Are You Thirsty?

Good morning, everybody. Good morning. We’ll go ahead and start finding those seats again after the meet and greets.

Or maybe not. We can just do this for a while. We just keep we just keep hanging here. This would be cool, too. What’s up, Kenneth? How you doing, man? Good. Good.

All right. It’s about that time I normally start calling f calling names. That’s when people start getting a little quiet. Awesome. Thank you’all so much.

We’ve come to the part of our service where we just take a few moments and we just pray. You know, Jesus He said and did a lot of exciting and kind of wild things over the course of His ministry. One of the wildest He did multiple times. He went to Jerusalem, went to the temple, saw all the commotion, all the stuff happening, and Jesus storms into the temple, overturns all the money changers’ tables who are making a profit off people just trying to worship God, and He declares, “My house will be a house of prayer.” So for us as followers of Christ thousands of years later, we need to make sure that we keep prayer central to everything we do as a church. So that’s why we take a few moments every Sunday morning and we just pray because we know that we can be a lot of things. We can do a lot of things. There’s something some things we must do, and praying is one of those must-do’s.

So naturally, on July 5th, we’re going to take a few moments and just pray for our country, pray for President Donald Trump. So, I hope that you had a great time celebrating the fourth over this weekend. I got to throw water balloons at kids yesterday. That was a lot of fun. I also had water balloons and ice water dumped on me. So, it was great. It went both ways in the skirmish of 2026. So, there it is.

So, just grab a neighbor and just pray for our country. Thank God for the blessings of living here in America. Ask God for His favor and His kindness on our president and on all the things going on. You know, it’s a crazy time in in the history of the world. I feel like every generation says the same thing. Things are getting crazy, and yeah, we just keep praying for our country. So, y’all pray, and I’ll put a bow on it here in a second. Thank you.

Holy Spirit, thank You for gathering us here today, and thank You for gathering those first believers that were called St. Paul’s Parish Baptist Church 185 years ago. Thank You for Your faithfulness to continue to gather believers, Your faithfulness to protect this church. Thank You for that, God. Thank You for Your faithfulness too to this country for establishing America 250 years ago. God, You’re kind to do that. You’re You’re kind to put all of us sitting in this room in a land of such comfort and prosperity, freedoms. You’re kind to put us in a place where some of those founding fathers loved You, and they wanted to pro protect You. They wanted to worship You. And God, we we get to draw off those that that positive interest. God, thank You.

But Lord, I also know there’s so many people in this country that don’t know You as Lord and Savior. There’s so many people in America that hate the idea of a God, hate the idea of Jesus, at least the way He’s presented in the Bible, the way I’m going to preach about Him this morning. I pray, Lord, for for us in this country who do love Jesus as Lord and Savior, who follow Him as Master. God, would You please help us to take advantage of the freedoms and the comforts and the privileges we have by living here to do everything we can to point our lost fellow citizens not just to the glory of what America could be, but to the glory of the kingdom of God, a home that will be never be taken away from us.

Lord, I pray for our president. I pray, Lord, that You would direct and You would guide him. God, I I ask that You would give him a deep relationship with You. That before anything else, before being rich, before being powerful, before being influential, he would be devoted. He’d be devoted to You. Let that be the core of Donald Trump. Let that also be the core of us. That at our very center, what’s most true about us would not be religious. It would not be successful. It would not be married. It would not be healthy. Whatever would be at most core about Pastor Jeremy Simmons, about each member of this church is that we would be devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ. Holy Spirit, I pray this morning that You would get a hold of all of us. That You would open our hearts to receive Your word. That we would walk out of this place knowing Jesus a little bit more deeply, loving Him a little bit more ferociously, worshiping Him with deeper sacrifice. Please, God, for anybody in this room that does not yet know Jesus as Lord and Savior, would You make today the day that You save them? Please, God, I can’t do it. You and I, we’ve worked together this week to prepare this message. I believe this is from You for us. But God, I as Your instrument, I’m I’m only that. I’m just a I’m just a megaphone. I’m just a microphone. You’re the voice. You are the speaker. God, please speak to the hearts of Your people this morning. It’s in Your great name that we pray. >> Amen. >> Can you go out to restaurants? >> If I have the energy to deal with, you know, putting happy face on. Sometimes I don’t feel like that. >> Now, you seem a bit the reluctant star. Well, the problem is it’s you can’t have one without the other. You can’t have the football fame and not the other stuff. So, in a lot of ways, I’ve created this myself. >> This what you always wanted. >> You’re right. You’re right. It has. And I didn’t think it came with all the other baggage, though. >> The most eligible bachelor in America. >> Well, it’s very flattering. But at the same time, I don’t think I sleep any better at night being that. No way. Do you mean like alone or not alone? What did you mean by that? >> Yeah, that’s right. >> But with all that money, fame, and career accomplishments, we were surprised to hear this from him. >> Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and and still think there’s something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, “Hey, man, this is what it is. I reached my goal, my dream. My life is me. I thank God. It’s got to be more than this.” >> What’s the answer? >> I wish I knew. I wish I knew. I love playing football and I love being the quarterback for this team. And but at the same time, I think there’s a lot of other parts about me that I’m trying to find.

By 27 years old, Tom Brady, quarterback of the New England Patriots, had already reached the upper echelon of American sports success three times. By 27, he had already won three Super Bowls. He had everything. He had fame, wealth, success. Yet, in that 60 Minutes interview, he famously admitted, “There has got to be more than this.” When the interviewer asked him, “What is it?” Tom Brady literally says, “God, I wish I knew.” 1700 years before Tom Brady said that, St. Augustine wrote, “Our hearts, God, are restless until they find their rest in You.” One of the greatest or the greatest quarterback of all time, Christianity’s greatest theologian of all time. Different centuries, different countries, different lives with the same thirst. There has got to be something bigger and better than what this world offers.

Maybe that’s your story, too. You came in this morning. You got the promotion. You have the marriage. You had the kids. They had their kids. You bought the house. You bought the boat. You’ve got the stuff. You’ve retired. You survived cancer. You lost the weight. You finally got what you wanted. Yet on the inside, when you’re honest with you, you are still thirsty. This month, we’re just going to take a few weeks to look at something only Christ can offer you. Something only Christ can offer thirsty souls. I want to get right into it. If you’re taking notes this morning, write this statement down. It’s a bit beefy, so I’ll read it a couple times for you. The living water of Jesus satisfies thirsty souls, saves guilty sinners, and sends transformed worshippers. The living water of Jesus, satisfies thirsty souls, saves guilty sinners, and sends transformed worshippers. You know what Jesus wants to offer you is so much bigger than anything this world could ever give you. What Jesus wants to offer you is bigger, like I said, than that promotion, than that family, than that truck or whatever it is. And if you haven’t found it yet, I pray this month, this morning, you would find it. Open Up with me to John chapter 4, where we’re going to begin this little miniseries that I’m calling Living Water. Jesus in His ministry, like I said a few moments ago, there’s a couple times when He would go to the temple in Jerusalem and He would find all the money changers becoming wealthy off of the hard-earned work and devotion of the worshippers coming to Jerusalem to buy and sell so that they could be able to afford the turtle doves and the goats to make their offerings. Jesus would go into that and He would flip all those money changing tables multiple times and He would get up and declare, “This is God’s house and my house. God’s house shall be a house of prayer.” One of those times when Jesus did that, He followed up that statement by quoting from an Old Testament promise that He Himself was fulfilling, saying that living water will once again pour out for God’s people. What Jesus was referring to is something that He Himself had to give to those people and to give even to you. John chapter 4 will be the first time Jesus in the Gospels mentions the living water that He has to offer.

What I’m going to do this morning, just going to read straight through this moment of Jesus’s ministry, drawing some details out along the way, and then I’ll make a couple application points and we’ll be finished. John chapter 4. When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard He was making and baptizing more disciples than John, though Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were. Jesus left Judea and went again to Galilee.

So something you got to remember is that before Jesus, there was this guy named John the Baptist. John’s whole job was to be the appetizer to the main course. His whole job was to prepare the people of Israel for the Messiah to come. John as he was doing that was leading people to repentance, to saying, “God, I am sorry for my sin and I need You to deal with it because I can’t.” Jesus was going to come in and be the way of salvation to follow that up. So John is making disciples. He’s making followers and then Jesus arrives on the scene and John says, “This is good. My ministry is over. The ministry of God’s anointed Savior has begun.” So the Jews are catching wind of all this, the Pharisees, the rule, religious rulers at the time, and they’re not liking Jesus so much. So Jesus says, “You know what? I’m going to leave Judea in the south. I’m going to go back up to Galilee in the north.” Verse four says that Jesus had to travel through Samaria to get there.

Now, I’ll give you a little bit of the geography of the country of Israel. Israel is kind of like your arm. It’s up and down like this. You got the Sea of Galilee up at the top about where my fist is. And you got the region of Judea down here where my forearm is. And between the two connecting the Sea of Galilee and this lower country of Judea is a river that runs in the very middle called the Jordan River. So for somebody to get from the south from Judea up to the Sea of Galilee in the north, there’s two routes. You either cross the Jordan River and you go up the river valley taking these kind of mountainous cliffside riverside trails all the way up north and you cross the river of the Jordan River again up top or you go through the flat lands of Samaria. Now if you’re just going as the crow flies it makes a whole lot of sense. Let’s just go through the flat lands of Samaria. But there’s beef between the Jews and the Samaritans.

Now, see, this goes all the way back to when the people of Israel were being driven out of their homelands back in the Old Testament. You see, God’s people had sinned against Him, and God was warning them, saying, “Hey, if you don’t stop this, I’m going to kick you out of this promised land. I’m going to exile you out.” Then comes Assyria, Babylon, all the other people. And then God’s people start being exiled from the promised land. Hundreds of years pass and then those same people, God is returning back, not the same exact people, but their family members are returning back to the promised land and God is resettling a bunch of these people in this area called Samaria. Now, prior to the exiles, Samaria is already one of the regions. It’s one of the places of Israel. It’s fine. However, the issue is all of the pureblooded Jews who had been able to stay behind, they don’t like the Samaritans a whole lot. They saw the Samaritans as kind of half breeds. You’ve got a little bit of Jewishness in you, but you’ve also got some Assyrian in you. Yeah, you know some of the stories of our Jewish faith, but you also worship some of those Babylonian false gods. So, by the time Jesus is on the scene, there is intense rivalry between the pure-blooded Jews and the half-blooded Samaritans. Which means to say that a self-respecting, devout Jewish follower of Yahweh would not under any circumstances choose to travel through Samaria. It’d be like you going through that part of town that you don’t like being caught in. That’s what this is.

Jesus though says He’s got to go. Why would Jesus, the most devout, the most pure, the most holy Jew there ever was, why would He have to go through the lands that could have contaminated Him spiritually and religiously? We learn verse 5, Jesus traveling through Samaria with His disciples comes to a town of Samaria called Saikar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there and Jesus worn out from His journey sat down at the well. It was about noon and a woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, because His disciples had gone into town to buy food.

Picture yourself. You’re Jesus. You just walked dozens of miles, hot, dusty miles through the countryside. You’re on your way to the Sea of Galilee. You’re just trying to get there at some point. You’re passing through this town and there’s a well and man, you’re thirsty. You’re like thirsty, thirsty. Real thirsty. There’s this well. So, you just sit down by it. You send your disciples in to town to go buy some food if they had the desire to talk to a Samaritan because remember the these disciples wouldn’t have liked the Samaritans a whole lot anyways. It’s about noon starting to get hot in the day and up walks a woman carrying a water jar probably on her head or maybe under her arms. This jar would have been big enough to hold at least five gallons of water. That’s a big old jar. She’s Who’s walking up to draw water at noon? Tell me, do you do your hardest outside labor during the hottest part of the day? Do you? No. I There’s probably some of us that do because we’re foolish and all of our wives are telling us to come inside, right? Do when do you do the hard part, the the hard outside work? When do you do it? Say it again.

Early.

Early. Like before it gets hot, right? See, that’s what they did, too. Now, see, the women, it was their job to go get the water that a family needed for their day’s needs, to make bread, to just drink, to cook with, whatever it was. The women would have gone to this well, which was over a half mile away from town early that morning. They would have done that before breakfast. But this woman waits till noon to go retrieve five gallons of water from the well. And then Jesus sitting there has the audacity not just to talk to this Samaritan but this Samaritan woman. “How is it that you a Jew ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked Him. For Jews did not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, give me a drink, you would ask Him, and He would give you what?” Living water. That’s right. Good job, Nola. Good job, bud. Can’t even read. He’s doing it, man. Can you read yet, sir? No. Okay. Yeah. But good job, Nola. Living water. It’s a bit of a double entandra. It’s got two meanings. Living water literally means a spring. Water that comes from the ground. This is running water from the ground. Literally, that’s what they would have called it. They looked at Jacob’s well, which filled up naturally like all of our wells do. That’s living water. But also, Jesus is saying, “I’ve got something interesting for you. I’ve got something that’s alive. I’ve got something that’s lifegiving. I’ve got something that’s self-replenishing that I want to offer you.” The woman though, remember she’s traveling there at noon every day to get her water. She’s only thinking about the first meaning. “So sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket and the well is deep. Where do you get this living water? You’re not greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and the livestock. Jesus says, “Everybody who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in Him for eternal life.” Okay, now we’re getting closer. “Sir,” the woman said to Him. You could hear the pleading. You could hear the thirst of her soul. Not just her parched lips, but her heart itself. “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty again or have to come here to draw water. Give this to me.”

Verse 16, look what Jesus has the the go to say. “Go call your husband. Come back.” “I don’t have a husband,” she answered. Jesus goes, “Yeah, you’re right. You don’t have a husband. You’ve had five husbands. The man you’re with now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

Now, we understand why she’s traveling to the well at noon. See, this woman is not just making risky health decisions. This woman is a social outcast. In a community of outcasts being the Samaritans, this woman found a way to further isolate herself even more. Married five times, divorced five times, now she’s living with another guy. She’s not going to the well early in the morning, perhaps because she’s being shamed by all the other women there. Perhaps they have barred her from even being allowed and she’s sneaking the water at the hottest part of the day. She is going when she as an isolated person can go and have some peace by herself.

And Jesus, that’s what He touches. You see, when Jesus wants to get a hold of you, when Jesus wants to save you, He doesn’t want you coming all dressed up in your Sunday vest. Jesus wants you mess and all. And what He does to get your attention is that He addresses the trickiest, dirtiest, toughest spot of your soul. When I’m 15 and I’m sitting at my buddy’s car and he shared the gospel with me and he’s asking me to believe it, you know what I felt like the Holy Spirit was talking to me about in that moment? Not how good of a person I was. God was helping reveal all the dirtiness of who I was. He was putting His finger on my sexual sin. God was calling me on my tendency to lie and manipulate. God was exposing all the crud of my soul.

Jesus here looks at this woman and He says, “I want to give you something that will satisfy your soul, but for you to truly enjoy it, you’ve got to recognize how truly unsatisfied you are.” And part of that is recognizing that we are all guilty sinners who are utterly, spiritually worthless in the presence of a holy and good God. That’s what Jesus is saying. He’s putting His finger on the worst part of her.

So, how does she respond? “I see you’re a prophet.” She’s just grasping for some distraction like you would do if you and I are sitting at Starbucks and I just I told you, “Hey, you know what? I think that you are a burp.” You probably deflect the conversation if you don’t return and do it back to me. “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place for worship is in Jerusalem.” She’s just trying to make a a spiritual conversation into a theological debate. We do the same thing with God.

Verse 21, Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain”—because the Samaritans had their own temple in Samaria—“nor will you worship the Father in Jerusalem where God had told His people to put the temple.”

Verse 22. “You Samaritans, y’all worship what you don’t know. We worship what we do know because salvation is from the Jews.” But get this lady, an hour is coming and it’s here when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship Him. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. Mountain, no mountain, temple, no temple. It doesn’t matter where you worship Him as long as the way you worship Him is in spirit and in truth.

The woman, verse 25, she is being awakened to her need for this. She is wanting something better than what she’s got. “I know,” she says, “I know the Messiah is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us. Then Jesus looks her in the eye. Sweat dripping down His face, sweat dripping down hers. She’s still hoisting that water jar. He’s looking at her. The tension is building. And Jesus says, “I am He. I’m the Messiah. I’m the Savior. I am God’s chosen instrument for your salvation.” When Jesus is getting to the high point of His invitation, that’s when the disciples walk up. They’re amazed that Jesus is talking with this woman. Yet, no one says, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Verse 28, the woman sets down her water jar, goes back to town. Isn’t the water the whole reason she made the half-mile trek uphill to come? Isn’t the water the whole reason that she came at noon? Doesn’t matter anymore. She sets it down. She tells the people, “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” Remember, this lady’s been married five times. She’s living with the sixth guy. Everybody in her town already knows what she’s done. When they saw her, they said, “Oh, there she is again. There’s that lady that can’t keep a husband.” They all know exactly who she is. The mystery is the fact that there’s an outsider who knows who she is. So they said, “That’s interesting.” Verse 30, they leave town. They make their way to Him.

In the meantime, the disciples keep urging Him, “Rabbi, eat something. We’ve just walked a long way. You sent us into town to buy some food. We’ve got some food. Come on, eat something.” But Jesus said, “I’ve got food to eat that you don’t know about.” The disciples at that point probably pretty frustrated. What do you mean you brought a Lunchable? You just went and sent us into town to go buy some sandwich stuff. You’ve had this food the whole time. What’s the deal with that? But Jesus said, “I’ve got food to eat you don’t know about.” The disciples are looking at Him. Could someone else have brought Him some food to eat? And Jesus makes this weird statement that My food is to do the will of God because God sent Me and to finish His work. Don’t you say there’s still four more months, then comes the harvest? Listen, open your eyes. Look at the fields because they are ready for harvest. The reaper is already receiving pay and gathering fruit for eternal life so that the sower and the reaper can rejoice. In this case, the saying is true. One sows, another reaps. Jesus goes, I sent you to reap for what you didn’t labor for. Others have labored, i.e. Me, and you are benefiting from their labor. Jesus is trying to get these disciples to recognize life is more than food. It’s more than drink. It’s more than work. It’s more than family. Life is in helping others meet God. He’s inviting them to join this with Him.

While Jesus is saying these things, the Samaritans are gathering. Many Samaritans from that town believed in Christ because of what this woman said when she testified, when she witnessed. Literally the Greek word, when she martyed herself. Not in the way we think. She was a martyr. She was a testifier. She was a witness. When she said that Jesus, He told me everything I ever did, the Samaritans come to Jesus. They find Him at this well. They asked Him to stay with them and He stayed there for two more days. And many more believed because of what Jesus told them. They told the woman, verse 42, “We no longer believe because of what you have said. Since we have heard for ourselves, we know that this really is the Savior of the world.” That’s the beautiful story of Jesus and the woman at the well. Jesus, the Messiah of God, come to seek and to save the lost. Jesus had to go through Samaria on His way from Judah in the south to Galilee in the north because He had an appointment that day with this woman at the well. She just didn’t know it when she got up that morning. The living water of Jesus satisfies thirsty souls. It saves guilty sinners, and it transforms worshippers. I just want to take that piece by piece and explain it for a few more moments if you’ll give me the time. Jesus satisfies thirsty souls. I need some help to illustrate this point. All right. Can I get like two helpers from the room? I need two helpers. All right. I got one in Nolan. I need a second helper. Who’s My second helper? All right. Okay. Very good. Nolan. Okay. Fowler, I’ve got two cups of water, two Yetis on that back table over by Mr. Clyde and Mr. Lester. Can y’all go grab those cups and bring them up to me, please? Let’s go ahead and give a precursory round of applause to our helpers. They’ve got no idea what they just got themselves into.

All right, these cups of water, they’re they’re full now. So, yeah, that’s a that’s a two-hand carry. Okay, thank you, buddy. All right, I appreciate that. All right. Jesus satisfies thirsty souls. No, you’re stressing me out with that one-hand carry, bud. Y’all go ahead and join me. Join me up on stage. Okay. Now, just answer this for everybody in the room. Very good. Okay. All right. This will still work. Somebody tidied, which is okay. Okay. Have we talked about this? The answer is no. We We haven’t talked about this. I didn’t put you up to this, Nolan. I did not talk with your dad about this. He has no idea what’s going on. Okay. You You don’t know what’s going on either, do you? I wish I had a better way of figuring out what’s going on because somebody [inaudible] All right. No, it’s okay.

All right. So, Jesus satisfies thirsty souls. No, there’s still a little residual in there. You just go ahead and take a sip for me. What did that taste like? Just water, right? This is also water. You take a sip of that for me. It’s also water. Just Just go ahead and get it up to your lips, bud. >> You don’t want to drink this. It’s safe. No, you take a sip of this. It’s not dirty. It’s clean. I I washed it last month. >> There you go. That’s the face. What did that taste like? It tasted like dirt. It’s salt water is what I made. Let’s give them another round of applause. Okay. All right. Y’all can go. Y’all go back to your seats.

Okay. These two cups are really meant to illustrate something deeper about life. He’s getting that sip of water. Jesus offers one to us. Yet, we so often reach for the other. Jesus is here saying, “I’ve got clean, living, cool water for you. I’ve got something for you that is a blessing to Your body.” Yet we reach for this over salty, unable to drink. There was so much salt in this, guys, that when Nolan opened the cup, he saw the undissolved salt surrounding the rim of this thing. This was as salty as the water off of Folly Beach. This is what we drink.

Here’s what I mean. We reach for salt water whenever we think something in this world will satisfy us. When we’re acting like Tom Brady and we think that more Super Bowls, marrying supermodels, having all the all the money will satisfy us. You see, everybody’s drinking water. The question is, are you drinking salt water or fresh water? Let me explain a little bit more.

We drink the salt water of parenting whenever we think that having a couple kids will fulfill us. But that actually leaves us thirstier because kids are born with an innate ability to expose our souls. I will put it that way. We drink the salt water of materialism when we think that buying one more outfit, buying one more vehicle, buying one more house will make us feel at home when actually those things that we pay for with our money just break down or wear out or look a little bit less nice compared to our friends’ stuff.

We drink the salt water of health and fitness whenever we crave good medical records and whenever we orient everything about looking the right type of way. But I’m old enough to know now that gravity has its way with all of us. These bodies break down. They don’t last the way we would like them to last and they leave us ultimately unsatisfied.

We drink the salt water of a good career or a good promotion thinking that happiness and joy and fulfillment is around the next the next career curve. And if we just get from here to there, then we’d be done. But there’s no amount of money that can satisfy your soul. There’s no influence. There’s no position you can have. You see, only the living water of Jesus can satisfy you. But I will tell you, it satisfies you. Even in the deserts of life, when that family breaks down and you have a divorce from your spouse and your sense of security is ripped away, Jesus can satisfy you. When that career you have been striving for breaks down and you are fired or you lose that job, Jesus can still satisfy you. When you are feeling isolated in life through your own mistakes or the pain of somebody else, Jesus can still satisfy you. When you are dealing with the shame of another sin, another failure, another misstep, Jesus can come in and wash that away and satisfy you. When you are afraid of your future and you don’t know how you’re going to make it from here to there, Jesus can pour His living water into your soul and still satisfy you. Amen.

And I’m wondering this morning, how many of you have yet to ever actually drink the living water of Jesus? You’re here. Maybe you put money in the plate. You say grace before you eat. You’ve read your Bible a time or two. Yet your soul is still thirsty. And Jesus is saying, “I’ve got living water for you.”

Jesus doesn’t just satisfy the thirsty, He also saves the guilty. That here’s the thing. When this woman is starting to put the pieces together of who Jesus is, she calls Him the Messiah. She rightly recognizes that there is a God who sent a savior to deal with our sin.

Here’s the deal. The Bible says that we are all sinners. We are all born spiritually dead and we all incur God’s wrath or at least we are earning God’s wrath through our sin. And there is no way out of our sin except through God’s grace and mercy which intersect at the cross with God’s incredible justice. God never once sacrifices His justice for the sake of His love for us. Yet God also does not sacrifice His love for us to maintain His justice. No, He upholds His justice yet lavishes us with love by sacrificing the Son Jesus on the cross so that Jesus would pay for our sins Himself.

We have all sinned. We have all fallen short of the grace of God, the standard of God. Yet the grace of God steps in and He makes a way to forgive us.

I’m curious. Have you ever embraced Jesus this way? Or is Jesus just the religious add-on to your otherwise unchanged life? If you’ve never done that, it’ll just look something like this. These words aren’t magic, but it’s the meaning behind them. God, I’m a sinner. You’ve made me to be holy and to be good. Yet, I have done wrong. I can’t get my way out of this. I need you to forgive me. I believe Jesus died for me. I believe He paid for my sin. I give you my life. God, please forgive me.

In fact, I just you just close your eyes. If that’s a conversation you need to have with God right now, you just have that. Just admit that God is holy and you’re a sinner. You believe that God sent Jesus to die for you and you would confess your need for Him and your desire for Him. You just do that right now, please.

If today’s the first day you’ve ever done that, would you raise your hand, please? Thank you. I put the offer again. If today is the first day that you’ve ever done that, would you raise your hand, please? All right, let’s let’s all raise our heads again.

So Jesus satisfies thirsty souls. He saves guilty sinners. Yet Jesus also sends transformed worshippers.

You see the first thing this woman does when she puts the pieces together about who Jesus is, what’s the first thing she does? What’s the first thing she did? She did? She tells others. She runs and she tells everybody. Her message and the way she told it was so powerful that the entire town had to do something with this Jesus guy.

Could you imagine that? Could you imagine being so so convinced that Jesus really is God? So convinced that you are a sinner that needs to be saved? So convinced that God sent Jesus to save you from your sin and to free you from the shame of your mistakes. So convinced that now everything is different that you today would go to Food Lion and start telling everybody that would listen to you. Could you imagine that? That’s what our lives are supposed to look like, man. What this lady did is supposed to be normal.

Now, I will be the first to confess, my life doesn’t look like this. Some of y’all already think that I’m the social weirdo that tells anybody about Jesus. Here’s the thing. I’ve still got to pray myself up. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to go to the YMCA of downtown Somerville. I’m going to work out and do my thing with my earbuds, which is a sign to everybody else: don’t talk to me. And then I’m going to go sit in the sauna and hope that there is some other guy there who hasn’t already been there for like an hour about to get out. And I’m going to pray. I’m say, “Jesus, please help me.” And I’m going to introduce myself and in a few short questions try to make it a spiritual conversation. Y’all, this has worked for me.

I get it. Our lives are supposed to look more like this lady, though, who was so convinced that Jesus is everything she ever needed that she couldn’t help but start offering it to others. She didn’t attend seminary. She didn’t need to come to an evangelism training. She didn’t need to listen to any of my sermons. She didn’t need to read the best book on church growth. All she needed was to know that Jesus is the living water, and she started trying to pour it into everybody else’s souls.

You see, when you enjoy the living water of Christ, you can’t help but offer it to others. Transformed people become scent people. It reminds me of two the two young men who are going to be baptized coming up in August. I’ve had the privilege this past couple weeks of sitting down with them and their parents and just getting to hear more about what’s what Jesus has done in their life. And y’all, I was blown away for both of these guys who were with us at camp last month. Man, within 48 hours of us being back from camp, they had both told friends from their neighborhood about Jesus and shared their faith. I didn’t tell them to do that. I wish I could claim that. I didn’t even think to tell them to do that. That wasn’t me. That wasn’t Pastor Al. That wasn’t Miss Becca. That was the Holy Spirit inside of them. God had just convinced them. He is He is real. He is alive. And now He’s living inside of these boys and all they could do is just go tell somebody about Him. Isn’t that incredible, man? Let’s give it up for these guys.

Man, Jesus offers something so much more compelling, exciting, and fulfilling than work, parenting, comfort, or power. You’ve got a story to tell. You have a story to tell, man. Let’s tell those stories. Let’s testify. Let us witness to others about how Jesus has transformed us.

You see, we all came in today carrying some sort of jar in our souls. Some of us are filling those jars with the living water of God and we are satisfied. Others of us came in and these jars have the the dry crust of salt water and we keep thinking pouring more salt water will satisfy us. Maybe romance, maybe fitness, maybe religious performance, maybe good morals. But all of these leave us thirsty. The invitation today for believer and unbeliever alike is to lay down the salt water and start enjoying Jesus.

I’ll be right here. I’ll be right here at the at the end of this sermon while we sing, ready to pray with anybody. Maybe today is the first day that you’ve ever given your life to Christ and you just want to pray and seal the deal. Or maybe you gave your life to Christ 20 years ago, but you know that you’ve been trying to drink salt water for the last few me weeks or months or years and you’re done. You are so done with it and you just want a little bit of prayer to get out of that. I’m here for both alike. Let’s pray right now.

Father, thank you. Thank you for sending your son Jesus to come and satisfy our deepest longings to pour the living water of God into our souls. Thank you so much, Christ, for what you have done for us. I pray for the one in the room who just gave their life to Christ. I’m begging you would help them to know that this is a safe place to come forward to testify. For the others in the room who don’t know you as Lord and Savior yet, would you please use these final songs and final moments to get a hold of them? But for all of us, would you satisfy us in your love? Lord, we love you. It’s in your name we pray. Amen.