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[0:00] Our text for today is John chapter 4, verses 1 through 30. While you're getting there, I just want to extend some appreciation to everyone who showed up over the last two days on Friday and Saturday to help with the project downstairs.

[0:16] If you are unaware, about two-thirds of our building flooded downstairs and had to be remediated, flooring out, sheetrock cut, and we're putting it back together.

[0:30] And not only am I thankful for all the help that showed up just because the project needs to get done, but it's a real clear expression that the church understands that it's not my project.

[0:42] This building belongs to you all as much as it belongs to me, and I'm very glad for that. So you didn't just show up and help me with my project, but we came together and rallied. And especially thankful for Jake, who pulled together materials for us, and Tyler, who spearheaded and led the charge over the last two days.

[1:02] And the long haulers. And if you don't know if you're a long hauler, you're not a long hauler. But I'm grateful for everybody who showed up, even those of you who could come for an hour or two and pitch in.

[1:14] It was really, really helpful. Very encouraging. We'll keep at it. It's not done quite yet. So, John chapter 4, verses 1 through 30.

[1:25] Let me pray before we read it. Father God, help us as we study your word together this morning. We humbly recognize that it was written for your glory and for our good.

[1:41] We should. We need your help to believe its promises and obey its commands and have affection for you, its author. So help us, we pray, to this end.

[1:54] Amen. Amen. Verse 1, chapter 4 and following. 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.

[2:17] 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.

[2:32] It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

[2:52] For Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. 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.

[3:10] 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?

[3:20] 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.

[3:33] 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.

[3:44] 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.

[3:59] 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.

[4:13] 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.

[4:28] 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. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

[4:42] But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

[4:54] 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.

[5:06] 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.

[5:18] 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.

[5:33] Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to him. Okay, now, you may have noted in your bulletin that it says, John chapter 4, verses 1 through 30, part 1.

[5:51] If all goes to plan, you know, often I have a plan to do the entire text, and then we end up splitting it into parts. I am planning on doing it in two parts, so this Sunday and the next Sunday, because there's just so much richness to be pulled out of these verses.

[6:11] And to aid us across this week and next in our study of these 30 verses, I'm going to do something unique for my preaching, perhaps for all preaching, I don't know.

[6:24] We're going to consider the text with two outlines, not just one, but two. And my hope is that this will help us grasp the structure and, therefore, the meaning of the text.

[6:37] So our first outline for today, Jesus is presented in four ways. Number one, he is Jesus the living water.

[6:49] I'll explain more, verses 4 through 15. He is Jesus the prophet, number two, verses 16 through 19. We'll try to cover those two today.

[7:01] Thirdly, he is Jesus' savior of the world. And fourthly, he is Jesus, Messiah. So we're going to try our best to get to those two points of the four today.

[7:16] And we're also going to use a second outline, which will kind of be the more prominent outline. First, if you're taking notes, this is probably the place you want to start.

[7:27] First, the greatness of our sin. And secondly, the surpassing greatness of Jesus' mercy.

[7:42] The first of these outlines presents itself fairly obviously to me as I sought to ascertain some direction for our study. You may not have ever taught the Bible, but this is a thing we do.

[7:55] We sit down, we read the text, we reread the text. We're looking for some structure found within the text itself. Some texts it's easier, some texts it's a little more difficult to ascertain how you should structure what the structure of the text is, therefore what the structure of the sermon ought to be.

[8:14] But as we read through that, and I gave you those first four points, I imagine that it was fairly simple for you to see the point there. It's sequential, Jesus the living water, Jesus the prophet, Jesus the savior of the world, Jesus the messiah follows through the text in that way.

[8:33] And of course, we do well to see what any text intends to inform us about our Lord. We want to pay very careful attention to it.

[8:43] What is it saying about Jesus in the case of the gospel of John? So, why the second outline? If that's easy to ascertain, why the second outline?

[8:59] And I want to tell you, I want to give you a little bit of explanation. So as I'm looking at this passage, I'm beginning to notice some patterns that I want to show you that were emerging to me.

[9:10] I'm going, I really think there's an interesting pattern going on in this text. And so we need to talk a bit about the literary structure of chapter four.

[9:23] Before doing it, though, I want to take two quick comments about preaching. Some of you are guests this morning. Some of you are pretty settled in here. But number one, I'm just always baffled, just absolutely astounded by the preacher who is constantly searching for relevant stories to help make Bible points.

[9:42] I don't spend any time in the week watching TV or sports and looking for an analogy that I can bring to the pulpit on Sunday morning. Why?

[9:53] The Bible itself is replete with Spirit-inspired stories. We have one before us today. I just want to say, not all preaching that has stories in it is bad, analogies in it is bad.

[10:09] But be wary of preaching that's always looking elsewhere to try to drive a lesson home. It's right here. It's right here in the text itself if we would be careful and really consider it.

[10:23] Secondly, good preaching keeps your nose in the text. What do I mean by that, right? Good preaching is many things, but a really good place to begin preparing a faithful sermon is to consider how to have your hearers swim around in the text.

[10:43] So when I say keep your nose in the text, not that I really want any of you to do this, but this. You're doing this. You don't have to look at me. I'm not very much to look at up here.

[10:54] I wave my hands around frantically sometimes, but you're better off in the text. And I do a good job when I'm drawing you to it again and again and again. We don't want to just read it and then move on in our preaching.

[11:08] We want to contemplate it deeply so that the text might read us. And beloved, this text, I mean, it is just rich.

[11:21] The scripture is so incredible. The times I've read this passage and not really understood the layers of its meaning, and I will tell you humbly, probably someday I will come back through the book of John and there will be something else in there, something I missed that will make it all the much more rich.

[11:41] This past Monday at our elder meeting, we had a discussion about literary structure and how it aids in our preparation and delivery of faithful sermons.

[11:53] We talk about things like that at elder meetings sometimes. And we had some extended conversation about how much of that is helpful to listeners. Like, how much time should we spend explaining things like literary structure?

[12:09] But we also don't want to neglect it, particularly when it's really important to the meaning of the text. We want you, in hearing the way we preach, to be able to go home and confidently study the Bible.

[12:26] You can do everything I'm about to do this morning. It's very possible for you to do it if you could just take up and learn how it is that you're supposed to do it.

[12:36] So, at the risk, I recognize, at the risk of spending too much time on the structure before us this morning, but with the hope of keeping your nose in the text and with the aim of answering the second outline question, why a second outline, I want to talk to you about chiasmus.

[12:56] I've used the term before. I think it blows off the top of your head. We're doing it again. Chiastic structure. And this word comes from the Greek letter, the X in Greek, which is the chi.

[13:12] So that's chiasmus is the plural of it. Chiastic structure. And these structures are found everywhere in Hebrew, in Greek literature, including the Bible.

[13:26] So what that means is, the starting point of the text can kind of be folded over to the ending point of the text, and they reflect one another. So the two things, you could fold.

[13:38] So think of the X, like you're following the pattern, or if you want to follow it, down to the point and then back out. The two things fold over the top of the structure.

[13:49] All over the place in the Bible. Not forced into it. And I'm going to show you this morning that this text has a chiastic structure. In fact, the entire book of John has a chiastic structure, and I can't wait to get to the center point of the text.

[14:03] I'm so excited to get there, but I'm going to wait for it right now. Did you know that the entire Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, have a chiastic structure? Brilliant.

[14:16] Brilliantly written. And meant to bring us to a place to help us interpret the rest of it. Why? Why does this type of structure exist?

[14:27] Well, it's a very useful device for the memorization and the transmission of thought. It's really helpful for that. And that structure can help lead us, again, to some interpretive help as we're looking at text.

[14:44] Now, I learned this week, if any of you listen to the Room for Nuance podcast, which I commend to you a lot, this was talked about this week from the book of John. I learned this week that Jewish children were taught their alphabet this way.

[14:58] I don't know the Jewish alphabet, so I'm going to tell you in our alphabet. First, right, sequentially in order from beginning to end, right? A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and so on. Then, they learned it backwards.

[15:11] So, in our alphabet, Z, Y, X, W, V, E, U, T, and yes, I typed the whole thing out backwards. Because I couldn't do it otherwise. Because we don't learn the alphabet that way, do we? In fact, if you're anything like me, you've got to sing the song every time.

[15:25] You try to... Then, then they would learn it in a chiastic structure. A, Z, B, Y, C, X, D, W.

[15:40] What a way to know their alphabet forward, backward, inside out. I mean, you really know where the letters belong in that sequence if you memorize it in that way.

[15:54] So, this is like in the water of our biblical writers and their initial audiences. I think they would have seen them. It should have been really apparent what was going on.

[16:06] We've got to recognize that they exist and slow down a little. So, that was what I was doing this week. As I was looking, I'm going, there's some things happening. This is an interesting text. Even odd. What's going on here?

[16:18] And then, praise God, somebody smarter than me actually built out the chiastic structure and handed it to me in a book. And I was able to take a look at it. And I want to bring it to you.

[16:29] Like I said already, but regularly, where the literary structure meets in the middle, the central point of the text is being made or a significant turning point happens or a phrase that helps the reading of the rest of the passage is presented.

[16:46] We're supposed to pay attention to it. A little special attention to what's going on right at the center of that text. And so, we really do well when we notice these patterns emerging from the text.

[17:00] So, I want to show you. Now, the chiastic structure begins in verse 4 and ends in verse 30. The previous text is also chiastic, but the first three verses belong to it.

[17:12] So, I'm going to talk about the first three verses just briefly and then I'm going to get to the chiastic structure. Again, I'm answering the question why a second outline. So, I'm just going to know. There's structure here that matters for our study of this text.

[17:24] Okay, so first three verses. Now, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John. He's rising in prominence. His ministry is growing.

[17:35] There's a concern on Jesus' part that the Pharisees are going to take him before his time. We'll see this repeated throughout the gospel accounts. Jesus himself did not baptize, verse 2 says, but only his disciples.

[17:48] He left Judea, the region where Jerusalem is located, and departed again for Galilee. He's going back to Galilee.

[17:59] Okay? So, that's where we pick up the end of the other classic structure and the beginning of this one. Now, nose in the text. Are you ready? I'm going to show it to you. I just want you to see how very cool it is.

[18:11] I hope you think it's cool. Okay. First, verses 4 through 6 correspond to verse 30. Notice in verse 5, he comes to a town, he comes to a town of Samaria.

[18:28] And then what happens in verse 30? They go out of the town and there, in this language, they're coming to him. Okay? So, see how that happens? And inclusio, he's going to the town, eh, there's some coming to, coming out to him.

[18:44] Okay? So, I'm just showing you. This is how you can kind of see the pattern. Go, eh, there's some coming to and some coming to happening on both sides of this. Now, watch again. The first half of verse 7.

[18:58] A woman from Samaria came to draw water. She would have brought something with her in order to do that. A water jar. Notice verse 28, 29.

[19:12] So, the woman left her water jar and went away. Right? So, are you seeing what's happening here? So, he's coming to, then they come to, and you step just inside of that.

[19:26] She came to draw water with a water jar. What does she do? Just before, she leaves her water jar and she goes back to the town. You see how it steps in? I won't walk you through the entirety of the text, but I'm going to give you another one.

[19:38] Okay? Jesus speaks to the woman. Okay? We see this at the very beginning of verse 7. Oh, the last half of verse 7. Excuse me. Jesus said to her, give me a drink.

[19:53] And what we see in verse 27, the disciples come back. What do they do? They marvel that he was talking with the woman. Are you seeing it?

[20:06] I'm not making this up. Right? It's there. And we can track it all the way down to the central point. For the sake of time, I'm not going to walk you through the entire thing. If you'd like to see it, I'll be happy to share it with you.

[20:17] But what I do want to bring you to is the central, the hinging point. Okay? And it is found in verse 17, the very first half.

[20:30] We show you on either side. Again, this is reflecting on either side. Jesus says to her, go call your husband. Other side, he's speaking to her again.

[20:40] Same phrase. Jesus said to her, you are right in saying, I have no husband. Last half of verse 17. The beginning of verse 17. The woman answered him, I have no husband.

[20:57] Isn't that fascinating? If you understand that these structures exist and you can see the pattern, and again, it's a whole pattern. It's built out here.

[21:08] See the chiasm? There's a whole thing. The central point of it is the woman said to him, answered him, I have no husband.

[21:26] Fascinating, right? The structure of the text itself is communicating, this is a turning point. There's something going on here. We should pay attention.

[21:36] So this text fully intends for us to behold Christ. But this is not a text that's teaching us how to emulate Christ. This is not a text saying to us, look like Jesus in this way.

[21:49] We could pull some things by implication, but that's not the point of the text. This text seeks to expose us, to lay us bare.

[22:00] This is what's going on, right in the central point of this text. Jesus says to her, go get your husband, come back here, and she says, I have no husband.

[22:11] He knows this already when he asks her, because how does he respond? Yeah, you don't have a husband. You've had five. Five failed marriages, and now the man that you're living with is not your husband.

[22:27] Which is why the first point of that second outline is the greatness of our sin. We're supposed to notice this happening in this text.

[22:41] The greatness of our sin. This little point, we have to start with it, verses 16 through 19, and this is where we see, she makes the declaration that Jesus is the prophet.

[22:53] That second point in the first outline that I mentioned to you. Jesus said to her in verse 16, go call your husband and come here.

[23:07] Jesus has just said some astounding things. We read them earlier, and we'll address them in a moment. Some astounding things about living water. Water that you will have, and it will never go away.

[23:21] Water that wells up in you for eternal life. I mean, these words are worth contemplating. Roll these things over. What is going on here?

[23:31] And she is just absolutely clueless. I mean, she thinks he's speaking literally as he's saying this.

[23:42] And we can see in verse 15, she says to him, Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water. How great. It tidies up my day is what it seems to be doing there on the surface.

[24:00] And what does Jesus do? That's what's so odd about this text. What does he do when she says this? He doesn't go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me explain further what I mean by this.

[24:12] He just drops the analogy. He stops talking about it altogether. He doesn't even revisit it later in the text. Like we move on later to talk about worship and where worship happens and how worship happens and who worship is to be aimed at.

[24:27] He just leaves it behind altogether. She doesn't get it. And he just seems to just move on. This response seems so very strange.

[24:40] but if we understand the structure, if we see the structure and we see what's going on and we can add another little detail into the mix, it helps us comprehend what is happening here.

[24:56] Right? So, we come to the text. Again, our elders, this past week, we had a conversation about textual structure and I didn't get to this point. It was not where my head was by the time we ended our time together.

[25:07] But we were all kind of thinking through outlines and I was scratching my head. I said, I got some work to do on this text. Right? It is odd. And then I start to notice patterns.

[25:18] And then we pick up a detail in the last part of verse 6. When does Jesus arrive at this well? It was about the sixth hour.

[25:31] So, about noon. First hour was 6 a.m. It's about noon. This is not when people went and gathered water in the desert.

[25:43] This is the hottest time of the day. They would go out early in the morning or they would go out late in the evening as the sun was setting.

[25:54] Preparing for the day, putting it away in the evening, getting ready for the next day. This woman, by herself, as far as we can tell, this woman is out there in the middle of the day gathering water.

[26:14] It's extremely significant. The woman answers Jesus. She says, I have no husband.

[26:26] Jesus says to her, you are right in saying I have no husband for you have had five husbands and the one you have is not your husband. what you have said is true.

[26:38] Five failed marriages. This number, I mean, this is a true story. This number is an astounding number. Less so in our day, but still in our day.

[26:49] And she's now in a cohabitation situation. This woman has either first looked for satisfaction in men and they have failed to satisfy her.

[27:02] Or she has been the desired satisfaction of these men and she has failed to satisfy them. Or, and likely, as we know, the nature of human relationships, both things are true.

[27:14] She is dry. She has looked for life and she has failed to find it.

[27:26] She is out there in the middle of the day. This is some sanctified imagination, I know, but cultural details help us to understand she is avoiding the scorn of others and she is collecting water by herself in the midday heat.

[27:44] She comes to that well in the middle of the day with great shame. It's why she's there and it's why Jesus encounters her in this very moment.

[27:58] She doesn't get what he's talking about, about living water. Why does she not want to come back to the well? She could avoid it altogether, right? I don't have to be around the shame, I don't have to come out in the midday heat instead of gathering early in the morning or late in the evening, I could avoid it all together.

[28:17] And Jesus turns to expose her. You've been looking for it in the wrong place, is what he's saying to her. The relief of your shame isn't found in a midday gathering of water, it's found in me, the source of living water.

[28:39] Earlier this morning in our liturgy, Jake read from Jeremiah chapter 17 verses 5 through 13, I want to reread some of that for you. This is verses 5 and 6.

[28:51] Thus says the Lord, cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord.

[29:02] He is like a shrub in the desert and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness in an uninhabited salt land, dry, dry land.

[29:18] land. Then down to verse 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? And then verse 13, O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be put to shame.

[29:35] Those who turn away from you shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water.

[29:46] water. That wasn't an accident. We planned that, him reading that earlier for our benefit. You may not comprehend just how dry a desert is.

[29:59] Water is life in these places, right? In a stark way, right? It's life for all of us, but it's in a stark way. It is precious. It is carefully saved in the desert.

[30:14] desert. We here are like fighting against water all the time, right? We're trying to keep water out of stuff like our basements, right? It's the enemy often where we live, but not at all so, right?

[30:27] This idea of a water that satisfies, that gives life forever, it's a really vivid thing that Jesus is saying to her as she confuses it all together.

[30:40] Jesus' response to her failure to understand what he told her about living water makes perfect sense when we can understand the cultural and literary context, right?

[30:57] Keep your nose in the text. Keep your nose in the text. It's a rich, rich book. Let it read you. We are no different from this woman.

[31:14] I feel like we're always reading the Bible. There are others all the time. Don't let it be lost on you. You and I have searched for satisfaction for life in so many places where it cannot be found.

[31:32] We should not read this text and go, well, I haven't been married five times and now I'm cohabitating with somebody else. This is clearly a story about somebody who's that bad off. Not at all.

[31:44] Every single one of us has tried to find satisfaction in something that will not provide satisfaction. It will not. It cannot. And we walk around in this world, apart from the forgiveness of Christ, with great shame and guilt.

[31:59] Metaphorically, for us, we're looking for all kinds of ways to avoid it. And we drown it in things. Even those who have been delivered from the power and the guilt of sin, we drown the way we feel with all sorts of unsatisfactory things.

[32:16] We, so often, are midday at a well. What we need is living water. to the point to the point, draw our attention to this woman.

[32:31] We might see the greatness of our sin as we behold her. How does she respond? The woman says to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

[32:48] He knows things that he couldn't possibly know without her having told him. And her conclusion that he is a prophet is absolutely correct. Jesus holds that office.

[33:00] It's certainly not all that he is, but he certainly is. She's saying a true thing there. She's taking a step in the right direction. We'll see next week where her thinking leads her.

[33:13] It doesn't take off the way you might hope that it would. but we do see in verse 29, she says, come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?

[33:27] The greatest person and ours. But praise God we get to step out beyond that.

[33:37] We're not left miserable in the middle of the text. So we also want to note the surpassing greatness of Jesus' mercy. The opening song, kind of the song that's kind of meant to gather your attention and get us together, although that seemed to be slow this morning.

[33:56] So you might have missed the first verse of his mercy is more. This is what love could remember no wrongs we have done.

[34:08] Omniscient, all-knowing. He knows all about this woman's sin. Omniscient, all-knowing, he counts not their sum.

[34:20] Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore, our sins, they are many. His mercy is more. Praise the Lord, his mercy is more.

[34:33] Stronger than darkness, new every morn. Our sins, they are many. His mercy is more. Surpassing greatness of Jesus' mercy.

[34:46] So let's back up in the text and look at what it teaches us about that. Verse 4 says he had to pass through Samaria. Now, Jesus has left Judea and he's traveling back to Galilee.

[35:00] We see that detail in the text. He did not have to travel through Samaria in a geographical sense. It was the fastest way, it was the most direct way to complete his journey, but there were two routes that circumnavigated the region and most Jews went out of their way to avoid encountering Samaritans.

[35:23] They went around the long way to not go through the region of Samaria. But John says Jesus had to pass through Samaria.

[35:34] Why? The verb that John uses here translated had to, he also uses to speak of Jesus fulfilling the mission that the Father had given him.

[35:45] He uses that same verb repeatedly throughout his gospel account. Jesus had to pass through Samaria because this was a mercy-filled divine appointment.

[36:00] He was compelled to go there by God the Father that he would be at this well, at this time, to speak words of life to this woman. What a merciful God.

[36:14] He was meant to encounter her. Now I mentioned that Jews went out of their way to avoid encountering Samaritans. Some historical context is helpful here. Samaria was a region, I mentioned that already, but the people named after the region were viewed with disdain because of their mixed ethnicity.

[36:33] after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians, the ten tribes of Israel, this is in 2 Kings chapter 17, were exiled from their own land to Assyria, and the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kutha, Ava, Harnath, and Safarazim, something like that, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the sons of Israel, and they took possession of Samaria and they lived in its cities.

[37:06] They intermarried and were therefore viewed as unclean by the Jews. Not only that, for some time, the Samaritan people had mixed together pagan idolatry with Judaism.

[37:21] In Jesus' day, they had departed from the idolatry, but they had a pretty odd version of Judaism. They only read and studied the Pentateuch, the first five books next week, but the Jewish people just viewed them as unclean, outside of the grace and mercy of God.

[37:43] So, a further mercy, right? He is sent through this region to encounter this woman, a Samaritan. Jesus does not see this Samaritan woman, or the Samaritans of her village, we'll see later in the chapter, as being outside of the reach of his mercy.

[38:08] So, he prompts a conversation with her, verse 7, right? He asks her for water, give me a drink, and we get the parenthetical insertion, verse 8, his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food, and she responds to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink from me, a woman of Samaria.

[38:29] And then John inserts again, for Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Further, it was breaking a societal norm for a rabbi to speak with a woman.

[38:43] At very best, it was seen as a waste of time. This is why the disciples marveled that he was talking with a woman.

[38:54] Further mercy. The original readers of this would have been like, why is Jesus spending any time with her? Jesus answers her.

[39:07] If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have flipped it around. You would have asked him and he would have given you living water. If you have any idea of who I am, you would get that the point is not the water in the well.

[39:25] everyone, verse 13, who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

[39:36] Fully satisfied. He does not mean that we won't have to drink water. He's not talking about our temporal life. He's talking about our eternal satisfaction.

[39:48] Never be thirsty again. The water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

[40:00] Here Jesus presents himself as the living water. Great, great mercy to this woman. He presents himself as the living water.

[40:14] But why not the giver of living water? Again, back to our Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 5 through 13, reading from before.

[40:25] This time, let me read to you verses 7 and 8. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. Trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.

[40:38] He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.

[40:55] The picture is a tree planted by a stream that continues and continues and continues. Even in a year of drought, the water continues to flow. Does that sound familiar at all?

[41:05] Back to verse 14. The spring of water that wells up to eternal life. And again, verse 13, O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be put to shame.

[41:20] Those who turn away from you shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water. That's why I think Jesus is presenting himself as the living water.

[41:37] John's Jewish readers, this imagery would have been just firing off in their brains as they're reading this recorded word of Jesus' teaching to this woman.

[41:49] God's love of So, we get to see in the first part of this passage, in our first week in it, the greatness of our sin, the surpassing greatness of Jesus' mercy as he presents himself as the living water and as the prophet.

[42:09] I hope that our time in thinking about this lays us bare. we recognize our great need of a merciful savior.

[42:22] And close with a quotation from Charles Spurgeon, it's on the back of your bulletin. He's once said, God's mercy is so great, God's mercy is so great, that you may sooner drain the sea of its water, or deprive the sun of its light, or make space too narrow, than diminish the great mercy of our God.

[42:47]  Let's pray together.