In Pastor Jerry Zepnick's sermon titled 'Calling Out Sin,' he emphasizes the necessity of love in evangelism, drawing from John 4:15-24 where Jesus interacts with the Samaritan woman at the well. Pastor Zepnick underscores that evangelism must be rooted in love, as without it, the message of the Gospel loses its power. He stresses that recognizing one's own sin is essential and reflects on the dual revelations of God's love and personal sin as pivotal to the process of salvation. The sermon further explores the concept of true worship, which must be in spirit and truth, and discusses the transformative role of the Holy Spirit in convicting individuals of their sin. True worship is defined not by physical location but by the heart's posture towards God. Pastor Zepnick concludes by highlighting the critical importance of approaching God with humility and understanding the need for repentance and genuine relationship with Christ.

I'd like to say thank you for your prayers and support in this last week. I went through influenza A and pneumonia and now I'm standing here again. So that week went in a blur, I'll say literally. A haze of Nyquil and cough medicine. So it's good to be up and about again.

I praise God for his healing power. And I thank God for where he has us. And so today we are again in the book of John, chapter 4, verses 15 through 24. I'm always hesitant on the back end verses because I'm not really sure if I'm going to get done with it all. But this is a message that I've entitled Calling Out Sin.

And it's not going to start that way and it's not going to end that way. It starts with what is really love, the love of God. And I kind of made up that topic because I don't see it right there in verse 15. But it has to overlay everything that we do. And the second part of it is calling out sin.

And when I talk about calling out sin today, I don't want us to think about what we look at across the fence. I don't want myself or anyone here to think about, you know what, I know somebody that could really use this message. I know that guy is in that sin. This calls out a specific sin that Jesus talks about to the woman, but let's bring it home, okay? Because the first sin that God calls out is the sin of yourself, of the believer.

And beyond that, If he calls you to call out sin on somebody else, he's going to do it privately, like he did with the woman at the well. And so, let's start out by reading the text and then open up in prayer. And that's John chapter 4 verses 15 through 24. 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 if you've had five husbands and the one whom you now have is not your husband. In that you speak truly. The woman said to him, "'Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain.' And you Jews said 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 worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. Let's pray.

Father, we thank You today for this text, for this account that You've given, Lord, your discourse with this woman at the well, nameless Lord. I just pray, Father God, that as we open this text and walk through it, that you would show us not only our own sin, Lord God, but your love for us, Father God, and how we rightly worship You off the backside of that, Lord God. I just pray for Your work and Your Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives this morning, in Jesus' name, amen. So, the emphasis is this love of Christ that He has for us. And we've talked in John 3.16, for God so loved the world that He gave His own Son that whosoever believeth in Him.

That's anybody. That whosoever is anybody. And when he's talking to the woman at the well last week in verse 13, Jesus answered and said to her, whoever drinks of this water, this water is for whoever. So if at any point in time we feel like we're getting on this high horse of sorts, let's knock ourselves down from that, because this is for whoever. There was a time when I was a whoever, and there was a time when you were a whoever, or whosoever.

And so God loves everyone and gives everyone chance equally. We need to understand that is by God's grace that we have been saved through faith. It's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And so in this book of John, we see how Jesus evangelized the people. And so, we get a glimpse of what is the way of the Master.

And so we're given this example laid out right in front of us. All right, what is the way that our Master evangelized? What is the way that He socialized with other people? And to this Samaritan woman today, he first spoke to her of the living water last week. And when he spoke to her of this living water, it was a powerful conversation.

This shows the first step of evangelism really is to turn any and every conversation into a spiritual conversation. And so we don't have the luxury when we're walking and talking with strangers or other people to not eventually take this conversation and turn it over to Christ. Turn it over to one that points to Jesus. That's what our purpose is here. We are saved unto that end.

And that's why we're called Christians, because we're supposed to act like little Christ. Well, we see what Christ did here. So this is the end of our purpose here is to be a reflection, an image bearer of Christ on this planet while we have this vapor of time that we're given here. And so this shows the first steps of evangelism, turning it into a spiritual realm. And with this turn of conversation, we see what Jesus does.

Jesus brings light to her need. He brings a light to her need. He doesn't say to her, you know what woman, God has a wonderful plan for your life and and you're gonna you're gonna love it because God loves you. Okay great thanks, Goodbye. Thanks for the advice and that's not it.

That's the way of our culture today and there's a billion churches preaching that this morning, But this is not the pattern that we're given here. This is not what we're shown. And this turn of conversation is what I want to first look at. But remember last week when I spoke of how most people they don't know in verse 10. It says, Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God...

Most people don't know the gift of God. They don't know the mighty God of our salvation. We know that. We're supposed to know that. Because that's our life, that's our fire, that's our everything.

The mighty God of our salvation. They don't know. We know. They should see that difference in us. If you don't know, the thing is they don't know.

They don't understand their need for spiritual water. So Jesus steers this woman gently in that direction to evangelize her, which is really gospelize. Okay, you haven't started to evangelize until you gospelized a person. You can bring them cookies, you can talk to them for hours on end about meaningless things, but if you haven't started to give them the gospel, it doesn't really begin to evangelize them until that conversation turns there. So most people don't realize they're thirsty.

So how are you going to think you need a drink of water if you don't know that you're thirsty? And if you don't know you're thirsty, you're not going to have a taste for anything. And so we need to be made aware of who God is, and we need to be reminded of who we are. But that's what we hope to stir up in talking with someone in this evangelism process that we have, that we go through. The first point that I have today is the love of God.

The love of God. And like I said before, I made this one up and I put it in there because we can evangelize all we want. We can know the Word of God forward or backwards. We can have our doctrine nailed down to perfection, but if we lack love, it's not going to accomplish a single thing. I know people that have witnessed to me and have not shown love before I was saved.

It bounced right off. John 3.16 tells us, "'For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever, whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Before we get into the text full way, I want to open up the reminder that this all needs to be done. All of our work for Christ, our very lives, our worship, our evangelism, it needs to be laced with love. If it is not intertwined with and showing the love of God, it is useless.

This is why Jesus stopped in Samaria in the first place, right? Did He stop in Samaria so that He could make Himself look good? So that he could get more followers and bigger offerings? No. He stopped in Samaria because of this one woman, this one lost soul, that He could evangelize her.

He loved her. That is why He stopped there. Love is not only the backbone of the ministry of Christ. It's written of or implied, And it's the underlying principle throughout the whole of Scripture. And it's been said the Bible is one love story to God's people.

And so all of our greatest efforts of evangelism done without this crucial element of love make it make it done in vain. It's done in useless vain. You can create what would be a I'll say a kettle of bouillard okay you got this recipe and you carefully follow this recipe of bouillard and and people use turkey because that's what the big guys use and and they go down and through and they make their own this and that and they do all the vegetables and they put it in this big cauldron and they stir it and then right before it's done you throw a bucket of rattlehead snakes in there, right? That's going to be perfect. Everybody's going to want that, right?

No, nobody's going to want that. See, that's the same thing. If you don't put love in what you're doing, you're going to not be a witness at all. It's got to be done in the right heart. And so, you can't be adding poison to what God has given us to give out.

1 Corinthians 13, 1, Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but I have not love. I have become sounding brass or clanging cymbal. What good does it do? If you don't have love, end with this. And so this has got to overlay everything that we do as believers.

It's got to permeate our hearts and it is part of our evangelism. It is part of our worship. We'll talk about that too. Worship is something that is 24-7. It's not something you click it on when you open a piano or pull the guitar out of the case.

It doesn't turn on when you do that. It sings out of our hearts in a love for Christ. And we can't give other people love if we don't have love. So we love because it's been shown to us, because it's been given to us. There's two things that are supposed to earmark a Christian.

The first one is courage in the face of danger. In the face of ridicule, in the face of persecution, courage, having unfounded courage. The other one is love one for another. That is what earmarked the very early Christians. And it ought to still today.

So as we have this great gift given to us, we owe it to use it and give it to others. And honestly, if it's in you at all, it's going to come flowing out and pouring on others. You can't help it. You can't help it. It is going to come on top of others.

So John 13, 34, and 35, a new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this, all will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another." See, this has got to be inseparably intertwined with our Christian walks. And you will be known by it, which tells me if you don't have it, you are not known as a Christian. I'll put it this way. If you don't have love, you're not a Christian.

If you have love and tolerance and patience and caring for other people, you are a Christian. This is just what earmarks you as a Christian, your love one for another. So this has to be part of your Christian life. If you're walking in what you perceive to be a Christian life, but you have a problem in your heart loving other people, forgiving, putting love over sin that they put at you. You gotta question yourself right here and now if your walk is as deep or at all as you want it to be.

So this is extremely important. You see this self-sacrificing love is the identifying mark of Christ's disciples. It's action-oriented. It's unconditional for others. Unconditional care and tolerance and patience, boy, all those things that I lack.

That's hard, isn't it? For others. This is what we're called. And this is not dependent on merit, on how a person looks or works or talks or speaks or what color they are or anything. This is unconditional.

And this love is not just extended to our friends, it's our friends, our enemies. The love is proof that one truly is a follower of Christ. And so 1 John 4, 8 tells us, he who does not love does not know God, for God is love. And so If we think for one minute that we can rightly serve God, if we can come along side of the church and serve God, or if we can rightly share the gospel to anyone without showing and doing it in love, we're horribly mistaken. It's not going to take.

So we're saved because of love, God's love for us. The gospel is love in its truest form. And so for God so loved the world, 1 John 4, 10, 11 tells us, and this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. And at the same time, we've got to see that it's not showing love to withhold the Gospel from an unsaved person.

And it's not showing love to not tell the gospel to a person that we know that is not born again, that is on their way to hell. It is not showing love to do that. It's not showing love to a brother or sister in the Lord who is walking in unrighteousness to come alongside of them and help them through it, to point out and to help them. It is not showing love. We're to speak the truth to them in a loving way, of course.

The truth in love always. And we see in today's text, this love manifesting itself in Christ as I hit point number two, which is sin called out. Jesus calling out sin. And that's in verses 15-18. 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 to your husband. Go call your husband and come here." The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, He said, well, I have no husband. If you've had five husbands and the one that you now have is not your husband in that you spoke rightly. So this is calling out sin.

Jesus calling out sin. This text, by the way, is not an allegory. It's not a myth that actually happened. It's not an illustration. There was talk in some theological studies that this was more of an allegory that this five husbands represented five nations and things like that but that's not the case this really happened and so it is to speak to us today the purpose of this taxes is to speak to us today that's what it's for And it's written in the Scriptures in many places.

We see this in Revelation 3.19. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore, be zealous and repent." This fact of calling out sin, it is done in many different ways. It's done through the Word of God, through the Holy Spirit working in someone's heart, to Christian brothers and sisters from the pulpit. It's done in many different ways, But love doesn't shut its mouth.

Love comes alongside and rebukes and helps. And so we see, it says, as many as I love I rebuke and chase and therefore be zealous and repent. That's pretty powerful. So we see how this woman in the beginning, it's almost jestingly, there's this verbal play going back and forth and Jesus said give me a drink of water and she says how is it that you want a drink of water from me? And then he says, well, if you knew who I was, you would ask me for water, living water.

And then she says, well, how are you gonna give me living water? You don't have a bucket, a rope, You don't have anything to get your water with. So yeah, fine. Well then in verse 15, she says, woman said to him, sir, give me this water that I may not thirst. Sure, give me this water that I might not thirst.

I don't know where you're gonna get this water from this this magic thirsting never again water what where where's this gonna come from you got no bucket you got no rope you got no helpers I don't know where this is coming from, but yeah, go ahead. So we see how this woman almost gestingly asked Jesus to give her this living water, even without a pail, so that she doesn't have to thirst again. And I can imagine, it's, yeah, I don't want to have to come back here again and I don't want to thirst again. So yeah, go ahead, give me this water. And he says to her, just like that, The time for this verbal by-play is all done.

And he says to her, go fetch your husband. Go fetch your husband and bring him back to me. Bring him back here. Go get your husband and bring him back here." And how that tone changed then. This is the flip of the whole conversation right here.

And so, what happened is Jesus held up a mirror right in front of her face. And now she's starting to see herself. Go get your husband. And Jesus was not kidding. This woman truly showed she didn't know who it was that was speaking to her.

And just like that, she says, I have no husband. You know what? She's backing off. But she doesn't want to tell the whole truth. She doesn't want to be exposed for who she really is, but she's backing off.

But she caught sight of herself. This woman came face to face with her lifestyle When Jesus said to her, You have said, well, I have no husband. You have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband, and that you spoke truly. And that you spoke truly. She came face to face with her sin.

She saw herself for what she really was. The sin that she was living in, she had had five husbands, and now she's living with a guy that's not her husband. And in Christianity, there's two revelations. There's a revelation of God in your life, and there's a revelation of your sin, ourselves. There's two revelations, And they're both meant to bring us to Christ.

No one really sees himself as he or she is until a person sees himself or herself in the presence of Christ. You don't know who you are until you hold yourself up against the mirror, until you look at who you are in Christ. Another way of saying this, that being born again, starts with this exposing of sin in our lives. This is the beginning of evangelism. And there is no salvation without repentance.

We need to see our own sin. And it was at this point in time that this woman was looking in a mirror of her own sinfulness, and she saw what she really was. And so there's two revelations, revelation of God and a revelation of ourselves. No one sees himself or herself until a person sees ourselves spiritually in the eyes of God. And that sight ought to scare the living power out of you.

It did for me. It's not until we realize and recognize that we're not friends with God. I had a guy downstairs months ago tell me, yeah, I made my peace with Him. Oh really? Has He made His peace with you?

That's the question. And so, it starts with seeing our own sin. That life as we know it isn't the same anymore. We have been living it, that life, it will not do anymore. That life, it's lined up now, and I see it in a mirror of righteousness, of truth, and it's just not okay.

It comes up short. I've been disappointing God, and I've been living in sin, and this is not okay. And I need an exchange. I need a change in direction. I need to change my will for God's will.

My will is not going to cut it anymore. There's a point in my life when this happened. My life was no better than hers and neither was anyone here. And there's a point in time in your life when we wake up to our real self and awake to our need of God. And that has to happen with every soul or you will spend an eternity in hell.

This is not a game. We gotta get this right now. We don't have time. It's not going to get less convicting tomorrow. I'm not going to sit and think on this.

It's the Word of God and it's speaking to us right now. And so, He has even lovingly, in His grace and mercy, He's defined what our sin is, and He's poured it out. He's shown us what our sin is. There's some of it here. For from within, Mark 7, 21-23, out of our heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetous, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, foolish, pride, foolishness.

All these evil things come from within and defile a man. These are the make of man. That is what we are made of. And not only this, but Jesus upped the standard. He upped the standard because we can look great.

We could do all this stuff on the outside and we can think that we're all that, but then in the end, Matthew 5.28, but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Bam! You're guilty just like that. That's a whole different standard. And that's not just after a woman.

That's after money. That's after... If you hate your brother, you've committed murder. Wow, that's a whole new standard. How are we gonna get on top of that?

How are we ever going to get past this wall of sin that surrounds us and that we live in, in Christ alone. And so, because sin is always a matter of the heart, not just outwardly keeping commandments and looking righteous. And although Christ spoke directly to this woman, today, we can't say, well, if Jesus would just sit down and talk with me, I'd feel better about this, you know, then He could tell me exactly what my problem is, and I'd be convicted of my sin in my life. Yeah, He gave us Moses and the prophets. He gave us the Word.

He gave us the Holy Spirit to convict us. He gave us brothers and sisters in the Lord. And although Christ spoke directly to this woman, today we have all of that, that exposes our sin, convicts us of our sin unto repentance. See, conviction of sin is one thing. You can sit around and you can mope about your sin.

There's two kinds of repentance. One of worldly repentance where you just don't, doesn't matter to you. And the other one is a godly repentance that convicts us of our sin, that allows us to conquer that sin, to move past it. Hebrews 412, for the word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." That goes right to the heart. See, if one has not heard of Christ and is not in the Word?

How will they know or see their own sin and be convicted of it? See, we have the sin in our lives, but how are we ever going to be convicted of it if we don't know it? If we don't know the Word of God, if God doesn't speak to us to call it out, through other people or through the Word of God, if His Holy Spirit doesn't work in our heart, if this doesn't convict us, how are we going to have it? How is it going to come out of us? After all, the ultimate goal of conviction is not to leave a person in guilt moping on the floor, crying in a puddle of tears, but to show them their need for a Savior.

And this is the love of God. Lead them to the grace, the forgiveness that's found in Christ and in Christ alone. St. Corinthians 7-10, for godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation. Not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death.

One of my study books that I have by Barclay at home, it's a quote I took, it says, prophecy is criticism based on hope. A prophet points out to a man or a nation what is wrong. What he does, not so to push them into despair, but to point the way to cure and to amendment and to righteousness and to rightness of life. How important this is. But please do note also in verse 16 how Jesus uses a tactic that most churches today with a big platform will not, they will not accept.

He speaks about this woman's personal sin. And this is convicting. You will not have that in churches today. Churches don't like talking about sin today because it convicts people and They don't want to come back. They don't want to hear about how they're sinners.

You know how the church of God grew? Because people were convicted of their sin and they received Jesus Christ. You want a church full of goats? Tell them how wonderful they are. They'll come back every week.

We don't want a church full of goats. We want a church full of imperfect, repentant sinners living for the glory of Jesus Christ. And that's the top and bottom of it. So we won't get this stroking a person's ego. He speaks about her personal sin and as the woman answers and says that she has no husband, She's hiding the whole truth.

She's not telling Him the whole truth. And while trying to display the life that she has in the best light that she can. And remember, a half-truth is still a lie. Jesus sees the hearts of men. We saw that in chapter 2, verses 24 and 25.

And so, when Jesus tells her of her life, He exposes the entire thing. He lays it right out. And he didn't drag her into the town square and expose this. She had shame enough. She was there in the middle of the day.

They were alone. He exposes the entire ugly truth. Is this like us? Sometimes we think we can hide little pieces of our life? We think that we can hide from God these little compartments because we slip in and we slip out and compartmentalize our sin in a place, and the rest of it is good and holy.

But we've got this little cache right here that might be something that's not really glorifying a god, a radio program, a TV show, pornography, alcohol, tobacco, whatever it might be, we slip it in this little spot, and then we move past. And we praise God, right? And that's not going to work. It's not going to work. And when Jesus tells her of her life, the whole ugly thing is laid out right out in front of her.

And she knows that this man of God that sees her soul knows everything about her. Her adultery or fornication. But you know what? It doesn't have to be that. It can be anything.

It can be a grudge that we hold against a person. It can be hatred that we have in our heart. It could be jealousy. Remember, all have sinned. Come short of the glory of God.

Romans 3.23. James 2.10. For whoever shall keep the whole law yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. All. All.

Jesus points out not just the sin that the Samaritan woman had been in, but also the adulterous relationship that she is currently living in. He didn't just say, hey, look what your past was. You've been married five times. And she'd be like, yeah, you know what? I'm not married now.

Oh, really? Because the guy you're living with is not your husband. And so why is he driving this home? Because before we can get to the refreshment part of the water, you've got to know you're thirsty. If you don't know you're sinning, how are you going to repent?

So we must understand our thirst. We will not drink if we're not thirsty. And sometimes it takes a loving brother or sister in the Lord to come alongside of you and say, you know what, I detect in your life a little bit of jealousy or a little bit of envy or a little bit of pride when you said this and when you did that. And I was like, you know what, you're right. One of the greatest things that ever happened for my ability to preach has been opening my life up to criticism to people that that hear me preach and and it has helped me a lot.

I'm a long ways from there I'll tell you that right now so keep your criticism to yourself. No but honestly God moves through other people and And we need to listen when other people tell us. And their heart coming to our heart and telling us what we can do better. And so, this is the need for all of us. So, is it right to talk about sin when we evangelize?

Absolutely. It's not only right, but it's our responsibility. That message only becomes legalistic when the sinner is left with the impression that they need to first clean up their life. You know what? You can get saved, but you need to clean up your life some.

No. Just as I am without one plea. Acts 3.19. Repent then and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped away. Jesus doesn't do that here or anywhere in scripture.

He doesn't call her name or put her down. He gives her an opportunity to receive the gift of faith by grace. See, this is a necessary call for repentance before the gospel message even. And Jesus preached both repentance and faith. Mark 1, 14 and 15 reads, now after John was put in prison Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying the time is fulfilled the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel.

Believe in the good news. Now, in reality, no one is going to repent until God changes their heart. It's not going to happen. So, we're not talking about decisional regeneration. Now, this is the work of a lot of ministries.

They'll go downtown, and they'll walk through different things happening, And they'll say, hey, do you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior? And the person will say, well, no, I don't. Would you like to? Yeah, sure. And so they'll read a gospel passage and they'll say, repeat this prayer after me.

And they'll repeat the prayer, and then next week they're out in the bay baptizing them, and they haven't been born again. This is decisional regeneration. It does nothing to the soul. The decision is not what gives a person new life. It's the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

It's what the Holy Spirit does in a heart and life, along with true godly repentance. If a person doesn't see their own sin, how are they going to see the glory of God? The glory of God will be strangely dim, instead of the other way around. Titus 2.14, who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. My last point today is point three, Christ calls us to true worship.

And this is a progression. God loves us. He calls out our sin and He calls us to true worship. And so, in verses 19-24, the Samaritan woman first perceives Christ to be a prophet. This is a shortcoming of his true identification.

His knowledge of her made her think this. And this happened before, Matthew 21, 11, Christ being misidentified. So the multitude said, this is Jesus the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee and others had misidentified him too. John 7, John 6 14, John 7 40, John 9 17. The question is do we do the same thing with Jesus?

Do we do the same thing with Jesus? Have we done that in life? Like this woman misidentified him, did not know him, do we do that? Is he to us sometimes, is he a helper? Is he a friend?

I'm not saying he's not these, but is that it? Is that where you draw the line? Is he a savior? Is he a buddy? Is he your provider?

Is he your provider, but then you don't tithe off of what he provides for you. These just don't weigh in. This doesn't come together. There's an offset there that's not reconcilable. We can't get this wrong.

We can't misidentify who Christ is. And we can't fool ourselves. Jesus is Lord. And if He's not your Lord, He's not your Savior. As your Lord, He is your everything and He is your final answer.

And if He's not, He's not your Savior either. He's your everything or He is your Nothing. And we cannot get this wrong. We can't walk out of here today having a wrong image of who Christ is. We move forward in the text, the woman recognizes Jesus for who He is and she sees her sin and this is to be our response as well.

And then in verse 20 she asks, apparently convicted of our sin, she knows enough being a Samaritan, which is a mongrel of the Jewish nations, pretty much, she knows that sin requires a sacrifice. And so her first thought is, okay, you caught me. Where do I offer my sacrifice? You Jews say that it's in Jerusalem and we say it's right here. And so where is this supposed to happen?

And so, apparently, they were taught to go worship God and to get things right. The Samaritans had been taught that Mount Gerizim was the place where Abraham brought Isaac to sacrifice him and where Moses had first erected in the altar and sacrificed to God. And when the Israelites entered the promised land. And So this is what the Samaritans did in rewriting scripture. They rewrote scripture.

Cause in Deuteronomy 27 verse four, It tells, it tells, and they went by the Pentateuch, they went by this, it says, "'Therefore it shall be when you have crossed over "'the Jordan that on Mount Ebal you shall set up "'these stones which I command you today, "'and you shall whitewash them with lime.'" Okay, so God directed them. The Samaritans, they rewrote scripture, and that's not unlike any false religion today. They reinterpret scripture, and it becomes a mess. And so that's what they figure. So this woman was saying to herself, I'm a sinner before God, I've got to offer to God an offering for my sin.

I need to take that offering to the house of God to make myself right with Him. But where am I going to take it? What she is saying is, where can I find God? Where can I find God? I'm a Samaritan woman.

Is it here? Is it there? Where do I find God? And maybe you're asking that very same question today. Where do I find God?

Where does God fit into my life? And Jesus has the answer in verse 21. He says, and he said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. He tells her that there is a greater worship on the horizon. One that is not bound by location.

It starts with, you worship what you do not know in verse 22. So they reject the entire portion of scripture. So how can they know the God of scripture? Those who reject or skip past part of God's word do not know what they worship and they're in error. And that's across the board today.

That's the Jews, the Muslims, the JWs, the Mormons, the Catholics. I could rattle on and on. And the list goes on. But these groups cannot rightly worship God if they don't accept the full counsel of His Word, which describes His character and His command. And neither can we if we refuse to obey what God's Word tells us to do.

And so when sharing the gospel, we may need to get into some theological discussions at times as part of that evangelism, but the focus is ultimately on Christ. Salvation is in Christ alone, by faith through grace, not of any Work. This is what any lost sinner needs to hear. So no more pilgrimages to Jerusalem, no more sacrifices. The veil was torn from top to bottom, it's wide open, and We have direct access to Christ.

1 Samuel 15, 22. So Samuel said, Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices As in obeying the voice of the Lord, behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. You make no mistake, true worship starts with regeneration of the Holy Spirit in a person's life. But what Jesus emphasizes is that it can't only involve outward acts. It doesn't only involve outward acts.

In fact, Scripture reads here in verse 23, worship in spirit and truth. It doesn't say worship in spirit and in truth. It says worship in spirit and truth. The two are inseparable. You can't worship in spirit and then go worship in truth.

You worship in spirit and truth. They're inseparable. God wants our hearts inward to worship Him. Not just our heads, not just our bodies, outward. And the Holy Spirit calls us to an orderly worship.

1 Corinthians 14, 40. Let all things be done decently and in order. The true worship is what fills the inner man. That's why it's a 24-7 thing. It includes a focus on Christ, it includes a focus on God's work.

Colossians 3, 16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. We're two on that slide. And so the father sent the son into the world of saved true worshipers to gather these true worshipers and they come to Him through Jesus Christ alone. That's the one way.

John 14, 6, she said to Him, I am the way the truth will light. No one comes to the Father except by me. So there's so many different religions and cults and people out there saying, we need to do this, we need to do that, we need to be more ecumenical and accept all of these religions out there. It's in Christ alone. That's it.

Here are more verses that point to the importance of Christ. John 3.16, 1 John 4.9, Luke 19.10. In verse 24, Jesus concludes that God is Spirit because He is Spirit, He's transcendent, not comprised of this material world. Worshippers must approach God as greater than themselves. And that's the problem sometimes.

We approach God like our agenda is greater than his agenda for our lives. That takes some nerve, doesn't it? You know what, God? I know what your word says and I know what you want from my life, but you're just gonna have to understand I'm more important than you are today, okay? That's not gonna pan out well for you, friend.

That's not gonna work out. See, Isaiah 66, one says, "'Thus says the Lord, Heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool. Where is a house that you build me? And where is my place, the place of my rest? That's a picture of God.

Okay. Do we have the right picture of this? See, this whole text in the end, it makes location-based worship obsolete. Worship in spirit, with inner being, and under the influence of the Holy Spirit rather than outward rituals. So if God is everywhere, then the place of gathering for worship isn't what really matters.

Here it does. We come together and we worship on Sunday morning. I can't imagine not doing this on a Sunday. And Christians come to church. A person that does not come to church every Sunday and be part of a church, you're not going to function in a Biblical Christian way.

And so, the question for the woman at the well, and for any sinner as far as that goes is this, what manner of worship do I offer up? What manner of worship? What satisfies my soul? So when confronted, the woman's first response was to go make an offering, which shows no repentance of heart, it's just that she understands that she needs to do this. But God wants our hearts.

Acts 412 tells us, Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven among men by which we must be saved. And so the question this morning is have have you given him yours? That's the question this morning. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, on a rescue mission to earth to save souls. And He's given us so much.

How have we responded to that? Have we received that? Father, we thank You this morning for Your Word. Pray for its power, Lord God, to loosen the chains, Lord, that the devil wants to hold us back on. I pray, Father God, for Your Word to call us today, Lord.

Repent of our sins, Lord. Open our eyes to our own shortcomings, to our own sin, Lord. Help us, Father God, to love you more than we love our own sin. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.