John 4:1-30; Living Water

Jason Sterling March 29, 2026 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL

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Transcript

Last Sunday In This Room

SPEAKER_00 0:23

If you have a copy of God's word, turn with me to John chapter 4. John 4. So go to your New Testament. And notice I didn't say Romans. We're taking a break from Romans. And the reason why we're taking a break from Romans is because endings matter. This is our last Sunday in this space. Tonight we dedicate our new sanctuary. We gather one more time in this room for worship. For over 20 years, this room has been the home for lots of things. It's been the home of uh our worship services, preaching of the gospel, been the home of no talent night events. Um square dances been held here. People have met their Savior in this room. This has been the home of countless weddings and baptisms and funerals. God has been so good and given our church this room for over 20 years and week after week, Carl mentioned it, a thousand Sundays. We have gathered to meet the Lord Jesus Christ through the preaching of the word and through the sacraments and through prayer and through the singing. And so thanks be to God for this wonderful space that He's given this church years ago. And some of you were here the day that we moved into this church, into this building in 2004 on Good Friday. And for most of us, it's all we've ever known. It's all I've ever known is this space. And so today is bittersweet in lots of ways. And the Bible talks about moments like this. Ezra chapter 3, when the foundation of the temple was laid. If you remember, there was lots of joy and shouting, but there was also what? Lots of weeping, lots of sadness, so much so that you couldn't tell the difference between the two. They were both happening at once, and both honor God. And that is this moment. So much to celebrate. God's faithfulness to this church. A new season of ministry. More legroom. No more tripping over chairs on the way to communion, Lord willing. So much for us to celebrate, but also sadness is appropriate too, because of the memories that we have here, and because of the faces that have dreamed of a new sanctuary and that God would fill up this property are not here because they're in the presence of their Savior. And so they will not sit in the new pews, and that brings a level of sadness. And so chapters are closing, endings matter, and that brings both joy and sadness. And we want to give space for both this morning. And so, what do we do with this moment as we gather one last time? What do we need to hear? Well, I kept going back to John chapter 4. And I know it doesn't say anything about buildings, but it says a whole lot about Jesus. And Jesus is the one who has been with us here and been so faithful, and he is the one that will go with us there into the new sanctuary, and he will be faithful there as well. What happened at this well that we're about to read about in John 4, 2,000 years ago, has been happening in this church for 50 years and 20 years in this room. Same story, same Jesus, different location, and it will continue. And so with that in mind, follow along with me. This is God's word, John 4, 1 through 30. I'm only going to read 4 through 30 this morning. It's in your bulletin and it'll be on the screen. As he had to pass through Samaria, so he came to the town of Samaria called Sichar near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. And Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. And a woman from Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 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. And Jesus said to 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. And the woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. And Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life. And the woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water. And Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband and come here. And the woman answered him, I have no husband. And Jesus said to her, You're 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. And the woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you're a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem it's the place where people ought to worship. And Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who will who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. And the woman said these things, or said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming, he who is called the Christ, when he comes, he will tell us all things. And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He. Just then his disciples came back, they marveled that he was talking with the woman, but no one said, Why do you what do you seek, or why are you talking with her? So the woman left her 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. This is God's word. Let's pray. Father, uh, come one last time we come into this room to hear your word preached. Our hearts are full. We are filled with gratitude. We're filled with hope on what lies ahead for our church. And in the middle of all these emotions that we feel this morning, would you help us to hear clearly what you want us to hear? Teach us. Show us you have us here, you've brought us here. We are your servants, and we are listening. Show us Jesus. May we encounter him this morning. In Jesus' name. Amen. Three things this morning from this passage. First of all, the woman who met Jesus at her hiding place, number one. Secondly, the well that pointed beyond itself. Thirdly, the water we are carrying forward. So the woman, the well, the water. That's where we're headed. Let's look at each of those in turn this morning. Number one, the woman who's going to show us where we all meet Jesus. Look at verses three and four. Notice the text says, and I want to focus on this for a moment, he had to pass through Samaria. He had to pass through Samaria. That's important because for a first century Jew, Samaria was not on the route. And you would have avoided Samaria if you were a Jew at all costs. There were hundreds of years of hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans. And most Jews would have taken any other route, would have made their trip way longer just to not have to go through Samaria. Unless you're Jesus. And the text said he had to go through Samaria. The word literally means divine necessity. And so this is not about geography. This is about mission. The mission of Jesus. Jesus had an appointment at this well. Look at verses 6 and 7. He's weary, he's thirsty, he's sitting by a well. A woman comes and draws water at he asked her for a drink. And again, to understand the text indicates it here, but this is remarkable because of who this woman is. She's a Samaritan, so she's the enemy. She's also a woman. And it was scandalous for a Jewish man to speak to any woman in public. That's why look at verse 27. The disciples returned and they're like, What's happening? They marveled at Jesus talking to this woman. But there's something else I don't want us to miss. Look at verse 6. It's the sixth hour. So it's high noon, and this woman is all alone. Okay, why is she all alone in the middle of the day? Because women would come and they would draw in the cool of the day. They would draw water in the morning or in the evening, but this woman is coming in the hottest part of the day when she knows that she will be all alone. And we get a hint of why that is happening when you look at the text and see how the conversation starts to unfold. Why is she coming alone in the heat of the day? Shame. If you want to summarize it in one word. He said, You've had five husbands. The one you're living with now is not your husband. She's been so wounded by people's treatment of her that she comes alone. Chuck DeGroat has a book titled The Hardest People to Love. And he gives this great image in the book. And he says that everybody, all of us, carry around every person an invisible bag that they drag behind them throughout their entire life. And it starts really early when children start to realize that the world's not safe at all. And that it's actually a place of difficulty and pain. And so very early, we start putting things, he says, in this invisible bag, parts of ourselves that we want no one else in the world to see. The anger that we have inside of us that we have no idea how to what to do with and how to express, parts of our personality that people have told us that they don't like. We put that in the bag. Pain that comes from living in a broken, fallen world, sin and the things that we've done that we're deeply ashamed of, that we don't want to ever tell anyone. We stuff into the bag. And so by midlife, that bag becomes really heavy. And we carry it everywhere we go. And we're hiding it from people. And the heavier the bag gets, the more isolated we become, and the more we try to rearrange our lives so that we can avoid being exposed. That's what this woman is doing. Her bag is so heavy that she can't face anyone else. And so she comes alone at noon. The well becomes her hiding place. And we all have our version of the well at noon, don't we? Invisible bags that we're carrying, patterns and places where we carry our bags so that we go undetected, so that no one will really see what's going on inside of us, and no one will ask any questions, and we will have no risk of exposure. We all know what that's like. And what I want you to see is what this woman found out. Guess who's waiting for you there in that hiding place? Jesus is waiting for you in that place. And not because he uh look, notice there, he wants to. He had to pass through Samaria. He sought this woman out in her hiding place. He seeks us in our hiding place. This meeting was on Jesus' schedule from the very beginning. Twenty years or more. This woman of the well, at the well story has been playing out in this church. And it's been playing out in this very room. And it's even playing out this morning in our last service here. People have walked into this room with their invisible bags. Shame and brokenness and addiction and failure, and Jesus meets us here. Not because the room's magic, not because it's beautiful when it is, but because Jesus promises to show up when his people gather in his name. This has been a place where Jesus has met us in our hiding places, Sunday after Sunday, week after week, year after year. The woman at the well, over and over again, different faces, same Jesus, same grace. God has been faithful. The divine necessity, think about it, that took Jesus through Samaria. Here's what I want you to hear. That same divine necessity will drive him to meet with you there, down the hall, several steps in the new sanctuary. Different location, same God, same faithfulness, same pursuit. Secondly, the well. Look at verses 13 through 15. Everyone who drinks from this water will be thirsty again. He's talking about the well, but if you bring if you uh drink from the well I give you, you'll never thirst again. So this woman is confused. And she thinks Jesus is actually talking about actual water, but Jesus, to make his point, goes deeper. Look at verses 16 through 18. Go call your husband. I have no husband. No, I have you have five husbands, and the one you're living with is not your husband. Wait, what just happened? We're talking about water. Now we're talking about her relationship. Did Jesus change the subject? He did not change the subject. Jesus is saying, let's stop talking about Jacob's well and let's talk about the well of your heart. Let's talk about your thirst, the thirst in your own soul that you've been trying to quench by going to all of these other wells, and they've never been enough, and you're still thirsty. We all have wells that we drink from, don't we? Career and control and reputation and the success of our kids and family, and we can go on and on and on. Those are good things, but we make them ultimate things. And Jesus is saying that these wells, even the good ones, will leave you thirsty and empty and will ultimately not satisfy you. And we could spend the rest of the sermon talking about that, but given the occasion here, I want us to consider something else carefully. Even church buildings can become wells we drink from. Not because buildings are bad, buildings are good, but because our hearts are often tricky. And so let me say two things and say this in two ways. First of all, maybe the temptation for some will be here with the familiarity of this place, the comfort and the memories and the nostalgia and the sense that God lives here because we met God here, and leaving here feels like we're leaving God behind. Or maybe it's measuring faithfulness by whether worship feels like it did in this room. Grief, good. We need to grieve. It's right for us to honor this gift that God has given us. Jesus is not confined to this well. He's not confined to this space. As awesome and as good as this room is, it is not living water. Perhaps a bigger temptation will be on the other side of into the future, not to wish that we were back here, but to make the new building the point to drink from what we've built, to find our identity in our facility, or to measure our faithfulness by our architecture. It would be real easy for us to develop building consciousness and say, look at our building. But we want that building, the new sanctuary, to point someone else somewhere else entirely. We want it pointing up, which it is. We want it pointing to Jesus, the one who meets people, and their thirst and their shame and in their isolation, this beautiful sanctuary that God has given. Yes, it's a testimony to your sacrificial giving and the giving of God's people and to God's faithfulness to this church. It's not living water, only Jesus is living water. It's about what's happening and who we're worshiping in the beautiful space. Look at verse 20. You see this. The woman wants to debate worship location with Jesus. She's fixated on the place, she's making the well the point. And Jesus says, true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth. The location's not the point, spirit and truth is the point. He's saying that true worship is about a person, and it's directed towards a person. Now, let me be clear before I go further. Wells are good. Buildings matter. Wells matter. Jacob's well was a good thing. It served the community, it served God's purpose. It was a gift. Same thing is true of our beautiful sanctuary. When we build something beautiful, we are making a statement about who God is and what we believe about him to this community and to the world. Beautiful spaces for our worship are biblical, building beautiful spaces. Just look at Kings and Chronicles. God cares about spaces we create for people to gather and worship him. And our sanctuary is beautiful and it will serve God's purposes, Lord willing, for generations to come. But what Jesus is saying here is good and as beautiful as it is, it can't give living water. Only He can give living water. The well serves the water, the building serves the one we meet in the building. What makes the room sacred is not the wood. In the windows. What makes it sacred is Jesus showing up through his word, through sacrament, through worship, and through community. Lastly, the water. Look at verse 28. It's interesting. What does it look like when you have this living water in your life? Well, if you look at verse 28, she came there, she was thirsty to get water, but she leaves her water jug. Why? Well, because she found what she came for. She came looking for water and she found living water. Look at verse 29. She runs back to the village. Think about the village, the place where she was shamed and outcast, and she starts telling everybody, hey, come, I want to show you this man. I want to show you the Christ who told me everything that I ever did. She's now running towards the people who she was avoiding. She's actually seeking them out. What changed? Well, she met Jesus. That's what changed. And that's what we want to keep being, and who we want to keep being as a church. A people who encounter Jesus, and we can't help but leave this place because Jesus is so kind and good and beautiful. We can't help but leave here and say to the world and to our neighbors and to our coworkers, come and see. Not our building, come and see, not the well, come and see Jesus, the man who told me everything I ever did, knew me all the way to the bottom, and still loved me and didn't leave. That's what we want. What will people find as we invite them to this place? That's what we want them to find. Here's an illustration. I share it in the new members' class. So if you've heard it recently, forgive me, but I still think it makes the point. Think about the difference between a job interview and the emergency room waiting room. Imagine a job interview and you're all in one room waiting to go through a door to interview for the same job. What does that feel like when you're in that room? Competitive? You feel like you it feels pressure, feels like you got to pretend, like you've got to be perfect, like you've got to have it all together. Now think about an emergency, an ER waiting room. What does that feel like? Desperate. You're all connected, aren't you? Why? Because you're all in need of the same thing. Everybody in that room and in that space needs help. They need to see the doctor. We want Faith Church to feel more like an ER waiting room than a job interview. Friends, our space is beautiful. But please let us never forget that the church is to be a hospital for sinners, not a museum for the saints. It is to be a place where sinners meet Jesus. Religion says, get yourself together and then go to church. You probably hear that a lot. I can't go to church. You know what my life? No, no. That's religion. Gospel is come as you are. Come meet Jesus, the living water. And if you're wondering whether you'll really be welcomed, look at this woman at the well again. She wasn't seeking Jesus. She needed some water to drink. She wasn't looking for anything spiritual, but who was seeking her? Jesus was seeking her. Look at verse 23. The Father is seeking such people to worship him, not the put together, not the cleaned up, the thirsty people who need a savior. Jesus is saying, just come. You see, that's the invitation. And then the question becomes is well, okay, how can broken people like us offer living water? How can this woman, how can she get living water in the first place? Did you know there's only one other time in the Gospel of John where the sixth hour is mentioned? It's in John chapter 19. Guess where Jesus is? He's hanging on a cross. And you remember what he says from that cross? I thirst. He meant more than physical thirst. Jesus was experiencing the loss of his relationship with his father, ultimate thirst, because he was taking the punishment that we deserved. And Jesus died of thirst so that you and I could have living water, the living water of Jesus living inside of us. That is why she could leave her jar. Because think about an external well. You go to it, you draw water, you get thirsty again, and you come back. It's exhausting. But did you notice, verse 14, Jesus doesn't just give you another well to visit, he gives you a spring. He can't hold down a spring. It's going to find a way to bubble up living water flowing from within, flowing from us wherever we go. Not something we carry in a jar, something that lives in us and flows out of us. My prayer for our church for generations to come is that people would walk into this building, into that building, just like they did this one. People like this woman in John chapter 4. People who are thirsty and they're broken and they're looking for life in all the wrong places. And my prayer is that they would meet Jesus here because this place, we are a people who offer living water. We walk into that new building with the same mission that we had here to be a people so transformed by Jesus that we can't help but invite others and say, come and see. Come find living water. The building is done. Our property is complete, but the mission is not. Buildings serve the mission. Jesus is the mission. And this Jesus is with us wherever we go. Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you. You have been so good to this church. Thank you for this space. Thank you for the worship that has happened here, for the souls that have found life and living water here. Forgive us, Lord, for the ways that we make good things, ultimate things. Holy Spirit, go with us. Carry your living water through us into the new sanctuary, and may it flow into a thirsty world. May Jesus be the mission always in this church. It's in his name we pray. Amen.