Blake Hickman: Good morning, everybody. If you've got your Bible, turn to John chapter four. We're gonna be working our way through that, through most of that chapter here today. My name is Blake. If you are new here or you were not here last week, I had the privilege for many years, my wife and our family, our five sons, of being members here and being able to serve here. And it has been a great two weeks for me being back with you all. ⁓ In Philippians chapter 1, Paul states starting in verse 3, he says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me. to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart for you are all partakers with me of grace. It has brought me great joy since last October to hear about all that God has been doing here and for the last two weeks to be able to see it with my own eyes. God is doing a wonderful work here at Harvest and God is extraordinarily faithful. and of great encouragement is that he is not completed with his work yet here among you all. It was a regular thing for me to exhort everyone when I would have the opportunity to preach here about the primacy of scripture and the importance of God's word, not just in this time in our gathering, and not just in your small groups, but in your day-to-day personal walk with Jesus. ⁓ to remember that this word, this word right here, that it is for you, that it is not just for us collectively, but it is for each of you individually. No matter how you find yourself here today, whether you are near to God, far from God, searching for God, this word is for you. And not just those verses from Philippians that I read, not just the... the eight verses that Mike read from our text that we're going to look at together this morning, but all of this word is for you. And so let's pray again and let's ask God to bless our time together in His word this morning. Father, thank you so much for the truth of your word. Thank you for the many ways that your word has been proclaimed here this morning. Father, not just in the portions of scripture that have been read and have been recited, but even in the songs that we have sung, being able to declare your greatness, being able to declare your matchless worth, to declare your faithfulness, your holiness, your righteousness, your grace, and your mercy. Thank you for all the ways that we have been able to see through your word this morning, you showing us who you are. Father, I pray for our time together in the text. I pray that you would work through great weakness in me, that you would work through great weakness in all of us here, that Jesus would be magnified and would be made known. And we ask all of this in his name, amen. In 1846, Alexandre Dumas, who at this time in France was already well known, published his work, The Count of Monte Cristo. Now, if you're not familiar with this story, Dumas tells the tale of a man named Edmond Dantes, who would go on to become the Count of Monte Cristo. Many years ago, I became familiar with this story through a movie that had been released in the early 2000s, and recently I became reacquainted with it ⁓ as PBS is airing a relatively new miniseries each Sunday night, 10 p.m., tune in, it's great, okay? Without giving too much away, Edmund Dantes is wrongfully accused of a crime and he has been unjustly sentenced for it. He ends up finding a way out of prison miraculously and even more amazingly, he becomes the Count of Monte Cristo. He ends up back in the acquaintance of all of the people that were responsible for his imprisonment, but now they no longer recognize who he is. He is completely and totally unfamiliar to them. He knows them. They do not know him. And as many years have passed, it's not just that they don't recognize his appearance. They also don't recognize his station in life as now he has become extraordinarily wealthy. As the story unfolds, these people are astonished by how this man that they have just met seemingly knows everything about them. and they cannot figure out how he has access to this knowledge and it has become very, very unnerving to them. Well, Edmund Dantes is not omniscient. ⁓ He is a very fallible man. He is a very limited man. He is also a man that is driven by great vengeance and is driven by great retribution. And this is where he differs greatly from the central figure in our story today. But in our text, we will see something similar. But the main difference is the man who knows everything in our story today is omniscient. And instead of being filled with vengeance and retribution, he is filled with love and with mercy and with grace. And he is without any hint or stain of sin. In John chapter four, we are going to see today that Jesus knows everything. He knows everything. Now for time's sake, we are only going to highlight three specific things as we see them lay out in our text. But we could list for now from the end of eternity of all the things he knows. And as a quick aside, Dumas published two editions of that work, an abridged one and an unabridged one. Our text today is going to cover 42 verses. And in those 42 verses, there are numerous references and callbacks to Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, among others. I say that to say you are getting the abridged version of this text this morning. And I would also encourage all of you to spend some time on your own in this chapter this week. to see all of the beauty of all the many ways this story unfolds slowly. But as time is of the essence today, we're gonna begin with what we see first. And the first thing that we're going to see today is that Jesus knows our human frailty. Beginning in verse one of chapter four, and then we're gonna jump down to verses 31 through 37, but this is what. John tells us, he says, 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 for Galilee. 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. It was about the sixth hour. And then if you jump down to verse 31, 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. So the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him anything to eat? 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 there are yet four months and 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 the sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, one sows and other reaps. I sent you to reap for that which you did not labor. Others have labored and you have entered into their... labor. Last week as we looked at John the Baptist's encounter with his followers, John the Baptist's encounter with John the Baptist's followers, we saw that Jesus and his disciples were baptizing as well and the way that John our writer framed that in John chapter 3 made it appear as if Jesus was also doing the baptizing. Well today John our writer, one of the twelve, clears this up for us that Jesus himself was not baptizing. His disciples were and he was giving authority and presiding over the work that they were doing. But now that ministry that they had there in Judea, it's ended. They are on the move. And there's twofold reason why. Primarily, they're being led by the Spirit. Jesus is being led and told and said, you need to be moving. And he is. But another reason is John lets us know they're staying ahead of the religious leaders. The religious leaders at this time are doing all they can. We've seen this all the way back in John chapter one. When John the Baptist started to show some hints of being the Messiah, they come and they question him and he says, hey, that's not me. But now we know that this is Jesus and now people are flocking to Jesus as they used to John the Baptist. And the Pharisees are dialing in on this. And so Jesus is moving a little bit ahead. And this leads them through Samaria. Now we'll get into those details more in a minute because this is very complicated and yet it is very important. But in the course of this journey as they are traveling, Jesus has grown weary. Weary enough that he has to sit by a well and weary enough that his disciples are on a mission to find him food to eat. Now you may be asking, why are we beginning with this? Like I've read chapter four of John before, I'm familiar with the story. This is about the woman at the well or the Samaritan woman, depending on how you have heard it. And friend, you were right, but. This text is about so much more than that. And primarily this text is not about that woman at all. This text is about Jesus. It's about who he is and how he works and how he woos and how he wins. And John begins by letting us know that we need to know about our savior, that he was human just like we are and that he grew weary just like we do. We're beginning here because John begins here. Then you may say, well, Blake, why did you jump ahead 25 verses to read more at the end of the chapter? Also a good question. Simply because we have two very separate interactions that are happening here. We have Jesus and his encounter with the woman and we have Jesus and his encounter with his own followers and taking them separately will allow us to spend the bulk of our time on Jesus' primary message and interaction. But also understanding Jesus' humanity is going to help us understand better his interaction with the Samaritan woman, because it's going to show us his motivation. But you need to understand here, both to Jesus in his humanity and to Jesus and how he interacts with the woman in the story. Jesus knows mine and your human frailty. When we begin this chapter here, Jesus is exhausted. Time of travel of the journey that they are taking no doubt has worn on him. The immediacy and urgency and weight of his earthly ministry having begun has no doubt worn on him. By the disciples leaving him to sit beside the well, we can rightly infer that he was physically thirsty. After all, they left him by a source of water. They did not leave him with a bucket as we will get to in a moment. By the fact that they went to buy food, we can infer that he was physically hungry. And why this matters to us is that it allows us to know and to remember that Jesus was human just like me and just like you. He grew weary. He grew tired. He felt pains of hunger. He knew what it was like to be parched and be thirsty. He knew sadness. He felt pain. While in his human flesh, Jesus knew better than any of us will ever know about the frailty of our human bodies. And I say this to comfort you today. I say this to give you hope today. I do not know each and every one of your individual stories and I don't know what you specifically are dealing with today, but I know at some level, every single one of us in this room is very, very, very aware of the failings of our human bodies. For some, it's probably very small, minor things. Maybe even something that's just a little bit nagging that you really don't even pay attention to. And for others, you know this, it painfully deep levels. And while I might not know your situation and I might not know how to help, I might not know how to be able to enter into what you are feeling. This text wants us to know and John our writer wants us to know that Jesus does. That he does. And I know reading these verses might not seem comforting because we get to the end and the disciples are trying to comfort Jesus as he is physically exhausted. And it seems like Jesus is rallying all of a sudden and ignoring his physical limitations and you might have heard well-meaning pastors or teachers or friends over the years to tell you that what Jesus tells the disciples is the answer when you feel weary and beat down. When Jesus tells his disciples that he has food they don't know about, he isn't hungry and that he is here to work, you might have had someone tell you, see when life beats you down, you dig deeper and you beat back. But I believe that misses the point of what Jesus is talking about. See, Jesus was fully human, but Jesus also was fully God. And he gives a wonderful picture on how to endure here. And yet the way that we endure and the way that he endures is very, very different. We endure while acknowledging our difficulty and our frailty and our limitations, not by ignoring it. It is important for John to mention this here. If it wasn't important, he would have left this out. This seems like two very small details. And yet John writes beautifully and with purpose. He wants us to understand that we have a savior that knows. And we'll come back to this part with the disciples later when we see the interaction at the very end of the text as the Samaritan people are coming back about how Jesus exhorts them on what it looks like to live on mission, to have eyes that are open, to see fields that are white, and to be willing to play our part in helping to reap that harvest. But for now, we need to know and take comfort in the fact that Jesus was a man of sorrows and he was acquainted with grief. That he grew tired and he grew weary. That he needed things in his humanity just like we do. He knows our frailty and he alone is our comfort when we feel frail. His interaction with the disciples here is vital to the overall point of the text. There was purpose to what Jesus was doing. It wasn't wrong, by the way, for the disciples to be concerned about Jesus' physical condition. They are showing a high level of care for their master and teacher here. But as always, Jesus is trying to lift their gaze and point them to something that is much bigger. Jesus is not saying that physical hunger and thirst do not matter. He is saying that in each and every situation in our lives, we always need to keep an eternal perspective. We don't forget the reality of the temporal, but we always look to see the reality of the eternal. Jesus was being led through Samaria for a very specific reason to offer salvation to a specific person and a specific people that no one would expect him to offer it to. He had a mission. And he doesn't want the disciples to miss this because they are focused on everyday things. And this sets up our second observation. We see that Jesus knows our every thought and action. And this is the largest portion of our text today. And here it can be easy to say that this statement deals directly, if you are familiar with this chapter, with Jesus' knowledge of this woman's past. But it deals with far more than that. Yes, Jesus knew every thought and action of this woman as we will see, but he knows so much more about what is going on in the background of this text. So follow along with me as we begin there reading verse seven and we're gonna read all the way down through verse 29. It says, there came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria, for Jews have no dealings with the 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. 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. 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. 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. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, you were right in saying I have no husband for you have had five and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me. The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 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 there is 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. And 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. 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 the town and said to the people, come and 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. The beginning of verse seven says so much to us in just a few little words. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. John is a beautiful writer and he knows how to set up a story. We just found out in verse six that it was the sixth hour of the day. This would have been about noontime. It would have been very, very warm. That lets us know already if we know the cultural context that something interesting and a little bit off is happening here. She comes to draw water and Jesus asks for a drink. Now for Jesus to speak to her is not common. For two reasons. One, she should be offering him water. Second, according to custom, he is a Jew and should not be speaking with a Samaritan, let alone speaking with a Samaritan woman. She sees that this is out of form and she addresses it with him. John tells us parenthetically here that Jews do not deal with Samaritans. Strict Jews wouldn't even pass through Samaria to get from Judea to Galilee. They would take a much longer journey going back across the Jordan River, adding a lot of time to get back to Galilee. to pass through Samaria would give them the risk of becoming ceremonially unclean, something that they would never, ever consider. The history here is very complicated between the Jews and the Samaritans. It goes back when the tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel were taken captive by the Assyrians. In their captivity, they began to intermarry and while keeping some aspects of worship of the one true God, they would take on some aspects of worship of their captives, of their captors and their foreign spouses. Therefore, they were not seen as truly Jewish and they were despised even more than if they were fully Gentile. She brings this up with Jesus and Jesus totally ignores it, completely ignores it. And he gets more to the point of what he's trying to talk to her about. He begins by telling her, listen, I'm really not all that thirsty if we're gonna be honest here. But I think you are. And I want to offer you what you need most. And the rest of the interaction flows from this statement that Jesus makes to her. Jesus seeing what the woman needs most. And Jesus slowly and carefully opening her eyes that he alone is the one that can provide this for her. Every single one of us comes into this room today burdened by something. For some, it's a very light burden, but it's still there. For others, it seems so heavy that you're about to be crushed under the weight of it. We all fall victim to the cares of this life, the concerns of this life, the weightiness of this life. And Jesus is saying that there are some things in life that are greater even than food or drink. There are some things in life that matter more than the everyday things that we feel we can't live without. And as Jesus is showing the woman here, he reminds us here, he and he alone can provide and meet that need. And the woman here does not appear to understand. It's going to take about three to four layers here for her to finally understand. She doesn't seem to understand. She believes that Jesus is just talking about a freshwater spring that might have better water. We read verse 15 and she says, sir, give me this water. And we're like, yes, she's getting it. No, she's not. She thinks that he's talking about a well that might be better. Maybe it's got more water. Maybe it's a little bit deeper. And Jesus just keeps digging down deeper and deeper to show the woman her need and to show her that Jesus himself can meet it. She then questions Jesus about Jacob, the patriarch. She's trying to find common ground. She knows that Jesus is a Jew. She knows that she is Samaritan. And yet here is something that they can agree on. Jacob would have been a patriarch to both of them. And Jesus responds to her not by diminishing Jacob, but by diminishing the well. This water from this well is only going to provide for your thirst temporarily. It might be the best tasting water in the world. It might have the most minerals for everything your body needs. It might make your hair look the most luxuriously shiny if you wash in it. But if you drink this water, you will thirst again. And the woman is starting to get it a little more, but she can only see through physical eyes, through human eyes. She wants this water that Jesus is talking about to be sure, but she only wants this water because she is tired of lugging a jar to the well to fill it up every day. And she's tired of having to do this in the heat of the day. But there is another reason why she does not want to come to this well to draw water any longer. And we're about to find out why from Jesus' next statement. Jesus tells the woman to go and to get her husband. And there is a reason this woman is drawing water at noon time instead of in the morning with the other women. She needs to come at a time when she will not draw attention to herself and where she will not be confronted and reminded by people of the condition of her life. And the reason that she wants to avoid the other women is because she is not currently married, but she is involved with a man that is not her husband and she has had five other men in her life in her past. And Jesus is not bringing this up to shame this woman. He is not trying to heap pain on her. He is not trying to bring up past hurt. past pain, past difficulty? No, he is letting her know that he knows everything about her. He knows everything about her past. He knows everything about her struggles. He knows everything about her longings, her physical need for water, and he knows that only he can provide what her heart needs most, which is not any of those things. Jesus is carefully exposing what lies deep in her heart to get her to see her need and to get her to see that that need can only be met in him. The woman begins to see this though still not fully. She believes Jesus to now be a prophet, maybe like Moses or maybe he just has a little bit of prophetic gifting. How else could he know these things about her? He's never met her before. He's never had an interaction with her. He's just a stranger propped up by a well. And here Jesus paints her a picture of something that will happen but not yet. Jesus points her to the cross. Much like Jesus with his mother at the wedding at Cana, Jesus references his hour here. And he tells her that anything that she thinks she knows about worship is about to be greatly expanded. He tells her that there is coming a day when not in Samaria and outside the walls of Jerusalem that this man to whom she is speaking would give his life to save sinners. where the spotless lamb would give his life to give us life and through his death to give us access to the Father. Jesus is telling her that it is at the cost of his life that he will be able to give her life. It is by the spilling of his blood that he will be able to quench her thirst and give her living water. Friend, if you find yourself here riddled with the guilt of sin and feeling no hope on where to go to be set free, What Jesus is providing for this woman, he is also providing for you. Just as this woman needed to quit looking to other things to satisfy what her heart longed for most, you need to as well. Jesus and Jesus alone is the one who can provide this. And just as he offered this life to the Samaritan woman, he offers it to you as well. Would you trust him today? Would you believe in Him today? Would you let go of your fear, of your doubt? Would you let go of your unbelief, of your pain, and your hurt? And would you run to the fountain of living water to be forgiven and cleansed from your sin today? Jesus helps this woman understand what true worship looks like. Notice in the interaction, she says, we about herself and you about Jesus. And Jesus says, you about the Samaritan people, we about the Jews. But then he uses another word, he says true. Instead of we, the Samaritans worship this way, you, the Jews worship this way, Jesus says, when this hour comes, it will not matter what we did and what you did. It matters what true looks like. And this is worship that is done in spirit and in truth. It doesn't matter if it's at Gerizim, it doesn't matter if it's at the temple in Jerusalem, it doesn't matter about your ritual ceremonial sacrifice. No, the lamb has already been provided for. Will you worship him in spirit and in truth? This is what Jesus is saying here. He wants them to be able to understand spirit and truth, not spirit as in a spiritual experience. but the Holy Spirit opening our eyes to our sinfulness, allowing us to see the sacrifice of the Savior so that we can be brought into fellowship with the Father. And in truth, continually running to God's word and having the pages of scripture communicate to us, our continued need for sanctification and growth and grace and becoming more like Jesus each and every day. Seeing the truth claims that are clearly presented here, seeing the way that God expects us to order and live our lives now that we are in Christ, allowing us not to compromise on this, but with winsomeness and grace, be able to point out things to the people who need it most, just like Jesus did with the Samaritan woman. Jesus knows, and he is ready to forgive, and he is ready to save. And the woman sees this and she understands this. It finally clicks. She understands that he can satisfy something in her that no one else can. And we see this because instead of needing water, she goes back to the city to tell people, but she leaves her water pitcher behind. She leaves her water pitcher behind. The water from that well no longer matters to her. She has found the one who can give her living water. And also notice the freedom that this woman now feels. This woman who snuck out in the middle of the day when no one else would be there now goes back into the heart of the village to tell everyone about a man who told her everything that she had ever done. There's no fear here, there's no guilt here, there's no shame here. There's the freedom from having been set free. No longer being held in bondage by the pain of the past, but the freedom of having been set free by the living water. Her past no longer matters to her. What matters is that she has met the one who knows everything about her. She has met the one who has offered her life. And then this leads to our final thing. We see that Jesus knows our greatest need. Let's read verses 39 through 42. says, 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 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. Jesus knows our greatest need. The testimony of someone else may light a spark, but only Jesus can fan it in to flame. these people that she goes back to tell, they need not believe in the woman's words. They needed the word that had been made flesh to save them from their sins. And this helps us understand that this must be personal to us. It must be personal to us, our salvation. It's not just that it is personal to someone else. Is this personal to you? It intrigued the people what the woman said, but what saved them was their belief in Jesus for themselves. And so a question to ask yourself, a question to think about, a question to ponder, is this true for you? Is this true for you? Is this something that you believe? Not just is this something this church believes, is this something your small group believes, is this something your mom and dad believe, your uncle, your best friend, your spouse, your children. No, do you believe this? Their testimony can encourage you. Their testimony can open your eyes to the fact that it might be true, but the truth must penetrate your heart. This is what Jesus is encouraging the 12 with, by helping them understand you need to look. The fields are white. There are many people out there that are ready to respond to the gospel. Are we willing to tell them? Are we willing to share with them? Are we willing to help them understand their individual need to repent and believe? The last verse there is so beautiful, for we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world. Would we all hear, would we all believe in this same way today? And real quickly, three quick points of application that we see from this text. The first is this. In our human frailty, let's run to Jesus because he knows. When you feel weak, when you feel weary, run to Jesus, he knows. With your every thought and action, run to Jesus because he knows. Learning to take every thought captive. Learning to repent and confess sin for every wrong action. Seeing God's work of grace in our lives as we move closer to him. And in our greatest need, let's run to Jesus because he knows and he has provided. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this day. Thank you so much for Jesus. Thank you for the testimony that he gives us of what it looks like to find life in him. Father, for every single one of us, would we understand that we are thirsty and we need you. And when we look to you and to you alone to quench that thirst. In Jesus' name, amen.