John 4:1-26
A True Worshipper
Introduction
True worshippers of God worship God for who He truly is. God has revealed the truth about Himself: the truth of His identity, His character, His promises. And when true worshippers worship Him, they worship Him according to what they know to be true about Him as revealed by Him. God says “This is who I am” and we are to worship Him with the true knowledge of who He is in our minds.
Or a better way to say it, the image we have of God is based on the information God has given us about Himself. We don’t determine what God is like, we don’t create with our imagination what God is like. We don’t break the 2nd Commandment which says, “You shall not make for yourselves an idol.”
That means you don’t get to create what God is like, whether it’s as primitive as carving a wood figurine with a knife or as civilized as carving an idea with your imagination.
The very heart of that command is a recognition that we are the created and He is the Creator. He did not come from us, but, we came from Him. Therefore, we don’t make up what He is like, but, we marvel at what He is like – as He reveals Himself to us.
We submit and accept and believe God to be who He has shown Himself to be in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in His written Word, the Bible. No other revelation has been given; no greater revelation has been given.
So, today we are going to look at a passage where Jesus encounters a woman at a well, and what starts out as a conversation about water, ends up a conversation about worship. Jesus describes what the true worshipper is to her. I want to challenge you today to ask yourself, “Am I a true worshipper of God? Am I the real deal? Or, am I fooling myself? Is this Sunday morning thing genuine for me? Is what goes on here and what is said and sang here authentic and pleasing before the Holy God I profess faith in?
Context
We read at the end of John 3 that Jesus’ ministry was growing larger and more popular than John the Baptist’s, and verse 1 of chapter 4 says that the Pharisee’s heard about it. So, Jesus left and went back to Galilee.
Why did he leave when the Pharisee’s knew about His growing popularity? Two reasons are suggested by scholars: First, He wanted to avoid the appearance of a rivalry between Himself and John the Baptist. This issue was already surfacing when we read in chapter 3 about the jealousy of the Baptist’s disciples.
Second, He wanted to avoid any premature hostility from the Pharisees. Often times Jesus would move on from a place when there was open hostility towards Him.
So He is on His way to Galilee and verse 4 says He had to pass through Samaria. Samaria is between Judea and Galilee, and the quickest and most direct route to Galilee from Judea would have been through Samaria. However, He did not have to pass through there. Most Jews did not pass through Samaria when they went north to Galilee. They chose to go all the way around Samaria by going east of the Jordan river, then north through Perea, and then crossing back over the Jordan to get into Galilee – a much longer route.
Why would they go through all that trouble to not set foot in Samaria? Because Jews hated Samaritans. (Illustration: going around Ohio and not through it because you hate the Buckeye’s.)
Why do the Jews and Samaritans hate each other? A little history is needed here. The first king of Israel was Saul. The second was David. The third was Solomon. After Solomon, the nation was split into two: the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. The southern kingdom retained Jerusalem as its capitol, but, the northern kingdom after breaking away named the city of Samaria as its capitol.
When the Assyrians came and captured the northern kingdom in the 727 B.C. those Jews were taken off their land. After capturing them, the Assyrians repopulated the land of the northern kingdom with many different races of Gentiles. The small remnant of Jews that remained in the land became intermixed over the years with these other races and they are called Samaritans. Samaritans are not full-blooded Jews – they are a mixed race. (That’s why Paul said in Philippians one of his best credentials is that he was a Hebrew of Hebrews, meaning his ancestry was not mixed, but Jewish all the way back.)
When the Jews from the southern kingdom returned to Jerusalem from their captivity in Babylon, the Samaritans offered to help rebuild the temple. The Jews rejected their offer. So hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans developed. The Jews said worship of God was to be in Jerusalem; the Samaritans built a temple on Mount Gerizim and worshipped God there. The Jews would eventually destroy that temple which only inflamed the rivalry even more. The Jewish Scriptures included the Law, the Prophets, the Poetry, and the History Books; the Samaritans only accepted the Law, the first 5 books of the OT as Scripture.
By the time of Jesus day, the mutual hatred was locked in. Samaritans would not give shelter or hospitality to any Jews passing through Samaria while on their way to Jerusalem for the Feasts. (Most Galilean Jews would take the route through Samaria – Jesus was a Galilean. But, the vast majority of faithful, orthodox Jews would not step foot in Samaria, but, go around it as mentioned earlier.) When the Pharisees wanted to insult Jesus the worst they could come up with was calling Him a Samaritan (Jn. 8:48). The hatred was long-standing and deep between these two people-groups.
So, Jesus is on His way back from Jerusalem after the Passover feast, and after spending some time with His disciples and drawing large crowds in the countryside, He is making His way back to Galilee by going through Samaria. No Jewish Rabbi would even think of such a thing.
He gets tired. Note that. It’s a detail that highlights the true humanity of Jesus. God doesn’t get tired. But, when God came as a man into the world, God subjected Himself to the limitations of humanity. This is important because there are many out there who say Jesus did NOT come in the flesh.
Anyway, His disciples go into the nearby city of Sychar to get some food. He takes a break and waits for them by Jacobs well. This well is still there in the land today and can be seen. It is 9’ in diameter and at that time over 100’ deep.
Two Sections, Two Concepts
This dialogue can be divided into two sections. The first section is verse 7 – 15 and focuses on living water. “Water” is a key word and it occurs 7 times in these 8 verses. The second section is verses 15-26 and focuses on worship.
The Source of Living Water
Notice verse 10, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
The first thing Jesus is doing is asking a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. As we discussed, and as John mentions in verse 9, Samaritans and Jews don’t have dealings. Watch this: the literal translation of “have no dealings” is “share no utensils together.” It’s not that they never had transactions, otherwise the disciples wouldn’t have gone into the city to buy food from Samaritans. It means they did not share the same utensils, share in fellowship, or in meals. For a Jew, to share utensils with a Samaritan was to defile himself and make himself ceremonially unclean. And Jesus was asking for a drink of water from her cup.
Adding to the shock is that she’s a woman! Men, especially, Rabbi’s would never ever talk to a woman in public. And the view of women was so low that the Jewish Rabbi’s had a saying, “Better to burn the Law than to preach it to a woman.” Jesus is so far over some cultural boundaries at this point He needs a passport. What’s more, as we read a few verses later, Jesus is not only talking to a Samaritan woman, but, a sinful Samaritan woman. She’s had 5 husbands, and the man she is now with is not her husband verse 18 says.
Is Jesus worried about being defiled? No. Drinking from her cup cannot defile Him. When He touches things He doesn’t become defiled, things become clean. He is the Holy One of God and He came to cleanse and to purify those who are defiled. He came through Samaria so that she, the Samaritan, the woman, the sinner, would be cleansed, because He has the living water.
Jesus is the Source of Living Water. Notice this is exclusive. This water cannot be found anywhere else. Jesus is the only One with the supply. He says in chapter 7 verse 37, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’”
Notice He says, “if you knew”. Knowing is a key theme in this chapter. He says she doesn’t know who He is here in verse 10. In verse 22 that she and the rest of the Samaritans don’t know what they worship. Later in verse 32 when the disciples get back from town they urge Jesus to eat, but He says to them, “I have food you know nothing about.”
And then the whole town comes out to see Jesus and after hearing him, they say this in verse 42, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” That was the very goal! That they would know. Chapter 20 verse 31 John says, “I write so that you will know, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus prayed in chapter 17 and said that eternal life is knowing God.
But she did not know who He was. True Worshippers know Jesus. They know He is the Christ, they know He is the Son of God, they know He is the Redeemer, and they know He is their Savior. They not only know His identity, but, what comes with knowing Him – that is, the gift of God.
The gift of God and Jesus are two different things here. What is the gift of God? Romans 6:23 says the gift of God is eternal life. However, the gift comes through Jesus. He is the means by which we receive eternal life. That’s why the rest of Romans 6:23 says, “the free gift of God is eternal life IN Jesus Christ”. That’s why Jesus says to the woman, “If you knew the gift of God and who I am, you would have asked me and I would have given you living water.”
The Superiority of Living Water
So the True Worshiper has gone to the Source of Living Water. He Knows Jesus. Secondly, the True Worshipper recognizes the Superiority of the Living Water. Notice verses 13 and 14, “Jesus answered her, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’”
Notice that Jesus is drawing a comparison: the water that He gives is better than the water that she is getting from Jacob’s well. First, because it satisfies. The water Jesus gives quenches the thirsty soul once and for all. You can go to other “wells” to satisfy your soul but you will go back again and again because your thirst will not go away. But, when you take the living water that Jesus gives it satisfies.
Second, the living water Jesus gives becomes a spring. Jesus is comparing the abundance of His water to the scarcity of the water found in the well she was drinking from. Now notice this, she mentioned that Jacob’s well was an abundant well that Jacob, his sons and all his flocks and herds drank from……..and, it is a well that is there still and she and the whole town still draw water from it.
But, Jesus was saying that the water He gives will become a spring of water, and in chapter 7 He says that “streams of living water will flow from within you”. The water Jesus gives becomes a spring within us, overflowing into eternal life and running like a river from within us. Abundance is the picture here. A well can supply Jacob and his sons and herds, but, a spring overflowing into a river can supply far far more. Jesus provides the abundant eternal life to anyone who believes in Him.
Well now she is liking what she hears. She wants this living water. But why? Notice verse 15, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” Swing and a miss. Does she understand the difference between the physical water she got from the well and the living spiritual water Jesus offered? No. The Jews were always misunderstanding Jesus to mean something physical when He was speaking of the spiritual.
For example, chapter 6 Jesus says that they must eat His body and drink His blood to live. They think He’s talking about cannibalism. He’s not. He was using a metaphor they should have understood because He just fed 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread, and they were talking about the bread that God miraculously fed the Jews in the desert with in the OT.
And she is not getting it either. The reason? Because she doesn’t understand that she is spiritually thirsty. Therefore she doesn’t understand that she even needs the living spiritual water Jesus is offering. Jesus is going to solve this. Which brings us to our next point:
Sin Causes Spiritual Thirst
Notice what Jesus says to her in verses 16-18, “Go, call your husband and come back.’ ‘I have no husband,’ she replied. Jesus said to her, ‘You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is you have had 5 husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is quite true.”
This is the transitional statement in the chapter. Jesus is now moving the conversation away from the subject of water and leading it to the subject of worship. In that statement we see several things:
First, the omniscience of God the Son. Up until this point we have seen that the woman did not know Him ……….but, He knows her. Like Nathanael, He saw her long before she ever knew Him. Jesus Christ is the All-Knowing God of the Universe sees intimately every detail of our lives. Because of this, Jesus is aware of the cause of her spiritual thirst – her sin, which is our second point we see here.
Jesus points out to her her sin and He does this why? Because in order to have the living water of eternal life she has to go to Jesus to get it. And in order for her to go to Jesus and actually receive this water, she must recognize her sinfulness. She must see that she is a sinner. Worshipping on mount Gerizim and following the Pentateuch were not going to solve that problem. She was not seeing that she was dry and parched because of her sin. So Jesus, confronts her with the her sin, which needs to be confessed before she can receive this living water.
And lastly, we see the grace of the Lord. He didn’t avoid Samaria. He didn’t leave the well when she came. He didn’t become impatient when she didn’t understand the living water. He didn’t overlook the sin in her life. He knew she was going to be there when He sat down. It’s just how He planned it. He wanted to meet her at the well to lead her to the living water. And that required confronting her sin so that she could see that her sin is why she needed Him. If she was going to worship the Living God, she would need her sins washed by the Living Water.
Listen, if there is anything I would want you to understand from these verses it is this: when you are confronted with the sin in your life, accept it as a gracious act by God, because He’s doing it to lead you to Himself so that you may drink of the living water, so that you may be washed by the living water, and be cleansed of your sin. Proverbs says that wounds from a friend can be trusted. It can hurt to hear you’re not perfect. But, sin blinds us, and God works through His people to
Conclusion
So True Worshippers know the Source of Living Water – Jesus. They are Satisfied by the Living Water He gives. True Worshippers recognize their sins are what keep them from worshipping God. We’ll pick up next week as Jesus and the woman get into the details of
A True Worshipper
Introduction
True worshippers of God worship God for who He truly is. God has revealed the truth about Himself: the truth of His identity, His character, His promises. And when true worshippers worship Him, they worship Him according to what they know to be true about Him as revealed by Him. God says “This is who I am” and we are to worship Him with the true knowledge of who He is in our minds.
Or a better way to say it, the image we have of God is based on the information God has given us about Himself. We don’t determine what God is like, we don’t create with our imagination what God is like. We don’t break the 2nd Commandment which says, “You shall not make for yourselves an idol.”
That means you don’t get to create what God is like, whether it’s as primitive as carving a wood figurine with a knife or as civilized as carving an idea with your imagination.
The very heart of that command is a recognition that we are the created and He is the Creator. He did not come from us, but, we came from Him. Therefore, we don’t make up what He is like, but, we marvel at what He is like – as He reveals Himself to us.
We submit and accept and believe God to be who He has shown Himself to be in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in His written Word, the Bible. No other revelation has been given; no greater revelation has been given.
So, today we are going to look at a passage where Jesus encounters a woman at a well, and what starts out as a conversation about water, ends up a conversation about worship. Jesus describes what the true worshipper is to her. I want to challenge you today to ask yourself, “Am I a true worshipper of God? Am I the real deal? Or, am I fooling myself? Is this Sunday morning thing genuine for me? Is what goes on here and what is said and sang here authentic and pleasing before the Holy God I profess faith in?
Context
We read at the end of John 3 that Jesus’ ministry was growing larger and more popular than John the Baptist’s, and verse 1 of chapter 4 says that the Pharisee’s heard about it. So, Jesus left and went back to Galilee.
Why did he leave when the Pharisee’s knew about His growing popularity? Two reasons are suggested by scholars: First, He wanted to avoid the appearance of a rivalry between Himself and John the Baptist. This issue was already surfacing when we read in chapter 3 about the jealousy of the Baptist’s disciples.
Second, He wanted to avoid any premature hostility from the Pharisees. Often times Jesus would move on from a place when there was open hostility towards Him.
So He is on His way to Galilee and verse 4 says He had to pass through Samaria. Samaria is between Judea and Galilee, and the quickest and most direct route to Galilee from Judea would have been through Samaria. However, He did not have to pass through there. Most Jews did not pass through Samaria when they went north to Galilee. They chose to go all the way around Samaria by going east of the Jordan river, then north through Perea, and then crossing back over the Jordan to get into Galilee – a much longer route.
Why would they go through all that trouble to not set foot in Samaria? Because Jews hated Samaritans. (Illustration: going around Ohio and not through it because you hate the Buckeye’s.)
Why do the Jews and Samaritans hate each other? A little history is needed here. The first king of Israel was Saul. The second was David. The third was Solomon. After Solomon, the nation was split into two: the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. The southern kingdom retained Jerusalem as its capitol, but, the northern kingdom after breaking away named the city of Samaria as its capitol.
When the Assyrians came and captured the northern kingdom in the 727 B.C. those Jews were taken off their land. After capturing them, the Assyrians repopulated the land of the northern kingdom with many different races of Gentiles. The small remnant of Jews that remained in the land became intermixed over the years with these other races and they are called Samaritans. Samaritans are not full-blooded Jews – they are a mixed race. (That’s why Paul said in Philippians one of his best credentials is that he was a Hebrew of Hebrews, meaning his ancestry was not mixed, but Jewish all the way back.)
When the Jews from the southern kingdom returned to Jerusalem from their captivity in Babylon, the Samaritans offered to help rebuild the temple. The Jews rejected their offer. So hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans developed. The Jews said worship of God was to be in Jerusalem; the Samaritans built a temple on Mount Gerizim and worshipped God there. The Jews would eventually destroy that temple which only inflamed the rivalry even more. The Jewish Scriptures included the Law, the Prophets, the Poetry, and the History Books; the Samaritans only accepted the Law, the first 5 books of the OT as Scripture.
By the time of Jesus day, the mutual hatred was locked in. Samaritans would not give shelter or hospitality to any Jews passing through Samaria while on their way to Jerusalem for the Feasts. (Most Galilean Jews would take the route through Samaria – Jesus was a Galilean. But, the vast majority of faithful, orthodox Jews would not step foot in Samaria, but, go around it as mentioned earlier.) When the Pharisees wanted to insult Jesus the worst they could come up with was calling Him a Samaritan (Jn. 8:48). The hatred was long-standing and deep between these two people-groups.
So, Jesus is on His way back from Jerusalem after the Passover feast, and after spending some time with His disciples and drawing large crowds in the countryside, He is making His way back to Galilee by going through Samaria. No Jewish Rabbi would even think of such a thing.
He gets tired. Note that. It’s a detail that highlights the true humanity of Jesus. God doesn’t get tired. But, when God came as a man into the world, God subjected Himself to the limitations of humanity. This is important because there are many out there who say Jesus did NOT come in the flesh.
Anyway, His disciples go into the nearby city of Sychar to get some food. He takes a break and waits for them by Jacobs well. This well is still there in the land today and can be seen. It is 9’ in diameter and at that time over 100’ deep.
Two Sections, Two Concepts
This dialogue can be divided into two sections. The first section is verse 7 – 15 and focuses on living water. “Water” is a key word and it occurs 7 times in these 8 verses. The second section is verses 15-26 and focuses on worship.
The Source of Living Water
Notice verse 10, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
The first thing Jesus is doing is asking a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. As we discussed, and as John mentions in verse 9, Samaritans and Jews don’t have dealings. Watch this: the literal translation of “have no dealings” is “share no utensils together.” It’s not that they never had transactions, otherwise the disciples wouldn’t have gone into the city to buy food from Samaritans. It means they did not share the same utensils, share in fellowship, or in meals. For a Jew, to share utensils with a Samaritan was to defile himself and make himself ceremonially unclean. And Jesus was asking for a drink of water from her cup.
Adding to the shock is that she’s a woman! Men, especially, Rabbi’s would never ever talk to a woman in public. And the view of women was so low that the Jewish Rabbi’s had a saying, “Better to burn the Law than to preach it to a woman.” Jesus is so far over some cultural boundaries at this point He needs a passport. What’s more, as we read a few verses later, Jesus is not only talking to a Samaritan woman, but, a sinful Samaritan woman. She’s had 5 husbands, and the man she is now with is not her husband verse 18 says.
Is Jesus worried about being defiled? No. Drinking from her cup cannot defile Him. When He touches things He doesn’t become defiled, things become clean. He is the Holy One of God and He came to cleanse and to purify those who are defiled. He came through Samaria so that she, the Samaritan, the woman, the sinner, would be cleansed, because He has the living water.
Jesus is the Source of Living Water. Notice this is exclusive. This water cannot be found anywhere else. Jesus is the only One with the supply. He says in chapter 7 verse 37, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’”
Notice He says, “if you knew”. Knowing is a key theme in this chapter. He says she doesn’t know who He is here in verse 10. In verse 22 that she and the rest of the Samaritans don’t know what they worship. Later in verse 32 when the disciples get back from town they urge Jesus to eat, but He says to them, “I have food you know nothing about.”
And then the whole town comes out to see Jesus and after hearing him, they say this in verse 42, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” That was the very goal! That they would know. Chapter 20 verse 31 John says, “I write so that you will know, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus prayed in chapter 17 and said that eternal life is knowing God.
But she did not know who He was. True Worshippers know Jesus. They know He is the Christ, they know He is the Son of God, they know He is the Redeemer, and they know He is their Savior. They not only know His identity, but, what comes with knowing Him – that is, the gift of God.
The gift of God and Jesus are two different things here. What is the gift of God? Romans 6:23 says the gift of God is eternal life. However, the gift comes through Jesus. He is the means by which we receive eternal life. That’s why the rest of Romans 6:23 says, “the free gift of God is eternal life IN Jesus Christ”. That’s why Jesus says to the woman, “If you knew the gift of God and who I am, you would have asked me and I would have given you living water.”
The Superiority of Living Water
So the True Worshiper has gone to the Source of Living Water. He Knows Jesus. Secondly, the True Worshipper recognizes the Superiority of the Living Water. Notice verses 13 and 14, “Jesus answered her, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’”
Notice that Jesus is drawing a comparison: the water that He gives is better than the water that she is getting from Jacob’s well. First, because it satisfies. The water Jesus gives quenches the thirsty soul once and for all. You can go to other “wells” to satisfy your soul but you will go back again and again because your thirst will not go away. But, when you take the living water that Jesus gives it satisfies.
Second, the living water Jesus gives becomes a spring. Jesus is comparing the abundance of His water to the scarcity of the water found in the well she was drinking from. Now notice this, she mentioned that Jacob’s well was an abundant well that Jacob, his sons and all his flocks and herds drank from……..and, it is a well that is there still and she and the whole town still draw water from it.
But, Jesus was saying that the water He gives will become a spring of water, and in chapter 7 He says that “streams of living water will flow from within you”. The water Jesus gives becomes a spring within us, overflowing into eternal life and running like a river from within us. Abundance is the picture here. A well can supply Jacob and his sons and herds, but, a spring overflowing into a river can supply far far more. Jesus provides the abundant eternal life to anyone who believes in Him.
Well now she is liking what she hears. She wants this living water. But why? Notice verse 15, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” Swing and a miss. Does she understand the difference between the physical water she got from the well and the living spiritual water Jesus offered? No. The Jews were always misunderstanding Jesus to mean something physical when He was speaking of the spiritual.
For example, chapter 6 Jesus says that they must eat His body and drink His blood to live. They think He’s talking about cannibalism. He’s not. He was using a metaphor they should have understood because He just fed 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread, and they were talking about the bread that God miraculously fed the Jews in the desert with in the OT.
And she is not getting it either. The reason? Because she doesn’t understand that she is spiritually thirsty. Therefore she doesn’t understand that she even needs the living spiritual water Jesus is offering. Jesus is going to solve this. Which brings us to our next point:
Sin Causes Spiritual Thirst
Notice what Jesus says to her in verses 16-18, “Go, call your husband and come back.’ ‘I have no husband,’ she replied. Jesus said to her, ‘You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is you have had 5 husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is quite true.”
This is the transitional statement in the chapter. Jesus is now moving the conversation away from the subject of water and leading it to the subject of worship. In that statement we see several things:
First, the omniscience of God the Son. Up until this point we have seen that the woman did not know Him ……….but, He knows her. Like Nathanael, He saw her long before she ever knew Him. Jesus Christ is the All-Knowing God of the Universe sees intimately every detail of our lives. Because of this, Jesus is aware of the cause of her spiritual thirst – her sin, which is our second point we see here.
Jesus points out to her her sin and He does this why? Because in order to have the living water of eternal life she has to go to Jesus to get it. And in order for her to go to Jesus and actually receive this water, she must recognize her sinfulness. She must see that she is a sinner. Worshipping on mount Gerizim and following the Pentateuch were not going to solve that problem. She was not seeing that she was dry and parched because of her sin. So Jesus, confronts her with the her sin, which needs to be confessed before she can receive this living water.
And lastly, we see the grace of the Lord. He didn’t avoid Samaria. He didn’t leave the well when she came. He didn’t become impatient when she didn’t understand the living water. He didn’t overlook the sin in her life. He knew she was going to be there when He sat down. It’s just how He planned it. He wanted to meet her at the well to lead her to the living water. And that required confronting her sin so that she could see that her sin is why she needed Him. If she was going to worship the Living God, she would need her sins washed by the Living Water.
Listen, if there is anything I would want you to understand from these verses it is this: when you are confronted with the sin in your life, accept it as a gracious act by God, because He’s doing it to lead you to Himself so that you may drink of the living water, so that you may be washed by the living water, and be cleansed of your sin. Proverbs says that wounds from a friend can be trusted. It can hurt to hear you’re not perfect. But, sin blinds us, and God works through His people to
Conclusion
So True Worshippers know the Source of Living Water – Jesus. They are Satisfied by the Living Water He gives. True Worshippers recognize their sins are what keep them from worshipping God. We’ll pick up next week as Jesus and the woman get into the details of
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