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[0:00] Please open up your Bibles this morning to the book of John, and we will be in chapter 4 this morning. We're going to read the story of the woman of Samaria.

[0:12] So it's going to be John chapter 4, verse 1, all the way through verse 42. If you would, follow with me as I read. Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples, he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.

[0:43] And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

[1:00] It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

[1:12] The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

[1:24] Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

[1:35] The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob?

[1:46] 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.

[1:58] 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.

[2:11] 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. Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband and come here.

[2:23] The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, 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.

[2:36] What you have said is true. 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.

[2:48] Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know.

[3:00] We worship what we know. For salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

[3:13] For the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit. And those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to Him, I know that Messiah is coming, He who is called Christ.

[3:28] When He comes, He will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He. Just then His disciples came back.

[3:41] They marveled that He was talking with a woman, but no one said, What do you seek? Or why are you talking with her? So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.

[3:54] Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to Him. Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Him, saying, Rabbi, eat. But He said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about.

[4:07] So the disciples said to one another, Has anyone brought Him something to eat? Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to accomplish His work.

[4:19] Do you not say, There are yet four months, then comes the harvest? Look, I tell you, Lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.

[4:37] For here the saying holds true, One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.

[4:49] Many Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them, and He stayed there two days.

[5:03] And many more believed because of His word. They said to the woman, It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.

[5:17] This is God's word. Let's bow once more. Lord, what a beautiful story. Powerful. We pray now that you would open our eyes and ears to understand it, and to respond to it as you would desire us to.

[5:33] We pray in Christ's name. Amen. There are two crucial questions that everyone in the world ought to know the answer to.

[5:45] Who is Jesus? And what did He come into the world to do? Who is Jesus? And what did He come to do?

[5:55] Last week, we closed out chapter 3 with four ways that Jesus Christ is distinct from every other individual on the planet, every other man, every other religious figure.

[6:06] So we saw that Christ alone is distinct in His supremacy. He is distinct in sight and speech. He is distinct in His measure of the Spirit. He is distinct in His sonship.

[6:18] And all of this together, we saw that it tells us that this man, Jesus, is not another teacher. He is the Son of God in the flesh. As we see what we just read in the story with the Samaritan woman this morning, Jesus Christ is the Messiah.

[6:38] So last week, we saw very clearly who Jesus is. This morning, as we see this incredible encounter with the Messiah and this woman from Samaria, the sinful, rejected woman, we see why Jesus has come.

[6:55] Why Jesus has come. See, Jesus Christ is a man on a mission. He has come with purpose. Jesus Christ came to magnify the glory of God.

[7:10] This was His primary mission in coming to earth as the Messiah. His mission is our mission. So we're going to see this in five ways this morning.

[7:20] Five reasons the Messiah has come. This will be our outline this morning if you're taking notes. Five reasons the Messiah has come.

[7:32] First, Jesus Christ has come submitting to the plan of God. Jesus has come submitting to the plan of God.

[7:45] Look there to verse 1, chapter 4. It says, When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that He was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus Himself did not baptize but only His disciples, He didn't stick around.

[8:01] He wasn't chasing after their approval or popularity or their influence. He didn't stick around. He was on a mission. Verse 3 says, He left Judea and departed again for Galilee.

[8:14] And what does it say? It says, He had to pass through Samaria. Now this phrase is very, very interesting. He had to pass through Samaria.

[8:25] Why? Of course, this was geographically the quickest route. I use maps on my phone anytime I want to go anywhere. I can't get anywhere without it.

[8:36] And always I click the quickest route available. I want to get there as soon as possible. Well, geographically, the quickest route from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north was a straight path that took you right through Samaria in the middle.

[8:53] And some took that path, the direct route. But you didn't have to. In fact, many Jews did not go the quickest route. If you were a strict Jew, they put into their maps the setting, Avoid All Samaritans.

[9:08] So they would go from the south. And instead of going straight up through Samaria, they would go around, cross over the Jordan River, avoid Samaria entirely, and take the long route up to Galilee.

[9:22] But it says here Jesus had to pass through Samaria. Why? Well, this was not a matter of geographic necessity.

[9:33] It was a matter of divine necessity. Providential necessity. This same word here is the same thing John said just a few verses earlier last week.

[9:45] He must increase. I must decrease. It's the same word that Jesus used when he told Nicodemus, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

[9:58] It must happen. It is necessary. John chapter 20, verse 9, it says, As of yet, the disciples did not understand the Scriptures, that the Son of Man, that he must rise from the dead.

[10:12] In other words, God had a plan, and Jesus, being the perfect, obedient Son, gladly submits to the plan.

[10:23] He had to pass through Samaria, because God in his wisdom had ordained that Jesus go, so that he might grow weary, sit down at a well, be thirsty, so that a woman might come at just the right time in the day, just the right time in her life, so that this providential conversation might happen, might take place, so that through this conversation, this woman might be changed, so that through her transformation, she might bear witness in Samaria, so that so many in Samaria might believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

[11:00] See, there are no accidents in God's plan of redemption. There are no coincidences in God's plan of redemption. Every detail down to every step that Jesus took was all part of the plan, and it delighted Jesus to fulfill it perfectly.

[11:22] This is what he says down in verse 32 to his disciples, isn't it? Look there. He says to his disciples, I have food to eat that you don't know about. What was his food? What sustained Jesus?

[11:34] What gave him nourishment? What kept him going? What was his primary concern? It's not physical sustenance, but the sustaining, strengthening food of obedience to the will of God.

[11:48] My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. I have heard legend, maybe you have too, of some people being so focused on their job, on a task at hand, that they just work right through lunch.

[12:05] I don't know anything about that myself, but some people I've heard, they don't even think about stopping to eat food. Why? Because they're so zeroed in on the task at hand.

[12:15] They're so focused, so motivated. That task is what's sustaining them. Well, for Jesus, this was all the time. Of course, he got hungry. He ate. Of course, he got thirsty.

[12:27] He drank. He slept. He had physical need, but what kept him going, was obedience to the plan of God the Father. This is what he craved.

[12:39] This is what he hungered and thirsted for. I just want an ounce of that zeal, that hunger for obedience, don't you? Well, what was that work that Christ was committed to do?

[12:54] It was to come, to live, and to die, and to rise for sinners. This is our second point this morning.

[13:04] Second, Jesus has come seeking and saving the lost. Jesus has come seeking and saving the lost.

[13:15] Verse 5 says, Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

[13:30] It was about the sixth hour, which is 12 in the afternoon. This is the hottest part of the day, and Jesus, fully God, yet fully man, in a picture of his full humanity, he was tired.

[13:42] He was worn out. He had just traveled a long journey. He was weak. 12 o'clock was not a time when most people were coming out to the well. Most of the time, the women, they would come early in the morning, before the sun got too high, before it got too hot.

[13:59] Most of the time, they came out in groups, rarely alone. But here in God's providence, again, Jesus just so happens to sit down at the well, to be waiting there, when a woman from Samaria came, to drink water.

[14:17] Jesus said to her, give me a drink, for his disciples, they had gone off into the city, to buy some food. Now, I wish I could have been there, to see the look on this woman's face.

[14:28] And look how she responds. In verse 9, it says, the Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, would ask me for a drink of water?

[14:39] A woman, of Samaria. She was shocked, because she had three things working against her, here, socially, in this situation. Three things. For one, she was a woman.

[14:51] Culturally, this put her in a lower social class than Jesus. A male, it would not be normal for him to approach her in this way. But not only that, second, she was a Samaritan woman.

[15:03] A Samaritan woman. The Jews hated the Samaritans. This hatred, it goes back all the way to the divided kingdom of Israel in the Old Testament.

[15:15] The southern kingdom had Jerusalem as their capital. The northern kingdom took Samaria as their capital. Well, in 722, the Assyrians, they overtook the northern kingdom.

[15:26] They took most of the Jews out. They filled the city up with a bunch of pagans. And what happened was that these two groups eventually began to mix. They mixed their religious practices.

[15:38] They intermarried. They had children. And those people eventually became the Samaritans. These people were hated by the Jews. They weren't really well received by the Gentiles either.

[15:50] They were just generally despised. The Jews, they saw the Samaritans as dirty. Half-breeds. They saw them as perpetually, constantly unclean.

[16:03] This is why she says Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Why? Because they wouldn't even share a dish for fear that touching an object might make them unclean.

[16:14] But not just this. Third, she was deeply, deeply sinful. And she knew it.

[16:26] Here she is, coming to the well alone at the hottest part of the day. Why? Five husbands. One she's living with is not her husband.

[16:37] She had been ostracized from her own community. She carried her shame and her guilt everywhere she went. She was hated by Jews, hated by Gentiles, hated by Samaritans.

[16:51] And in her mind, I'm sure she's thinking, if this man only knew who I was, he wouldn't be caught dead with me here, asking me for a drink of water.

[17:04] But here was Jesus reaching out to her, initiating to her, asking her to take on the role of one of his disciples, asking her to serve him with her own water pot.

[17:19] Not afraid of her uncleanness, not ashamed, not bothered by her social status, not afraid of her sexual history. Why would he do this? Because this is exactly why he's come.

[17:35] Jesus did not come to seek out the very best, the most impressive, the most self-righteous, the most religious. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost.

[17:51] I heard a story this week about a man named Joshua who moved to Hollywood to become an actor. He had aspirations to become an actor, but he had a hard time finding reliable work and he had to pay the bills.

[18:06] And so through a series of terrible decisions, he wound up entering into the adult acting industry for the sake of the children in the room.

[18:17] And he was very successful. He made a lot of money. He won awards, but according to his testimony, he will tell you all of his success.

[18:29] It only served to illuminate his brokenness because at the end of the day, none of it satisfied him. And so in God's providence, he quit. And in God's providence, he met a girl that he was interested in dating.

[18:43] And so he asked her out and he took the risky step of explaining to her and telling her all about his history. Here's what happened. She began to share the gospel with him.

[18:57] She wasn't afraid of his sinfulness, wasn't afraid of his history. She saw a providential opportunity of God to share the love of Christ.

[19:09] She took him to church. He heard the gospel clearly explained and he gave his life to Christ. The Lord saved him. They wound up getting married and now he serves as a pastor in Iowa and giving his life to spread the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[19:27] Don't tell me that anyone you know is hopeless. Too far gone for the grace of God. The gospel is the power of God for salvation to any who believe.

[19:41] Any who believe. And Jesus Christ did not come to seek out the most impressive, put together people of the world and praise God.

[19:53] Right? Praise God. We are not Christians because we have it all together. We are Christians because by the grace of God, Christ Jesus came to seek and to save the lost.

[20:06] There is no one, no matter how sinful, no matter how far gone, who can out-sin the grace of God. God. I think that, in fact, this is why John, the author, pairs together this story of the Samaritan woman right next to the story of Nicodemus, don't you?

[20:27] You think about the contrast here. You could not imagine two more different people than Nicodemus and this woman from Samaria. Nicodemus was a Jewish man, well-educated, well-respected, well-liked, intelligent, a teacher of Israel, a member of the Sanhedrin, a child of Abraham, and here is this Samaritan woman, we don't even know her name.

[20:52] Sinful, hated, sexually immoral, ostracized, rejected, unworthy. Here's the lesson. I want you to get this.

[21:04] If Nicodemus can't earn eternal life despite his knowledge, despite his heritage, then no one can.

[21:15] But if this Samaritan woman can receive eternal life despite her sinfulness, despite her brokenness, despite her past, anyone can, church.

[21:31] This is why Christ has come to seek out the lost and third, to satisfy the thirsty soul.

[21:41] Christ has come to satisfy the thirsty soul. Jesus answered her, verse 10, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that's saying to you, give me a drink, then you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

[22:00] If you knew who I was and if you knew what I came to do, you would ask me and I would give you living water. Well, she and Nicodemus did have one thing in common, didn't they?

[22:12] They both responded to Jesus with physical understanding. Look what she says. She says, Sir, you have nothing to draw water with and this well is deep. Where do you get that living water?

[22:24] Are you greater than Jacob? He gave us this well. He drank from it. His sons drank from it. In fact, it had been there for over a thousand years. But Jesus pressed in further.

[22:36] He said to her, For everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

[22:48] The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. What is he saying here? Well, Jesus, as he often does, he's making a spiritual lesson out of a physical example.

[23:04] Water satisfies. Water gives life. You know what it's like to be thirsty at a hard day's work out in the sun.

[23:15] Your face is dripping sweat. You're exhausted. And you come inside and you get a cold glass of water. What does that do for you? It satisfies. It gives you life.

[23:28] But Jesus says here, even the best water will run out. And even, no matter how much you drink of it, you will be thirsty again.

[23:43] He's making a spiritual application here for this woman and for us. So often throughout the scriptures, water, thirst, dryness, hunger, drought, famine, they are interconnected.

[23:59] They point us. They're indicators. They represent spiritual lack. Spiritual thirst, spiritual hunger, spiritual drought, spiritual dryness.

[24:11] Here is this woman who has tried and tried and tried and tried to satisfy herself with sexual pleasure. Six men and counting.

[24:23] But Jesus says, you will be thirsty again. Why? Because your soul was made to be satisfied in God. Not these trifles.

[24:37] We often think that more money will satisfy us, more health, a healthier body, more me time will satisfy us.

[24:49] Maybe like this woman, we think more sexual satisfaction will satisfy us. but we will be thirsty again.

[25:00] Nothing can satisfy the desires of our soul except that for which we were made to delight ourselves in the living water that Jesus Christ alone can offer.

[25:15] What is this water? What is this water? Well, it's the soul-satisfying gift of the Holy Spirit.

[25:28] The soul-satisfying gift of the Holy Spirit. John chapter 7, you don't have to turn there now, mark this down for later. In John chapter 7, Jesus stood up at the feast of booths and he cried out, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

[25:45] Whoever believes in me as the scriptures has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Does that sound familiar? Now he said this about the Spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive.

[26:04] The Holy Spirit is like water in the lives of believers. We need to understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit, don't we?

[26:16] The Holy Spirit is not some mystical, magical, mysterious force that just makes us emotional and does cool tricks and impresses us. The primary work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers is to give us life by satisfying our soul in Christ.

[26:36] Let's say that again. I want you to get it. The primary work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers is to satisfy our soul in Christ and in so doing to give us life.

[26:56] Eternal life. This is the ministry of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is working in us to magnify the greatness of Jesus Christ. He's working in us to cause us to see His goodness more clearly, to cause sin to taste bitter, and to cause Christ to taste sweet to our souls.

[27:16] Sweeter and sweeter and sweeter and sweeter, welling up to eternal life when we enter in to the fullness of joy in the presence of God.

[27:27] And Jesus, here, He promises that Spirit to any who believes in Him. Any who would come to Him in faith.

[27:39] This is why He has come. Are you thirsty? I know that even in a room this size there are some here who are thirsty or spiritually dry this morning.

[27:55] I know that maybe some of you even know that you are seeking satisfaction other places besides the fount of living waters. Well, He says to the Samaritan woman and to us this morning, church, if you are tired of coming again and again and again and again to the same streams of water that promise satisfaction yet never deliver, simply come to Christ and ask and He will give you exactly what you need.

[28:32] He came to satisfy the thirsty soul. Why? In order that we might delight to worship Him.

[28:47] This is the fourth reason He has come. Fourth, Jesus has come securing true worship. Securing true worship.

[29:00] The Samaritan woman, she's no fool. She tries to throw Jesus off her trail, doesn't she? And change the subject away from her own personal history and instead to the most hotly debated theological topic that she could think of, which is the question of worship.

[29:18] See, the split between the two kingdoms of Israel, it resulted in a split of religious history and religious practice. So the Samaritans, again, in the north, they only accepted the first five books of the Bible.

[29:33] They rejected anything else. Essentially, they rejected anything that mentioned Jerusalem at all. And they established their own temple. Instead of the temple in Jerusalem, they established their own place of worship on Mount Gezerim.

[29:47] And as you can imagine, this was a major point of tension between these two people groups. And she would rather talk about that than anything to do with her own personal history. And so she says in verse 19, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

[30:03] Our fathers worshipped on this mountain. But you say that Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. So, which is it? But look at what Jesus says, verse 21.

[30:16] Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

[30:28] You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.

[30:49] Jesus doesn't take the bait. He doesn't engage in this theological discussion of this mountain or that mountain, this tradition or that tradition.

[30:59] Instead, He says, I have come to bring something entirely different. I have come to usher in the age of true worship for the glory of God.

[31:12] That time is coming and is now here. a time when worship will no longer be connected to a specific place but rather to a person.

[31:25] See, there is no Christian Mecca. We know Muslims, millions and millions of Muslims make their pilgrimage every year in July to perform the Hajj in Mecca.

[31:39] The Koran, it commands it that every capable adult, every healthy Muslim who is financially and physically capable, they must travel to Mecca to perform the Hajj at least once in their lifetime because to them, this place, this physical location is holy, this time of year is holy, this physical area is holy, but Christianity has no holy place.

[32:07] Some of you, I know, have traveled to Israel and gone to see some of the very places that we're reading about here in Scripture. I hope to go someday myself. I think that that would be fascinating, but not to get closer to God.

[32:23] Church, we live in an incredible time. We live in the age of the church, the age of physically unbound, unrestricted worship.

[32:38] We live in the age of the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit of God is what makes God-honoring worship possible, not a place. And that Spirit, because of what Christ has come to do, does not dwell in any one place.

[32:54] Church, He dwells in us. If the Spirit of Christ is in us, then there is no place on earth that we can go to be closer to God than where you are right now, here, in Allendall, South Carolina, wherever you might be tomorrow, if the Spirit is in you, He is what makes true worship possible.

[33:19] We live in the age of Spirit-empowered, God-glorifying worship for the entire world. Just think about how this magnifies God's glory.

[33:30] How this magnifies His glory. The Holy Spirit, He exponentially increases the glory and the honor that is given to God. True worship is no longer limited to one geographic region of the world or another.

[33:48] It's no longer limited to one particular people group or another. It's no longer mediated by one class of people. Christ has come that God's glory might be known and exalted by anyone, anywhere, in any place, from Allendall to Kenya, to Jordan, to the uttermost ends of the earth, so long as they worship in Spirit and in truth.

[34:21] Two very important qualifiers He gives us, aren't they? For true worship in Spirit and in truth. True worshipers must worship in Spirit and in truth.

[34:35] He says, God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in truth. And one of the most American individualistic lies that we tend to believe is that we can worship however we see fit.

[34:56] Whatever makes us feel good, whatever our preferences are, whatever moves me, as long as it moves me, then that's what I can do. That is simply not true.

[35:08] We must worship in Spirit and in truth. In Spirit, that is internal, not external, not a matter of religious practice, not a matter of external behavior, but a matter of your inner spirit, yourself, your inner self.

[35:27] You all know how easy it is to worship externally only, but nothing you do on the outside can honor the Lord if your spirit is not engaged in worship.

[35:43] Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher, he once said, God does not regard our voices, he hears our hearts, and if our hearts do not sing, we have not sung at all.

[35:56] We want to worship, we want our hearts to sing, not just our lips, but doesn't it matter who we sing to? Doesn't it matter what we sing about, what we proclaim about the God that we worship?

[36:11] Of course it does, which is why we must also worship in truth. How could we worship a God that we know nothing about? Any worship that would please God, it must spring out of the truth of what he has revealed in his perfect word?

[36:33] The true worship, it requires true knowledge about the truth of God. It is truth that cannot be learned any other way than by the word of God.

[36:47] We must worship according to his word. How then will the nations hear the truth? How then will the unreached peoples of India and Afghanistan, even those here in Allendal and Mount Pleasant and our community, how will they know the truth of God's word that they too might worship him?

[37:13] Church, they must hear it from us. They must hear it from us. Fifth, and finally, Jesus Christ has come sending his disciples to sow and to reap.

[37:32] Jesus has come sending his disciples to sow and to reap. One of the most amazing truths of the gospel is that we who have believed it now get to experience the joy of spreading it.

[37:51] This message of life and hope and satisfaction is spread by the lips of his disciples. We are commissioned as disciples of Christ to go and to follow the example of our master.

[38:07] Have you noticed over the past several weeks how we have seen Jesus go from Jerusalem now to Judea and now to Samaria and in the coming weeks to the Gentiles?

[38:23] Does that sound familiar to you? In that same way he has sent his disciples you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

[38:41] You see that call the missions of Christ it was not just for these disciples but for any and all who would claim to be disciples of Christ we too must go and share the message of salvation in the name of Jesus.

[39:00] Two things convinced this woman of who Jesus was. Do you see it? For one it was the clear testimony of Christ. Look there to verse 25.

[39:11] This woman clearly was impressed even curious about who Jesus might be. We see in verse 25 she said to him I know that Messiah is coming he who is called Christ and when he comes he will tell us all things and here Jesus does what he rarely does.

[39:32] He speaks clearly and directly to this woman and reveals in no uncertain terms who he is. And I who speak to you am he.

[39:45] But you know something else added to that testimony. Do you see it? Look there to verse 27. It says just then his disciples came back.

[39:57] They marveled that he was talking with a woman although they didn't know the half of it. Right? They didn't know the half of what was going on. But no one said what do you seek or why are you talking with her?

[40:08] No one doubted the integrity of his master. No one questioned his motives. No one criticized this woman. Maybe for the first time in her life. No one cast shame upon her. And it was this two-fold testimony.

[40:21] The words of Christ and the trusting obedience of the disciples that had her convinced. She left her water jar, went back into the town, back into the crowd of people she once avoided, back into the place of her shame, and she proclaimed to any and all who would listen, come see a man who told me all that I ever did.

[40:47] Can this be the Christ? You know, so often we think that we need more training to be an effective evangelist.

[40:59] We're intimidated by the task of evangelism. We don't think we know enough. I hope that the Samaritan woman can convince you that that is simply not true.

[41:12] We just need to be convinced of the message and moved by the harvest. The message is simple. The Messiah has come.

[41:25] Come. Come see. Come hear his word. Come drink the waters of everlasting joy and life. We don't need to be experts. We just need to be faithful. Like the woman from Samaria.

[41:36] She didn't stick around to learn much more, did she? Right away. She didn't go to seminary. She didn't read a book. She didn't ask for more knowledge. Right away she moved to proclaim the message of the gospel.

[41:52] And as the woman left on her way, Jesus took this opportunity to teach the disciples a lesson. He says, Do you not say there are yet four months and then comes the harvest?

[42:04] Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white. for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.

[42:19] For here the saying holds true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored and you have entered in to their labor.

[42:32] Jesus is telling the disciples and us that he has come to usher in the age of the harvest. So many have come before us to prepare the way for this time.

[42:48] Prophets, martyrs, apostles, sowing seed, scattering seed, but now in the coming of Christ, the age of reaping has begun.

[43:00] The age of the harvest has begun and the harvest is plentiful. Church, we have the incredible privilege of being used by God to bring in the harvest of those who would become his disciples.

[43:14] If only we would go and share the news of the gospel. There are men and women all around us every day who are thirsty for what only Christ Jesus can provide.

[43:33] Do you realize that God has appointed men and women to eternal life all around us? If only we would go and open our mouths and proclaim the message of the gospel that they might hear and believe and become his disciples.

[43:50] The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Church, the mission of Christ is our mission.

[44:01] We follow in his footsteps. He has come submitting to the plan of God, so we go submitting to God's plan for the salvation of those in our household, for the salvation of those in our community, that we, the church, would go and call them to come and see the man who told me all I ever did.

[44:24] Come and see the Messiah. Come and see the man who has lived and died and risen for my salvation. Christ has come seeking the lost, so we go, not caring about physical appearance, external social status, sinfulness, but scattering the seed faithfully and broadly and trusting the Lord to bring the growth.

[44:49] Christ has come satisfying the thirsty soul, and so we go proclaiming that we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. Come to the waters. Come and drink.

[44:59] Come find satisfaction for your soul, the soul that was satisfied, that was created to be satisfied in Christ. He came zealous to restore worship for the glory of God.

[45:14] So church, we must go with this one ultimate mission to magnify the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[45:25] This was his mission, so church, it must be ours. Here at the close of this story, we see a glimpse of the harvest.

[45:41] John says in verse 29, many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days, and many more believed because of his word.

[46:00] They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.

[46:14] This is what we long to see, church. This is what we long to see. Who will you share this with? who will you bring this message to?

[46:27] Who around you is thirsty for living water? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this promise of eternal satisfaction, eternal life.

[46:44] It's a free gift that you alone have purchased that we can only find in you, and Lord, our souls were made to delight in you. We pray, God, that as we consider what you've done, as we consider the work of Christ, that it wouldn't be information only, that it would move us out of these doors to spread the message of the gospel to any who would hear.

[47:06]  And we pray, Lord, that you would bring death to life through the faithful witness of this congregation. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.