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

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 10 ,000 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.

But 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. And I'll 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 at 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 worshiped 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 tense 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 worshipped at the tent of meeting. We worshipped 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 in 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 garrisons. 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 Gerizim, worship will not be tied to a mountain in Jerusalem, and worship will not be tied to a building that's really nicely decorated.

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 into true temples 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. Instead of asking the nations to come to Jerusalem, 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 have 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 love 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 % 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 is not this long.

We have 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 is the Spirit of God? Where is 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.

Where true worshipers will 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 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.

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, 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, you know, 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 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 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.

Look at this. 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 worshipers. The point is true that if the

Father doesn't seek us to be his worshipers, 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. And why do you think Jesus tells her this?

Jesus is telling her the Father seeks true worshipers because this lady's seeking. Why is she seeking?

Because God was first seeking her. Why is she asking questions? Because God came looking for her.

Why is she interested to have a conversation with Jesus? Why does she stay there? Because God is doing the work.

And what I want us to understand is that we did not save ourselves. And that if we are here, and if we are genuinely seeking to love

God, it's because God first sought you, and he found you, and he opened up your eyes, and he caused you to love the things that you would have never loved if it weren't for him.

This is why you and I are worshipers. Because the Father sought us and made us worshipers who worship him in spirit and in truth.

Now we can go more into this. I think we've covered that. Let's go to our fifth and final piece.

This is where we put the whole puzzle together. We are called to live worshipful lives.

That's the final point. Jesus concludes this section, God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

That means that if we are a Christian, then we need to live our lives in such a way that demonstrates that God has sought and found us.

We need to live our lives in such a way that don't offend the holiness of God. We need to live our lives in such a way that does not quench the spirit of God.

We need to live our lives in such a way that doesn't dishonor the Christ who gave everything for us.

I'll never say that you have to obey in order to be accepted, but because you have been accepted by the finished work of Jesus Christ, it should warm our hearts to obey.

It should warm our hearts to seek after the one who sought first for us. It should warm our hearts to love the one who first loved us so that we can be people of the truth and so that we can live worshipful lives.

That's the five things. Jesus bought us, sorry, the Father sought us.

I made a poem. The Father sought us, Jesus bought us, and the Holy Spirit taught us so that we can live truthful lives to the glory of God as temples.

Now, if you're not a Christian living here today, I want you to know the single thing that Jesus told this woman.

You can't save yourself. You can't be righteous enough. You can't be good enough. You can't be holy enough.

But if you're here and if you're seeking God and if you're looking for answers, it's likely that God has first sought after you and that God came looking for you.

And all I want you to do is turn to the cross of Christ and accept what

Jesus Christ has done for you. If you're asking questions, it's because God first sought you. Take that energy that God has given you.

Take that eyesight, spiritual eyesight that he's given you and turn to Christ. You can do that today.

If you're a Christian, I want you to know that the triune God was at work in your salvation.

The Father sought you. The Son bought you. The Spirit is teaching and taught you.

All three members of the Holy Spirit or all three members of the triune God have been at work in your salvation so that you will live a life of truth, so that you will live a life of seeking him in the morning, seeking him in the evening, seeking him in his word.

Because Christ sacrificially purchased you, you'll sacrifice everything for him. Not perfectly, increasingly.

Because the Spirit indwelled you, you'll live a life of truth, loving the truth, learning the truth.

And because he's made you a mini temple, now we're going to come to the full picture. Your life is not just about you.

Your life is about worshiping God and leaving here to help other people find the same

God who ransomed you. A temple's purpose was to reach the nations. Christians' purpose is to reach the nations for the glory of God.

Amen? Dear Jesus, thank you so much for this wonderful little conversation that you had with this woman.

Lord, thank you for the truth that we can't find you, but,

Lord, you can certainly find us. Lord, thank you for the truth that once you found us, you paid for us.

Lord, I was thinking about it earlier. It's like a house. We go look for a house. We find it.

We buy it. We live in it. That's what you did for us. You found us. You paid for us. And now, by the

Holy Spirit, you're living in us. Lord, let us live like people who are indwelled by the Spirit of God. Lord, let us live as people who are exhibiting the fruits of the

Spirit of God. Lord, let us live as gifted people who've been gifted by the Spirit of God. And, Lord, I pray that we would live on mission so that the whole world would know who this great