Willow Ridge Sermons

Sunday, January 2nd • Beau Bradberry

"Jesus said to her, “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. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”" — John 4:13-14

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Show Notes

Sunday, January 2nd • Beau Bradberry

"Jesus said to her, “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. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”" — John 4:13-14

–
Podcast: https://pod.link/willowridgechurch
Website: https://willowridgechurch.org
Instagram: https://instagram.com/willowridgechurch
Facebook: https://facebook.com/willowridgechurch
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@willowridgechurch

Creators and Guests

Host

Beau Bradberry

Senior Pastor

What is Willow Ridge Sermons?

Sermon audio from Sunday services at Willow Ridge Church.

Hi, and welcome to the Willow Ridge Church weekly podcast.

This is where you can find audio for our current and past sermons.

We hope that you enjoy this week's installment, and be sure to check back next week to hear

the latest message.

Thanks for listening.

Would you guys pray with me?

Lord, we come to you this morning, and just thank you for this wonderful opportunity we

have to worship you.

Lord, as we open up your word this morning, and your word is powerful, it is living in

and it works, Lord.

We pray that it would convict us.

We pray that it would draw us closer to you, Lord, and more in love with you.

Lord, as we gather here this morning, if there's anyone here that does not know you, Lord, we

pray as a result of the working of your spirit and the power of your plan, Lord, as we leave

here today, there will be those that stepped out of darkness into light, out of death, and

into life.

And Lord, and we'll give you all the praise and honor and glory for it.

Lord, as we look forward to this new year, Lord, we look at it in anticipation of what

you have for us as a church, what you have for us as families, what you have for us as individuals.

And God, we pray that you would be glorified.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

If you've got your Bibles, go on over to John chapter 4.

All right, as you turn there, normally there's a video that comes up on screen, and we do

not have that this morning.

So I want to go over a few of our announcements that we have.

The first one that I want to mention is on Friday, January 21st, our women's ministry is

going to be gathering here for a game night.

And ladies, a wonderful opportunity for you to come and connect with other women here at

Willow Ridge Church to build gospel-centered relationships.

And so we are doing a sign-up for that in the lobby, and so please go out and sign up for

that and be a part of that wonderful night.

Also, next Sunday, January the 9th, we will gather together as a church family that evening,

and we're going to have a chili and soup night together.

Again, a wonderful time for us just coming into the new year to gather together as a church

family, to fellowship, to have a wonderful time.

And we are wanting to make sure that we've got enough chili and enough soup, and so there's

a sign-up for that as well in the lobby, and so if you wouldn't mind signing up for that

also.

And then lastly, on January 16th, we will be starting back our regular Sunday night programming,

as well as our small groups will be starting back.

And so we will be beginning a new series that I'm excited about, and what we're going to

do for our spring semester.

You know, normally it feels weird to say spring semester when it's freezing cold outside, but

right now it fits, right, to say spring semester in 85-degree weather.

So our spring semester, we're going to go through the book of 1 Corinthians together as a church.

And so what I'm going to be challenging everyone to do is to take a section as we go through

that week and study that in your quiet time.

And then I'm going to be here on Sunday morning, and I will preach through 1 Corinthians.

And then in your small groups, you're going to work through 1 Corinthians together as a

small group.

And so I'm excited to see what this is going to be like for our church.

Now, as we're going into, well, as not going into, as we're in the new year, we do have

a lot of new groups that haven't previously met before, meeting at different times, meeting

at different days.

And Pastor Dave is going to have all of that finalized and that information out there to

you next week.

And so if you haven't been a part of a group, there's a lot of new groups that are starting

up, and we'd just love to challenge you to be a part of a group as we gather back together.

Well, if you did not recognize our guitar player this morning, I just want to take a minute

to introduce y'all.

It's Brian Nolasco.

The burgers had to miss this morning.

And so in the last minute, we called Brian, and Brian agreed to step in and help lead along

with Leslie this morning.

Brian is our worship leader for our Hispanic service.

And so Brian, I just want to say thank you.

You're pulling double duty today, brother.

We appreciate you.

He'll be back here.

Yeah, absolutely.

Man, leading in English, leading in Spanish, man, you're the guy getting it done today.

Well done, sir.

And thank you so much for being willing to step in.

Well, as we go into this passage in John chapter 4, this series is All Things New.

We began it last week.

You remember last year, right?

We got started in there, and we looked at Revelation 21, and we saw how God is working to make all

things new in eternity.

And today, we're going to take that step back and look at that immediately for us.

But I want to kind of refresh us.

If you weren't here last week, I want to kind of remind you of where we're building off of

and what we're working toward as we look toward eternity with the Lord.

We looked at last week that God makes us both spiritually and morally new, that in eternity

that we're set free from the bondage of sin.

There's not sin around us, but even more promising and more hopeful with what you and I,

as believers, what we struggle with internally most often is we're even set free from the

desire of sin.

So it's not just that sin's not there.

It's that within us, even though we know the right thing to do, even though we desire to

do the right thing, there's still that peace in us that wants to pull us back toward the

sinful patterns.

But in eternity, all of that is set free.

The part that got the most of the amens and probably started a lot of us on our New Year's

resolutions, right, is that our bodies will be new.

And in thinking about that, we don't know what they'll be.

We don't know what age.

We don't know what standard our bodies will be.

But what we can draw from and what we can see from Scripture is that there's no more death.

So the pain and the suffering and the hurt that comes from the fact that these bodies are broken

because of the humanity that is broken within us, we're set free from.

And so we say amen, not that we're going to have chiseled rock-hard abs in eternity, right?

But we say amen because there's no more suffering.

There's no more hurt.

There's no more sickness.

There's no more death.

And so we celebrate.

We look to the fact that even within that, that creation will be new.

The no more effects of sin.

We saw in Scripture where creation inwardly groans because of the brokenness of sin that's there.

But the most promising, the one that gives us the most hope that we have in eternity is the newness of relationship with God.

Now, if you're saved right now, you are brought into relationship with God.

God promises never to leave us, never to forsake us.

God promises and sends His Holy Spirit when upon conversion indwells within us as believers.

And so we are filled with the very Spirit of God.

But because of the brokenness in which we live in and the brokenness in which our world is set,

even though God promises to never leave us or forsake us,

even though God promised us His Holy Spirit that indwells within us,

we could all say amen to even though we're believers,

there becomes points and times in our walk with the Lord where He feels absent and we feel far from Him,

even though that's not reality.

But what we have the hope is God is there in the newness of relationship.

There's no distance within there.

And so there's the hope that we have of eternity,

but even more so as we look to the reality of where we are now,

we want to look at the fact that salvation in Christ makes us new.

So what we're going to do this morning,

we're going to try to work through pretty much all of John chapter 4, which is a lot, all right?

So we're going to read a lot and then talk a little and then read a lot and talk a little

and kind of work through that and hopefully so our children's ministry workers don't get left in there too long, right?

Yeah, get out of here in a decent time.

So let's start reading in John chapter 4, verse 1.

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.

And He had 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.

And Jacob's well was there.

So Jesus, wearied as He was from His journey, was sitting beside the well, and it was about the sixth hour.

And a woman from Samaria came to draw water.

And Jesus said to her,

Give me a drink.

For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

And 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.

And 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.

Verse 11,

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?

He gave us the well and drank from it Himself, as did His sons and His livestock.

And Jesus said to her,

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.

The water I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

And 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.

Well, what we're going to look at this morning are three different things that Christ gives us in newness from our relationship with Him.

That we can see from His interactions with the Samaritan woman of three different pieces as we work through all of this.

And the first thing that in a relationship with Christ of what Jesus provides for us is new water.

Jesus gives us new water.

Now, verse 9 is a key verse for us to understand what is happening here and what Jesus is doing.

So Jesus asked this woman for a drink of water as He's there during the heat of the day.

And remember, He's traveling.

He's not traveling in His car.

He's not traveling on a plane.

He's not traveling on a train.

They are walking.

And during the heat of the day, during the desert area which they find themselves,

He is very hot and He asks her,

Could you give me some water?

And then her response to Him in verse 9 kind of lays the groundwork for all that's going to happen and unfold

over the course of this interaction.

It says,

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.

So it's key for us to kind of understand the dynamic of what has brought them into this place

where a woman who's hot, someone who's thirsty and you're drawing water and they're asking for some

while her response to Jesus is neither rude or inappropriate.

It's culturally fitting.

And it's not because of her that brings her to this point.

You see, the Samaritans were descendants of how they were viewed from the Israelites as descendants of the Assyrians.

The Assyrians had captured Samaria, which at the time Samaria was in the northern kingdom of Israel around 722 B.C.

And when the Assyrians captured Samaria, the Assyrians removed all Israelites of power and of influence and they deported them.

They sent them off and they claimed this is going to be our city.

But they didn't deport all of the Israelites.

They left some there.

And so then the Assyrians and the Jews that were left behind over generation to generation continued to marry.

And as they would marry, they would have children.

And what you had was this different race was formed and was created, the race of the Samaritans.

Now, the Jews viewed the Samaritans at extremely low levels.

Their view of the Samaritans were based off of two things.

During a time where race was emphasized, they were considered to be racially unclean.

A mixed race, not purely Jewish.

But they were also, and probably even more prominently, considered religiously unclean.

You see, they had a mixed faith.

The pagan Assyrian practices that came in with the Assyrians had mixed also with the Jewish practices that were there.

And so what was left was this divide that was there.

So she's kind of interacting culturally with what should be expected.

She says to Jesus, why are you, a pure Jewish man, talking to me, an unclean Samaritan woman?

As the nature and dynamic has determined for them in that setting of what is clean and what is not.

But in the hope and the beauty of the gospel, what we're going to see is we're not talking about a racial impurity because there is no such thing.

We're talking about a spiritual impurity that Jesus is going to bring with new water.

And so Jesus answers her in verse 10.

And he says, 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.

Now I can imagine, like, hearing this concept of living water is kind of like the whole Jack and the Beanstalk thing, right?

Like, what are you talking about?

Living water.

But what Jesus is doing is letting her know as she responds correctly based off of culture to what any man would have said to her.

It's like, hold up, time out.

I'm not like any other man that you've engaged with.

And we're going to see she's got some engagements.

She's got some situations in her life.

But Jesus is not going to be like any Samaritan man.

Jesus is not going to be like any Jewish man.

With what Jesus is going to bring and what Jesus is going to offer are completely different.

So for her, she's confused.

What do you mean that this is what you're going to do?

And she says, are you greater than our father Jacob?

He gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

So she's saying, well, hold up.

You say that you're different, but there's no way that you are greater than Jacob.

But Jesus says in verse 13, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.

But whoever drinks of the water I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

And we begin to see this conflict of this dialogue that is existing between the two of them.

Is it too good to be true?

Well, for those of us who know the story, for those of us who understand the gospel,

that's what we understand of what Jesus is talking about, this new water.

It's different.

It's different than any other faith.

It's different than any other religion.

It's different than any other practice.

It's different than any other culture because it comes to bring to what is broken.

So that life can happen and be restored and be eternal.

And so Jesus offers a water that is different.

The water that Jesus talks about is a water that's not found from a well,

but water that is a gift of God.

We understand that.

Jesus is saying from the very beginning, you can't get this water.

You can't earn it.

You can't dig deep enough for it.

You can't send your pot down as far as you can.

You'll continue to dig a hole.

You see, this water comes from me and comes from me alone.

This water is a gift of God as his salvation.

Jesus says that this water is living.

That he wants her to understand that in this of what he will share,

that this living water is different than any other thing.

Cannot be defined by anything else.

Cannot be compared to by anything else.

And what makes this different is that this water, it satisfies.

Blessed are those who thirst for righteousness, Jesus says.

Right?

It satisfies, but it's going to satisfy something different than just being a little thirsty.

It's going to satisfy a little bit different than when your throat gets a little dry

and you need to take a bottle of water and have a sip.

This water is going to meet more than a physical need

because this water satisfies the longing of the soul.

But that this water will become something.

It will become a spring within you.

Water that produces water.

That from you, this water will continue to build and to flow and to continue on in your life.

Because this water is the water that gives life.

The water that gives life.

One of Aaron and I's favorite shows that we like to watch is the TV show Life Below Zero.

I don't know if you've ever watched Life Below Zero,

but we like to watch Life Below Zero.

And it's about people who kind of live off the grid in Alaska.

And one of the things that I've learned over the course of watching Life Below Zero

is that the state of Alaska is filled with natural resources.

Like you can go there and everything you need is provided in this ecosystem that they have.

And during the winter months, which is most of the year for most of the people,

you would think the need that they have that is the greatest is heat.

But it's not because they've got all of the wood that they need and they can make fire.

You would think that meat and vegetables would be the most valuable resource that they could store up,

but they don't.

But even in the coldest times of the year, there are animals who are migrating and moving through,

and so they're able to provide.

But the resource that they have there that they long for the most that is the hardest to obtain is water.

Even though it's surrounded by snow.

And I thought, just get some snow and put it in a pot, and then you're good.

But it doesn't work that way.

A big pot of snow this big will turn into a little bit of water about that big.

And so they've got to go out, and they've got to break ice, and they've got to get water out,

and they've got to do this every single day, and sometimes negative 30, negative 40 degrees.

And they have to do this every day because the water that they long for sustains their life.

That if they go too long without water, their life will no longer be sustained, and they will die.

But Jesus says this water is different.

It doesn't just sustain life, but Jesus says this water gives life.

From this water is where life comes from.

From this water is not where you just get from by day by day,

but this water secures you for all of eternity.

And I love what she says.

You ever had that bad day at work?

You know?

You ever had that bad day at home, right?

Everything's falling apart.

Nothing's going right.

Everything is just the inconvenience of the day.

Like, I can hear this frustration in her as going and getting water every single day would have been her challenge.

Now, there's some meaning going on here of why she's there during the middle of the day,

during the heat of the day, by herself.

And we're going to see that as we kind of work through this.

But you can tell and you can hear from her response the desperation in her voice.

And she says to him, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.

She's like, you can solve this problem.

I don't have to come out here and drip in the sweat.

I don't have to take my pot all the way down and pull it all the way up and carry it all the way back to my house to just do it again tomorrow and do it again the day after that and do it again the day after that.

Then I want this.

So look at verse 16.

Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here.

And the woman answered him, I have no husband.

And Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband.

For you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband.

What you have said is true.

And the woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Right?

The most obvious statement in the Bible.

Right?

Verse 20.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain.

But you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.

And 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.

Verse 23.

But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

For the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

And the woman 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 Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he.

What we see here, not only does Jesus give us new water, Jesus gives us new worship.

Jesus sends her to get her husband.

She says, I want this water.

He says, fine, go get your husband.

And she tells Jesus, well, I don't have a husband, which is half truth, which a half truth, you know, is a whole lot, right?

And Jesus tells her, you're right.

You don't have a husband because you've had five and the man you're living with now isn't your husband.

So she says, obviously, you must be a prophet, right?

The disconnect from who Christ is, but that's for her the most obvious thing that this could be.

I mean, could you imagine, like, you're at Walmart, and you bump into someone who you've never met in your entire life,

and you say, hey, could you pass me the Cocoa Pebbles?

And they're like, oh, yeah, by the way, you remember in 2001 when you didn't really do things right on your taxes?

You're like, oh, what, right, you know?

Like, this is what's going on here.

There's no way that Jesus should know the things that Jesus knows.

He's a Jewish man traveling through town, she thinks.

Obviously for her, he must be a prophet.

And so what she begins to do, she senses there's some religion going on here.

You're not just a Jewish man who's willing to talk to a Samaritan woman.

You're a man of religion.

You're a man of faith.

You're a prophet.

And what she tries to do is to move the conversation.

She tries to deflect it.

It began by understanding the sinful life in which she lives in,

and now she tries to push it to a religious debate of where you should worship.

And she wants to argue in her mind with this prophet, but not yet understanding that he's the Messiah.

But what Jesus wants to get her to is that in worship, in the new worship of what Jesus is bringing for her,

the worship of what Jesus brings us when we're found in him,

it's not the where, but it's the how and the whom that matters.

Look back at verse 21.

Jesus says, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

That's what she's trying to bring the debate to.

Verse 22, 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 worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

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 internal aspects of how you and I worship Christ are vastly more important than our external experiences.

The internal aspects of the character and nature and spirit of who we are in Christ are vastly more important than any external worship experience.

Jesus says that true worship is based in knowing God, not in experience.

Worship comes from salvation.

And he says there's this standard that we're going to see in worship.

There's the standard of what's there and that we're called to worship God in spirit and in truth.

This is the how and the whom of worship.

We worship in spirit and truth.

So to worship in the spirit acknowledges that there's something supernatural that's taking place between me and God in worship.

Whether it's in these chairs, whether it's in your car, whether it's in your backyard, or whether it's on your knees by your bed.

There's a supernatural spirit, there's a supernatural spiritual thing that is taking place between us and God.

That my affections and my longings are stirring for him and are pointed to him.

Not because of who I am, but because of who he is.

And we worship in spirit.

It's more than the things that we do.

It's more than the place that we gather.

It's more than the experience that's there.

That we worship in spirit.

And this can only happen in believers.

But we also worship in truth.

That our worship is based in who God is, not in who we are.

Right?

The beauty of that.

It's our response to his holiness.

It's our response to his goodness.

It's our response to his love.

It's understanding what transforms and how that works within us.

But the truth of the nature of who God is, the more that we dive into him, the more we know his holiness and his goodness, the more that we worship him.

And Jesus says, you can't worship him if your spirit is in line.

You can't worship him if you do not know.

And so with new water, with new life, comes new worship.

No longer tied to the traditions of the human perspective, but from the internal desire to know him more and to love him more.

And look at verse 25.

It says,

The woman said to him,

I know that Messiah is coming.

He who is called Christ.

When he comes, he will tell us all things.

Let's pause there for just a second.

Jesus has left where he was before because word's getting out about him.

And Jesus does this oftentimes in ministry.

And there's no really clear way to explain it other than Jesus is walking under a providence and sovereignty of God that you and I can't possibly imagine.

There's points and times where in a city, so many people begin to talk about all that he's doing.

And Jesus is like, it's time to go.

And we would think, no, no, no.

We need to lay roots here.

There's so many times where Jesus shares who he is with someone and then looks at them.

And we can't understand it.

But Jesus, in knowing the plan of God that's going to lead him to Calvary, says,

But don't talk.

Just shh.

And Jesus, culturally speaking, with a nobody, looks at her because he knows that she is someone.

And in verse 26, Jesus said to her,

I who speak to you am he.

Jesus says, hey, you've had five husbands.

The man you're living with now isn't your husband.

You're out here in the middle of the day, during the heat of the day, by yourself,

because you don't come out during the cool of the morning when everyone else comes out here in the cool of the morning to get water.

Because what we know is when you come out here in the cool of the morning,

even your own people don't want to be with you because they know the behaviors that you've had in your life.

I'm the Messiah.

New worship begins to happen.

What we begin to see of who Jesus is.

Look at verse 27.

And just then his disciples came back.

I love the honesty of the Gospels.

They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, what do you seek or why are you talking with her?

John gives us a glimpse into the thoughts of what's happening and taking place.

They're baffled that Jesus is talking to a Samaritan woman.

Tax collectors and thieves are confused by what Jesus is doing here.

So the woman left her water jug and went away into town and said to the people,

come see a man who told me all that I ever did.

Can this be the Christ?

They went out of the town and were coming to him.

And meanwhile, the disciples were urging him saying, Rabbi, eat.

Remember, they're just pausing.

They were sent in town to get food.

He's ready to eat.

This is what they wanted to do.

But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about.

So the disciples said to one another, has someone brought him something to eat?

They're curious, like, Jesus, did somebody bring you like a Big Mac meal?

Like, what's going on here, right?

And Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

Do you not say that there are yet four months, then harvest will come?

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

the sower and the reaper may rejoice together.

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.

Verse 39, 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.

And they said to the woman, and it's no longer because of what you said that we believe,

for they have heard, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.

The last thing that I want us to look at this morning as we close is Jesus brings new water.

Jesus brings new worship.

Jesus brings a new way.

The gospel transforms not only our eternity, but who we are.

The disciples don't even understand the power of this moment, of what has happened and taken place.

They show up, and what is Jesus doing?

He's talking to a woman.

He's talking to a Samaritan woman.

Why would he do that?

And then they, Jesus, we brought you food, but you asked us.

And Jesus says, well, there's something more important than food, something that we need to talk about.

So the woman leaves, left everything behind, went into town, and said to the people, what verse 29 tells us,

come see a man who told me all that I ever did.

Can this be the Christ?

And they went out of the town, and were coming to him.

You know, times change, and people change, but I believe by our nature, not a lot changes.

And a woman who once before wouldn't come to a well out of the fear of the shame of the people who would be at the well,

runs into town, and like throwing her life on a billboard,

says, hey, I know that y'all talk about me.

I know that y'all know.

I know that I'm the person that gets whispered about.

Come meet a man who knows all that, too.

Come meet him.

He's told me about everything that I've ever done.

And this is key.

She's not bragging about her sin, but she's amazed by the Messiah.

And the people heard, and they were coming to him.

Jesus looks at the disciples, and he says, in four months, it'll be time to take the harvest, right?

If you've ever planted fruits and vegetables, you know that you don't put the seed in the ground,

and the next day you come and you take the fruit, right?

You've got to wait, and there's a harvest season.

And Jesus looks at the disciples, and he says, look, I know in four months, like he's helping them.

These disciples, they're like me.

They're a little hard-headed.

I know that in four months is when the harvest comes, but look up now, because the harvest is ready.

What harvest is ready?

The people.

Scripture tells us that they're coming to Jesus, right?

The beauty of this, the beauty of what we're experiencing.

She says, it's more than grain and fruits and vegetables.

It's more than the hunger, pain, or the thirst that I feel in my stomach right now.

Because he who has sent me has sent me for a greater work.

And it's not about the things of this earth.

It's about them.

And they came.

What brought the people to Jesus?

It wasn't a mission trip.

The missionaries were out getting food.

It wasn't a worship service.

They didn't have them then, right?

It wasn't a sermon.

It was a testimony.

We have verse 39.

Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.

She confirmed who she was before Christ and who he is.

And he told me all that I ever did.

And so when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them.

And he stayed there two days.

And the beauty, verse 41, of the power of the brokenness of God's people.

When they carried the gospel into the world and sharing what Christ has done.

And many more believed because of his word.

And they said to her, it's no longer because of what you said that we believed.

You see, it wasn't just about hearing a cool story and responding to it.

It was about the work of the spirit of God and what he sent the people, what he sent Jesus to do.

For we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world.

And that's the hope that we have.

But as you and I have experienced the new water, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the living water that comes from us.

That we interact with him and that we worship him in a new way.

It's no longer based out of some religious obligation.

It's no longer based out of the man-made customs and traditions that are there.

But we worship him in a new way, in a new worship, in spirit and truth.

Because of what is welling up inside of us and what is drawing us to him.

And it's not about knowing a person more.

It's not about a different experience.

It's not about being entertained, but it's about worshiping him in spirit and in truth.

Because of who he is and our response to him and this supernatural act that is happening and taking place.

Which pushes us toward and points us toward.

And we're going to look at this a lot next week.

Into a new way.

Into a new ministry.

A ministry of reconciliation of what God has for us.

Because here's the truth.

In this story, there's one Samaritan woman.

One Samaritan woman who was broken.

Who was unclean.

Who was not fit to sit beside the Savior.

Who was not capable of saving herself.

Who had a past.

Who made poor decisions.

There's one of those in this story.

But the truth is, you and I are her.

We're broken with a past.

We're undeserving.

But Jesus came so that we may have life and have it to the fullest.

Would you pray with me?

Lord, I thank you for this time and this opportunity that we have to worship you.

Lord, as we move into a time of taking in the Lord's Supper.

Of acknowledging that you came not to just have moments like this.

At a well in Samaria.

But you came to live.

To die.

To be resurrected.

And to ascend.

So, Lord, that we may have life in you.

And to its fullest.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

So if you have your elements, I want to get you to go ahead and open and take out the bread.

The bread that represents the very body of Christ.

Why was Jesus punished?

Why did his body endure what he endured?

Because he took our place.

And because of our sin, he was crucified.

He took a crucifixion that you deserved and you deserved and you deserved and I deserve.

And he took it in our place to pay for our sins.

And so because of that, Scripture tells us that Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

And in the same way, Scripture says, he took the cup.

The cup that would represent the blood of Christ.

The payment for our sins.

That we may be made new and what we may inherit is eternal life.

That we're covered by the blood of the Lamb, which makes us clean.

In spite of all that we're done in spite of all that we do.

And so Jesus says, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Would you pray with me?

Lord, we thank you for the grace of this morning.

We thank you for life, for hope.

Lord, we thank you in the beauty of this story of what happened and what took place.

Lord, we thank you that in your journey on this earth to fulfill the will of the Father.

You took the time to sit in the middle of the heat of the day and talk to a woman at the well.

Lord, we thank you for the new water that you give.

The new water that you bring that is found in you and in you alone.

Lord, we thank you that we can't obtain it ourselves.

We thank you that it's different.

We thank you that it satisfies.

That it produces.

And that it gives.

Eternal life.

In the hope of the gospel.

Lord, we thank you for the new worship.

It's not found in us, but it's found in you.

And Lord, you are our object of worship.

You are the subject of worship.

You are the means of worship.

You're the focus of worship.

And Lord, may we worship you in spirit and truth.

Lord, may we worship you in spirit and truth.

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