All right, hold on. I'm going to take a sip of water. This is so awkward cuz I bring this up here every week and honestly like I never drink from it.

That was the first time that I've ever drank from it on stage cuz like low key have a fear of just like choking in front of everybody on water. Do you ever do that. Like it goes down the wrong tube and it's just like it's bad news, right.

, but I know how important it is to stay hydrated. And today we're talking about that just a little bit as we continue our who is Jesus series. And this is a series where we're doing some of these big questions through the book of John. And we're talking about just somebody who's going to get a simple drink today. And it is a life-changing experience because de dehydration, like I said, is no joke.

Can I show of hands. Have you ever been dehydrated before. Okay, a couple of people in here.

I'm going to tell you about my first dehydration story. I was at a music festival at the age of 15 that I probably shouldn't have been at. My parents aren't here this morning. We can talk about it. So, , I I was at this music festival.

I shouldn't not have been at this music festival. And I show up with my bottle of water. And what I didn't know about music festivals is you can't bring water into them, right.

It's like Disney and all these like big places, like they won't let you have the water inside. So, you had to dump it out and ditch it or whatever it was. And so, I get in there and I have money in my wallet for band merch, for food, and for water.

And so what does a 15-year-old kid do with that. He spends it all on band merch. Okay, that is the correct answer.

And that is what I did. I neglected food. I neglected water in order to enjoy the fullness of the concert. And so I am in the middle of the noon sun. It's high up in the sky beating down on a huge crowd of sweaty people.

And I'm standing there and all of a sudden I cannot hold my weight up and I have to sit down on this dirty concrete and I'm I'm just sitting there and I cannot move. And so I had a friend come and pick me up and and and bring me to this medical tent where I found out that's where you get the free water. , so they gave me what they call this tour water, which tour water was just in like a fancy can that was branded for the tour. And I I kept it on my shelf because I drank like seven of these in a row. I thought they were going to kick me out, but like that was the golden ticket is to get into this to get free water instead of paying like $5 for a bottle of water, right.

And so, , I learned a lot that day about the importance of staying hydrated. And I think today in our world, a lot of people are living like this. They're living dehydrated.

And yeah, that might be true physically in talking about water, but I mean dehydrated in the sense that they're dehydrated from the world, that they're thirsty for things like success, like money, like status, like power, like we all are. But nothing seems to satisfy like Jesus does. And so today we're going to be looking at this big question.

Will Jesus actually forgive me. And we're going to learn through this story that we can be so dehydrated and thirsty for something and inside of us we think we are unworthy of what Jesus has to offer us. And so a lot of us will say, "Man, if you only if you only knew, Josh, what I've done or what I'm doing right now or what I've been through.

If you only looked at my past, you would know that I shouldn't even be in a church right now because how could Jesus forgive me. " And so again, the big question is, will Jesus actually forgive me. So you can take these blue Bibles out.

We open up the word of God every single week here because what God has to say is way better than my stories and what I have to say. And so, , John chapter 4, page. By the way, if you don't have a Bible, please take this one home with you. This thing will transform your life if you're reading it more than Sunday.

So, take it home, study the word, and learn the word. And today, we're going to witness this beautiful conversation that Jesus has with a Samaritan woman. Let's let's read it together and just pause along the way here.

So now Jesus had learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John. Not that it's a competition, but apparently it's a competition. Although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but it was his disciples. So he left that mess is basically what it says in verse three here.

So he left Judea and went once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there and Jesus and he was tired from his journey. He sat down by the well and it was about noon. When the Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink.

For his disciples had gone into town to buy food. So John does a really great job at painting us the who, what, where, when, why kind of scene here. Let me set the stage a little bit and show you. , this is a map of what this journey would look like. Now, back then to travel from Judea to to Galilee and back and forth, you had to go through Samaria.

But what it says here in the scriptures is that Jesus had to walk through it. Now, that's true if you want a 3-day journey. The red route is a direct route of a 3-day journey. However, what Jews would do is they would take the yellow route, which was a 6-day journey. You ever try to avoid somebody when you see them at Walmart and you don't want to talk to them.

That's what's happening here. , and so they they come and and they want to take this way, but Jesus says, "We're going to go this way. " And the reason why this is so real to them is because Jews and Samaritans, they they don't get along.

They are opposites and they are kind of pinned against each other in this way. And so this is not just a typical situation here. But here, just as a side note, this this map just alone teaches us some very important truth about Jesus is that sometimes we try to avoid something when Jesus is calling us to walk through something that he will be with us for. And so he is bringing his disciples through Samaria. And he's doing this at when.

When the sun is at its highest. Now we're at desert time. I know that's really hard to think about here as we're in Minnesota in the cold, right. But this is really warm, hot weather. And here a Samaritan woman shows up at noon.

Now, this is why this is significant. Okay, motans, let's talk about this. In July, if you're going to go take your dog for a walk and it's going to be a 100° day, when do you take your dog for a walk.

>> Early in the morning, late at night. Because the sun is not beaming down on you. So, nobody's out walking their dog at at noon.

But here, Jesus runs into the Samaritan. Why is she there at noon. Well, because everybody else is there in the early morning and the late night. See, she doesn't want to be seen.

And last week we talked about this guy named Nicodemus who traveled through the darkness in order to have a conversation with Jesus. But now we see the opposite, but still the same avoidance. You see, she's going there at noon when the sun is at its peak, but she knows that no one is going to be there. You see, when you have a path to hide, most of the time, isolation is the thing that you run to in order for people not to see the real you or to see what you're going through. And so Jesus breaks the ice and he's like, "Let's have a conversation here.

" And so, let's pick that up. Verse 9, Jesus says, "Will you give me a drink. " The Samaritan woman said to him, "You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman.

How can you ask me for a drink. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. But Jesus answered her, "If you knew, if you knew the gift of God who asked you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. " "Sir," the woman replied, "you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.

Where can you get this living water. Are you not greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well to drink from itself and did also his sons and livestock. Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks from this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

" Okay, so let's get the scene a little bit more now. So this conversation again, she's iterating what we already know that they are not friends, the Samaritans and the Jews. Okay, Vikings fans, Packers fans, that's what that's what they're saying here.

And Jesus is saying, look, if you only knew, if you only knew who I was, which by the way is the name of this message series. If you only knew who Jesus was, then you would know that this is so much more than water that I'm talking about. But now, like Nicodemus and like many people in the book of John, we miss sometimes the obvious that God is showing us because we're oblivious, right.

At least sometimes I am. And so Jesus is trying to illustrate this spiritual truth with a physical reality. And what we can miss is taking Jesus so literally here. And that's what this woman is doing. She's taking Jesus and she's saying, "Well, you give me your your cup.

You don't have anything to draw from for this well. " And and then she kind of launches into this who do you think you are kind of conversation with Jesus. She says, "Who do you think you are. Do you think you're greater than our father Jacob.

Do you think you're greater than this. Have you ever had somebody say this to you. You think you're better than me. And this is like for the the Christian who's like trying to stop swearing on the job site or something and and they tell their co-workers that they're trying to stop swearing and then they're like, "Well, you think you're better than us cuz you're a Christian. " That's kind of like what's what she's saying.

Like, "You think you're better than me. " And Jesus is trying to bring her to some kind of deeper spiritual meaning. And we can't miss this because what Jesus is doing is he's breaking down cultural barriers. He's gone through Samaria.

He is seeking out a conversation with this woman who he knows what we're going to learn in a second has a past. So, he's willing to go into this place and into this situation to have this conversation. This teaches us something very important about Jesus's forgiveness that Jesus forgives where you've been.

See, a lot of us like to use our past against our future. And so what we'll do is we'll take our past mistakes and we'll act like they are not forgiven or they are not forgivable and we'll continue to walk in them as that as that way. And let me just encourage you with this that God loves you just the way that you are, but he loves you too much to keep you that way. >> If all of us realized this, then we would have an entirely different relationship with God.

That right now God has never loved you more than he loves you right now sitting in that that chair whether you believe or don't believe God loves you but God wants to take you to a new depth of understanding of his love for you and so he wants to move people around and and let's just be real here God sees your past God knows your past >> he knows what you've been through. He know how he knows how hard that upbringing was in your childhood. He knows how hard that relationship was, that friendship, that job, that thing that didn't go as expected. But you need to hear this that your past and the things that happened doesn't mean that God was absent.

It means that we live in a broken world and God himself entered it to be with you. And so Christianity doesn't say if God loved you then this stuff this stuff in the past wouldn't have happened. What it says is that God loved you so much that he entered the world that he gave his one and only son and then he promises to redeem it.

So let me just summarize that your past does not define your future. God has a future for you. And so in verse 13, he's going to he's going to make this claim and he's going to try and bring this woman there. Look at this verse 15.

The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming back to draw water. " It's a very important statement here. Jesus has got it. He's got her.

And then verse 16, he told her, "Go call your husband and come back. " She responds, "I have no husband. " Jesus said to her, "You're right when you say you don't have a husband.

The fact is you've had five husbands and the man that you have is not your husband. What you have said is quite true. " Okay, let's break down how awkward this conversation just got.

Okay, let me just show you it like this. , if you and I were going to tell somebody who didn't know Jesus about Jesus and they said, "Sign me up. " That's your golden ticket, right.

You're excited. If you're in sales, this is like the equivalent of somebody saying, "Yeah, sign me up. " Like, "Where do I sign. Where do how do I give you my money.

This is the big moment. And Jesus has this woman here who is ready for the living water. Who is ready to to give her life to this living water to Jesus, right. And Jesus, what he doesn't do is what we sometimes do in the modern church, which is, "Hey, pray this prayer. , come meet us at the next steps table.

We're going to get you involved in a growth group. " And hey, all of those things are really great, but Jesus doesn't do that here. What he does instead is calls her out. He calls her out.

Do you know how awkward this must have been. He's just going to go right for repentance. You know how he said, "God loves you just the way that you are, but loves you too much to keep you that way. " This is the too much to keep you that way moment. She's feeling probably a little attacked by this because she says because Jesus reads her mail.

He's like, "Listen, I know I know you don't have a husband. You've had five and the one you're with is not even your husband. What you said is right.

And this teaches us of how important Jesus values repentance and forgiveness. You see, Tim Keller says it like this. Repentance is not just a doorway into the Christian life. It is the Christian life.

>> That's good. And so what happens is a lot of us will think repentance is just about us feeling guilty and shame about some things that we've done or are doing. And we think that we're not supposed to have that yucky feeling and like why would we why would we just go against that and try to fight that yucky feeling. But let me just offer this to you.

When you repent and when you forgive and when Jesus forgives you that is freedom for your soul and Jesus is doing something in you. So Christian hear me. When you said the salvation prayer and you said yes to Jesus, repentance was not a one-time event.

It doesn't happen in that moment. It happens daily >> because daily we miss some of the goodness of God. Daily we fall short, all of us. And that's okay because Jesus wants to meet us there.

He wants to meet us in that place. And help us understand what forgiveness is. And no, we're not like a a Catholic church where we have like a little, you know, confessional booth here in the corner that you can meet me at after service, right. >> Because that confessional booth should be here >> and it should be daily.

It should be something that we are always doing. Now, confession sometimes doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good to search for this repentance.

But let me remind you of the God that loves you in that that from the very beginning all the way in numbers, it says that the Lord is slow to anger. He's abounding in love and he's forgiving sin and rebellion. That Matthew 18 gives us a math equation and shows us that Jesus forgives time after time after time, 7 time 77* 77.

He is he is forgiving. In first John says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us for our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Think about this.

When Jesus was on the cross, he was praying for the very people who were beating him and who had nailed him up there. He said, "Father, forgive them. " Jesus wants to forgive you. Jesus wants to forgive what you've done. That's the big thing about forgiveness is to know that Jesus wants to forgive everything.

That there was nothing too bad or too dirty for God to to be there with you through. And the question for us is, are you willing to bring it to him. Are you willing to confess it.

This is what the woman says in response. She says, "Sir," this is verse 19. The woman said, "I can see that you're a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.

Can I just point out something. This is hilarious to me because this happens all the time. You notice they have this like deep exchange and she gets called out and what is she doing here.

She's changing the subject, right. How many times does this happen. Like when stuff gets too deep, you're like, "Yeah, so the weather, right. " and it it happens all the time. And just so you know, it's going to happen to you as you share your faith.

As you share your faith and you start to get into some of the deep stuff with some of the people who may not believe, , what's going to happen is they're you're going to be talking about their heart and their prayer life and what they believe about God. And then all of a sudden they're going to be like, "Yeah, but did did Noah and the ark did he bring like tigers and lions or was it just one or the other. " And then he like it's going to get all technical and that's what she's trying to do. She's trying to bring the conversation away from the things that she is feeling convicted over. We'll do this with God.

We'll do this in our confession and miss that Jesus is a savior. He wants to meet us in this place. And so Jesus responds with woman, which by the way again from last week, got to be careful how we read this.

This isn't woman. This is man with all sincerity. Jesus says, "Believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

You Samaritans worship what you do not know, and we worship what we do know. For salvation is from the Jews. And yet a time is coming and now has come when the true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and in truth.

For they are the kind of worshippers that the father seeks. God is spirit and his worshippers must worship him in spirit and truth. The woman said, "I know. I know that the Messiah called the Christ is coming.

" She still doesn't get it. He will explain everything to us. Here's the mic drop.

Then Jesus declared, "I, the one who's speaking to you, am he. " And so, here she is. She's trying to avoid the hurt.

She's trying to avoid the conviction, right. And Jesus is saying, "Look, I know. But no matter how wounded you are or how bad your past may look or may be, there is a time now where salvation and worshiping, worshiping the Father in spirit and truth is available to you.

This teaches us something so important about Jesus's character. That Jesus forgives your false beliefs. That sometimes what happens to us is we will build up an impression of God based off of our life experiences.

And so when we get hurt time after time again, when that prayer isn't answered or when that person doesn't reconcile with us, when things start to go wrong in life, we start to build up this belief that God must not love me, God must not care about me, God must not want to meet me here in my junk. Cuz if he did, then I wouldn't be here in this place. Let me just tell you that that is so far from truth. That God forgives your false beliefs.

So, let me just can I like bring this sermon down a tad. I feel like I've just been like firing at you. Let's let's give you an analogy here.

I love burgers. Okay, this is the like the third time I've talked from burgers about burgers from the stage. I really like burgers, but let me tell you, I did not have a burger until I was 13 years old. So, I was convinced when my parents presented me a burger for the first time that I would not like it. I had this belief that this is not for me.

This I'm going to be a hot dog and a chicken nugget kind of guy. And that's what I believed for 13 years. Why didn't anybody tell me I was wrong.

That's what I'm mad about. And so I try a burger at 13 years old and I could not believe what I was missing. And so now every time my wife can attest to this, every time we go to a restaurant, you know what I order.

>> A burger. >> A burger. Because I feel like I missed something. And I feel like if I don't order a burger that I'm doing an injustice to this restaurant.

And so this is kind of the picture that I want to give you that for so long you can believe something about God or about yourself if you stay in this place of not forgiving the things that you've done or the things that you've been through. Not giving those things to God and letting God meet you in that place and forgive you. You will have a belief about a father who is abusive. A father that just wants to pay you back with bad karma. But that is not the God we serve.

That is not the God in heaven that loves you so much. This is a God who looks at you and says, "I love you so much that I will take your mess and I will make it into a message. I will take your tests that you've had in life and turn them into a testimony.

I will make all things work together for my for your good and for my glory. That is Jesus. >> Jesus is not this kind of person who's going to come by and just make you feel like you should be paying him back for all of the wrong you've done.

This is a God who sits on the cross and says, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. " And then this woman's life is changed. Do you want to know how I know it's changed.

Go look at verse 39. Let's look at verse 39. Kind of go follow the numbers to 39 and look at this.

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. You want to know why we tell testimonies at baptism. Right there.

And he told me everything I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them. And he had stayed with them for 2 days.

And because of his words, many more became believers. They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said. Now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that the man really is the savior of the world. >> That's who Jesus is. >> You see, the big idea here and what this woman's story teaches us is that forgiveness is the key that unlocks your prison and helps others unlock theirs.

>> So what this means, I want you to really take this word in is that when we sit in our bitterness and we convince oursel that God could never love me, God could never forgive the things that I've done. We are locked up. We are locked up in that and we build up this false belief about who God is.

But forgiveness is the key. Repentance is the key that lets us out of that prison to experience the freess, the freedom and the truth and the love of Jesus. And so as we seek that kind of repentance in ourselves, then God starts to bring that freedom into our lives.

So the question for us is, what prison are we locked in. What prison are we locked up in that we need to seek forgiveness. Yeah, this is a really tough thing. It's a really tough question because for some of us it is like this woman. Like we have sin and we have stuff in our lives that if we're being honest, we're not proud of.

I have it too. Just because I'm on a stage doesn't mean I don't need to ask for forgiveness. And this repentance, this forgiveness is not a moment.

It is an everyday thing for those who believe. And so as we, you know, fall short, we come to God and ask God for forgiveness. But hey, maybe your forgiveness isn't just seeking it. Maybe you're good at that. Maybe you're good at actually seeking Jesus and and saying, "Father, will you forgive me.

" But maybe it's the other side. The side that we didn't even get to talk about this morning, which is giving forgiveness to the people that have hurt you, to the people that have wronged you, to the people that said or did things that man really, really hurt. And let me tell you just really quickly on the subject of forgiving others. I want to just encourage you forgetting does not mean forgetting.

Forgiving does not mean that you don't set a healthy boundary. Forgiving is this very real thing that I said just a moment ago. It unlocks that prison and brings you to freedom. It doesn't mean that you don't set boundaries and careful things around a situation because every situation is so painful and can be so painful.

But to walk with bitterness and to walk in a way where you're not forgiving somebody is to is to lock yourself away from the freedom that Jesus wants you to experience. Now let me tell you something hard. I stand every morning I I think every morning I need to pray a prayer of forgiveness cuz there are some people in my life who have really really hurt me. And so I know I know how difficult this is. I know how difficult it is to every day when you're so angry and so upset to extend this forgiveness.

But let me tell you, as you do, God is going to change your heart and God is going to give you this this freedom. And I believe that and I hope you do, too. But the last maybe prison or maybe not even prison that some of us are in is some of us are just thirsty. We just find ourselves in this place of feeling so dehydrated from the world that every situation, everybody that hurts us, every unanswered prayer just leaves us feeling more and more dehydrated. And we run to other things, other beverages, right.

We run to alcohol. We run to looking at things on our phone that we shouldn't be looking at or treating people like we don't really want to treat them. And so we'll be in this place where we don't necessarily lock ourselves up, but we don't necessarily know the living water.

And so wherever you're at this morning, Jesus wants to meet you there. And so I'm going to have the worship team come up and I want to just invite you to bow your heads, close your eyes. I just want this to be a moment with you in Jesus. And this is something that we do at Destination every week. It's the this time for reflection.

This time that we don't really give ourselves to think about what our next step is. And I believe that everybody in this room has a next step. Whether that is to ask God for forgiveness, it's to say, "God, I know that I've fallen short and that I need you. " For some of you, God has put somebody on your mind, somebody on your heart that has really, really wronged and really, really hurt you.

And God wants to give you freedom from that this morning. And God wants you to take that person and just pray for them and to give that pain piece by piece. And for the rest of us, some of you in here are still kind of unsure, kind of unsure that Jesus could meet you in this real way, in this real place. Maybe you haven't experienced Jesus in this way where he can be the living water, that he can quench your thirst, that you've been running to all of these different things, but Jesus has a real true life for you here on earth and here in heaven. And so I just want to encourage you if you're in that place and you're just saying, "I I need Jesus before I even tackle this forgiveness stuff.

I need Jesus. " Cuz you do. You need Jesus.

And so if that's you, if you are in here and you just need to say yes to Jesus, you need Jesus to meet you where you're at, to help you on this journey of forgiveness. If that's you, would you just so boldly raise your hand so I can pray for you. Let me pray for us as we close.

Jesus, we thank you for this story that Jesus, you entered our mess and you still love us. You see all of those parts of us and you still love us. That God, you you looked at the cross, you looked down from the cross and you said, "Father, forgive them. " So God, help us to walk in the freedom of that forgiveness cuz you've been so good to us.

Help us to walk in the freedom of that forgiveness to extend it to others and help us come to you as the living water in Jesus' name.