John 4:1-26

Order of Service

• Hymn — Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
• Call to Worship — 1 Timothy 1:15-17
• Hymn — Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise (continued)
• Prayer of Invocation
• Confession of Faith — Apostles' Creed
• Scripture Reading — Jonah 2:1-10
• Hymn — Revive Thy Work, O Lord
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Prayer of Dedication
• Hymn — Blest Be the Tie That Binds
• Sermon
• Hymn — We Come, O Christ, to You
• Benediction

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Sermon Title: Breaking Down Walls — The Water, the Washing, and the Worship

Scripture: John 4:1-26

I. The Water of the Spirit

A. Setting: Jesus, tired and thirsty, stops at Jacob's Well in Samaria and asks a Samaritan woman for a drink

1. The woman's shock reflects the deep hostility between Jews and Samaritans rooted in history going back to Assyria's conquest of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC
2. The Samaritans accepted only the Samaritan Pentateuch and revered Mount Gerizim as the proper place of worship, not Mount Zion

B. The woman misunderstands Jesus literally, as others have done throughout John's Gospel

1. In John 2, the crowd misunderstood "destroy this temple" as referring to the physical building
2. In John 3, Nicodemus misunderstood "born again" as a physical rebirth
3. Here the woman takes "living water" to mean literal, physical water

C. Jesus is speaking of the Holy Spirit, poured out through him into the souls of his people, welling up to eternal life (John 4:14)

1. The Father pours out the Spirit on the Son without measure (John 3:34); the Son in turn pours out the Spirit on his people
2. Jesus is greater than Jacob because he gives the water of the Spirit; greater than the temple because he is the true temple from which the Spirit flows

D. Application: We live in what Max Weber called a "disenchanted world," unable to think beyond the physical and empirical

1. Charles Taylor's "immanent frame" — life reduced to what can be seen, tasted, and touched
2. Paul confronted this same tendency among supernaturalist Jews in Acts 26:8: "Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?"
3. Real life is found not in the things of this world but in the invisible Spirit poured into invisible souls

II. The Washing Away of Sin

A. Before the woman can receive the gift of the Spirit, she must recognize who Jesus is — the Gift Giver (John 4:10)

B. Jesus abruptly redirects the conversation: "Go, call your husband" (John 4:16)

1. Jesus already knows she has had five husbands and is not married to her current partner
2. This confrontation with sin prepares her to properly receive the gift of the Holy Spirit

C. Conviction of sin is a chief mark of the Spirit's work

1. Peter's sermon at Pentecost cut the crowd to the heart; they cried, "What shall we do?" (Acts 2:37)
2. Peter's answer: "Repent and be baptized…for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38)
3. Jesus declares in John 16:8: "When the Spirit comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment"

D. Salvation is spoken of in past, present, and future tenses in the New Testament

1. Present tense: "to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18)
2. Future tense: "we shall be saved by his life" (Romans 5:10)
3. Christ must remain our Savior, not merely our Lord, life coach, or motivational speaker — his yoke is easy only when he remains our Savior

III. The Worship of the Saints

A. The debate over the proper place of worship: Mount Gerizim (Samaritan) vs. Mount Zion (Jewish) (John 4:20)

B. Jesus affirms that in the Old Covenant era, salvation and covenant blessing were rightly located in Jerusalem, not Samaria (John 4:22)

1. The Samaritans worshiped in ignorance because they lacked the complete canon of Scripture
2. The canon of Scripture is not an academic debate — it determines whether one worships the true God or an unknown god
3. The Westminster Confession of Faith begins by naming the canon precisely because right worship depends on right Scripture

C. The hour has now come for worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:23-24)

1. The earthly temple was always a temporary copy of the Heavenly reality (Hebrews 8)
2. Even Jonah's prayer from the fish's belly reached "your holy temple" — God's heavenly dwelling, not the Jerusalem building (Jonah 2:7)
3. Now that God has come down in the person of the Son, his people have become the temple; worship extends to the ends of the earth and joins the angels and saints surrounding the throne of the Lamb

D. Worship in spirit and in truth requires both heart and doctrine

1. Spirit — the disposition of the heart: broken, contrite, prepared, and engaged
2. Truth — the doctrine of the mind: grounded in God's Word and the teachings found therein
3. All emotion with no truth is not true worship; all doctrine with no heart is not true worship; the two must go hand in hand

E. Application: A building without true worshippers is a house, not a home

1. Grand European cathedrals stand empty — once homes for God's people, now abandoned buildings
2. In the early church, what mattered was not the dimensions or beauty of the meeting place but the worshippers within (Acts 2)
3. Call to prepare hearts every Lord's Day and to engage minds in the closed canon of Scripture, so that God is pleased to make his dwelling among his people