APR 13 2014

Sea Change Church · Adam Stadtmiller · April 13, 2014
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

If you have your Bibles, turn it to John 4, and we are going to be talking about Jesus, a woman, and a well. Exciting passage. Jesus looks for someone who has a mutiny of self. It's a long passage. We send out the passage on our constant contact email that goes out at the beginning of the week so you can listen to it, so that you can get steeped in it.

If you are not part of that email blast in your bulletin, you can fill that out and give it to one of the ushers or give it to Chris afterwards with her volunteer welcome, volunteers for Easter. She will take it, and we will get you on that list, and you will know what I'm going to preach. Usually on, it'll be to you by Thursday, so you can spend some time in the Word.

I really want to do the Word together. One of the things I struggle with, I seem to struggle with a lot today, obviously. You know, you love a pastor, always getting up and talking about what he's struggling about, you know what I'm saying? But one of the things I don't like is when all the burden is on the pastor to do the work of the study of God's Word.

And so you'll notice, I don't preach everything, I don't flesh everything out. That's why I have the footnotes here on occasion, you can see. You can go for a little further study. That's why I have the questions at the end, that you can go and sit with a friend and have coffee and go, let's talk about the sermon. That's why we send it out on Thursday, so you can listen to it.

We have an audio version, Max McLaren. He's got almost of a good voice as Pastor Jim. But he's British, and I won't try the British Jim amalgamation accent. But nonetheless, we send that out on Thursday so that you can start steeping yourself in God's Word. That when you get here, you've already got your own thoughts to bring to the passage. Your heart's already been softened and kind of tenderized, so to speak, by the passage.

And then we can come and work together, and I think it just makes for a church that has a better back and forth, a better ebb and flow of when the pastor teaches, as opposed to being teacher-centric from the front. So Jesus finds a woman who is having a mutiny of self. And I'm going to read part of this passage. We're going to finish the rest of it next week on Easter Sunday, which I'm super excited about.

Let me just read it. Now, Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John. Although, in fact, it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. And so he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now, he had to go through Samaria, so he came down to a town in Samaria called Sychar. In verse 5, I want you to look at that again real quick.

So he, or verse 3, excuse me. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. In verse 4, now he had to go through Samaria. Put a little check by that as you're looking in your notes. He had to go through Samaria. Verse 5, so he came down to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given his son, Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well.

And it was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, will you give me a drink? Very interesting. Jesus, God, asking a created human being to serve him and give him a drink. It says his disciples had gone into the town to buy food, which was a big request for disciples who would not want to go into Samaria. And the Samaritan woman said to him, you are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.

How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. And that's what John added in there. And Jesus answered him, 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. Sir, the woman said, you have nothing to draw with. And the well is deep. Here comes the excuses, right?

And the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? And here comes the sarcasm. Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well to drink from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock? And Jesus answered, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I will give them will never thirst.

Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Interesting here. Let me read that again and see if you notice what Jesus says about the source of living water. It says, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become, now he is the genesis of that water, but it will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

It says, but individual believers have the potential, when they drink from the well that is Jesus, to actually become the source water for living life. Eternal life. Not only for themselves, but for those they speak to. He says that she will become a well. That if you drink of the water, if you tap into the source that is Jesus, that it is so powerful that it can actually turn you into a well that can nourish others.

And not only that, you will be sustained. We spoke in Psalm chapter 1 last week. It says the tree that is planted by streams will constantly be nourished. There's one thing I said about when a tree is planted in the right place, you never need to water it. If a tree is planted by a stream, it never needs to be watered. It doesn't have to go and look into the world to be watered, to be nourished.

It doesn't have to look for business success or academic success or any other success that the world will have. If you can just plant it by that stream of living water, the same stream that it says will run through heaven, that same stream that is Jesus himself, then you will constantly be nourished. And you can become, through Jesus, not yourself, through Jesus, a well in this culture.

How thirsty is this culture? How much does it need a well? Imagine if just this congregation became wells of living water, not only for yourself, but it bubbles over where everyone is getting wet. Think of New York City on a hot day. You've seen the pictures of the kids, right? And they go and they have that giant, you know, wrench. You get that fireman's wrench and you put it there and you go to the fire hydrant and you knock it off and you just let the water come out.

And the kids, what do they do? They dance and they sing and they play and they throw water at each other. Jesus says you can become that source well. Good stuff, right? Good passage. Man, I was loving it. But here's, if I had one thing to say today, it's this. Jesus quenches the thirst of desperate people. I say evangelism's easy with desperate people.

You know, Jesus was really, he picked his spots. He had a hard time with religiosity. He had a hard time with Pharisees, right? Real religious people that had to do things a certain way or this. And Jesus was always, he was always, seemed to be breaking religious norms, but he would never break religious norms. He would break them that were set by religious people, but always within the confines of what God's truth was.

And so he was doing things in this passage, as we'll get to, that religious people would have turned their nose at, that would have made him look downgraded in society. But as he did that, he was a living well for this woman. Evangelism's easy with desperate people. And I want to say, you know, one of the things we want to do is, if we're tapped into Jesus, we want to be desperate for Jesus, but he takes away our desperation.

You see, we want to be desperate for Jesus. We want to be thirsty. But God takes away our desperation that is outside of that. Because if we are not sourced into Jesus, the well that is Jesus, we can become desperate people. You know, one of the things I think is important for, to being a follower of Jesus, for discipleship, is maintaining a sense of desperation.

I'm always concerned when things get a little too good, right? For me, it's easier to follow Jesus when things are tough. Cry out, throw myself at God's feet. But when things are good, when I get a little too fat and happy, you know, get a little too fat and sassy, I lose that sense of desperation. I would say, in the morning when you get up, do you have that sense of desperation?

You can cultivate desperation. You don't have to be desperate as the world's eyes see it, but we can cultivate a desperation for Jesus. And one of the things that makes us desperate is when we taste that water. When you get into that word of God, and you really taste it, you become desperate for it. Desperate for the truth that is God. I say, my daughters and my wife and I have been listening to a thing called the Daily Audio Bible.

I'm going to be turning you guys on to that not too long. It's an online community where they read through the Bible as a community every day for the entire year, and then they start again at the beginning of the year. And I've become so nourished by it that I'm desperate for it. Even when things are good, I'm desperate to hear God's word. One of the things that Jesus does here when he speaks to this woman is he quenches her thirst, but he doesn't use a fire hose.

You know, I've just seen it so often that people are like, you want a little bit of the truth? I got some truth for you. Come here. I'm going to give you some truth. Just put your lips right around this bad boy. Yeah, right, you know. Rawr! You know, their eyebrows are, you know, their eyelids are peeling back. Jesus is light, but he came in a form that people could understand and see the light.

If Jesus came in the fullness of his light, it would have been like a nuclear bomb going off, and all of us would have been destroyed in the light that is God. How do you share truth? We have to share truth in a way that is loving, but in a way that the culture can understand it. We have to share Jesus in a way where the truth is real and vibrant, but it's life-giving.

And that's the thing about Jesus when he shared truth. The truth was life-giving. It brought life to people. And so he responds. Jesus responds to desperation. Jesus responds to desperation. And just quickly, in your notes you're going to see, I just want to, just for you people that really love to dig into the Bible, water is a key theme here in the Bible.

This is a Baptist church, so water is a key theme here, right? It has Baptist roots, if you didn't know that, for a long time. You're going to see water is used in chapter 1, mentioning John. If you look at your footnotes, John and his baptism in chapter 1, Jesus turns water into wine in chapter 2. He meets a woman at the well in chapter 4. He meets a man at the pool of Bethesda in chapter 5.

Jesus walks on water in chapter 6. And on and on, all the way through, he meets his disciples with John on the water. Later on in John 21, I just stopped right there. But if you look through, water is a key theme. I think he's trying to say something. And I think it's important that you can only live 3 to 5 days without water. He's made the metaphor very clear.

I think he has. Of how important it is. But imagine if we went after the source of the water of Jesus in the same way that we were desperate. Don't drink for, well, I'm not telling you this. I'm just saying it as a metaphor. Don't drink for 4 days. 3 days. See how you feel. See what happens to your throat. See, that's how I want to be with God's Word.

I really want to be that way. With after 2 days, I'm just, I'm keen for a drink. I've got to have some. I've got to find it. You'll do anything to find it. You've seen those stories about survival, where people are willing to do anything to find it. Let's look at a setting here. I'm going to look at a few things. Once again, I want to look at it as a narrative, because I believe that narrative, movie, story is the language of our day.

So I want to set this up like a movie scene. First of all, let's look at the setting. The setting is a well in Samaria, and it's not just any well. It's Jacob's well. Every religious tradition, whether it be the Samaritans, and the Samaritans, I don't know if you know that, they still exist. I think there was, I wrote it down. As of 2012, 751 Samaritans still exist today.

I didn't know that. But this well, in Islamic tradition, in Christian tradition, in Jewish tradition, in Samaritan tradition, nobody disagrees to the geographical fact that this was Jacob's well. Now, you go to the Holy Land, they'll say, you know, this is where Jesus did this, but then somebody else has a little stand over here that's selling trinkets from where they think Jesus did the same thing, and all over.

But this, no one refutes the fact that this was that well. So you can go sit there. There's a church built over it now. You can go sit at that very well where Jesus was, and there's a picture of it online. The well was important, but it doesn't have much significance in the Bible other than that. It just was a well that gave life. So that was interesting.

It is this well that we look at, that we know about. Next, I want to understand Samaria. Samaria was a place and a people group that were ethnically despised by the Jews. There was a deep ethnic hatred. Think Rwanda, 1994, but without the genocide component. Think a deep ethnic hatred for these people. And it was because during one of the exiles, some Jews were left.

When the Jews were exiled to Babylon, or one of the other exiles, some Jews were left in Jerusalem, in Israel, and other nations came in. They intermarried. They got religious practices all mixed up. And so what happened was you had a group of people whose religion started to shift to the point where they began to say that we're the true Jews. We're not only the true Jews, but Jerusalem really isn't the place where Jesus is going to come.

It's really going to be a place called Mount Gerizim. And so you can imagine when the Jews come back and everything is restored, that this other group that has been there saying, hey, we're the ones, we're the remnant. You guys got taken away, but we got left. And God is coming back here, and this is the spot, and Messiah will come through us. You can see why the Jews had a problem with that.

And so, like John says, they have no dealings with the Samaritans. In fact, it was known that men at the time would go into church, and they would stand up, and they would raise up their hands. They begin to pray, oh, great and eternal one, because they would not say God's name because it wasn't an intimate religion. You didn't talk to God with intimacy like now.

There's an intimacy that Jesus opened up to us, right? But it says that they would speak and say, oh, eternal one, thank you that I am not a woman. That's what they would say. This is true. Sorry, but this is what they would say. I won't say that. Thank you that I am not a woman. And then they would say, and thank you that I'm not a Samaritan. They would get up and speak.

Imagine if people got up and started saying things in front of the church. This was what was going on. So his disciples, you can imagine, when Jesus is walking through on the way to Samaria, they would take these long half-day journeys around. They would actually cross the Jordan to not go through Samaria. You would have to cleanse yourself if a Samaritan shadow fell upon you.

A shadow, just a shadow would fall on you. That's some of the historical tradition that I've read. That you would have to cleanse yourself after. So they hated and despised people. But in verse four, it says it was someplace that Jesus had to go. Eddie E.I. I think that's how you pronounce it. I worked on it, and I don't think that's right. It's a German, it's a Greek word.

Eddie E.I., that's it. Eddie E.I. is the Greek word meaning a compulsion. Somewhere Jesus had to go. It was a place that no other Jews would go, but it was a place where Jesus had to go. Let me ask you this. Where do you have to go? Where is that place where no one else is gonna go, but when you drive by there, or you walk in there, or there's that coffee house, or there's that pub, or whatever you want to say, there's that place, and you're thinking, I can't go in there, but there's a compulsion drawing you saying, go there, or go to that elementary school and be a volunteer on that campus.

That place where you have to go. If you're not in touch with Jesus, you're not gonna know where you have to go. And Jesus was willing to step beyond all of these societal boundaries. Look at the societal boundaries today. I don't need to mention them to you. You know what they are. Get on the internet for five minutes, you'll figure it out. It's not hard.

There's these societies, there's places where Christians, and types of people Christians should hang out with, and then there's types of people that they shouldn't. And then there's types of people that all these other people groups say that you should see them together, or you should not see them together. Jesus was willing to break all these things down for the truth of what God had called him to do.

And so my question to you then is this, is where is your well? We're gonna talk about the well here in a second, but the well was a central place where people came. My question to you is where is your well? Where is the well that you're sitting by that you are having conversations with desperate people? 1989, I had a radical conversion experience.

I had had a powerful encounter with Jesus at 12 years old, and then when I was, had kind of walked away because of some things, was living in PB, delivering pizza for Domino's Pizza. If you lived in Bird Rock, I was your guy. And so I know the area well. It's fun to be back on different circumstances. And I ended up going to Point Loma Nazarene and having another radical re-experience, a renewal of who Jesus was.

And when I got there, I was coming off a really hard kind of following and going after drugs and all these other things and walking away from my identity. And when I got there, I had this radical experience. And I got sober the day I started Point Loma Nazarene. I signed the paper. I didn't know how I was gonna get sober. I was alcoholic. I'd been doing all kinds of drugs.

And I signed the paper that I would not drink again. And God, all of a sudden, we had a radical kind of revival at the campus. It was about a month or two long where amazing things happened. And after I signed that, I never drank again. It's been 25 years since I've had any substance of that. And that was 25. Yeah, good, thanks. From a guy who would cry at night and say, Jesus, I need you to free me from this because this isn't who I am.

I would cry, but I didn't know how to get free. And Jesus found a way out for me. And I'm glad to be here today. But I was looking for something radical because the streets of PB are radical, okay? Some of you know, okay? Radical. Crazy stuff happens in PB. And when I found Jesus again, I had to find a Jesus that was equally as radical for me. And so we just said, hey, I'm a Christian.

I can't do that anymore. I grew my hair out really long. I wear these Jesus shirts like full on, okay? No ties, none of that. Walk around. My friends would say to me like, hey, man, you look like, you know, you look like Jesus now, yeah? And I said, you know, I didn't have the beard. I could never connect a beard, you know what I mean? So I didn't have a good man beard like Jesus.

But I got some friends again. I said, what can we do? They said, well, let's go down to OB and feed some homeless people. So we went to OB and we would feed some homeless people. And then there was this thing called AIDS that was happening in 1989. And we didn't know enough to think that Christians weren't supposed to really, from what you hear sometimes, weren't supposed to be around people that had AIDS or that lifestyle.

But we didn't know any better, right? Because we were already with those people. I had already been with around those people for years. So I spoke their language and they made sense. And so we said, well, there's this AIDS hospice up off College Avenue. What if we go there and we ask if we can paint it? And so we showed up. And there was a six-foot-eight guy named LeVar was his name.

And he was a dancer and a singer. And he showed me all the sequined dresses that he had had. He had AIDS and he was dying. And he showed me his Ronstadt. He had a little Ronstadt number and this whole thing. But we had this community. I didn't know any better. I didn't know that people were going to tell me that we shouldn't do things like that. We just crossed that bound because we didn't do anything.

We began to paint that place. And then one day we said, hey, down in Rosecrans, there's all these, like, prostitutes. And how can we serve them? And some of the girls that were in the ministry that were recently just saved, too, at the campus said, hey, what if we go to Soup Plantation and we get some muffins and some coffee because they always have their muffins they throw away.

And we go down and we open up the back of a truck and we put the muffins on the back of the truck. We didn't know what we were doing. There was no ministry plan. It was not safe. I get all that, okay? I was 19, you know, and had just gotten sober and I had Jesus. It was like, you know, I was drinking from the fire hose, okay? So if you want to pick apart my ministry strategy, go for it.

It was horrific. But we showed up there with our little truck and about eight of us, because one girl had come up to me and said to me, a woman, she was like 19 also, and she said, hey, my mom was a prostitute and she gave me away. And I was raised in foster, but I just saw my mom again and I want to go reach out to prostitutes. And so she got some of her friends and I got some of mine and we showed up there.

I went to the soup plantation and we said, hey, we want to give out muffins. And so we went there and we sat on the back of the car and we would just hand out coffee. And we did it for about a year. Friday nights, Saturday nights, we'd just go sit down there and we'd pray for people. And I remember one day I was there and I was on a corner. We'd kind of walk the street up and down and say, and there was groups of girls and it was a different scene back then in the late 80s down on Rosecrans.

There's still some of that, but it wasn't like that. They would kind of walk in packs. It was more accepted and there was more of the clubs down there that were happening. And I walked up on a corner. I was with this girl, a friend of mine, and we were standing there and this little girl out of nowhere, it was almost like she appeared. And we started talking to her.

She was 16 years old and she was from Wisconsin, had come out and had kind of lost her way. And she was so sweet and she was speaking so, so just like you would a normal kid. She's a kid from Wisconsin. And we were talking. I said, hey, we got some coffee. And right then out of nowhere, this guy walks up as if we weren't even there. Like it was unbelievable.

It was like we just disappeared. Her whole countenance changed, completely changed. And he started talking to her and I just watched it happen. They made their deal and they went over and there was a dumpster in Target, in the parking lot in Target. And they went into that dumpster area in the thing. And I never forgot it. I've never forgotten her and I never know what happened.

And I, sometimes I wonder if I had more living water than I could have given at that moment, but she was a broken person. And I'll tell you what, this woman in this story is not far off. And I want to say that we are surrounded by this person and maybe you were that person. I was that person in PB. I was this woman in PB. My life was a mess. And Jesus came and he was gentle with me.

And he sat by the well and he called me back home. I want to say, where's your well? I really want to challenge us as a congregation, individually. We don't have to have some grand scheme where we go do this major thing. I just want to encourage all of us to have a well and to come and to say, hey, do you want to have a drink together? Do you want to just, do you want to talk about life?

Let's have a drink together and let's talk about life. And so, you know, you'll hear more stories about the things I did when I was 19 and they were crazy, but it stuck, right? I'm still here and God is good. So we see that Jesus had to go there. Now let's look at the characters quickly as we come in for a landing here. The characters, the Pharisees and the disciples, both groups, had their eyes on different targets than Jesus.

You see, the disciples thought Jesus was going to be a king and take over and they were so excited and they could cast off the Roman occupation and all the phariseutical things and Jesus was going to be the king and they were going to be in the inner circle. That's what they had their eyes on, the glory of that. The Pharisees, you know, they had their eyes on this religiosity, this religious law, but none of them were looking at the thing that Jesus was looking at.

Jesus was looking at people. Let me tell you the heart of the gospel. Why Jesus, this is the heart of Christianity, this is the secret sauce, the key, it's people. The gospel boils down. This church, this ministry, all the stuff we do around here, all the activity that takes off, you know, happens in the office as Carol sends emails, all these things. Let me tell you, all this stuff boils down to one thing.

People. And when you get your eyes, when we get our eyes off the prize, which is Jesus first, but letting him be known to people, we go astray. You're those people, I'm those people, and so I've been told many times at my old church where I was, Pastor Mark is a great man of God, great man of God, and he would say, hey guys, as you send your email today, he goes, add an extra sentence.

You'll probably see, if you've been getting emails from me, you'll probably see, oftentimes, there's a little extra sentence, hey, hope you're doing well, I'm so glad you're here. That comes from how I was discipled by Pastor Mark Forman because he said, it's not just an email. An email is an opportunity. It's a crossroads. It's an opportunity to make a difference in people's lives.

So once again, as your mind has a collage right now, who are the people? Or who's the people that you've kind of walked by and you thought, they kind of bug me, be surprised, you know, or whatever it is, that you step into the lives of those people, and that's the gospel. And we see this woman, she's an outcast of society, living in desperation and a false identity.

Five husbands, the one that she has now is not her husband, broken, broken emotionally, broken sexually, all, everything is broken in her life to the point where she has been a complete outcast. We know that the well represented two things. It represented community, and it represented life. And this woman would go out in the heat of the day, and maybe you've heard this before, but the other women would go out in the morning because in the morning you have a whole day's worth of work to do, and you would go out and you would talk and they would carry their water, and you could imagine the gossip that would go on or the stories that would happen and the jokes and talking about kids and the children would be with them.

It was like a giant daycare center, and then they would sit around the well and they'd bring food and they would eat and they would share life. It was rich. It was a well. It was so rich. It's like the Panikin or the Bird Rock coffee roasters of today, okay? Like, Matt, you see it live. I went down to Bird Rock on a Tuesday. Man, they're doing business down there, you know what I'm saying?

I was down there. It is packed on a Tuesday at two in the afternoon. Don't you people work, you know? It is Bird Rock, so imagine that and all the activity. That was so good. The well was so good. This woman had been ostracized from it because she had had all these, see, there's a thing about women and men, you know, and if you have one woman who likes to meet a lot of different men, causes problems with the other women.

Maybe you've seen this happen in the past. High school, saw it a lot in high school, and in the 1920s, they would call her a floozy, you know, other words for it today, which I won't say. But she was a complete, completely broken, emotionally broken, societally broken, sexually broken, just a puddle, a desperate person. Desperate people are a fertile field for God's work.

I want to say, where's your well? You know, one of the things I have a dream to be, I hear a lot of times, we always talk about the church going outside of the walls, but I like when the church was the center of community. You know what I mean? Back in the day, they would build the city around the church, and the church was where the life happened, and you know, so I don't want to lose the fact that this could be a well.

I was walking by La Jolla, this is just an idea, I was walking by La Jolla Elementary this week, and I heard some moms say, hey, are your kids going to homework club? I thought, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, not saying we're doing it. Homework club. Three schools, quarter miles distance from here, not rocket science, right? Little fellowship hall sits there empty in the afternoon, not saying we're doing it, okay?

Because when I verbally process, it doesn't mean we're doing it, so, just a real tip, when you work with, when you work alongside of me, as I speak, because I'm a verbal processor, a great question is, are we really doing this, or are you just verbally processing? That's a great question for some of you that I might spook, don't want to spook the horses.

But I thought to myself, sorry, thought to myself, homework club, lots of kids walking by, ice cream, free tutoring, it could be a hub. I'm not saying that's what we'll do, but that's how you, that's how the church, once again, gets a place in society, because there's so many parents that have to, both have to work, and they've got nowhere to go, and they need a safe place, and they don't want their kid, they don't know where their kid is, but what if they had a place where they could come, just a thought, just thinking, okay, you got some teachers in the schools, you know, right, and all this, right, okay, okay, she's in, Chris is organizing, no, no, no, no, no, no, slow down, I love you guys, hold the horses, it's a well, where's your well, back to the point, where's your well, let us be a well, let us go there and be a well, where there's community, and happens, so she's broken, and so Jesus, I'm coming for a landing, second time, I'm circling the tower, I've been told to go around once, we see that the plot thickens here, Jesus is disregarding non-essential boundaries, and lines of culture, but let me tell you what he does regard, he doesn't regard non-essential boundary lines, but he does regard all people within a culture as essential, every person is essential, the people you agree with, the people you don't disagree with, every person is essential, he disregards, Samaritan bias, gender bias, because men did not speak to women, they actually had a set, of rabbis, that would walk, only looking at their toes, for fear that they would look at a woman, because when you look at a woman, bad things happen, right, so, they would only look at their feet, they bump into things, bump into each other, religiosity, religiosity, I don't like religiosity, there's a gender bias, not talking to women, there was a moral bias, he was talking to this, he constantly was being anointed by people, when he got anointed, and they said, don't you know what kind of woman this is, you know, or this woman, there was like this type of people, you don't speak to, but Jesus was not only willing to be spoken to, but asked them to serve him, a rabbi would never ask someone, of that nature, they wouldn't even talk to you, wouldn't let your shadow be on our, now Jesus is saying, let's have fellowship, when you drink together in that culture, if you understand Jewish culture, meals mean something, and they mean something today, you're going to find out afterwards, why do we have this meal, it represents what they've done in Christianity, and Judaism for a long time, and so there's this, all this is happening, and Jesus is saying, let's have community, let's have family together, so he goes beyond this, because Jesus has a vision, beyond boundary lines of culture, Jesus sees people, I want to read something by C.S. Lewis, it's really profound, I think we have to be careful, really be aware, when we look at every person, to look at finished products, of where they could be, and what they could be, because every one of us, is in a temporary identity, as human beings, but we are eternal, C.S. Lewis talks about this, and he talks about the fact, that one day, we will be like, we will not be God, but we will be like God, that's according to, Matthew 22 speaks about this, if you want to know about that, where Jesus says, we will be like angels, we won't marry, but we will be like angels, he says, you know, we'll be eternal, C.S. Lewis speaks about this, and the reason I'm telling you this, is as I read it, what C.S. Lewis is saying is, you have a person in front of you, that you look at, whether it be a homeless person, whether it be an alcoholic, whether it be your boss, whether it be your wife, and then beyond that, is this eternal identity, Jesus always saw this, beyond the identity of the now, because that's the one, he was going for, and you see in society today, that people, have all this stuff, in their lives, whether it be their political views, or their whole, this wall, this cloud of stuff, that often times, inhibits Christians, from seeing beyond that, to who they truly are, because of their opposite, of the way that we think, we stop here, and we don't see beyond it, and what I'm saying is, Jesus was aware of those things, and he spoke in truth, to those things, he didn't avoid the truth of them, but he always wanted to look behind, the veil of that, temporary identity, to see into the heart, and let's, here's what he says, C.S. Lewis says this, from the weight of glory, it's a serious thing, to live in a society, of possible gods, and goddesses, small g, meaning we will be like God, one day, to remember, that the dullest, and most uninteresting person, you talk to, may one day, be a creature, which if you saw them now, you would be strongly tempted, to fall down, and worship them, or else a horror, and a corruption, such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare, meaning if you saw them, in hell, is what he's saying, or if you saw them in heaven, all day long, we are in some degree, helping each other, to one or another, of those two destinations, let me say that again, all day long, we are in some degree, helping each other, one another, to one of these, two destinations, it is in the light, of these overwhelming, possibilities, it is with the awe, and the circumspection, proper to them, that we should conduct, all of our dealings, with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics, for there are no ordinary people, you've never talked to, a mere mortal, in your life, why?

Because we are children of God, destined for far more, than this world has, and that's what Jesus, had his eye on, and sometimes, I have to detoxify myself, from the upsetness, I get at judging the world, I had to add to my prayer list, this year, God, help me not waste, any more time or energy, judging the world, it was, you know, you listen to a little bit, too much radio, a little bit, too much TV, you read a little, too many headlines, pretty soon, I'm building up the wall, I'm on this side, and you're on that side, and let me just speak, a fire hose, a truth in your face, because I have the truth, of Jesus Christ, and I had to begin to say, Jesus, help me take that wall down, it's so hard to live there, it's so hard to live, in a place to go, okay, we're different, can we have a glass, of water together, let me tell you about, this eternal life, that is Jesus Christ, Jesus did that all the time, and it made him very unpopular, with the religious people, of the day, but he speaks truth, and we're going to talk about, this truth next week, Jesus does three things, first is this, you've seen your notes, final thing, he listens, to this woman, listening is a deep form, of care and honor, why is listening, so important, because God listens, to us, and when we pray, God listens to us, and when we listen, to others, we model God, why is listening important, because when we listen, to others, we model God, if you want to put yourself, in a position, to experience, the power of God, begin to listen, to other people, because Jesus listens, to us, so he listens to her, and he speaks, then Jesus speaks truth, he takes all these, little things, that she brings up, and he turns them around, he says yeah, forget about that, forget about that, let me tell you, about this living water, she says well, can you do this, can you do that, then she gets sarcastic, and he goes, all these arguments, in the blogosphere, if Dante had another level, of hell, it would be called, the comment section, on the web, okay, if there was another level, there was nothing, that frustrates me, more than the comment section, how many times, I've started tapping, and go oh erase, erase, get out, run, run, it's poisonous, the comment section, she has a big bunch, of comments, and Jesus says, delete, do you want, living water, or do you not, want living water, because I have it on offer, as you deal with people, eternal people, what do you have on offer, negativity, criticism, anger, upsetness, joy, what is it, you know, I'm not, I'm not, putting anything on you, you know, what you have on offer, and I'd ask you, what do we have, on offer, this is a funny thing, and this is the very end, the tower has told me, to land, the funny thing is, is Jesus goes away thirsty, he never gets his drink, this whole story, never gets his drink, Jesus is willing, obviously, to go away thirsty, this actually goes back, you're going to see this on the cross, when he's thirsty on the cross, think about that, there's a connection there, with that thirst, but the woman becomes, a source of eternal water, and life, you see, Jesus is willing, to go away thirsty for us, that we might become, a source of eternal water, and life, I'm going to ask the worship team, to come up, we're going to take, this last song, and I'm going to ask, the prayer team as well, to come up along the side, this is part of our tradition, coming, well it's part of the tradition, since I've been here, and I'm sure, I think it was here, before I got here, but to have our team, come up on the side, and to sing this final song, and give you an opportunity, to pray with some trusted people, I'm going to ask my mom, where's my mom, Virginia, would you come up as well, I can just tell you, you can trust my mom, she's great for praying as well, and as we sing, if you want to come forward, and just have some people pray for you, maybe you identify, maybe you identify,