reveal that there's nothing more, no more cancer there.

[7:20] I pray that you'd settle her spirit as she goes in for surgery. That you'd be with her family that is far away from here, that would be caring for their daughter.

[7:35] I know she's got such a wonderful support system of friends here. And I pray that we would continue to minister and love her as she has been so wonderfully ministering and loving us here, oh God.

[7:46] Thank you for all that you do for us. You have used each of our stories to identify with each of the people here.

[8:03] And I pray that the saints' hearts would be tugged in the way to minister to those people that they can most identify with. Lord, give us a blessing on this Sunday, but more importantly, give us a blessing on this year as we just come through this COVID situation.

[8:23] We thank you for all that you do. We pray for the strength, the trials that we deal with. And you bring healing to us.

[8:33] In your name, amen. Amen. Amen. All right.

[8:46] Please turn with me to John chapter 3. John chapter 3. It's been a while since we have been into this study of the life of Christ.

[8:58] I'd like to return to the study. If you guys can remember, there's a couple of reasons why we're in this study. One, we're not so much studying the words of Christ, but we're looking at the surrounding situations that the stories of the gospel tell us.

[9:16] And what we're doing is we're kind of piecing the stories of all the gospel so that we can see and observe, I guess it was the same thing, the life of Christ that unfolds in this world.

[9:27] There's two things that I want us to gain from this. One, give us confidence in the historicity of Christ, that Jesus Christ lived in a real history, a real culture with real people who had the same cares and thoughts for loved ones as we do, who would have been asking during different times of medical situations, God, where are you?

[9:52] We read it many times, whether it be lepers or people who were considered unclean to be cast aside from society, that the God who came was the God who loved, cared for, and entered into their lives just as he does for us this day.

[10:14] Amen? That Jesus Christ did that both as man and fully God in a way of the mystery that we cannot understand, but we truly affirm because that is what God's word teaches us.

[10:30] That Jesus Christ is the only one who can bring peace between us and God. That Jesus Christ, as living his perfect life in a way that we could not live, gives that life to us as he took the death that we could not die.

[10:53] So, this morning I want to spend some time, this is part two if you remember, we're looking at the end of John chapter 1 and to the end of John chapter 4.

[11:04] And what's really interesting is John, who wrote his gospel many years, if not decades, after the first three gospels. Remember Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are known as the synoptic gospels.

[11:17] But Matthew, Mark, and Luke kind of, when they're covering the life of Christ, he shows up, he gets baptized by John the Baptist, he then goes out in the wilderness, and he undergoes the temptation, and all three of them then shift him to Galilee, and he begins his ministry.

[11:33] And what's really interesting is when he begins this ministry, when you read those three chapters, he's got a pretty big crowd around him, and he's already got the Pharisees kind of dogging him, right?

[11:45] As we're going to see, they're going to be following him all through his Galilean ministry. And the question is, how did that start? How did that happen? How did the crowds get so big so fast?

[11:58] Why are the religious ruling authorities kind of already on Jesus? Well, that's the question John answers for us between the chapters of one and four.

[12:10] There's this like eight to ten month interlude that occurs between that. And this is where we are spending our time. So the first thing that I thought that I would do is we go through here.

[12:24] I want to explain why Jesus has the crowds and why the authorities are after him. But I want to do so in light of certain people that we see Jesus Christ interacting within the first four chapters, which will be a consistent theme throughout the gospel.

[12:46] So if you remember, the first people that he kind of interacts with is the apostles of John, remember? Or the disciples of John. So John is in the wilderness. He's baptizing.

[12:56] And these people are believing. And they're with him. And these guys are joining John in baptizing. They're receiving his teaching. He's telling them, hey, the Messiah is coming. The Messiah is coming.

[13:07] Repent of your old ways. Come, declare yourself. You're going to be with the King, the Messiah. All of a sudden, Jesus shows up. Some of them notice.

[13:17] One of them is the Apostle John. We believe James, Andrew, and Peter are all kind of hanging around John. And they see Jesus. And hey, let's go follow Jesus.

[13:28] Let's go with him. So those are the first group of people that we talked about in that last sermon on the subject. And I called those people the call.

[13:38] They were ready. They had been embracing the call that John was giving. And they kind of get in right there. Then the second group of people we met were the defiant, right?

[13:51] And the defiant, if you remember, were the ruling authorities, the Sadducees, the temple priests, the people who controlled the temple in Jerusalem. And they're a horribly corrupt group of people who've been basically pillaging and stealing from the people for many, many years.

[14:13] And Jesus Christ, and it tells us in the text, zeal he will have for his house. This is supposed to be the place of mediation between man and God.

[14:26] And these men are using it for their profit and their hold on political power. So Jesus goes in and he's throwing tables. He's throwing them out.

[14:36] And for that one day, it's almost the beginning of his ministry begins to teach. And I believe, and I said, there was three important, significant events that occurred by Jesus doing what he did.

[14:52] The first thing that Jesus did is he became a household name on that day. You know, everyone who was at Passover was talking about that carpenter guy from Galilee who went into the table and challenged the Sadduceean, the noblemen of the day that was their way of making money.

[15:14] This guy from Galilee came and tossed the tables. So people knew the name of Jesus going forward. And not only that, the Pharisees would have seen that.

[15:26] And the Pharisees would have liked that. Because Pharisees were men of the people. They were the ones that ministered within the crowd, mostly at the synagogues throughout of Israel. These were kind of the normal men.

[15:38] And I know when we look at the Pharisees, we see a lot of negative things about them. But these were men who did love the Lord. They loved God. They loved, they believed the Bible was true.

[15:50] They followed as good as they could. But somewhere along the line, man's law and man's way of doing God superseded the truth of God's word.

[16:03] So they're noble type men wanting to do what God would want them to do. But in the end, they kind of lose their way and follow to legalism.

[16:17] I think we can all identify if you've grown up in the church, that is something you're confronted with at some point in your life. Am I doing this because my parents told me to?

[16:30] Or am I doing this out of a desperate love for my Lord and Savior? So they see Jesus, and they're kind of digging this.

[16:41] And as we're going to see, Nicodemus, who is one of the Pharisees, is going to come and talk to Jesus the very next day. All right? So we have this, he's putting himself out there.

[16:53] The second thing that Jesus Christ accomplished in the temple is he's subtly letting the Jewish people know that he is the long-awaited Messiah. And by what he's doing, and as we go through the Gospels, we're going to see that Jesus Christ isn't there to confront Rome.

[17:11] He's there to confront the Jews. It's the Jews that he came for. And as we know, when we go through the Gospels, we see constantly people wanting to raise Jesus Christ up, to be the king, to overthrow Rome.

[17:25] No, no, no. You're missing the boat. If you think that's what I came for, Jesus will tell them, I'm here for you and your souls. I'm here to make things right between you and your God.

[17:36] And the third thing that is accomplished by Jesus Christ in the temple is by overturning the Sadducees, the temple way of life, he's made a division between the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

[17:55] And I commented last sermon, if you remember, Jesus throwing the table over in John is kind of the bookend for the beginning of his ministry. And him throwing the tables over on the Passion Week before he goes to the cross kind of joins it all together.

[18:14] Here, he strategically separates the Pharisees and Sadducees. By the time we get to Jesus being in the temple three years later, the Pharisees are going to hate him because he's been trampling on their way of doing things.

[18:28] And he's kind of reminding the Sadducees of how much they hate him. They come together, bring down the power of Rome, and Jesus Christ is sacrificed. So, those are the three main accomplishments that happen on that day.

[18:45] So now I want to bring us up to speed when he meets this man named Nicodemus. And I call Nicodemus the curious one.

[18:57] And I believe he represents a person group that we meet. There are people that we know that are involved in religious, that are good people, that are going to ask us real and meaningful questions.

[19:10] And I believe it is our responsibility to respond to them, taking some tips from Jesus Christ on how he did so.

[19:22] So I want to talk about this man Nicodemus first. So who was he? One, we understand that he was a Pharisee. He was one of, they think, between around 6,000 men that were part of the religious establishment.

[19:37] And the way Pharisees or scribes got their jobs is 10 Jewish men would be in a town. We'd start a synagogue. And of these 10 men, we'd come together. And what we would do is we would tithe one-tenth of our salary to hire someone to come into the synagogue.

[19:52] And that person would read us the law on the Shabbat, right? We'd go and we'd take that time in the synagogue. So that was where a lot of the Pharisees would be in there. They'd be in there teaching.

[20:03] And these synagogues were all over the place. So he was one of them. The second thing that we know about Nicodemus is he was also a member of the Sanhedrin. And the Sanhedrin, in lack of a better way, was kind of like the Jewish Supreme Court that dealt with Jewish matters in Israel.

[20:22] And that court was made up of Pharisees and Sadducees, as well as the high priest who kind of led it. So he's a part of this ruling class.

[20:36] So out of all the Pharisees, he's kind of one of the top ruling Pharisees. But more so than that, look at verse 10 of John chapter 3.

[20:49] Look how Jesus addressed him. Jesus calls him the teacher of Israel. So out of all the Pharisees and all the people of the Sanhedrin, Jesus Christ calls him the teacher.

[21:04] This is the man who teaches the teachers. This is the man who's got a complete, almost perfect understanding of the law. He would know all the Jewish laws.

[21:16] He would know God's written word. And so that's who he is. And notice when he comes to Jesus, simply tells him, he calls him, Rabbi, I admit that you are a rabbi sent from God for no one could do the signs that you do.

[21:41] This is an incredible statement, right? This is the most trusted teacher of the law in Israel who comes at night, most likely in a type of secrecy, because he's got some questions.

[22:04] And he's calling this Galilean. Listen, the kind of the true Jews lived more around Jerusalem and Judea, and kind of the roughneck Jews lived in Galilee.

[22:24] And just to give you a sense, more Jews lived in the Galilean region of all of Israel. That's where the best farm country is. But at the same time, there's more Gentiles there as well.

[22:39] Okay? So they don't make up the greatest saturation. There's a lot of Jews there, but there's still a lot of other people. In the southern part around Jerusalem, less Jews, but far fewer Gentiles.

[22:57] All right? You with me on this? And there's more Jewish influence there. It's almost, that's where the pure Jew would live. Jerusalem is not near any of the major trade highways, but Galilee is, right?

[23:11] You got the road up to Damascus and the road that goes down along the coast, and it kind of cuts through that whole area. So a lot of Galileans were there for work and trade, and they'd have many other people who had settled the land decades, if not centuries ago, making their lives work there.

[23:29] So here he is calling Jesus Christ, who is a Galilean, who is untrained from any school, because any of the good rabbis would have been trained down in the Judea area, rabbi.

[23:48] So Nicodemus has come to this understanding that Jesus Christ is much different than any other person he's ever met.

[24:03] Now, two things are on Nicodemus' mind. The first thing is, he's aware of John the Baptist. He knows John the Baptist is in the wilderness in Judea along the Jordan, and huge crowds are coming to him, and they're repenting.

[24:23] And he knows that Jesus is somewhat a part of that group. And now that Jesus Christ has shown himself at the temple doing the miracles that he did, he knows there is something gnawing at him in his soul.

[24:45] And the question that Nicodemus is struggling with is, could I be wrong? this whole thing that I have dedicated my whole life to, this religion, this belief, this way of coming to God, I have staked everything.

[25:05] I have notoriety over this. I have prestige. I'm seen as the teacher, as the teacher of all teachers. and this Galilean Jew shows up this one day, teaches, and now I'm questioning everything.

[25:30] Who am I? And what he's learning is this kingdom of God that John the Baptist is talking about, that Jesus Christ is talking about, is not guaranteed to him, one, because he's not a Jew, and two, because of the works that he's doing.

[25:57] If you remember back in Matthew, the Sanhedrin, the rulers, send these people to speak to John. And John confronts them in Matthew, and I'll just read you. This is, but when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

[26:22] Then he challenges them, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And then he says something very specific here. And do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham Abraham as our father.

[26:40] Because that was, that was, they were basing their whole goodness. There was nothing they needed to repent of. We're of the right line. We have the right God.

[26:53] Now notice what John, or Jesus, says in John 3.16. It's the verse we all learn, right? For God so loved the Jew.

[27:10] That's not what he says. For God so loved the world. We love that verse.

[27:21] We love that statement. Do you imagine what that's first sounding to this man, Nicodemus? You love us.

[27:37] You love us. Abraham, you're the, the God of our father, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You're with Moses. You protected them. You gave us this land.

[27:48] You killed all the people. You pushed them all up. Well, we were supposed to. We really didn't obey. But that's another story, right? But you at least went before us. There was pillar of smoke by day, pillar of fire by night.

[28:02] You brought in angels to wipe out the Assyrians. You're our God. You love us. Nah.

[28:14] For God so loved the world that who so ever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

[28:36] Jesus here teaches him that to enter the kingdom of God, Nicodemus needs to be born of the spirit, not the flesh.

[28:47] church. And here Nicodemus is sorting these things out. So this first one-on-one message with their conversation with this Jewish leader is a substantial conversation that we read in John chapter 3.

[29:12] But I want you to know how Jesus addresses this curious seeker. Notice Jesus does not show any excitement, doesn't give him any partiality, doesn't demonstrate no undue deference, no eager politeness, no compromise, doesn't attempt to persuade him, makes no accommodation for his faith.

[29:42] Jesus simply recognizes that he's seeking an answer that he can't even verbalize and you notice Jesus actually tells him what his problem is before he even tells him what my problem is.

[29:57] Nicodemus, you need to be born of the spirit. It's interesting, one of my friends, he's involved in this major ministry and he knows it's a camp ministry, billionaires, famous people send their kids to this camp and a very well-known MP was in the Harper cabinet, like one of his big guys wants to know Jesus Christ, he's been interacting with him and he actually sends the MP to one of my friends and one of my friends who's at a pretty small church is the guy that leads him to the Lord and disciples him and I kind of ask, why didn't you do that?

[30:38] Once the guy really showed real interest, he says, well, I said, why didn't you take that? He says, because I didn't think I couldn't show no partiality. Like I recognized who this guy is but the guy he sent him to would treat him like any other person who walked the earth and that is my friend's giftedness.

[30:57] He's an everyday guy, everyday kind of guy, money, all those things don't mean anything to him and to this day from what I understand not only was he able to be a part of his conversion experience but walks with him as a disciple.

[31:17] So that's how Jesus treats these curious seekers and I think there's a lesson for us but as you remember last week kind of earnest was here and the reality is when he preached a pretty strong gospel message, right?

[31:33] And sometimes you just got to go after him with Jesus. The fact of the matter is and you guys know the end of the story they killed Jesus. Jesus is the most loving, caring, kind, wonderful human being who ever existed on this earth yet they killed him.

[31:55] We will be rejected. We will lose friends. We will lose family. We don't want it to be because we're jerks.

[32:07] Right? Bossy. I know better than you. Just think Jesus Christ could have trumped Nicodemus. Hey, trust me on this. I'm the son of God. I know. But he doesn't.

[32:21] He's kind to him. He takes the time to answer the question. son. So that's the one individual that we see in John and that is forever going to be fixated in the story of Jesus as we go forth.

[32:37] The next great, incredible relationship we see is with the woman at the well that we all know. But John gives us this little interlude. And this interlude tells us about the greatest man who ever walked the earth according to Jesus Christ.

[32:55] And that's John the Baptist. So before Jesus gets on his way, John, as you look in chapter 4, he begins by going out to the wilderness after being in Jerusalem.

[33:10] And he joins John the Baptist in continuing to baptize people and calling them to repent and acknowledge and accept this king. Now remember, John the Baptist's message has changed.

[33:21] He said, he said, repent, the Messiah is coming. Now it's, repent, the Messiah is here. Yeah, he's here. And Jesus Christ has his disciples and they're kind of given that same message that John is.

[33:36] And what this does, it helps us explain that they start, a crowd starts gathering around Jesus. So much so that John the Baptist's disciples start kind of getting put out a little bit because the crowds of Jesus are bigger than the crowds of John.

[33:54] That tells us one simple thing. Sometimes we can be so close to the truth and still miss the truth. Here the whole time John the Baptist is saying, there's one here greater than I am, go over there, but some people are still being loyal to here.

[34:12] You need to be over there. And I want to read you what it says. And this is John the Baptist's last final public act.

[34:26] And he states in verse 27, a person cannot receive one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves, you yourselves, and he's talking to his disciples, you yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.

[34:49] The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom who stands and hear him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice.

[35:00] We don't celebrate the attendance at a wedding, do we? We celebrate the people that are getting married. And notice what he says. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete.

[35:16] He must increase, but I must decrease. By the time we get to the synoptics, we're going to learn that John the Baptist has been taken prisoner for declaring the truth to Herod, that he wrongly took his brother's wife to be his own, and he will be killed for being a truth-sayer.

[35:39] Luke 9, Jesus Christ will say, this is the greatest man that has been born of a woman. The absolute humility is what we must be when we share Jesus.

[35:57] It's not us. It's him. It's giving everything to him. So let's take a look at chapter 4.

[36:14] And I'm sorry, I wrongly said we were in chapter 4 before, but the story of John the Baptist is at the end of chapter 3. But chapter 4 begins with an interesting observation.

[36:25] Let's take a look at verse 1. Now, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, he left Judea, which is the area surrounding Jerusalem, and departed again for Galilee.

[36:47] So this is the kind of the ending of that whole Judean ministry that Jesus is getting. And what he's doing during that time, he's calling people to him. He's calling these crowds.

[36:58] And now these crowds are so big, the authorities are concerned no longer about John, but they're concerned about Jesus. Now, what's interesting, Jesus recognizes that he has to go back to Galilee.

[37:15] Two ways you go back to Galilee. Either on the west side of the Jordan or the east side of the Jordan. All right? There's a river that pretty much splits the land from the Sea of Galilee all the way to the Dead Sea, and then you have Jerusalem a little bit to the south.

[37:33] Jews go on the east side through the land of Perea. But Jesus does something that no Jew would ever do, and that's to go through the land of the Samaritans.

[37:49] One, it is the quickest route through Samaria, but number two, Jesus Christ, and I want us to see this throughout this whole study of Jesus Christ.

[38:01] Jesus Christ, this text tells us that he's innocent as a dove, yet shrewd as a serpent. That he is wise in cunning what he does. And the reason he's going to this side is you know Herod who really was up in arms about John the Baptist?

[38:19] Samaria is no longer his power. So by him going on the Samaritan side, he's just removed himself from the problem of being under Herod. Because the Jews got so mad at John the Baptist, they solicited Herod, who in the end, that was one of the things he used, approached John, John called him out for his sin, and so on.

[38:41] So all of a sudden Jesus is skirting wisely through the western side of the river. Now, as we all know, he comes to this well.

[38:53] This well was dug by the time of Jacob. And we have one of the most interesting discussions in all of Scripture. Now, this blood, there had been a blood feud going on between Samaritan and Jews for quite some time.

[39:12] And if you remember, and I spoke about this, when Assyria took over the northern kingdoms back in 700 BC, they took all the Jews away, whole bunch of other people went in, still Jews living there, they intermarry, they start this other twisted form of Judaism made up of all these other religions, and they're existing for like 700 years.

[39:33] So all those ancestors who've been living there, they're there, okay? So they've kind of got these remnants of the Jewish faith, their temple is Mount Gerizim rather than being in Jerusalem, but they hate Jews.

[39:46] And it's interesting in the history, and I won't read you any of the quotes, but some of the stories were pretty funny if not serious. One, what they used to do is when Jews were coming to the temple, they would rob them as a lot of people did not have time, they'd be cutting through the roads.

[40:01] Samaritans would rob them, kill them. Sometimes they would capture them and sell them as slaves to other empires against them. So there was a real hatred towards the Jews because the Jews didn't want anything to do with them.

[40:14] And there was this funny story that the Samaritans, basically the way a Jew would keep the calendars when he needed to do the holy festivals, Jews would light signal lights in the hills.

[40:28] Remember, not the Twin Twiars, what's it, the Return of the King and Lord of the Rings? Do you remember Lord of the Rings? When the King of Gondor wants to let Rohan know that they're in danger and they'd light these big mountain fires and the other guy would see that fire and he'd light that fire and that's how they used to signal.

[40:49] What the Samaritans used to do is they would go and light those fires early. So it'd mess up the whole Jewish sacrificial system in Jerusalem. It was just like these petty things that were going on with these people.

[41:03] They just hated the Jews and the Jews hated them. But all of a sudden there's this man who's sitting before this woman. And notice she says verse 7.

[41:20] A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink. So we estimate, scholars estimate it's later in the day.

[41:31] They're tired from their journey and the disciples rightfully so are gone to get some food. The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, asked for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

[41:49] So not only is there natural hatred, there's this natural hatred of everything they stand for, who they are. If you even walk through the land would declare you unclean. If you were going the other way to the temple, you'd have to wait another seven days.

[42:03] You'd have to do a whole bunch of other ritual things to get that uncleanliness off you. And Jesus Christ says to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

[42:22] The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. Where did you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob?

[42:33] He gave us the well and drank from it himself as did his sons and his livestock. Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.

[42:46] But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

[42:58] The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water. I call this woman the religiously lost.

[43:17] She represents a great many people that we meet in our everyday life. They go about living their life just as they normally do and they tend to follow the religion of their parents, their grandparents.

[43:37] And she knows and we're going to see in the conversations, but Jesus is saying, hey, there's something more. Like she's searching for something. There's something more and now she invites him in to tell me what it is.

[43:53] So I want us to see three things that Jesus does. The first thing he does when we look at verse 16, he points out her moral condition.

[44:05] Her moral condition. Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband.

[44:17] Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband. For you have had five husbands and the ones you now have is not your husband. What you said is true.

[44:30] Now Jesus, of course, is Jesus Christ. He knows, as the Son of God would know, he knows her current morality, her statement. And there's often times we can ask those questions.

[44:43] And just notice he's saying, hey, you want this? Obviously you're living this religious thing. Bring your husband, invite him in, right? And then she has to confess to him, this is where I'm at.

[44:57] The point I'm trying to make is, if a person does not recognize that they in some way have broken God's holy law, you're really not getting anywhere with them.

[45:10] They have to see that. They have to see their brokenness, their emptiness, their sin. And sometimes we see people who are sinful because they're rebellion.

[45:22] Sometimes we see people who are sinful because they're stupid. Sometimes we see people who are sinful because that's the way they've been taught. And they just do those things.

[45:34] That's why I really believe when we come to a point of sharing Jesus Christ, it's often good to not start with the gospel, but to start with Genesis. And what's interesting about starting with Genesis, not only do we get God, but we get to get to two important things.

[45:48] One, God is the creator of us. But two, we were created in his image. And all of a sudden, when you come to that understanding of how we are created in his image, there's a purpose for us.

[46:02] We're not just these empty voids to live our life in any which way that we choose. But there's a purpose for us. Right now, there's a big discussion even about sexuality in our day.

[46:15] I always just go back. I don't need to go to the verses that point quite clearly that any sexual activity outside of marriage is sinful. I just need to go back to Genesis and explain that's not how we were created.

[46:30] We were created with purpose, man and wife to come together to be one in marriage and to honor God and bless God by that relationship. Any relationship outside of that is not how we were created.

[46:46] That wasn't the purpose for us. So everyone can admit they have a purpose, right? Rick Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Life.

[46:57] That's the biggest bestseller in the world. You know that? Outside of the Bible. Simply because people recognize that there is a purpose. They need a purpose. And Rick kind of unfolds that for them.

[47:13] Usually when we convince people or we talk about sin, they're going to talk about, well, I am a sinner, but I'm not like that guy or that woman.

[47:24] They're always going to think they're somehow, I've done good and better things. So I really believe when we're sharing the gospel with someone who's truly curious, if they can't get over the fact that they are not living according to the purpose that God has created to them, that they're somehow broken, very little can be done except to pray that God would make them have spiritual eyes to see that.

[47:50] Otherwise, you're just banging a ripe fruit and bruising it. The second thing that we see Jesus Christ doing is look at in verse 19. So she's recognized she's broken.

[48:04] She's sinful. She's had five men. She's living with another man. That's not. He's now pointing out the futility of her present religiosity.

[48:16] So she says, the woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

[48:33] Amen, right? You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know. For salvation is from the Jews. Notice, not for the Jews, from the Jews.

[48:46] But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Remember, that's the conversation going back to Nicodemus.

[48:57] You need to be renewed spiritually. For the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.

[49:12] Truth. People like to tell us today that truth is subjective. Truth can be whatever you want. That you can go home, design your own religion, and you're going to be right because it's your truth.

[49:25] Jesus totally unmasks. Just think of being told, you worship what you do not know.

[49:39] How do you worship something you do not know? You might write some rules. I bow down. I kneel three times.

[49:49] I raise my hand. What does it look like? Because in your heart of hearts, Romans quite, tells us quite clearly that A, through creation, we know that there's a God, and two, we have a conscience.

[50:03] And even pagans, atheists who believe that there is no God have a conscience which attests that something is broken and I've wronged somewhere.

[50:16] usually what most people do if you would have grown up when I grew up is they would follow their father or mother's religion.

[50:28] They would just go back to the Catholic church. Sometimes it's a Baptist church. And we've had people here at the church show up lost. And the reason they're here is because I knew my parents were Baptists.

[50:40] See, they're trying to make something right, but the world has done something today. And we in Squamish see it all the time. I recycle.

[50:53] You know, I belong to this community group and I got other neighbors yelling at other neighbors because everything in their recycling bin wasn't what was supposed to be in there. Right? Climate isn't changing.

[51:07] Apparently the climate's ready to be destroyed and if we can do something as a Canadian that would help us make things right in the climate, you know what I do? I feel better about myself.

[51:18] Right? I remember this story. I don't know if you all remember Al Gore, but Al Gore was the first guy to get this all going. He built this mansion that used more electricity in a day than the whole entire town did in the day.

[51:33] All right? Like it's crazy. Here's the guy telling, but he goes, oh, I buy carbon offsets. So I can live as, and by the way, you can too and they're companies that he makes money from.

[51:44] Right? Like, but it makes him feel good. I can live the way I want to live because I'm doing these other things. And of course, we know we live in an age of wokeism. Yes, racism is bad.

[51:57] It always is. Prejudisms are horrible. They're sinful. But being online and attacking someone for what you perceive is racist to make yourself better is kind of the way religion has become today.

[52:12] Right? Have you guys picked up on that? They use the same terms, good and evil. Light, darkness. You're in the dark ages if you don't, you know, if you quit using that gas lawnmower, we're all going to die.

[52:28] Where am I going with this? I heard this testimony of a man who was saved out of Greenpeace. And he simply said, Greenpeace was my religion.

[52:41] That was my cry to God to make things right. And it wasn't satisfied until I found Jesus Christ. Like, some of those things are all really good.

[52:54] But they don't save. But somehow, Satan, this world, has made us thinking that saving Mother Earth is salvation for our souls.

[53:08] And now, this is where Jesus Christ finishes it all. Notice the answer to the needs and desires of her soul. Verse 25. The woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming.

[53:24] He who is called Christ, when he comes, he will tell us all things. So even her, she recognizes God's coming back. He's going to tell us.

[53:35] There's someone to answer to. And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. The first missionary that God calls to reach the Jews' most hated people is a woman, Samaritan, adulterous many times over.

[54:04] And where does she go? She goes back into town and brings people to Jesus. Our role isn't to bring people to how we live our life, how moral we are, how wonderful I am with my kids.

[54:23] Our role as believers is to point people to, you can say it with me now, point people to Jesus. It's key to evangelism.

[54:37] This is the reality and it's also be the reality why Jesus will be crucified for the gospel. And you and I by doing the same things that Jesus did, some of us will be fired, some of us will lose friends, some of us will be not invited to Christmas dinners.

[55:00] But if Jesus died for us, I think it's something that we can do. See, here we have the perfect gospel presentation which would bear much fruit in that land.

[55:12] And that is to proclaim the good news to the lost. That even the person that we believe is most farthest from the truth still in their heart of hearts has a need for the greatest truth of all time.

[55:29] Jesus Christ. Let me pray for you. Dear Lord, Heavenly Fathers, there's this incredible story that we find in the gospels. Sometimes we read them over and over again and even get lost in the words without understanding what exactly is going on.

[55:45] I know how moved I was by the simple fact that it hit me that this was the first missionary that Jesus ever met. God and we're going to see this consistently as he reaches out in Mark chapter 5 to the demoniac.

[56:02] Simply calls them to do these things that I said and talk, tell people about me. One of the clear things that we learn about missionaries is that they are obedient to the task that has been given to them by their master.

[56:17] If we are Christians, we are indeed slaves to Jesus Christ. Christ. Jesus is our master. He is the perfect master. He's our father. We are his children.

[56:30] He calls us to this responsibility. Father, just through these stories, they seem unattached, but they are attached.

[56:41] There's a purpose for them and I pray that you would give us the wisdom to discern what the purposes is, purposes are, and that we would receive them with the intent that you intended.

[57:00] We give you thanks, Jesus, for all that you've done for us. That you confronted us with our sin in the most personal way possible that only we can understand.

[57:13] that we knew we needed you as Savior. No matter that, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't fix the hole that existed within us no matter how good we were, how good our children were, how good our parents are.

[57:35] That there's this process of being renewed by the Spirit that must take place. in everything that I read here, it must happen by the grace of God.

[57:49] May your grace fall on everyone here, especially those who do not know you, so that they would simply come to know you. We ask these things in your most gracious and holy name.

[58:03]  Amen.