Love at First Sight
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Date: 3rd Sunday in Lent
Text: John 4:5-26
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- Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern
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- Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.
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- And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the fourth chapter.
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- So, Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son
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- Joseph. Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.
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- It was about the sixth hour. 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.
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- The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?
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- For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. 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.
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- 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?
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- Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.
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- 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 thirst again, for the water
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- I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
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- 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.
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- Jesus said to her, go and call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband.
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- Jesus said to her, you are right in saying you have no husband, for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband.
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- What you have said is true. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our father is worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.
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- And Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the father.
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- You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know, for salvation is from the
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- Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and truth.
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- For the father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.
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- The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he arrives, he will tell us all things.
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- Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. Just then, just then his disciples came back.
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- They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, what do you seek? Or why are you talking with her?
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- So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, come see a man who told me all that I ever did.
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- Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to him. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.
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- He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them.
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- And he stayed there two days and many more believe because of his word. They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe for we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world.
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- This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus, amen. So when my kids were smaller, they're all adults now.
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- And by the way, those of you who have kids in the house, I'm kind of jealous. It was fun. It was a lot of fun having kids in the house.
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- But when they were smaller, we lived in a house that was, we bought it brand new and our next door neighbors, they had kids as well.
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- And it was really convenient because their kids were about the same age as my kids. And so they kept themselves busy.
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- It's kind of nice when that happens. But they as a family decided that what they were going to do was they were going to purchase a dog.
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- And so what they did is they went to one of these shelters and they got a rescue dog.
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- All right. And despite the fact that they were kind to the dog, that they were showing the dog love, and then they were taking care of it and speaking kindly to it.
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- This dog, because of its past, it was abused. This dog was horribly treated by its previous owner.
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- As a result of it, that dog, no matter how kindly you treated it, its past was still in the present in its mind and its psychology.
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- And as a result of it, even when you were trying to give it food or pet it or say, hey, how's it going there little buddy?
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- He would get in the corner and he would cower and shake and growl at you.
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- And sadly, they were not able to work with that dog to get him out of his previous state.
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- And so they ended up returning him to the shelter. Now when you think about the dominion of darkness, and this is where we have to kind of sort some things out.
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- Each and every one of us, not only were we born dead in trespasses and sins, you can legitimately say that we're all, as a result of man's fall into sin, victims of Satan's attack against humanity in the
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- Garden of Eden, we're all victims of it. But don't fool yourself into thinking that you are merely a victim.
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- Don't take on the victim mentality because you have a sinful nature and you have also participated in the corruption and the ungodliness of the dominion of darkness.
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- And you'll note, when you look at how humans treat each other, and I mean this, how do people treat each other?
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- The answer is terribly. They treat each other, they speak words of malice against them.
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- The Proverbs warn about those who hunt human beings the way humans hunt animals.
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- They hunt human beings, they hunt the poor in order to oppress them. And there's constant stories around the world of people who have figured out how to maneuver and to rig their financial systems within the countries that they live in, in order to exploit other people and rise on their backs and then live in gloriously rich and sumptuous living while everybody else is in abject poverty.
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- This is how we operate. We treat each other terribly.
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- Now that being the case, when we look at our Old Testament text, which is going to help us a little bit, we're going to grab something, a concept from our
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- Old Testament text as we look at our Gospel text. And that is that the children of Israel have just spent four hundred years in slavery.
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- Four hundred years in slavery. That's four hundred years without even being treated with kindness or respect by the people who had oppressed them and then enslaved them.
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- And you can almost hear some of the way in which they were spoken to by their slave masters and how they talked to God and talked to Moses and how their slave masters talked to them and vice versa.
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- Basically the idea here is they're still working with this idea that they have a slave master over them and they are treating
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- God with that same contempt that they had for their slave masters over them and the same contempt that their slave masters had over them.
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- It's just a mess when you think about it. So here we read in Exodus 17, all the congregation of Israel, they moved out on from the wilderness of sin.
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- And for context sake, the ten plagues has recently happened. The crossing of the
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- Red Sea has recently happened. And the children of Israel have been gloriously delivered by God's visible hand.
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- They've been delivered from slavery and God has rescued them in the most profoundly miraculous ways that none of them could deny.
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- But all of that being said, you can see that the corruption of being enslaved still impacts them.
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- And so here's what happened. They moved on from the wilderness of sin. According to the commandment of Yahweh, they camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.
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- Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and they said, give us water to drink.
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- And Moses said, well, why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? Why do you test Yahweh?
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- But the people there thirsted there for water and the people grumbled against Moses and said, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?
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- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You'll note that, kind of using the metaphor here, they're behaving like a rescue animal that had been abused by their previous owner.
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- And they assume that God is like that, but God isn't anything like their slave masters.
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- And that's the thing, Christ and the devil are mutually exclusive.
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- The devil is filled with hatred, with malice, with contempt, with scorn and reviling.
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- Jesus is filled with love and joy, peace, patience, and kindness. Jesus is nothing like the world.
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- And if you want, if you have to think here, we've all participated in this evil reviling and disgusting behavior that looks and sounds exactly like the devil.
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- None of us are innocent in this regard. And so it's with that, that we then come to our gospel text.
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- That's our frame. In our gospel text, we must note that there is an ongoing verbal rhetorical battle between the
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- Jews and the Samaritans. And in some senses, that battle is justified.
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- And I mean that because when you go back in the history of Israel and you read the book of second
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- Kings, you read the first and second Kings, you hear of the history of Judah and the kingdom of Israel.
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- David was faithful, except for when it came to Uriah the
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- Hittite and his wife Bathsheba, he was not faithful in that regard at all. And of course, David was still a sinner, but then his son
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- Solomon takes the throne after him and Solomon marries hundreds of wives and many of them, in fact, the majority of the women that he marries, they are rank pagans and they worship false gods and they drug
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- Solomon willingly, unfortunately into idolatry himself.
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- And as a result of it, God threatened to punish Solomon by basically saying that upon his death, that he was going to rip the kingdom apart and rip it in two.
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- The northern kingdom would get 10 tribes and then the southern kingdom would get two. And it was and God followed through.
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- After Solomon died, his son Rehoboam took the throne. And this guy was the best way
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- I can describe him. He was a fool, an absolute fool who did not know how to rightly rule at all.
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- As a result of his foolishness, the kingdom God had prophesied was torn in two.
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- And Jeroboam, the son of Nebat was the fellow who took control of the northern kingdom.
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- And he knew, he knew that if the Jews of the northern kingdom, if the
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- Israelites of the northern kingdom continued to travel back to Jerusalem for every
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- Passover and every required feast day of the Mosaic covenant, that it would just be a matter of time before their hearts would warm again towards their kin and they would want to be reunited.
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- And then Jeroboam, his kingdom would disappear. So he came up with a clever idea.
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- He forbade the northern kingdom people to go down to Jerusalem to worship at the temple.
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- And he set up high places in several places throughout the northern kingdom, most notably
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- Mount Gerizim. There was a temple complex there that he set up, which was kind of like the main affair, which is exactly where our gospel text takes place.
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- Not at Mount Gerizim, but on the slopes of Mount Gerizim in a place called Sychar. And today it's modern day
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- Nablus. So keep all of this in mind. So what happens is that the Jews are constantly telling the
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- Samaritans they are engaged in idolatry, and they are, and that God is going to punish them, and he has severely throughout the centuries, and that they need to repent and come back and worship in Jerusalem as God has instructed them.
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- But they don't. That's the thing about idolatry. It ends up burrowing deep, deep, deep into our corrupted sinful nature and digging that thing out as well.
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- It takes an act of God, miraculously so. So you'll note that Jews and Samaritans, they don't get along.
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- And then you've got the other issue, okay? And the other issue is that men and women, they're not supposed to be talking with each other in public, especially alone.
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- That's considered to be scandalous behavior, behavior that could, well, be indicative of leading to formal caboodling and things like this.
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- And so you don't do that. But Jesus is doing something here that I think is amazing.
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- In fact, let's walk through the beginning of this and we'll see how this plays out. So Jesus came to a town of Samaria called
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- Sychar near the field that Jacob had given to his son, Joseph. Jacob's well was there.
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- Jacob's well is right on the slopes of Mount Gerizim. So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well and it was about the sixth hour.
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- So it's high noon. It is legitimately high noon. And that's the heat of the day.
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- And Jesus is sitting beside a well and he's tired. Now go figure. That's kind of an interesting aspect of the incarnation, especially
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- Jesus not drawing fully on his divine nature. Jesus gets hungry.
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- Jesus gets tired, just like you and I. It's absolutely mind -boggling when you consider it, right?
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- So there came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Now let's talk about this.
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- This is not the normal time to draw water. Okay, let's just be blunt. This is not the normal time.
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- When do you draw water? Early in the morning when it's cool or late, late, late in the afternoon or early evening when it's cooling again.
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- You don't go and draw water at high noon because you're going to end up getting a sunburn and being vexed.
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- But here's the thing. We know from what we've already read, because I read out this gospel text, that this woman has had five husbands.
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- And she's currently shacking up with a dude that she ain't married to. Okay, so let's be blunt.
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- She's not exactly sexually chaste, shall we say, right? And here's the thing.
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- How do human beings treat women whom they perceive to be sexually loose?
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- There's a word we use for them and we call them sluts. And you know how people treat sluts? They slut shame them.
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- I know it's a terrible thing to say, but this is what they do, right? We've all heard that self -righteous woman who talks down to a woman who she perceives is sexually loose and calls her a hussy and talks in derogatory terms to her.
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- And so you'll note by this woman coming at high noon to get water, what is she doing? She's avoiding being horribly reminded and mistreated and slut shamed by the people in her village, the other women in her village, because sinful human beings treat others horribly with contempt.
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- So note here, she is a ungodly sinner and she's also being sinned against.
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- This is how sin works. It's just one big mess, okay? And nobody gets out of it without dirt on them.
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- In fact, completely covered from head to toe with the slime of sin. So this woman, she comes up to draw water and Jesus said to her,
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- Hey, give me a drink. What?
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- See the disciples, his disciples, they'd gone into town to buy some food. They were probably in line at the local
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- McDonald's or something. And so here's the Samaritan woman and she's just dumbfounded.
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- But notice that she doesn't sit there and say, sure, let me help you. I see that you don't have anything to draw with or anything like that.
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- No, she decides that she's going to fire back with a little bit of scorn and just a wee bit of contempt, right?
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- Well, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria, huh? You're not supposed to be doing that.
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- Jews don't have any dealings with Samaritans. And Jesus doesn't mirror back to her the same scorn and contempt that she just showed him in the answer that she gave him for a simple request for a drink of water.
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- Instead, what is Jesus going to do? Well, I want you to think of it this way.
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- Let me give you another metaphor. Every single human being who is brought to penitent faith in Jesus Christ and trusts in him and in his name for the forgiveness of their sins, collectively, we, the church, the forgiven, those who have faith, we are described as what?
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- The bride of Christ. Now, work with me here, okay?
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- Jesus, I think, is a hopeless romantic when it comes to his bride. And so, he suffers from the constant thing where he has love at first sight.
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- And that's what Jesus has for this woman. Total love at first sight.
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- Despite the fact that she is completely ungodly, currently steeped in sexual sin,
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- Jesus loves her and has compassion on her and he desires her for his bride.
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- The same way he has desired you and I for his bride. So, Jesus, love at first sight, says to her, well, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that's saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.
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- You see, Jesus wants to give her living water. A good way to picture that, in some ways, it's practically an allusion to baptism.
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- Listen to what Paul says in Ephesians 5, verse 25. Husbands, you husbands pay attention.
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- Husbands, you love your wives as Christ has loved the church.
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- And how has Christ loved the church? He gave himself up for her, sacrificed himself for her sins and her ungodliness.
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- Bore her sins in his own body on the tree of the cross so that he might sanctify her, might make her holy, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.
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- What a great picture, right? See, living water, that living water that flows from the side of Christ's side when he was pierced by the
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- Roman soldier after he had given up his spirit to God and died.
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- That water that flows from the side of Christ is the living water that runs through our baptisms.
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- And it's the water then, that living water of Jesus that cleanses his bride and washes away the filth of her ungodliness and her sin and makes her pure and washes her and makes her holy.
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- It's great stuff. So, Jesus here, suffering from a terrible case of love at first sight for the sinful woman says, ah, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that's saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, he would have given you living water.
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- And the woman, not exactly keen on his religious and spiritual advances says, sir, you have nothing to draw water with.
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- The well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Totally misinterprets Christ. Maybe, maybe he's like, he's trying to figure out how to get out of this conversation altogether, right?
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- Are you greater than our father, Jacob? He gave us the well. He drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.
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- And Jesus now even more intent on saving this woman and even saving the people of her town.
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- Oh yeah. That love at first sight when it comes to the bride of Christ, man, it doesn't want to be turned away.
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- Jesus says to her, listen, 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.
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- And he says, forever. What did Jesus say in the Sermon on the Mount? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
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- They will be satisfied. And here's the thing. Maybe the woman hasn't quite vocalized it or really meditated on it in order to figure out how to put words and to describe what she was going through.
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- But the reality is this. She was suffering the consequences of her own sin.
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- She was suffering the consequences of other people's sins against her. All right. And as a result of it, the fact that she's coming to get water in the middle of the day rather than the normal time of the day means that she's isolated.
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- She's alone. She, in fact, one has to wonder having had five husbands.
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- Okay. I mean, was she jaded by those experiences? Because listen,
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- I pastor people who have been through divorces and I've never met a single person who's gone through a divorce and saying, yeah, that was the best experience
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- I've ever gone through. No, in fact, everybody who's gone through a divorce just talks about the utter sheer devastation that it wreaks in somebody's life.
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- It's like tearing your heart in half. Right. And this woman has gone through five failed marriages.
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- Not one. Not two. Not three. Not four.
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- Five failed marriages. And at the end of this, when people who when they go through a divorce, the one thing they feel like is that they're broken, they're damaged goods.
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- And human beings, they wonder to themselves and maybe even wonder out loud, will anybody ever be able to love me?
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- Will I ever be able to love anyone ever again? That's always the concern. And in her particular case, she's tried and tried and tried and tried in very sinful ways.
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- And it's never getting her what she truly yearns for and longs for. And what is it that we yearn for or long for?
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- A drink of cold water in the wilderness? Well, that's what love and kindness often is.
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- Have you ever noticed how startled you are when when somebody treats you kindly in public or says a kind word to you privately?
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- It's like a drink of cold water. You see, we hunger and thirst for righteousness.
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- And Christ is our righteousness. And so note here, he's treating her with kindness, with respect, and true care.
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- And love that is just flowing from the way he's treating her. He's not there to condemn her.
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- In fact, our gospel text last week said, Christ didn't come into the world to condemn the world.
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- And that includes Samaritans. It includes you and I. Christ came into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
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- Such is the great love of God, because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
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- So Jesus says, 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 forever.
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- And the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, a source of water itself, welling up to what?
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- Eternal life. Now the woman's convinced. Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.
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- She still doesn't get it. She doesn't understand it. She's hearing his words, but not perceiving their meaning.
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- But Jesus isn't going to just give up on her. So Jesus says, all right, you go call your husband and tell him to come here.
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- Awkward. Well, the woman answered him, well, sir, I have no husband.
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- And Jesus said, you're right. You're not lying, by the way. You're right when you say you have no husband.
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- You've had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband. What you said is true.
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- And the woman said to him, sir, I perceive you're a prophet. You think?
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- And then she plays the religion card. The big thorn, the big bone of contention between the
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- Jews and the Samaritans. Our fathers, they worshiped on this mountain and they're on the slopes of Mount Gerizim.
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- That's where Jacob's well is. She can point up just straight up the hill right there and point to the fact that our fathers, the
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- Samaritan fathers, they worshiped on this mountain. But you Jews, you say that it's in Jerusalem that is the place where people ought to worship.
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- And what I love here is that what happens next can properly be described as Jesus mansplaining to her how true religion works.
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- And we should expect such a thing in the patriarchy, right? So, Jesus says to her,
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- Jesus says to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem where you worship the father, you worship what you do not know.
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- And so, no, Jesus doesn't compromise even a little bit on the guilt of the
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- Samaritans and their idolatry. And he speaks the truth, but he speaks it kindly in a way that gets at the real issue.
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- And he says, you worship what you don't know. We Jews, we worship what we know. And then he says it, for salvation is from the
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- Jews. And Jesus is right because Jesus is a Jew. Salvation is from Jesus and Jesus comes directly.
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- He is the lion of the tribe of Judah. He is a descendant of Judah himself. All the way through King David and Solomon and others.
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- Jesus is truly a Jew and God has ordained that our salvation come through the
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- Jews. But, he says, the hour is coming and is now here.
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- When the true worshipers, they will worship the father in spirit and in truth, through the
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- Holy Spirit and in the truth of the gospel and in the word of God. For the father, he's the one seeking such people to worship him.
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- And note here, God is the one, God the father is the one who is seeking. This woman wasn't seeking to worship the
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- God of the Jews. No, the God of the Jews, God the father, he was seeking her.
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- Christ takes a look at her and wants her to be his bride. That's the beauty of what's going on here.
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- And so, he's speaking to her the truth in kindness and in love. Because his desire is that she too would be part of his bride, the church.
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- The father is spirit. All true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth.
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- The father is seeking such people to worship him. And he says, God is spirit. And those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
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- And what happens next is amazing. In fact, it's worth noting here.
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- In fact, pay close attention. The woman said to him, well, I know that the Messiah is coming.
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- He who's called the Christ. And when he comes, he will tell us all things. You'll note that when
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- Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees and the scribes, who you make yourself out to be,
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- Jesus, tell us plainly. Jesus wouldn't. He never did tell them plainly.
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- But with this woman, again, it's love at first sight. He desires her to be his bride.
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- He just reveals who he is and says it plainly. Jesus said to her,
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- I who speak to you, I am he. In fact, in the Greek, I who speak to you, ego, a me.
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- I am is what it says in the Greek. It's just so powerful, so strong, and it's beautiful.
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- And it's here that we should remember our epistle text. Is it appropriate that Jesus would be speaking so kindly to a woman who is so notably sexually immoral and so screwed up?
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- You see, Paul says it this way in our epistle text, we have been justified by faith.
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- We aren't declared righteous by our works. Jesus didn't come to save the mostly good, but somewhat bad, right?
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- Jesus came to save ungodly sinners. And if you don't think you're that, you're deceived, self -deceived, and you're delusional.
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- Because if you don't think that you're ungodly and you're every bit as sinful as this woman is, you are, you're high on something here.
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- And the devil has spoken lies to you, and you are legitimately deceived and need help, right?
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- See, we have been justified by faith. Now we have peace with God through our
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- Lord Jesus Christ. And here's the thing, this woman hasn't experienced peace in her life. And her entire life has been marked with conflict, conflict with the
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- Jews, conflict with her ex -husbands, conflict with everybody in the village.
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- But here's the thing, Jesus comes and he gives her what she needs, peace with God, because he's about to go to the cross and bleed and die for this
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- Samaritan's woman's sins and your sins and mine, because of the great love that Christ has.
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- He sees his bride and he knows that she's ungodly and unworthy. And he makes her godly and holy and washes away her muck and sin.
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- And he makes her his bride and clothes her with his righteousness and splendor.
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- Through Jesus, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
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- And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. For while we were still weak, while at the right time,
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- Christ died for the ungodly, for one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare to die.
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- But God, he demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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- And that's the thing, brothers and sisters, Christ has died for you. And when you see that you have everything in common with this woman, and you recognize that you are just as ungodly as she is and deserving of no kindness from God, as she was not deserving of that either.
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- You'll note that Christ doesn't come to condemn us. Today's the day of salvation. Jesus, he's fallen, well, in love with you as well.
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- Love at first sight, and he desires you to be his bride. What a great
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- Jesus. So then Jesus, after revealing himself to this woman, the disciples show up.
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- They've got the Big Macs and the french fries and the drinks, and they're ready to have some lunch.
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- And they marveled that Jesus was talking with a woman. None of them said, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you seeking?
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- Or why are you talking with her? So the woman left her water jar. I love it. She leaves her water jar.
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- That was the whole reason why she was there. You know what? Because here's what's happening. I don't think that's a throwaway detail.
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- Already that well of living water is swelling within her now.
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- Because Christ has forgiven her, right? And so she leaves her water jar and she went into town and said to the people, come see a man who told me all
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- I ever did. Can this be the Messiah? You can hear some of the people in the village saying, hey, honey, we all know what you've done.
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- You don't need to be the Messiah to figure that out. But the people decided, all right, well, this is kind of odd that she's doing this.
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- So they went out of the town and they, these Samaritans, Jews and Gentiles, Jews and Samaritans don't get along, but all these
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- Samaritans, they come to Jesus. And many of the Samaritans from that town then believed in him because of the woman's testimony.
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- He told me all that I ever did. And so when the
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- Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there for two days, two days.
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- That means he had to stay in someone's house, a Samaritan's house. Oh, this is scandalous, right?
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- And many more believe because of his word. And they said to the woman is no longer because of what you said that we believe.
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- For we have heard for ourselves. And we know that this is indeed the savior of the world and watch the change.
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- What begins with rancor and reviling, with hatred and discord, with contempt and sinning against people and being sinned against and treating others horribly and even speaking and sassing, speaking back to and sassing
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- Christ. Jesus through his love prevails. And now where there was anger and hostility, there's peace.
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- Jesus brought peace with him and peace with God, the father to the Samaritans.
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- And he brings us peace as well. And he brings us tidings of love. Again, what did
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- Paul say? God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners,
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- Christ died for you. And so is it any wonder then that it's completely out of place for Christians to treat each other with malice and contempt.
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- But instead, we pray that Jesus would produce in us this well of living water through the
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- Holy Spirit who then produces in us rather than discord and hatred and strife and malice and horrible ways of treating other people, but instead produces in us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self -control.
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- What started as out of control is now under the self -control of the spirit of God there in Samaria and now in you.
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- So brothers and sisters, this calls for us this Lenten season to examine our lives yet again and ask the question, how many different ways do
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- I reflect the hatred and discord and malice and contempt and scorn of the dominion of darkness?
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- Having been abused, am I abusing others? Having been mistreated, am I mistreating?
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- And we need to repent and recognize that it's evil, but also we need to recognize that God's great love for us prevails and that he has washed away our guilt and our shame and Christ has bled and died for your sins and mine, each and every ungodly one of us.
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- Because Christ has fallen madly in love, love at first sight for his bride and he's the one who makes her clean and shows her the kindness that she's been yearning for her entire life.
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- In the name of Jesus, Amen. Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th
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- Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744. We thank you for your support.
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- All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message.