This summer we went to the cheapest hotel at Disney for two nights. You can get to go to a water park for free on check-in day when you do this. So there was this wave pool there that had huge waves, like a tsunami wave, probably eight feet tall. Well, Emma, of course, is wearing a life jacket, and I took her out there. Amy likes to stay in the toe splashing zone, but Emma and I went out, and then we were told by a lifeguard that was up on this wall about 15 feet above us that there was this red line down on the bottom, and that life jacket people couldn't go past that. I thought that was kind of weird. They have a life jacket; they can probably do just fine. But anyway, we stayed there. We had a lot of fun. We went and did a few other things when we were done there as a family, and we came back to it. And I said that I wanted to go in that big wave. I wanted to get out in the big, like eight foot tall wave that you, if you were a surfer, it would be beautiful. And so I did. I went out there, and I'd been kind of timing it. I had my cheap little Timex or you know Casio watch on my wrist, and I've been timing, and so I realized it was about every five minutes, and they would set off an alarm, and then the wave would come. I didn't pay close enough attention, and I realized I didn't realize there was two different alarms spaced about a minute apart, and then it'd still be like another 30 seconds. So I was out where I could touch. I'm not very good at swimming or treading water, to be honest. I can kind of get by, but not for long. And so I was timing it. I said, "Okay, it's been five minutes. So I start getting out a little bit, and I don't hear any kind of a buzzer. And then finally, I do hear it, and then that's when I realized it was still going to be another minute. And now I've been out here in this deep part where I can't touch for probably a good four minutes now. By the time the wave comes, and here it comes, but it wasn't a tsunami like I thought it would be. That I'd been watching it launch people towards the shallow part. Apparently, we saw later it was a three-foot wave pool. Now, I happened to be there right at the time change that was posted on a small little dry erase board by the outside entrance to it, and I was there at time change. And now, I was stuck in the deep end. For the past two weeks, we've been talking about grace. The first week we said that it's in God's nature to give it. It's just simply who He is. It's a free, unearned gift that we receive from God. Last week we looked at the fact that there are barriers that we have in our lives to receiving grace. Sometimes it's things that we put there or allow there. For instance, if you're unrepentant of a repetitive sin, something that you keep doing, you insist upon doing it, and you repeat it over and over, and you don't repent of that, you don't want to change. You don't want God to work a new thing in your life in that area, it can be a barrier to receiving grace. But also things such as addictions or just reliance on, you know, heavy drugs and alcohol and whatnot can be a barrier to receiving grace or bitterness that you have harbored. Maybe it's because you were hurt by someone, but that bitterness that you've allowed to remain in your life and have not sought to offload that bitterness and receive healing from that, that can be a barrier to receiving grace. I was listening to a podcast interview this week, and there was a lady named Kathy Sanders on an episode, and the interviewer was talking to her about her experience at the Oklahoma City bombing in the '90s. Her grandsons had been killed in the bombing, and she went on an investigation because she didn't believe, nor do I, the official story about the lone bomber.
There's a whole lot of evidence she brought that shows there's a whole lot more involved. But one of the men that was found guilty and is Doing time is Terry Nichols, and Terry Nichols, she had a set of conversations with him. She actually wanted to learn some more about those who had were co-conspirators in this bombing, and so she got to know him and talk with him. And she actually, after a bit of time, came to a place of forgiving him for his part in the bombing that had killed her grandchildren. Sadly enough, her husband had died. She believes of his anger that he harbored, the bitterness that he carried towards God and everybody involved in it, the FBI, the ATF, everyone involved, and. And he died at about 47 or 48 years old, I think it was, because of the the hatred that he had in his heart. But mrs. Sanders actually got in contact with Terry Nichols' wife and son, and a few years later actually hosted them in her home for several days and cooked for them and gave them a place to stay, and then took Terry's son to the bombing memorial because he wanted to go there and process and grieve for what his father had helped take part in. When you hold on to bitterness, it can literally kill you, but to forgive is not something that people deserve. But it it's what God does, and it is what is helpful for you. So, I want to read the scripture today, and it's from John chapter four, verses four through 42. But he needed to go through Samaria, so he came to a city of Samaria that is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied from his journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman of 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. When the woman of Samaria said to him, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says 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 with and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and livestock, Jesus answered and said to her, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst, for the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst nor come here to draw. Jesus said to her, "Go call your husband and come here. The woman answered and said, "I have no husband. Jesus said to her, "You have well said I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband. In that you spoke truly. The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things.
Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you, am he. And at this point, his disciples came, and they marveled that he talked with the woman. Yet no one said, "What do you seek? or "Why are you talking with her? The woman left her water pot, went into the city, and said to the men, "Come, see a man who told me all the things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ? Then they went out of the city and came to him. In the meantime, his disciples urged him, saying, "Rabbi, eat. But he said to them, "I have food to eat of which you do not know. Therefore, 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 finish his work. Do you not say there are still four months, and then comes the harvest. Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest. And he who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together, for in this the. Saying is true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap for that which you have not labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labors. And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified. He told me all I ever did. So when the Samaritans had come to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days, and many more believed because of his own word. Then they said to the woman, "Now we believe not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard him, and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. Now, I want to just break this down for a little bit. First of all, it starts out by saying that Jesus had to go through Samaria. He didn't exactly. Most people that were Jewish didn't. Samaria was kind of this landlocked region in the middle of Israel in the middle between kind of Judea and Galilee, and most of the Jews really hated the Samaritans, and so they didn't go through there. They would go around it, and it would take a couple extra days of journey time, but Jesus did have to go through there, not because it was the only road or because he was just stubborn that way, but I think he had to go there because he wanted to meet this woman. I think he had a divine appointment set up with her. While Jesus is talking with her or sitting there at the well, the disciples left into town for lunch, and and it's good to pay attention to this. It's good to pay attention to the details because first of all, it tells us that it was at noon time that he was there, and you know, obviously, so it's lunchtime. That's why they're going into town for food. But there's a there's a thing that's in here, and it's only in a couple of the older translations, like the King James, New King James, and some others. But there's a clue that's in here. It says Jesus sat down by the well, being wearied from his journey. He sat thus by the well. Now sitting thus by the well doesn't make sense, and so a lot of the people, the scribes that were copying the Bible, said, "Oops, somebody added a word. Let's take that out of there. That doesn't make any sense. Why would it say that? But they didn't take into consideration who was writing this. The Apostle John wrote this, and he was in Jesus's inner circle of three people: Peter, James, and John. And so it makes sense that at least one of them would stay with Jesus while the rest went into the village. And if John is writing this a few decades later, and he's not the one that's actually the scribe or what we call an amanuensis, he would have hired somebody to do that. He hired this amanuensis, and John would dictate to him, and that man would write it down.
And so, picture John being so engrossed in this memory, that he can just see it, and maybe he'd been walking in this room as he's recalling the story to this amanuensis, but then he sits down on a a ledge or a bench of some kind or a stool, and and leans on something, and he says, "Jesus sat by the well, like thus. He's imagining the way Jesus plops down, weary from his journey, right there by that water, wanting some of that water, and not having any way to draw it out, but then this woman shows up, and he asks her to grab it, to to to dip in and get him a drink of water. Now she's a little bit kind of shocked by this, you know, like they don't usually talk. Men and women wouldn't talk in public. Samaritans and Jews wouldn't really have any dealings with each other. So they have this conversation. Though in this conversation, they're going to deal with these cultural disdains between the two groups, the the male to female dynamic of those relationships, they're going to talk about proper worship sites and even the logistics of water retrieval and the feasibility of Jesus being able to provide living water for her. He claims to have this living water available, and she's skeptical. She's skeptical of it because she's like, if you had living water, which that was like flowing water, a spring of water. If he had living water, she's thinking it's an actual like location where there's a spring somewhere, and she's thinking if he knows where a spring is, um, first of all, why is he here asking me for water? And second of all, you know, why haven't I found it yet? Why hasn't anybody told me? And she's thinking maybe he just tapped into a new spot, so she says, "Are you greater than Jacob, our forefather, that dug this well and gave it to us? This well was, I believe, 120 feet deep, and Jacob, so many centuries before, had done it. So now Jacob's a common ancestor, or at least a partial. Historical family line of the Samaritans trace their name back to Jacob and and you know back to Father Abraham, but she's saying Jacob, our forefather and yours, gave us this well. But are you greater than Jacob? Like this well has been here for a long, long time. Are you able to find water in a place where he had to dig 120 feet deep to find it, and you think you're able to just find living water over here? But Jesus tells her what he's offering her is actually eternal life, that the living water he's speaking of isn't a spring of H2O, but it's it's the life that would well up within her if she would come to Christ for eternal life, so he tells her to go get her husband. Now, this would be culturally appropriate if there's going to be any life decisions, any big changes in the family, in a in a society such as theirs. The man would make that decision, and the whole household would follow along, but she kind of half lies about it and says, "I have none. Jesus is interesting. He says, "Oh, you've spoken the truth quite well. You're right. You don't have a husband. And now he reveals her secret struggles here. He reveals the the very the the pits of her life that she can't even keep hidden, but at least not even to a stranger she can keep it hidden now. He says you've had five husbands, and now you're shacked up with the next one. You're living with a guy that's not even your husband this time. Now I don't think Jesus was necessarily being trying to be difficult with her or to shame her in any way. I believe he was actually graciously, kind of pointing out the the hurt that she carries. He was graciously showing where she has hardships and struggles, where she has a burden that she's been carrying. He's showing the the very pain that she lives within, and so as we think about this, it's like why did this woman have such a string of relationships like this? There's a few possibilities. First, maybe when she was younger, of marriageable age. Her dad betrothed her to someone, and of course paid the bride price for her.
And so, you know, dad got to-it's not selling, but let's just call that way-he sold her off to be married, and it didn't work out. Maybe it was dad chose poorly. Maybe the the husband to be chose poorly, but he divorces her. She comes back to her father's household. He keeps selling her to another husband, and perhaps her father was profiting off of her getting married all these times to the wrong person. Perhaps her previous husbands had died. You know, maybe the first five of them, she was a widow five times over, and now this newest guy is kind of superstitious, thinking I've got the black widow here. I'm not going to marry her. You know, that'll be my death warrant. Maybe she was just a serial cheater and adulteress. They didn't want to put up with it, so they would find out and kick her to the curb. Maybe, maybe she was just a plain old like undesirable wife, you know. Maybe she seems good, kind of up front. You get married, you live with her, and you realize this woman's terrible. I don't want this, and they would kick her out and get a divorce. Either way, she gets a little kind of like nervous here at this part of the conversation because he's just uncovered one of the the deepest, darkest parts of her existence. So she nervously shifts the conversation and states the obvious: "You're like a prophet or something, aren't you? And so she shifts the conversation or attempts to to shift it to like what is the proper way to worship God. It turns out she's kind of ill-informed and confused, she was taught that the location mattered and the dogma mattered. Jesus shows her that spiritual worship is what matters and knowledge of truth is what matters. He says it's not going to matter if you worship on the mountain in Jerusalem where the temple is, or if you worship on Mount Gerizim where the the Samaritans go for their holy place. It's not going to matter where it is. What's going to matter is that you're led by the Spirit of God, and you have the knowledge of truth. Now, what's really cool in here, and something I want to point out, is she recognized one thing with a lot of perception in this conversation. She said, "Well, I know the Messiah is coming, and I don't think she just meant like, I know someday the prophets have said he will be here. I think what she was saying was she knew that the time was at hand. Somehow she just knew there was some some mysterious movement of God that was going on, and it was wakening people up for this, that God was preparing people. For that moment, and she says, "I know he's coming. He's got to be close. Like, how much longer can we go on like this without the Messiah coming to save all things? Jesus then drops the biggest like bombshell on her. He says, "I'm that guy. Now, as this is happening, his disciples are returning with food, and they see her and him having a conversation, but they don't interrupt, and they don't say like, "What's going on? Why are you talking to this woman? Do you want us to send her away? But she does leave, and she leaves her water jug there. And I don't know for sure the significance of that, but it seems to me like she's willing to leave everything behind, leave behind whatever she was doing and say, "I've got to tell others about this. This is the best news ever. This woman became an extension of God's grace in that moment. She had just received grace from Him. He had shared the truth with her about her life. He shared the truth about the the quagmire she's in, the mess she was in, and he didn't. He didn't harshly judge it. He didn't condemn her for it. He just spoke how it was. The life you're living has been rough, and you're not doing it the right way now. But he also offered her living living water, which would well up into eternal life. So she went to the town and she says, "Hey, I met a stranger who knows everything about me. Now I'm guessing a lot of the town knows a lot about her.
At least five of these guys, if they were still alive, know a lot about her. Who knows what they said at the local watering hole or bar or something, you know? But there's a lot of people know a lot of details about this woman's life. But she said this complete stranger knows about me. She says, "Could he be the Messiah? So now the whole town gathers around and they start following her out there to the well. First, they believed her about Jesus that he was the Messiah, and then after they spent time with him, they believed him directly. Jesus spent a couple days with them and forged a a life with them that they would be able to follow him and obey him and live for him later, throughout their whole lives. So there I was in the deep end. I was in that pool. Three foot waves are coming. Feels like every time one comes in, it pushes me back a little farther. I'm getting tired. My legs are starting to get cramped up. I'm out of breath. I start making eye contact with people that are a few feet away. I'm sure I had a panicked look on my face. But here I am, a grown man with gray in my beard, and they're probably thinking I'm okay. Nobody's asking if, if I'm all right. I just wanted somebody to offer to help me. But they didn't. I looked up at the lifeguards on the wall. They looked so far away all of a sudden. Help. Nothing. I'm sitting there thinking, why? What do I do? Do I do I put them out of, you know, off of their ledge and have them jump in here? Their their suits are dry. They're just standing there looking fine, you know. Now I got to make them jump into the water. Maybe I'll make it. I realized that I couldn't anymore, and things were going to turn bad if I didn't. Finally, I yell "Help! and I wave my arm. One of them looks at me with this quizzical look, like "Really? And I waved her over, and she jumped in. And then her partner, a few feet away, jumped in after her, and they swam over. They couldn't get there fast enough in that moment. I was so ready for them to come and save me. I just wanted that little red thing that the lifeguard had to hang on to, to float on. So as they're swimming out to me, I knew it would be okay. Although I had them help me get towed into the, to the shallow end. After a while, I was finally breathing normal, and my legs were ready to walk. And I contemplated why I took so long to ask for help. I didn't want to put somebody out.. I didn't realize just how bad it was, and I thought maybe I could make it. All these things are going on in my head, and really, all I needed was somebody to reach out and offer me help. People are drowning in the deep end of life. They are in over their heads. They're looking for someone. They're looking for anyone. They just need somebody to look at them and say, "Are you okay? Are you doing all right? Be on the lookout for these people. Ask, ask how they're doing. Listen to them. Connect them with grace. God is asking people that have received His grace to turn around and to be an extension of His grace to others.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai