John 4:23-24 (The Puzzle Of Being A Christian)

The Puzzle of Christian Identity in John 4

When you put together a puzzle, there's generally a strategy involved. You don't just throw the pieces down on the floor and leave them all cardboard side up. You tend to take a look at the box top and see what it is that you're actually trying to put together.

After that, you tend to grab the corner pieces where you flip all the pieces over. I remember we were at Rockport a few years ago, and I'm the kind of person that has a hard time unplugging, so I just find things to fill my mind.

So I was off of work. I was trying to not be working, but we got this ten thousand piece puzzle, and I sat there for eight hours glued in, flipping pieces, lining up things, you know, because there's a strategy involved.

After that, you line out the whole outside of it, then you put the colors together so that you can figure out, this one's a whale, this one's a dolphin, this one's a coral, whatever. And then by the time you've got all of that taken care of, you put all the pieces together and then it all makes sense, or at least that's the point.

Well today, I want us to look at John 4, 23 through 24, just two verses. We're going to give a little bit of context, but I want us to look at it like a puzzle. I'm going to tell you the box top right away.

I'm going to tell you what the picture that we're going to be developing is, and then after I tell you what the picture is, then we'll go through piece by piece and we'll see it all come together. The final picture that I want you to see today is that Christ did not just come to save you from your sin.

He came to make you into a temple of the living God. He came to make you into a walking, talking temple where God can be worshiped in spirit and in truth, and where you can go out from this place and bring the glory of God to the nations.

What I want us to see today is that we are living, walking, talking, miniature temples of God. Now the way we're going to get there is we're going to assemble the puzzle pieces, and we're going to do a little bit of context work.

We're going to start in verse 19, so if you will, turn with me to chapter 4. We're going to be in verses 19 through 26. The majority of our time is going to be in 23 and 24. So chapter 4, we're going to start with verse 19.

The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.

God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. And the woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming. He is called the Christ. When that one comes, He will declare all things to us.

And Jesus said, I who speak to you am He. Let's pray. Father, will You bless the preaching of Your Word today? Lord, would You allow us to see the truths that are inside of it? Lord, would You allow us to see what the implications it has for our lives as Christians?

Lord, would You give us a resounding confidence of what it is that You have done, who it is You've called us to be? And Lord, if there's anyone here or anyone listening online that is not saved, not born again, that, Lord, that You would give them the confidence to turn to Christ and to worship Him for what He's done.

In Christ's name we pray, amen. Again, before you put together a puzzle, you need to understand the box top. This woman, this Samaritan woman, this is the background that I want us to develop here, has basically two questions on her mind that she's been leading to in the conversation that Jesus is going to uncover.

The first one is the nature. What is the nature of true worship? And the second question is, what is the location of true worship? She's wanting to know what's the nature of true worship and what is the location.

And both of these at that time period was tied to a temple. I would go even as far as to say that every single person in that culture in the first century Israel, in Samaria, and even in the Gentile world, tied worship to a temple.

Meaning, if you were not worshiping in a temple, you were not really worshiping God rightly, fully, or completely. Because it's at the temple where God dwelled. He didn't dwell in the valleys, He didn't covenant Himself to dwell in the synagogues or the byways or the highways from the Old Testament period.

We know that God covenanted, meaning He made a promise that He was going to dwell in the temple in Jerusalem. Meaning that if you wanted to worship, at that point, you had to travel to Jerusalem. Now this doesn't sit well with the woman.

And in a minute we'll find out it doesn't sit well with Christ either. But for a different reason. The woman says, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. What an understatement. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, but you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

The reason this doesn't sit well with this woman is because of the background of what's going on at this time. The Jews hated the Samaritans. And at this time, the Samaritan temple in the town of Gerizim had been torn down for about 100 to 200 years.

So this woman functionally in her mind is like, worship has to happen in a temple. We don't have a temple in Gerizim anymore. And you people, do you hear that hurt in her voice? You people. You don't love us.

You don't like us. And you won't let us come to the temple. We learned this a couple weeks back. My issues with time continue a couple months back in John chapter 2. Jesus comes to a temple that was filled with money changers.

He comes to a temple that was filled with animals and all types of things. But it was in the court of the Gentiles, meaning the Gentiles didn't even have a place any longer to come and worship. This would be where the Samaritans would have to come, but they didn't have a place.

They were not welcome. Remember, we talked about that there was a sign hanging up in the temple that said, if you're impure, if you're unclean, if you're a Gentile, do not come in. You can be killed. That was the culture.

So this woman is saying, you people say that worship has to happen in Jerusalem, but you people won't let us come. That's what she's saying. How can she have a relationship with God if this is the dynamic that she's growing up in and living in?

Now I said Jesus doesn't like this either, but for different reasons. Jesus is not going to agree with the conclusion that worship should have happened in Gerizim because he knew the Old Testament. He authored it.

Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither this mountain nor in Jerusalem you will worship God. What Jesus is saying is that a fundamental shift is going to happen to the landscape of worship.

You had to travel to a temple in order to worship God, but I'm telling you an hour is coming when you will worship God on every square inch of this planet because of what I have come here to do. That's what Jesus is saying.

No longer is worship going to be tied to a building. It's going to be tied to a person and that person is Jesus Christ. He's saying your situation is that you've always worshiped here in Gerizim at the foot of the rubble on top of the hill.

Me and my ancestors have always worshiped in Jerusalem, but a time is coming when that will no longer be the case. But Jesus does not agree with her on Gerizim. He says no, worship goes all the way back to King Solomon when the temple was first built and God's presence, fiery presence, came down from heaven.

It goes even further back than that to Moses when the mountain of the Lord, Sinai, was shaking with the power of God. Leviticus 1 opens up with the tent of meeting being the place where God has said that he's going to worship and the fiery presence of God drops down into the tent of meeting.

Jesus is pointing her to the fact that Israel was the one who was entrusted with the gospel in the Old Testament. He says you worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews.

What he's saying is that the people who came from Abraham in Genesis 12 that was promised your family will bless the entire world, that's Israel. And the reason that that family is going to bless the entire world is not Judaism.

It's because from that family there's going to be an heir that comes named Christ and he's going to be the one that all the nations of the earth are blessed. Salvation will come from the Jews because Christ will come from the Jews.

Jesus is saying Moses, we descended from the people who are freed from slavery in Egypt. We were delivered by the mighty hand of God, brought to the mountain of God, given the laws of God so that we could be the people of God.

We worshiped at the tent of meeting, we worshiped at the temple, and Israel was given a mission to be a light to the Gentiles. You see the point, and I think the most dramatic display of Israel's mission being effective, there's only a couple examples in all of the Old Testament of Israel doing what they were told to do, is when King Solomon prayed and said, God, how could I build a house that could contain you?

You're the high king of heaven. God's presence came down and animated that temple and guess what happened? The nations of the world heard about its splendor. The nations of the world heard about its glory.

The queens and kings of different nations were streaming to Jerusalem in order to meet this great God that they'd heard so much about. That was the Old Testament system. The Old Testament system was come and see the glory of God.

And Israel got it right for about 20 years. And then they fell into deeper and deeper patterns of sin and deeper and deeper patterns of religion. That's the two big idols for Israel and for us. Their kings who were supposed to worship God worshipped idols.

Their prophets who were supposed to speak the word of the Lord did not. They were supposed to worship the one true God. Instead, they sacrificed their children on the idols or on the altars. They didn't just struggle with idolatry, though.

They struggled with idolatrous religion. At the time of Jesus, they became so prideful that they were nationalist. They hated everyone but Israel, which made them racist. They were legalist. The leadership was.

And the fact that they said that salvation comes through perfect obedience to the law. The law was not meant for that. And they became so impressed with their building and with their temple that they made it into a functional idol.

So much so that they wouldn't allow anyone to come in but their kind. So when we're talking about the box top here, the whole focus is what is the nature of worship and what is the location of worship?

The woman says that worship must be in a temple and it must be in garrison. Jesus says, you're right. In the Old Testament, it must have been in a temple. But an hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

And Jesus kicks off this dramatic shift. The Old Testament verbally comes to an end with a single word, but. But an hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

Jesus is saying that worship will not be tied to a mountain in garrison. Worship will not be tied to a mountain in Jerusalem. And worship will not be tied to a building that's really nicely decorated.

Do you see what this means? It doesn't just mean that we're going to get to worship Jesus as individuals. It doesn't just mean that we get to be saved as individuals. It means more than that. Jesus is not, I'll say it this way, is not abolishing temple worship here.

He's expanding it. He is multiplying it. He's saying that one temple in one city is not good enough. What I'm going to do is I'm going to come and be the true temple and I'm going to make all of my followers in the true temple so that I'm going to blanket the world with the presence of God through millions and millions and millions of followers of Christ who are temples of God scattered out to the ends of the earth to the glory of God.

There's a passage in Ezekiel that says his glory will cover the earth like water covers the sea. If you've ever been in the sea, there's a lot of water there. That's how much God's glory is going to blanket the face of this earth because of why?

Because of people like us scattered out to the ends of the earth filling the world with the glory of God because of Christ. Again, the Old Testament temple system was come and see. The New Testament temple system is go and tell.

That's the difference. Christianity, you can describe it in a lot of ways. You can describe it as a network of millions of little temples spread out across the face of the earth. And you and I, if you were in Christ, are a part of that.

But instead of asking the nations to come to Jerusalem, which that's what the Jews thought Jesus was going to do, they thought the Messiah was going to come and revitalize their religion so that their temple would be more glorious than ever.

Jesus doesn't say everyone come to Jerusalem, worship God. He tells his disciples, leave Jerusalem. Be my witnesses in Jerusalem, then Judea, and then Samaria, and then what? To the ends of the earth.

The great commission is a commission to leave. It's not a commission to stay. Now, that's the box top. That's who we are in our identity. We are not just people who are going to go to heaven. We are people who heaven has come in and dwelled in us.

There's a difference. We are not just people who love the Bible. We are people that the living word of God has taken up residence inside of our heart. There's a difference. We're not just people who believe in the resurrection.

We are people who've experienced it, who have new life in Jesus Christ. We are not just people who go to a spirit-filled church. We are people who have become spirit-filled people. That's who we are.

That's your identity. Now, we could end the sermon there, or we could continue going. I've got more pages, so let's do that. And what we're going to do, because, listen, no one buys a puzzle and refuses to open it and then hangs it on their wall that way.

That would be odd. Hey, look at what I did. So let's go through this passage. Let's look at the pieces of the puzzle. Let's put everything together, and let's rejoice in what Christ has done. Amen? The first thing that I want us to see is that Christ makes us a temple, and I have a couple sub-points here.

Christ came as a true temple to make us true temples. That's what we're going to see. The standard Christian answer for why we're saved is that Jesus came to save me from my sins. He came to save me from my sins.

Amen. He came to rescue me. He came to give me eternal life. He came to reconcile me back to God. Amen. He came so that I could go to heaven. He came so that he could justify me and atone for my sins.

All of those are right. But what I don't often hear is that Jesus came to make me into a temple. Let's look at how Jesus is the true temple. There's a couple things I would say. Why did Jesus come? Jesus came to a nation that was supposed to be on mission, telling the world about God, and they weren't.

And he came to a temple that was supposed to be magnifying God, and it wasn't. So Jesus came to unfaithful Israel so that he could replace it with his faithfulness. Jesus came to end the Old Testament system so that he could set up a faithful system that magnified the Lord.

Jesus is replacing Israel, and part of that is replacing the temple. Jesus is true Israel. The second thing I would say is Jesus is the perfect temple. The temple was never supposed to be the end. God did not design the temple to be the final solution for the problem of sin.

He did not give high priests because they were going to be the ones that could perfectly usher us into the presence of God. He did not give sacrifices because it was a perfect sacrifice. The Old Testament tells us the sacrifice of blood and bulls is not enough, which tells us we needed a better temple.

We needed a better sacrifice. We needed a better high priest. All of that is who Jesus is. That means that every brick, every stone, every offering, every priest, every bit of the temple system pointed always and perfectly to Jesus.

From the moment that the temple was set up, it was already outdated because it was pointing to something eternal, and that's Christ. The third reason I would say that Jesus is the true temple is the book of John gives us that idea, right in the first chapter.

It says, and the Word became flesh. The eternal Word of God stepped out of heaven into finite earth, and it says He became flesh and He dwelt among us. Now, I try not to mention Greek too often because I don't want to be a nerd too frequently, but this is one time that it's incredibly important.

The Word is skene. Skene. The Word does not mean dwelt normally. The Word almost every single time means tabernacle. The most literal reading that you can read of this verse, and we've preached a sermon on this already, so if you want to go back and hear more detail about it, you can, but the most literal meaning is that Jesus came and He tabernacled among us.

He came and He pitched His tent among us. He came as the true temple and set up before our very eyes the presence of God. Like God dwelling with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, Jesus comes and dwells with man.

He's a temple. Now what I love about this is that there's two words for temple. There's skene, tabernacle, and then there's laos, or maybe you pronounce it a different way. I think it's laos. That's the temple in Jerusalem, the stationary temple, the temple that doesn't move, the temple you have to travel to.

That's not the word Jesus uses for Himself. The word He uses for Himself is the mobile temple, the temple that you pack up and move, the temple that is in the wilderness where the people of God, as they're following God, pack it up, set it up, pack it up, set it up, and I think it's intentional that Jesus uses this word.

He doesn't say, I came to be stationary among you and be a temple among you. He says, I came to be the mobile temple because I am calling all of you to be people who follow me into the ends of the earth.

That supports the theological claim that Jesus is making. I believe He's not coming to reinforce the Jewish religion. I don't believe He's coming to keep God hidden in a temple in Jerusalem. I believe that He's coming to see the presence of God break out of Jerusalem.

On the day that He resurrected, the curtain from top to bottom was torn in two, and the presence of God came out, and the book of Acts that we've been reading is the story of how the Spirit of God is taking over the earth.

One town at a time, one sermon at a time, one gospel presentation at a time. So John 1 .14 is showing us Jesus' intention that He is the true temple. John 1, when John the Baptist introduces Him to the people, He's introducing them to God in the flesh, the true presence of God.

When Jesus shows up, the irony here in chapter 2, He shows up to a temple. He shows up to a temple as the true temple, and the Jews who loved the temple rejected Him. In front of this woman in John chapter 4, this woman saying, maybe it's on this mountain.

Maybe it's in Jerusalem, maybe you're right, and Jesus is saying, I'm the one who came from heaven and standing right in front of you. I am the ladder of Jacob that worship is going to be happening to the glory of God.

Not on that mountain, and not on this mountain. I'm the one that's going to be where worship happens. But it's even more glorious than that, my friends. It's not just that it centers on Jesus and stops there.

He came to make us into temples as well. He says, an hour is coming and now is. That means that all of the seconds and the milliseconds and the nanoseconds, the billions of them that comprise the Old Testament narrative are finished, and that Jesus has come to make something totally new.

He said the hour is now because He's physically standing right in front of this woman, but the hour is coming because the hour is the hour of His death, and it's still two years away in the narrative of John.

When Jesus, in the Gospel of John, says the hour, it usually means His death. This is also true in the Synoptic Gospels in Matthew 26, 45. He says to the disciples, are you still sleeping? Behold, the hour is at hand, the hour of Jesus' death.

Mark 14, 35, Jesus went a little beyond them. This is also in the Garden of Gethsemane, fell to the ground and began to pray if it were possible. The hour of His death might pass from Him. By far, the most examples happen in the Gospel of John, and it begins early.

Jesus' first miracle in Cana, where He turns water into wine, He says, woman, what does it have to do with us? My hour has not yet come. He's saying, I will turn water into wine, but my blood that's going to flow, it's not time for that yet.

The hour has not yet come. In John 5, 25, an astounding verse, we'll get there next year, maybe, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of God and those who hear will live.

Jesus is saying there's an hour coming when the dead will wake up and they will come to life in Jesus Christ. John 7, 30 says, they were seeking to seize Him, but they couldn't because His hour had not yet come, meaning that even the sovereignty of God prohibited wicked men from killing Jesus too early or too late.

It had to happen in the hour. John 12, 23, the hour has come for the Son of God to be glorified. From John 12 to John 21, that's the last week of Jesus' life, meaning about 50 to 60 percent of the entire narrative of John happens across chapters 12 through 21.

The minority of time, but the majority of the text. And He's saying that in my death is the moment I'm most glorified. Not when He raised Lazarus from the dead, that's pretty glorious. Not when He turned water into wine, that's pretty glorious.

He's saying my glory, even better than the resurrection, my glory is demonstrated when I'm crucified to a Roman cross. Why? Because in that moment, He had never been more temple-like. On the cross, Jesus, the true high priest, mediated a covenant between us and God that we could not mediate.

On the cross, Jesus, the true Lamb of God, was the sacrifice of God, and His blood was painted on the doorpost so that the angel of death would not come and take us. On the cross, Jesus was the true temple in all of His majesty and all of His glory, and He was the true high priest, the true temple, and He did for us what we could not do for ourselves.

His hour of His death was His moment of greatest glory. 1227, He admits, my soul has become troubled. What shall I say, Father? Save me from this hour? No. This hour is the reason that I came. The purpose of Jesus' life was that He came to die.

He came to die so that you and I could be reconciled to the Father. It's the only way. At the end of His life, in John 16, He said, an hour is coming, and it's already come, meaning it's here. And you'll be scattered each to your own home, you'll leave me, but yet I'm not alone because God's always with me.

That's not even all the verses. John is, it's almost like the hour of Jesus' death looms over everything that John says, because the entire purpose of Jesus' coming was the hour of His death. So that He could forgive our sins, yes.

So that He could heal our brokenness, yes. So that He could restore us to a relationship with God, absolutely. But also so that He could transfer to us His status. There's a great exchange that happens on the cross.

Jesus who is perfect gives us His perfect standing before God that we could not earn. Jesus who is righteous gives us an alien righteousness that we could never earn. He took our guilt and gave us His righteousness.

Jesus who is holy made us a holy people on the cross. Jesus who is Son made us who are orphans children. Jesus who is a true temple made us little temples. His status transferred to us. Maybe you're still not convinced, I feel like I've done a good job so far, but what made the temple special, and what made the temple what it was, is that the presence of God dwelled there.

Without the presence of God, the temple is just a building. It's just a nicely decorated house. There's nothing special about it unless God animates it with His presence. Well, if the temple was the building where the presence of God dwelled, what does that make you if the Spirit of God has came in and lives inside of you?

It makes you a temple. There's just one difference, though. The temple in Jerusalem is stationary. You are not. The Lord can call you anywhere. He can call you to your neighborhood. He can call you to your job.

He can call you to Zimbabwe. He can call you to the ends of the earth because His vision for your life is a mobile, walking, talking temple for the glory of God to the ends of the earth. It's the box top.

Now, the second, every point's not this long. We had to start with the cornerstone. When you build a puzzle, you have to start with the corner pieces. We started with the cornerstone that is Christ, and we're going to build everything up from there.

The second one is the Spirit indwells us. We've already covered this a little bit, but I want to touch it a little bit more. When Jesus is talking to this woman, she's asking, where's the Spirit of God?

Where's the presence of God? Is it on Gerizim? Is it on Jerusalem? Jesus says, no. An hour is coming where it's going to be inside of you. We're true worshipers. We're true worshipers. We'll not go to a Spirit-indwelled temple, but they will be Spirit-indwelled people.

Now, Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 3, 16. He says, do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells inside of you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him for God's temple is holy and you are that temple.

It's a glorious thing, actually, to be the temple of God. In the Old Testament, the high priest would have to put on the most elaborate robes, almost like he was armoring up. And he would have to go through the most elaborate prayers.

And he would have to go through the most elaborate sacrifices. And even then, they tied a rope around his waist in case he went in and he offended the holiness of God and they had to pull him out because they weren't going in after him.

It is a frightening and beautiful and glorious thing to be a child of God who is inhabited by the Spirit of God. Paul says it again in 1 Corinthians 6, 19. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Now, I don't want to belabor this point here.

Jesus is saying we've been redeemed by Christ, first puzzle piece, been indwelled by the Holy Spirit, second puzzle piece. The third thing that tells us is that because of that, we're now people of the truth.

He says that we'll worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Those two are never divorced from one another. So that when Jesus redeems us and the Holy Spirit fills us, we are now truth people. Jesus is saying that worship is no longer bound up in traditions.

Worship is no longer bound up in a list of rules. Worship is bound up in a set, fixed truth. And that truth is Christ incarnate. Being a Christian is being a Jesus-saved, Spirit-indwelled lover of the truth of God.

Because Jesus never divorces the Spirit of God from the truth of God. Jesus is talking to this woman so that she'll never have to wonder again where true worship occurs. It's not Gerizim. It's not Jerusalem.

It's Jesus. He's truth incarnate. The same is true for you and I. You and I don't have to wonder where truth is. Truth is found in Christ and Christ alone. Truth is found in God's Word alone. As Christians, I've seen so much change in my lifetime with the church.

I've seen the church chase after the world harder in this decade and in this year than I've ever seen in my lifetime. The church is chasing after the world, but the world will not give them what they're looking for.

Instead, we must be chasing after Christ because He's truth. Wokeism, philosophies, anthropologies, psychologies, none of that rivals the Word of God. The Word of God is truth. And it's not just inerrant, which means it has no errors.

That's true. It's also sufficient. It's all we need. We don't need to fawn after the worldly fodder that's getting posted everywhere these days. We don't have to do that. We have the truth of the Word of God, that we've not only been saved by Jesus and dwelled by Jesus, but we're now people who love the truth.

And let's get practical with this. If you're a Christian and you don't love the truth, at a bare minimum, you're grievously offending the Spirit of God, who loves the truth of God. If you're a Christian, I believe that you will learn or you will love to learn about your God.

Just like a husband, a newlywed husband will love to learn about his bride, a Christian will love to learn about their God. Not out of self-righteousness or smugness or religion or anything like that.

That's not...it's totally inappropriate. But out of a sincere love for the God who saved them. They will crave truth and love truth. And John Calvin even said that even a dog barks when his master is attacked.

In fact, a Christian who loves the truth of God will also be hurt when truth is discarded, will be hurt when truth is perverted, will be bothered. Doctrine matters. Because if we have the wrong Jesus, we don't have salvation.

Let me summarize. To be a Spirit-filled Christian is to be a truth-filled Christian. To believe in God rightly is to love true and right doctrine. And it's not a list of propositions that you can go home and memorize.

This is why Spirit and truth are never divorced from one another. If you believe the truth, it's because the Spirit of God has helped you. And if you are in the Spirit, you will love the truth. The two work together.

That's the third puzzle piece. Let's go to the fourth. I told you it's going to move faster as we go, didn't I? The fourth point is that we have been sought by the Father. It says, but an hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth for such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers.

Did you see that? You didn't seek God. God sought you. We didn't find God. God found us. The lost sheep doesn't find the shepherd. The shepherd finds the lost sheep. And the reason that this is so important is not so that we can enter into some sort of Calvinist versus Arminian debate or some sort of bump our chest and be prideful that we know a bunch of doctrine.

The reason this is important is because the Bible gives us a doctrine that is actually freeing for us. It would be infinitely easier for a paraplegic to climb Mount Everest 10 ,000 times than for us to work our way to heaven.

We can't. It would be infinitely easier for a person who had no arms to swim the Atlantic Ocean a million times. We can't. In our sin we have fallen so far down that we cannot work our way back up. And if God doesn't come looking for us, we can't go looking for God because we're blind and we're dead.

I've read this passage so many times that I know that we're getting close to being memorizing it at this point. Let's do it again. I want to reinforce this. There is none righteous. What's none mean? It's not your question.

None. Not even one. There's none who seek or none who understands. There's none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they've become useless. There's none who does good. Not even one. Their throat is an open grave with tongues.

They keep deceiving the poison of asps. I have to say that carefully. Is under their lips. I'm just admitting it. I was preaching this earlier and it did not come out right. Because I'm not righteous.

Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. See? Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths. The path of peace they have not known. There's no fear of God before their eyes.

What kind of hope does that present for us to save ourselves? We can't. It's the Father who seeks worshippers. The point is true that if the Father doesn't seek us to be his worshippers, we will not worship him.

All of us have gone astray. Now, he's talking to this woman, right? A woman who's totally lost. A woman who's sinned her way out of God's grace. Now let me say it to you this way. One sin against an infinite God requires an infinite punishment.

Therefore, she cannot pay for her sins. She's lost in tremendous shame. She's lost in tremendous spiritual confusion. And the only way that she's going to come to know who God is, is if God is first seeking after her.