In this episode of The Takeaway, Pastor Harry Barns leads us into John chapter 4, where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well. Not by chance, but by divine necessity. Building on the contrast between Nicodemus in John 3 and a Samaritan woman in John 4, Pastor Harry shows how God's commands always come first, how they reveal our sin, and how grace then flows to the unworthy so that God alone receives the glory. This passage is more than a familiar story. It's a picture of how God pursues, convicts, restores, and turns sinners into worshipers. Here's Pastor Harry Barns with today's teaching.

Hello, welcome again to the takeaway. I'm your host, Pastor Harry Barns, and today we're going to be starting in John chapter 4, looking at verses 1 through 26, a passage I'm calling the living water, God's command that reveals sin, grace, and glory. Now, before we get into the text, remember where we just came from. In John chapter 3, we saw Jesus meet Nicodemus at night. Jesus didn't give Nicodemus a list of spiritual steps. He brought revelation. He told him plainly that salvation is of God alone. You must be born again. You must be born from above. You must be born of the Spirit. And the Spirit moves as the Spirit wills. In other words, salvation doesn't begin with man, it begins with God. Then, right after that, we heard John the Baptist make that profound statement: He must increase, but I must decrease. That's the transition that's happening in the Gospel of John. Jesus is now becoming more publicly known, and John is gladly fading into the background. Everything up to this point has been establishing Christ's deity, who he is, so that now, as the works and signs begin to unfold, we recognize that every act, every conversation, every miracle is revealing more of who he is so that we can embrace him as the Son of God, God in the flesh. And now, one note before we read, I want to leave election and free will at the door for a moment. We've talked about those a lot. Those are really the how-tos of salvation. And sometimes, if we stay in the how, we can get stuck. We can get lost in the isms, Calvinism, Arminianism, Mullenism, all of which are trying to describe how salvation is applied. But in these next messages, I want to lift our eyes a bit higher and look at the why. Why is God doing what he is doing? What is he revealing about himself? What does he want us to see so that we enjoy him and glorify him? Because what happens is when we get stuck in the mechanics of Christianity, we can actually stop enjoying God and glorifying God. And that's the point of all this. So moving forward, I really want to press into living by faith. What does that look like? How do we walk by faith? Hebrews 11:6 tells us, and without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. That's what we want. The reward of seeking him. And we can't get there in our own strength. There is nothing in us that can live perfectly enough to receive God's promises. We have to rely on his grace. Grace comes first. We respond to grace, and the beauty of grace is that it makes possible what was impossible with man. So as we go through John 4 and John 5 and the rest of the gospel, I want to lay a foundation. Man's responsibility and God's electing power are never at war, but God always gets the glory because without God's command, you could not respond. God speaks first, God moves first, God reveals first. Otherwise, what would you even be responding to? All right, so with all that in mind, let's read verses one through six of John 4. 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 to Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sikar, 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. Now, John opens with what sounds like simple travel notes, but underneath it is something deeper, a divine command. Every step Jesus takes is ordered by the Father. This isn't coincidence. This is divine necessity. And that phrase he had to pass through Samaria, that's not just geography. That's obedience. That's the Father's will. The Father is directing the Son. And that right there is the pattern of redemption. God initiates, God's will brings about salvation. Even the pressure of the Pharisees, their jealousy because Jesus' ministry is growing, even that is used by God to move Jesus into the right place at the right time. Nothing unfolds by accident. Jesus' path is not man's strategy, it is God's command. Now, before we move on, note this there's no voice from heaven here. There's no public declaration, there's just this internal divine must. And Jesus always lived under that must. He said he never did anything except what the Father gave him to do. That's important because it mirrors our lives. You and I also experience things that push us, hardships, persecutions, disagreements, trials. And a lot of times we move because of those pressures. We move because something got hard. We move because something was closing in on us. But what if, like in this passage, that was actually the hand of God guiding you to the next assignment? Sometimes the thing we're trying to get away from is the very thing God uses to get us where we had to go. So looking to verses seven and nine, we see 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. The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, asked for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Now, there it is again, a command. Jesus says, Give me a drink. It always starts with a command because the command reveals the woman is isolated. We'll talk about that more in a moment. And she's shocked. How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me? The command cuts through cultural barriers and spiritual barriers. Behind that simple request is a divine purpose. Jesus is opening a door to her heart. Every divine command exposes the human heart. A few verses later, Jesus will say, Go call your husband and come here. We'll see that in verse 16. That's another command. And that one brings her sin into the light. She says, I have no husband. And Jesus reveals what's really going on. Five husbands, and the man she has now is not her husband at all. So let's say it clearly. God's command reveals sin, not to humiliate, but to illuminate. That's what's happening. The word of God is living and active, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4 12. Like light piercing darkness, the command of Christ exposes what is hidden. That's the pattern I want you to see throughout John. Command, revelation of sin and inability, grace offered, and glory revealed. God's command is purposeful. It reveals our darkness, our inability, the places where we've normalized our sin, so that we can later receive grace. Moving on to verses 10 to 15, we see this command that offers grace. It says, 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 him, 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 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. Now notice the flow. The same voice that exposes sin now offers grace. Jesus doesn't stop with, You're a Samaritan or you've had five husbands. He moves her towards inventation. If you knew the gift of God, you would have asked, He would have given. That's grace. But listen, sin must be revealed for grace to take effect. This is what's missing in so much of modern preaching. We hear God loves you, God wants to bless you, God wants to give you a better life. And all of that is true in its right place. But if we don't talk about our sin and even more about the wrath of God that is on us apart from Christ, Ephesians 2 says, we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind, then grace just becomes God helping nice people become nicer. That's not the gospel. God's commands reveal our inability. Be holy, for I am holy. If you can't do that, you are condemned. And none of us can do that. That's where grace comes in. Grace accomplishes what we cannot. The living water Jesus offers is not like Jacob's well. That's religion, that's self-effort, that's temporary. Jesus offers eternal satisfaction. So the pattern is this God reveals your sin, then God commands you to come, and in the very command, he supplies the grace to respond. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. That's not you working it up. That's grace overflowing. So a picture that we easily miss here. This woman came at noon, the sixth hour. That's not when the other women came. She's isolated, she's ashamed, she's living in sin and she knows it. That's us. When we live in sin, we isolate. We avoid those who would expose it. We don't want to be convicted, but we still feel the weight of it. And look at the beauty of the scene. Jesus was already there. She didn't show up, and then Jesus thought, Oh, good, here she is. No, he said, I must go through Samaria. That divine must brought him to the exact well at the exact hour for the exact woman. He was waiting for her. That's a picture of how he meets us. We are told a lot, you need to invite Jesus into your brokenness. But this passage shows us something even better. He meets us in our brokenness. He confronts us where we are. If it were totally up to us to invite him, we would never do it. We don't cry out, God save me, unless God first reveals himself to us, that's grace. So hear this you are not hiding your sin from him. He is already there, sitting at the well of your life, saying, If you knew the gift of God, you would have asked. And even that asking is empowered by grace. So looking at verses 19 to 24, the woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our father 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 that, what we know. For salvation is from the Jews. 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. So she does what a lot of us do when sin gets exposed. She tries to change the subject to religion. Well, where should we worship? Jesus redirects her again. Why? Because the goal of grace is worship. God commands worship because his glory is the ultimate purpose of redemption. The woman who was just living in shame is now being invited into true worship. That's the rhythm. Command, exposure, grace, glory. And that glory is produced in our worship. True worship isn't about location. It's not on this mountain or that mountain. It's in spirit and truth. It's the response of a heart that's been transformed by grace. The Father is actually seeking such people. Now that's amazing. The God who exposed your sin is now seeking you as a worshiper. Listen to this. Verses 25 to 26. 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. Now in Greek, this is even stronger. It's basically saying this I, the one speaking to you, I am. This is the climax of the whole encounter. The command that revealed sin and the grace that was offered now lead to the unveiling of Christ Himself. This is where all of it was headed, that she might see him. Second Corinthians 4 6 says, For God, who said, Let light shine out of dark darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's what just happened to her. So if we step back, the story of the Samaritan woman is really the story of salvation. The command God initiates. He had to go through Samaria. Revelation, God exposes, go, call your husband. Grace, God offers. If you knew the gift of God and glory, God is worshipped. The Father is seeking such people. God commands so that sin is revealed. Then God gives grace so that his glory is displayed. She came to draw water, and she left with a fountain. She came in shame, she left in worship. And as we'll see in the next section of verses 28 to 42, the glory of God flowed through her into the whole village. But for today, I want you to hear this. God is waiting for you right where you are. The command you are hearing is not to condemn you, it's to call you into grace that leads to glory. Drink deeply of his living water, and let your life become a stream that magnifies his name. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you are the God who goes ahead of us, the God who had to pass through Samaria, the God who meets us at the well of our shame, our habits, our isolated places. Thank you that your commands are not to crush us, but to expose what is keeping us from you. Lord Jesus, thank you for speaking to that woman, and through your words speaking to us. Thank you for offering living water, not religion, not temporary relief, but your very life through the Holy Spirit. We confess that on our own we cannot be holy as you are holy. We cannot satisfy your commands in our strength. So we receive your grace. We ask that you would cause that spring of living water to well up within us to eternal life. Holy Spirit, lead us into true worship in spirit and in truth. Where there is hidden sin, bring it into the light, where there is shame, cover it with grace, and where there is dryness, pour out living water. Let our lives bring glory to the Father, just as this woman's life did. And as we go from here, let us tell others, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, next week on the takeaway, we'll continue in John chapter 4 as the story of the Samaritan woman unfolds. We'll see how her encounter with Jesus transforms her from a woman hiding in shame to a bold witness who runs back to her village proclaiming, Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Her testimony becomes the spark of revival, revealing how God turns the broken into vessels of his glory. Now, as always, I want to thank you for joining us today, and I hope this episode has helped you take a step closer in your relationship with Jesus and that you now have a deeper understanding of just how much God loves you and wants you to know him. If today's message encouraged you, would you please take a moment to follow the takeaway and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it? Your support helps us reach more people with the hope of the gospel. And if this ministry has been a blessing in your life, we would love to hear from you. Just leave a quick word of encouragement or share how these messages are impacting your walk with Christ. It's our desire that this ministry be a toll to reach the lost and equip the saints for a life that brings glory to God. God bless, and we'll see you next time on the Takeaway.