The God Who is Immeasurably Gracious

Transcript

Good morning, friends. Wonderful to see you all. Wonderful to sing with you all. Wonderful to open God’s Word with you all. If I haven’t had the privilege of meeting you yet, my name is Andre, and I get to serve as one of the pastors here at Trinity Church, and it is my joy this morning to open up God’s Word with you all and continue our study of the Gospel of John. So if you have a Bible with you, I’d like to invite you to open your Bible to John chapter 4, and we’ll be beginning at the beginning of that chapter. This morning we continue our study of the Gospel of John, and if you’ve been here for any part of that series thus far, you’ll know that what we’ve been doing is week after week continuously looking to and marveling at Jesus, sitting under His Word, learning from

Him, seeing His life, hearing of His interactions with sinners, as we’ll see today, and seeing His preeminence, His magnitude, His greatness. If you weren’t here last week and you missed Thomas’ sermon, I’d encourage you to go back to the podcast or the website and listen to that sermon where Thomas, really wonderfully and in an encouraging way, brother, pointed us to the fact that Jesus is preeminent above all. Our ministry, our life, our walk, our interactions, everything that we are is for the purpose of Him increasing, Him being seen and known in us and through us, and less and less of us being seen. And today we get to stand in awe of this Jesus, and we get to stand in awe of His grace towards sinners, His patience, His kindness to those who don’t deserve it, and His compassionate call of those who we would least expect to be called by Him.

The Divine Appointment

So let’s go ahead and read our text. It’s a long portion of Scripture, so I will show grace to you and allow you to stay seated. John chapter 4, beginning from 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 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. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give Me a drink. For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

— John 4

(ESV)

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 had no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked, 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

— John 4

(ESV)

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 are right in saying, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have 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 worshipped 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.

— John 4

(ESV)

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. 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. 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 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.

— John 4

(ESV)

Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, Rabbi, eat. But He said to them, I have food that you do not know about. So the disciples said to one another, Has anyone brought Him something to eat? Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. Do you not say, There are yet four months, then comes the harvest? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and 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. 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 for two days. And many more believed because of His word. They said to this 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. This, dear saints, is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Pray with me, friends. Father, as we look to this beautiful passage of scripture where we get to see the salvation of this Samaritan woman, let us marvel at the Savior. As we read in our text, the Savior of the world. Please help us see Him more clearly. We ask in His name. Amen. This is a beautiful, beautiful story. This is one of my favorite stories in all of scripture.

Sinner Meets Savior

And it shows Jesus to us in a rather unique light. This is a vivid picture of Jesus, the gracious Savior. This is actually the longest recorded conversation Jesus has with anyone. And it’s with a woman who doesn’t really seem to fit into God’s redemptive story. The story that we see Jesus’ longest interaction, this length of time that He gives to this woman, then the time that He dedicates to go back to where she’s from, the place where, again, doesn’t seem to fit into the redemptive story, all puts under question, what is He up to? What is He doing? This account, it takes place right after a lengthy conversation with Nicodemus. We talked about this a couple weeks ago, but note the contrast between Nicodemus and this Samaritan woman. Note the tension between these two stories and how this clearly shows us, as we read through chapters three and four, that Jesus came to save all kinds of people.

John 3 shows us that there’s no one beyond the need of grace. And John 4 shows us that there’s no one beyond the reach of grace. The self-righteous, educated, religious man, and then the religiously ignorant, adulterous woman. The one who seems to have it all figured out and the one who seemingly doesn’t have a clue. Both of them need Jesus. The story about Jesus with the woman at the well shows us how the love and the grace and the mercy of God burst through seemingly all obstacles in order to reach those whom He must reach. This story shows us a God who relentlessly pursues the thirsty in order to give them living water, a God who patiently and lovingly calls idolaters to true worship. Jesus, the Son of God, the friend of sinners, is willing to cross any barrier to reach the lost and to claim them.

So I want us to look at this God who is immeasurably gracious in two parts. First we’ll look at sinner meeting the Savior, and then we’ll look at the sinner who is now a saint. Sinner meet Savior. In this story we see this woman meeting Jesus and through this encounter we come to understand Him more. We don’t understand the woman all that much more beyond what the text tells us, but we get to see more about Jesus. Our confidence with what Jesus has accomplished for us is tied in, my friends, with who we understand Him to be. If Jesus is small in our minds, if Jesus is diminished in His ability to save us, more importantly though, if He is diminished in His ability to change us, then what happens is we then move through life handicapped and unnecessarily limited by this understanding of a small Jesus who doesn’t do all that much.

If, however, our knowledge of who He is grows, so then does our confidence in what He says He has accomplished, which then fuels our lives. You see, friends, these two aspects of relationship with Jesus, understanding of who He is and trust in Him, are inextricably woven one into the other. So let’s gain just a slightly bigger picture of Jesus, shall we? Note that our text starts with telling us that He had to pass through Samaria. He didn’t actually have to pass through anywhere. Jesus doesn’t have to do anything. God doesn’t have to do anything. God does whatever He wants. This is proved further by the fact that Jesus was a Jew and a man of His time, and the Jews went around Samaria, intentionally so. They hated the Samaritans. They had nothing to do with them. They did everything they could to avoid them. They would add a day or more of journey just to not have to pass by these dogs, these hybrids

of Gentiles and Jews, these unclean, impure people who worship the wrong way, look the wrong way, talk the wrong way, and are just wrong all around. Jesus didn’t have to go through there. There was so much fear. There was so much animosity. There was so much hatred for the Samaritan from the side of the Jew. Keeping that in mind, just consider how shocking and offensive the story, the parable of the good Samaritan would have been to the Jews listening. Good and Samaritan don’t go together in the mind of the Jew. He didn’t have to go this way. He was compelled to go. Jesus had a divine appointment in the place where nobody expected God to go. The way Jesus chose to go is the way no Jew goes, the way others intentionally avoided so as not to meet people like her. This woman, she gets the tension.

She knows what this means, what this interaction means, the weight of what is happening around this well. And note the phrase, Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. We don’t interact. Our worlds don’t mix. We’re oil and water. How crazy is that? These two groups of people don’t even come around each other. They don’t cross paths at all. And that shows us further how radical this conversation is. This shows us that Jesus really is up to something. And the place where this all takes place is also rather significant. It says that this takes place at Jacob’s well. It was near this well that Abraham first sacrificed to God and Israel was born. Abraham’s servants met Rebekah here, Isaac’s future wife. Jacob met Rachel here. Moses met Zipporah here. And for the Samaritans, all of these things were very important because the Samaritans, the way that they worshipped, was they only accepted the first five books of the Old Testament,

the Torah. They didn’t engage with the prophets, with the Psalms, with the prophetic literature. They only accepted the Torah. And so for them, the history that was tied into this place was tied very much into what they considered was the whole of Scripture. And so their whole history, their whole story was right here. And Jesus is almost saying, you can attach yourself to this history. You can attach yourself to this understanding of what it means to worship God. You can attach yourself of what it means to be the people of God, and that’s fine. But what I have is so much more. What I’m offering is lasting. More than a place, however, what happens throughout the Gospel of John is that Jesus is stepping into various Jewish promises. He’s stepping into various Jewish traditions and showing that he’s greater than they are. We see throughout the Gospel that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the

world, and therefore you no longer need sacrifice. Jesus brings new wine. He brings a new way to live. He brings a baptism that’s from above, a cleansing and a purification that’s from above. We see that with his coming, there will no longer even be a need for a temple, as the Holy Spirit will now dwell within his people. He’s changing everything. And again, the Jews have this understanding that this is only for us. It’s definitely not for outsiders, maybe outsiders who would kind of go through the necessary steps to make themselves one of us, but if anybody’s excluded, it’s a Samaritan. Jesus made it clear with this conversation with Nicodemus in the previous chapter that the new life, the new birth is not from willpower. It’s not from family lineage. It is of belief, and it is of repentance, and it is available to all.

It has to come from outside of us. It has to be of God. Beloved, I want you to see that this whole context doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I want you to read this as if you are looking at it through the eyes of a religious person in this time. We read it and we’re like, oh, this is nice. Jesus is, you know, talking to this woman. This is shocking. This is offensive. This is confusing. This is bizarre. This doesn’t happen. Salvation doesn’t happen in this way. God doesn’t save people like this. And so Jesus seems to be redefining a whole lot. He seems to be challenging a lot of religious and cultural norms, and what he asks of this woman is scandalous. It seems to us so tame, but it’s scandalous. He’s asking a Samaritan woman in a one-on-one conversation for water, and you see the way

that she responds to him. She’s confused. She’s surprised. She asks for clarification, and then Jesus just jumps right into it. I’m talking about living water. He shifts from asking for water from the woman to offering water to the woman, and thus revealing why he really came. Notice again, this gift, this water is a gift from God. This water is something that comes from outside. This water isn’t something that you attain on your own. Salvation is not about what we do for God, which is why Nicodemus as a religious man was so confused. Salvation is not something that we bring to the table. It’s not about the place that we worship. It’s his amazing grace toward us. We need to remember that, saints. We need to not move along through our Christian life in such a way as to just forget that and just think about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, but we need to remember

the fact that the only way we come to be the people of God is when we receive the free gift of salvation from a gracious God who looked at a people who had nothing to offer, and yet he loved them and went after them. We ought to allow that to drive our worship. So this woman, once she hears about this living water, once this idea is thrown her way, she’s all in. Just look at verse 15. She’s all in. She wants it. You mean I don’t have to keep doing something? You mean I don’t have to keep pursuing? She responds to what Jesus says with, give me this water. I don’t want to thirst anymore. I don’t want to have to come here anymore. I don’t want to have to deal with this shame, with this difficult life, but Jesus wants more than just a yes.

He sees this woman who is living in such a way and functioning in such a way and operating around the broader culture in such a way as to hide, and he goes right for that wound. You see, this woman is likely an outsider in her own culture. This woman is likely ostracized, likely on her own. How do we know that? Well, the time that she comes is the middle of the day, the hottest part of the day, right around noon. The fact that she’s there in the middle of the day and alone is odd. You see, people used to do this in that time early in the morning. They would avoid the hottest part of the day, and what happened is women would always travel in groups. They would travel all together so that they can spend some time, protect one another, engage, have conversations.

Why is this woman alone? Why is this woman coming at the time of day when nobody else wants to come? Is it that she’s trying to avoid people? Is it that she’s trying not to interact? Is it that she’s trying to hide? Is she doing this because she actually is on her own and she doesn’t want to be around others? Or maybe others don’t want to be around her. Maybe she’s hiding something. Maybe she doesn’t fit in. Maybe this reputation of having been with five men is something that’s shameful. Maybe this reputation of now living with a man who’s not her husband is something that makes her mocked and belittled and pushed out. Jesus goes right for that. This outsider, this rebel, this woman of ill repute, this woman who’s all alone, this woman who doesn’t have a community, she wants this water. And once she says, I want that, give me that water, Jesus calls her to go and get her husband,

which it seems odd. He points to her five husbands. He points to the sixth man who’s not her husband. And on the surface, this response almost seems cruel. She said she wants what you’re offering. She says she wants this life. She says she wants the change. She says she’s after what you’re offering. Why would you just keep pushing into that one thing that she’s already ashamed of? And when we look at what Jesus is doing, it’s actually incredibly kind because what Jesus is doing is he’s not shaming this woman. He’s showing love to her. See, friends, Jesus knows all of who you are. He knows all that you’ve done. He knows all that you’ll do. He knows exactly what it is that brought you to this point of your life, and he’s bringing it all out so that he could cover it, so that you don’t have to hide it.

Just like with Nicodemus, he’s showing that the new birth is a new person, and that person, when they come to Jesus, is taken all in, warts and all, born again to a new life. The way to experience God’s love and healing and forgiveness is through the pain. It’s through the struggle. It’s through the difficulty. It’s through the shame. It’s not around it. It’s not through strength. It’s not that we walk this way so that nobody has to know what we’re really like and nobody has to see what we’ve done. It’s not that we have to cover up all of the stuff that we’ve done. It’s not that we have to first fix ourselves, and then God is like, all right, good enough. That’s not how it works. Jesus says, you want to be free? Go get your husbands. I don’t have a husband. And so today, Jesus says, you want to be free?

Go get your alcoholism. Go get your drug addiction. Go get your pornography addiction. Go get your stolen money. Go get your lies. Go get your pharisaic legalism. Go get your jealousy and your coveting. Go get your faithlessness, your dishonesty. Go get your hatred, your anger, your materialism. Bring it here. I will set you free from all of it. We spend so much energy hiding and holding onto that very thing that we desperately need grace for. Please, Lord, don’t let anybody know this about me. But God knows, and He calls you, go get it. Bring it here. Bring it to the cross. Jesus didn’t ask for a better version of us. He wants us. He wants all of us. He calls the ugliness and the sin, not so that we could bring it and say, well, here I am. This is what I’m like, and stay that way, but so that it can go up to the cross, and

so that He could die for it, and so that you could have new life and a new birth. Mark says, Mark 2, 17 says, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, we’re sick. We’re sick with sin. Jesus says, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Jesus goes for the very things which only He can heal. What He does here is He opens up this woman completely. He doesn’t give her any room to hide. He doesn’t leave her something to hold on to, and He basically calls her in, letting her know, I see what you’re like, and I’m calling you. As you are, ugly spots, everything, come to me. I have living water. We can’t hide from God, friends. Therein lies grace. We don’t have to. This is true at the point of repentance, and this is true for Christian community.

Putting on a show and hiding things, it does nothing but distance us from the people God places around us. One of the ways that God shows love for His people is by surrounding them with others who will care for their souls and who will help them grow, and those people, also sinners. Other people saved by grace. Other people who are en route and growing and working to look more like Jesus. Those are the people that God has surrounded us with so that we can grow. Jesus points to that most undesirable part of this woman, and He, in seeing that and pointing it out to her, pursues her. He shows her that He not only knows this about her, but He’s willing to forgive her. Notice He pursues her at her worst. He doesn’t first tell her to go and fix her life. He doesn’t wait for a better portion of her life to call her.

He calls her now. After Jesus confronts her, she tries to deflect. She starts speaking about truth and about doctrine, and He graciously engages her. He points her to the main thing, and when she does this a second time, again talking about worship and does this work this way, does this work that way, Jesus does something amazing when she mentions the Messiah. In verse 26, He says, I who speak to you am He. This is incredible. Do you see this? This is shocking. Underline that in your Bible if you’re the underlining kind, and if you’re not, underline it anyway. Imagine what happens to her when she hears this. Imagine that moment where just all the blood rushes to your head and you’re just in a daze. He’s saying our people for millennia have been waiting for this Messiah. We’ve been waiting for the one who’s going to save us, and He says, I am He.

This is significant, friends. You see, the gospel of John is full of I am statements. John 6, I am the bread of life. John 8, I am the light of the world. John 10, I am the door. John 10, later, I am the good shepherd. John 11, I am the resurrection and the life. John 14, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Chapter 15, I am the true vine. John 8, before Abraham was, I am. And where does it all start? Where is the first of all of these I am statements? Is it given to Nicodemus, the religious leader, who could go and spread the news and who can go to the Sanhedrin and who can, is it to a politician perhaps? Is it to an important person in a culture that could spread the news about this Messiah who came to save His people from the sins of the world?

Is it to the disciples who gave up everything to follow Him and who are doing His work and who are serving Him and walking with Him day by day? Or is it to a scandalous woman, alone, where no one else could hear but her, whom He pursued to heal the wound in her heart and to bring her to salvation? Salvation and the opening of a sinner’s eyes to see God as a free gift, totally independent of gender, nationality, social standing, religious background, skin color, merit, a person’s past, a person’s present, you keep going down that list. Remember, she hasn’t even repented yet. She hasn’t changed anything in her life and she gets this grace. Jesus goes for her when she brings nothing to the table. Friend, if you’re stuck in cycles of worry and feeling like you’re not enough, you’re not doing enough, I want to encourage you to just stop looking at yourself.

Look to Jesus, ponder Jesus. Look to this gracious, merciful Savior who goes after those whom He will save. This isn’t just a pep talk to get you feeling about yourself either. This isn’t just me like, you’re alright. This is a reminder of God’s grace, God’s love. If you’re a Christian, He found you and He made you His child. Rejoice. Stand in that reality. Stand in awe of your Savior. What Jesus says to this woman is one of the most unique, clearest declarations of who He is in the four Gospels. I’m the one you’ve been looking for. I’m the one of whom you’re speaking. I’m the one your people have waited for. It’s so direct, it’s so beautiful, it’s so patient. This woman can’t wrap her head around these grand religious concepts. She’s living in such a way that is contrary to God and she gets this declaration.

The Sinner Becomes Saint

This woman has been trying to find satisfaction in broken cisterns her whole life — wasting away, still empty, still in pursuit, still trying the next thing, the next relationship, the next whatever. And Jesus confronts the reality of her broken life. He confronts the reality of her sinful past, her shameful present, her being ostracized from the broader culture. She as a Samaritan, she’s been waiting for this prophet, for this greater Moses. As she shifts the conversation from husbands to worship, Jesus lays it all out for her. It’s not what you think. True worship and a true relationship with God looks much different than what you think it does. Notice what Jesus declares to her and how he puts it on display for her. God is seeking out sinners. God is finding these people. She was not looking for God, but he went and got her, just like he’s still doing today.

The Father is seeking people like this woman to worship him. And upon this sinner meeting the Savior, something changes in her. We see that this sinner becomes a saint. Once Jesus says those fateful seven words to her, I who speak to you am he, everything changes from this woman. You can almost picture the wheels turning in her head when he says this. And upon meeting God face to face, she instantly becomes a different person. The entire direction of her life is different. The entire focus of what she is and what she’s doing is now different. And notice when the disciples arrive, she’s just been seriously confronted. Her sin has been called out. She’s been a bit evasive. She’s definitely emotional, overcome with an array of thoughts and feelings, and yet what does she do? She bolts into town. It clicks for her. She gets it.

She has to share this news. She has to talk to people about who she’s just met. Disciples don’t quite get it yet, but she does. Our text tells us that they marveled at this interaction. They’re shocked. They’re confused. They’re like, Jesus with a Samaritan woman? Was it the fact that she was a woman? Was it the fact that she was a Samaritan? Could they maybe see that she was kind of on the outer fringes of society? Regardless of the reason of why this seemed surprising, should they not have understood by now that if he called them, he could call anyone? Should they not have begun to see how great his mercy and his grace toward needy people is? How compassionate he is? Charles Spurgeon had this to say about the disciples’ reaction to what Jesus is doing. He writes, How could these disciples marvel that he spoke with anybody after having chosen them and

called them? Surely when they frowned on others, they forgot the dunghills where they grew. If they had only remembered where they were when he found them, and how often they had grieved him by their perverseness, they would have reserved their surprise for their own cases. Ever since the Lord spoke with me, I have never marveled that he spoke with anybody. Brother Spurgeon has a way with words. Friends, who do you see that’s too far for the grace of God? Who do you see that’s beyond reach? Who do we have trouble seeing as savable? Are we quick to receive God’s grace and then forget that the scope of that grace extends far beyond us? It doesn’t stop with us? Do we see that weird kid in my neighborhood that’s confused about his gender, his sexuality, and we think, yeah, too far? Do we see the weird Wiccan neighbor that I have that’s just like too far?

The idolatry and the paganism and all of that? Do we see the friend who has deconstructed and is now living in a way that’s contrary to Christianity, is beyond the reach of grace? God can’t call them back for sure. Do we see the friend that we’ve been praying for 20, 30, 40 years? Is God clearly just not calling them? They’re too far gone? Who’s too far for you? Who would you be shocked if God saved? May we not be like the disciples, but just continue to marvel that he ever even called us. When she understands what’s going on, she doesn’t just ponder and marvel. She goes into town to tell everyone about this Messiah. She shouts it in the streets. This is amazing. People are coming to faith right away. This woman has barely been walking for an hour with Jesus. Others get saved as a result of her testimony.

She becomes an effective evangelist without training, without prepping. The crazy thing is, this is the very town from which she once hid in shame. Just that morning, actually. She runs directly into it, shouting that someone knew all about her sin, all about her shameful lifestyle. Once Jesus addresses her hurt and her shame and her guilt, each of these things becomes an arrow that points to the grace of God. She’s free. All of that energy that previously went into hiding and being secretive is now spent on worshiping Jesus, living for him, and pointing others to him. She’s overwhelmed. She’s filled with joy. She doesn’t have to hide anymore. She can’t wait to tell others. She even left her water jar. Once she gets the living water, even hydration starts to seem far less important. It’s a matter of priorities, right? This woman is focused on physical water, and Jesus points her to living water.

The disciples are focused on physical food, and then Jesus starts pointing them to something much greater in verses 31 through 38. He shows them then that the whole of who he is and what he’s doing is the Father’s will to save his people from their sins, to redeem for himself all kinds of people, and he tells the disciples that he’s bringing them into this work. This reality changes absolutely everything for them, changes everything for us, changed the whole world. How is it that this woman, after having been ostracized in her culture, would go to those very same people who knew just how messed up she was, just how dark and checkered her past was? Once she understood what had happened to her, she knew that it wasn’t about what she’d done. It was about what Jesus did for her. Don’t look at me. Look at Jesus.

Grace That Pursues

She says, come see a man. She doesn’t say, look at me, I’m different now. Come see a man. How desperately does the world need us to make much of Jesus, to magnify this Christ, this gracious Savior of the world? As Christians, our stories, as unique and varied as they are, all ultimately point to the God who saved us. Jesus is the place where deity and humanity meet, where time and eternity intersect. He’s the crossroads between heaven and earth. When we sinners, just like this broken woman, could not reach God, he reached out and got us. He met us where we were. He broke through every barrier to claim us, to purchase us, to redeem us. Why? Because we’re so great? Because he’s so unimaginably, immeasurably gracious? Do you recognize the magnitude of God’s grace toward you, or have you grown accustomed to it after walking with the Lord for some time?

This story shows us our God in a unique way, but we must also be reminded what it is that we’re called to when we encounter this God. Those of us who’ve received his grace must go and proclaim this good news to others, just like this woman, the good news of the God who is gracious and who pursues sinners, all kinds of sinners, even some as bad as you and I. Friends, we are each the woman at the well. I didn’t have five spouses, but I’ve had many other ugly spots. When the Lord found me, he didn’t find a guy who was looking for him. He found a drug addict in his early 20s who hated Christianity, who mocked it, who wanted nothing to do with God, and he called me. He showed me not only the ugliness of my sin, but the fact that he could forgive me and

change me. When we read this encounter, let’s remember our encounters with Jesus. When we hear her response, let’s remember our struggle after running after worldly joys and wanting more and more and more of the sin that is killing us. And when she says, where can I get this water, I remember that moment in my own life where it finally clicked. Hearing the gospel for what must have been the thousandth time, it just finally clicked. And I just understood the only thing I know that I need is Jesus. I know I need to be forgiven. It’s not from me. It’s not because of me. God opened my eyes. We’re all vulnerable before Jesus, friends. There’s no hiding. There’s no trying to be better or do better in order to be okay with him. The sinner can’t ever out-sin the cross of Christ. The interesting thing is that Jesus’ ministry was only three years long.

Think about that. A three-year-long ministry. What’s he doing spending so much time with a Samaritan woman, one single woman? At the well, giving her his time, his attention. And then if that weren’t enough, going and spending time, spending multiple days with her not-so-impressive countrymen, the outcasts, the hated ones, the ones with whom the Jews have no dealings. What’s going on here? This really isn’t an efficient way to save the world. Any business strategist will tell you that this is not the way you do ministry. Any consultant on how to build a church will tell you’re going about this way wrong. You gotta go suburbs, Jesus. Why is he spending his time here, wasting the precious time that he has? He does this because he’s the Savior of the world, beloved. He’s merciful. He’s kind. He’s generous. He’s a God who relentlessly pursues the lowest and the least.

Our gracious Jesus saves the sinner. He pities the perishing, and he invites his enemies to his own table. The abolitionist Anglican priest and hymn writer John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, once said, when I was young, I was sure of many things. There are only two things of which I am now sure, writing later in life. One is that I am a miserable sinner, and the other is that Jesus Christ is an all-sufficient Savior. Thanks be to God that he’s a greater Savior than I am a sinner. Amen? Amen. Amen. Let’s pray, friends. Father, we stand in awe of our Jesus, who pursued us at our worst, who loved the unlovely, who saved his enemies and made them friends. As we contemplate who we are as a result of that, Lord, may we worship with full hearts. May our lives be an outpouring of the grace that we so gladly received from him.

Help us, Lord, to point to him, to stand in awe of him, to worship him with all that we are, because he is worthy. Amen.