The Redemption of Marriage

Good morning.

Today's reading is from John 4, uh 5 through 26.

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sakar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there.

So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

It was about the sixth hour.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.

For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.

Where do you get that living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob?

He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty, or have to come here to draw water.

Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband and come here.

The woman answered him, I have no husband.

Jesus said to her, You are right in saying, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.

What you have said is true.

The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.

Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither 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 the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ.

When he comes, he will tell us all things.

And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Welcome to Church this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It's great to gather together with you all and uh worship together.

You know, we just heard a passage and it's calling us to worship in spirit and in truth.

And we get to do that together this morning.

We do not have to go to a particular mountain, we do not have to go point towards a particular place in the world.

The Lord is seeking those who will worship him in spirit and in truth.

He equips us to do that by giving us his spirit, and he calls us to participate in it by holding fast to his truth.

Now, before I begin the sermon this morning, um I want to introduce our prayer because I want to pray for something in particular.

This Friday, a Governor Polisigned into law a bill called HB 1312.

And this is a particularly meaningful bill for Christians.

The reason why it's meaningful for Christians is because it uh puts legal definitions around these two phrases, chosen name and gender expression.

Now, what that means is that according to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, if somebody requires you to refer to them by pronouns that are false, or refer to them by identities that would be agreeing with lies, then you are legally required to obey.

Now we have a God who calls us to worship him in spirit and in.

And so I hope you can see why this would be a particularly pressing concern for Christians in our state.

Did any of you how many of you grew up in Colorado, like front rangers?

Wow, that's pretty cool.

Um did any of you go to uh Camp Iderhaji?

One, two, three, four, five.

Wow! Okay, a lot of people went to Camp Idrahaji.

Um I never I I've never been actually when we did that men's retreat, I think it was close to there.

It was on it was okay.

I'm getting uh I'm getting head nods that are kind of like, you're wrong, but I get what you mean.

Uh Camp Idrahaji right now is suing the state of Colorado because they are being compelled by the state, the Department of Uh Early Childhood Education, to uh remove any gender barriers in their camp.

So that means that boys must be uh permitted to bunk with girls, and girls must be permitted to bunk with boys.

They m there there must be no gender distinction between any of the bathrooms in their camp at Camp Idrahaji.

And so they're in the middle of a lawsuit right now against the state.

Here's why I want us to bring, uh here's why I want to bring this to our attention.

Holding fast to the truth for the Christian has always required courage.

And that courage is always given to us by the Lord in sufficient measure for the tasks that he has called us to.

If you're doing our Bible reading plan, you might have read this morning that uh the story of Barak going against the Canaanites.

And in that section, it takes a lot to rouse the people of God in order to go and stand against their enemies.

And it says that uh the Reubenites, especially, were when they faced this challenge, it caused them to do a deep searching of heart, is what it caused the Reubenites to do.

And we are in that moment now.

Here's what I want to compel our church towards and ask our church towards: a deep searching of heart.

There are two ways before you to hold fast to the truth and face consequences, or to say that the truth is not important and not worth fighting for, that there may be some ways that we we could skirt around the truth and it would be better.

Now, this is a denial of our faith.

And it's a denial, it's a denial of the truths that the Lord has called us to.

Now, I understand that for many of you in your relationships, in your work, I I want I the part of the reason why I want to say this is because of everyone in this room, there is no one who it is easier for this to who it is easier to say this than me.

Because I'm a Christian preacher.

Like I like some people will leave, some people will come because I'm saying things like this.

Like it's it's kind of a wash.

Many of you, you are in jobs, you're in relationships where these very issues will be brought in right into your face with real costs.

And so what I want to call our church towards is mutual encouragement of one another to hold fast to the truth, support of one another, to hold fast to the truth.

Right now, right like the Reubenites, many of you are being pushed into, just by this being brought up, a position where it's like, I need to search my heart because I have made compromises with the truth in relationships that I have established.

And I know that that needs to be brought to bear and that there will be cost there and difficulty and humiliation.

And I I want you to know that for those circumstances there is repentance, there is forgiveness, and that the courage that Christ calls you to is absolutely sufficient.

Idrahaji means all right now let's all do the camp song together.

When we I don't know if there is one, but there probably is.

Let's follow Idrahaji.

As Christians together in this state.

Idrahaji means I'd rather have Jesus.

This is all, this is the request.

This is this is what's needed of Christians in our state.

In order to oppose wicked ideologies, state religion, transgender ideology, all these things which seek to tear down and and make uh threaten the purity and peace of the church, the great action that's required is simple obedience.

And so let's say, like Idrahaji taught those of you who grew up here to say, say, I'd rather have Jesus.

I'd rather have Jesus than the false peace that might exist here.

I'd rather have Jesus than hide out.

I'd rather have Jesus than than than say a lie when I can't say a lie.

I'd rather have Jesus.

This is the encouragement that I wanted to offer this morning.

So Christianity, this is this is not new for our faith.

This is it's new for us.

I think it's new for our generation.

Back in college, I was a uh what's it called?

Res RA?

What does that stand for?

Resident advisor?

Assistant?

I choose advisor.

Obviously, I was an RA.

Um because look at what I do now.

It's very, you know.

Wasn't like the cool party kid in the hall.

I liked the rules.

And so I went to a lot of uh uh social justice training and gender identity training and um heard then uh phrases that that were like what I had a the my hall director actually explain to me that um he was like they say that in 10 years uh that they won't even have the categories of men and women anymore.

They won't even have those categories.

And I remember going to the C4C later and sharing with some friends, listen to how crazy my hall director is.

Like this person's that they're they're you know, they're saying that there's not gonna be boys and girls, boys and girls, that's where people come from.

And uh I I looked and said that this is this is uh some sort of outrageous thing that I can't imagine.

Um this is you know, there's there's something certainly less glorious about this than than being commanded to uh declare that Caesar is Lord and instead declare that Christ is Lord.

But it is it is the it is the role to hold to the truth that the Lord has given to us in this time.

And so we must trust him to equip us to honor him in it.

And that will take uh deep encouragement from one another to be able to do that and and perhaps face the costs of that.

It is codified, it is real law, this is real life, this is it, this is actually happening.

What we can do is encourage one another to hold fast to the truth.

As we'll see in our text today, spirit and truth are wed together.

There is no love without truth.

So if you seek to love your neighbor, then be the one that holds fast to the truth.

I know this this likely for the ones that this will the ones in this room that this is hardest to hear are the ones that it's bringing into conflict yourself with relationships that you have and treasure deeply.

I want you to consider that relationships can last a long time, that the story is not over, and that the Lord will honor holding fast to the truth, that it is not unloving to hold fast to the truth.

It is essential to truly love, to hold fast to the truth.

And that's what the Lord is calling us to.

Let's pray.

Lord God, I love the phrase, I'd rather have Jesus.

But Father, I know in my heart that there are so many circumstances in which I prove that that's not true.

I wouldn't rather have Jesus.

I'd rather have peace, security, comfort, approval.

I'd rather have no com no conflict in my life.

I'd rather not look like those crazy Christians.

Lord, I'd I'd rather just be able to get just be able to get along.

But Lord, when we consider the sacrifice that you've made for us, when we consider the one who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, we know that you are able to equip us to endure.

Lord, it is hard to press into the truth in our relationships, because it is hard to press into the truth in our own hearts because we know what it exposes about us.

We know that it exposes our own fallenness.

But Lord, let us have confidence to press into the truth of our fallenness and the fallness of the world that we live in, so that we might likewise be able to hold fast to the truth of the redemption that you offer us, that we would see that your redemption is not just waving away or glancing over our sin or pretending that it wasn't actually sin, but your redemption is a true atoning for the sins that we have committed.

Lord, if we trust that for ourselves, then let us trust that for our neighbors and hold fast to your truth in all its forms.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let's talk about the redemption of marriage.

Um, and what before I do, uh, Taylor, could you find Zach and tell him to turn the lights up?

For that announcement, I requested it to be dark.

Not really.

I didn't know.

Yeah, dramatic mood lighting.

Okay.

This is our second, uh, excuse me, this is our third sermon in our uh in the marriage series.

And in this marriage series, we are beginning by getting gaining an understanding of marriage in the whole narrative of scripture.

And we're describing the narrative of scripture in these four events.

There's the creation, fall, redemption, and glory.

These are the wonderful outline of scripture and the redemptive narrative for us, but it's likewise the description of how we understand marriage.

We understand marriage in this very same narrative.

And so we've looked at the creation of marriage and the good intentions that God had for it.

And then last week we looked at the fall of marriage and how, by humanity's rebellion against God, the good structure that He had put into the world was inverted by Satan and by our agreement with Satan and plunged us into rebellion and disorder.

So that our marriages now, just like our own hearts, are plagued by these three realities of guilt, shame, and fear.

But that's not where the story ended.

Even in the fall of marriage, we begin to see this glimpse of the redemption that God has in store for marriage.

This glimpse of the redemption that God has in store for marriage is in the promise to Eve that she would bear an offspring who would crush that serpent Satan.

And it's in the clothing by God of Adam and Eve before they leave the garden so that their shame would be clothed before him, and that their shame would be clothed before, would be removed before one another.

Now, in the story of redemption, we see that the true husband who was promised to be born of Eve, her offspring, that this true husband comes and seeks his true bride.

And that we are to understand the story of Christ as the true husband coming to seek his true bride, the church.

And that when we understand the shape of Christ's redemption of his people, then we see the pattern that our marriages are meant to conform to.

And likewise we see the only hope that any of us have to be able to participate in that pattern of Christ's free and gracious and glorious redemption is that He has come and sought us, His bride.

This is our hope.

So we're looking today at the story of the woman at the well.

This is a familiar story, the woman at the well.

And what I want to uh help show you today is that the story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well is one instance of the true husband seeking and finding his true bride.

That's what the story of the woman at the well is about.

John 4, 5 through 6, we'll go ahead and jump in.

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sikar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

It was about the sixth hour.

So, why is this a marriage story?

Doesn't necessarily sound like a marriage story off the bat, but our first clue is the context.

That this is a story about a husband seeking his bride because it takes place at a well.

And in the Bible, if you're looking for your bride, go to a well.

This is the story of the patriarchs.

Uh Isaac meets Abraham sends that unnamed servant to find a bride for his son Isaac.

And when he goes, he goes to a well, and when he goes to the well, he prays that he might meet this bride, and he meets Rebekah.

And at the well, he meets the bride to bring back to Isaac.

Jacob, when he is running away from his brother Esau, and he goes up to live where Laban lives, the first place that he arrives there is at a well at midday.

And when he arrives at the well, who does he see coming towards him but Rachel?

And it was it was a sight to behold.

And as he saw Rachel, then he concludes this is the place where he will live.

He meets his bride at the well.

And so here, and it makes sense symbolically as well, because you you can think of it like this: like a when the man and the woman meet again, in and are being brought back into marriage again, it's like the Holy Spirit is telling us, think of Eden.

Think of Eden.

This is where the man and the woman were joined.

And Eden was the place of life.

And out of Eden flowed four rivers.

The living waters flowed out of Eden.

And so they bring together the man and the woman at the well to show this is a renewed Eden, a new hope that is continuing forward into the world.

And likewise, the woman herself is identified with the well, because she is named.

Remember, last week we learned Eve is named life.

And there is no life in these desert lands without the water that is flowing.

And so when the patriarch is seeking to find that their life would continue on and that it would move into the future, he meets this source of life, his bride, at the well.

And so Jesus meets this woman at the well, and it is one of Jacob's wells.

The well at Sychar.

In Genesis, Sychar was called Shechem.

Remember that.

It's more on Shechem later.

John 4, 7 through 8.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.

For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

Now, give me a drink.

Might not sound like a marriage proposal.

Can I buy you a drink?

Seems so relationships start that way.

But this one, give me a drink.

If we're thinking, though, as the text has taught us to be thinking, it's brought up Jacob in the well, and he's meeting a woman at the well, then we should be thinking in terms of those stories of the patriarchs.

And the request for a drink was exactly what Abraham's servant.

Prayed, would show that he had met the right woman to marry, that he had met the true bride to give to Isaac.

In Genesis 24, 13, the servant prays and says, Let the young woman to whom I shall say, please let down your jar that I may drink, and who shall say, Drink, and I will water your camels.

Let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac.

So he prays, When I say, Give me a drink, or let down your water, so that I might water my camels, the one who says, Yeah, I'll water them, and he'll say, Okay, now I know that I've met the right bride.

Let this be the sign that the Lord has showed me.

So when we're thinking in these terms, then when we hear Jesus sit down and ask the woman at the well for a drink, and we've been taught by the text to be thinking in terms of these patriarchal stories, then we should hear, oh, he's looking for his bride.

The Lord Jesus has come and he meets this woman, and he's looking for his bride.

Now, the Gospel of John has this story throughout the whole text.

There's this first miracle is at the wedding of Cana, where he turns the six water jars and he says, My wedding is not yet come.

We're being taught by the text to look for Jesus' wedding.

And then this is just two chapters later, and it's the next time that we see Jesus interacting with anyone.

And at this next time, it's as after we've just been asked uh when when is Jesus' wedding coming?

Well, now it's like he's meeting his bride, you see?

And so in that story of Isaac meeting Rebecca, or of Abraham's servant meeting Rebecca for Isaac, you know.

Rebecca meets the qualification perfectly.

And she is the one who says that, let me water your camels also.

Drink and I will water your camels.

Let her and it and this young woman, Rebecca is the suitable bride.

That's what we're meant to see.

Rebecca meets the qualifications perfectly.

She is the pure and suitable bride.

In fact, it goes on, and she is described by the servant, a young woman attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known.

She is beautiful and pure.

She is suited to be the helper that she is called to be.

That is the picture of Rebecca that we see when she is the woman who is met at the well.

This is not the woman that Jesus meets at the well.

This is not a description of the bride whom Jesus seeks to find.

John 4 9, the Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Now that's very different than Rebecca's response.

When he says, Can I have water?

Rebecca says, Yeah, here's some water.

When Jesus asks his woman at the well, can you give me a drink?

She says, Why are you talking to me?

How is it that you, a Jew, are talking to me, a Samaritan woman?

And we can see that the immediately what's apparent about this relationship, like what's apparent about Jacob and Rachel or Isaac and Rebecca is their match.

It's their suitedness.

That's what the well stories are supposed to be like.

It's supposed to be like, wow, yeah, though they're a perfect fit for one another.

But at Jesus' well story, the first thing that we're shown is they don't match.

There are plain cultural reasons, racial reasons, right off the bat, why we would say they can't marry each other.

In fact, the Samaritan woman points out they can't even be talking to one another.

The Jews are the ones who held fast to the covenants, insofar as they could.

But they didn't intermarry, except for sometimes they did.

The Samaritans, they are a mixed race.

And so they abandoned the covenant and intermarried with the people of the land.

And so there's this dividing line between the Jew and the Samaritan.

And that dividing line represents purity and impurity.

And she knows this.

It creates resentment between both peoples for one another.

But there is this dividing line between them where they wouldn't even talk to one another because the Jews considered themselves pure, and the Samaritans, although they considered themselves pure, were thought of by the Jews as impure before the Lord.

But Jesus is not surprised by this distance of purity and impurity that they carry racially.

In fact, Jesus is far more aware of the distance in purity between them than the woman is.

If you knew the situation, you would only be thinking in terms of what Jesus is able to provide for you.

Because you would understand that there is nothing that you're able to give to him.

That you wouldn't even be able to speak to him had he not initiated the conversation with you, that you would not have even been able to find him had he have not sought out you.

And that's the picture that we're seeing of Jesus, the true husband, seeking his true bride.

But she doesn't quite understand, of course, what it is exactly that he's saying.

When he says, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

She's like, well, you she literally says, you don't have a bucket.

You don't have a rope.

And the well is deep.

And you can hear in the question, you know, it anything that you ask Jesus when you don't know that he's Jesus is funny.

And that's true in this circumstance as well.

But you can also hear in the question, she's saying, you can't go down that far and come back up again.

That's the picture of the well.

But think of, but Jesus, he is the one who can go down to the depths into death itself and bring up life.

He's the only one who truly can.

And finally, after insulting him for his lack of bucket and rope, not the worst thing it's been said to Jesus, she goes on and she says this in verse 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob?

He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

This is the question of the woman, of the woman.

Are you greater than our father Jacob?

You think you think you're better than our father Jacob, the one who dug this well?

I'm sure they took great pride in living in Shechem, the place that was purchased by Jacob, and that this well that he dug.

And there's a story that you know, Jacob has a couple of events where he has like superhuman strength.

Let the reader understand.

So, of course, when he wrestles God, he wrestles all night long.

You know, it's very impressive.

Until the end, when God's like boop and breaks his hip.

You know, so he's strong, but he's not that strong.

There's but there's another instance of Jacob having this sort of superhuman strength, and it's when he meets Rachel at the well.

You may not remember this because it's just like one sentence, and it's there's often strange sentences that we read in scripture, and our minds are just like, okay, whatever.

I don't know what to do with that.

And this is one of those.

He's gathered together at midday, and he sees all the men are gathered around the well at midday, and the well has a stone covering on it.

And he says to the men, uh, why don't you uh water your sheep while you're all here?

And they say, Oh, we have to wait till everyone arrives.

Uh then once everybody gets here, we move the stone together.

Because it's too heavy of a stone for any of them to move until everybody arrives.

And then Jacob sees Rachel walking and he removes the stone himself.

He just grabs the stone and he's like, not that bad, not in front of Rachel.

It's a wild story.

But the point is that Jacob is the one who is strong enough to remove the stone.

And so to give the water to give the living water.

That's the picture of Jacob when he meets his bride.

The one who's strong enough to remove the stone, to give the living water when he meets his bride.

This is the story, this is the story that we're seeing.

You see, that's why Jesus is, this is a marriage story.

That's the one thing I want you to leave thinking, be like, oh yeah, Jesus and the woman at the well, he's seeking his bride.

So when she asks, are you greater than our father Jacob?

There's a sort of like, Jacob was great.

He had this incredible strength about him.

He was able to do wondrous things, even wondrous things involving the well.

Jesus said to her, He is greater.

Listen to how.

Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.

But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Are you greater than our Father Jacob?

You know, Jacob gave you this well.

But everybody who drinks from this well will be thirsty again.

I will give you a living water, which it will turn you into a well, so that life will be flowing from you, and you will be will be giving life to those around you.

And it this well will well it will well up in you into eternal life.

You'll never be thirsty again.

So are you greater than our father Jacob?

Well, I can give you a water which leads to eternal life.

Now, the living waters, the waters that lead to life, this is the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus is the one who is able to give her the Spirit.

Now, as the as the story continues, we'll see that He's what He's calling her to is true worship.

Because true worship is how we, the church, are wed to Jesus Christ, our Lord and true husband.

We honor him in true worship.

And worship is in spirit and in truth.

But we know that we don't have the spirit.

Our spirit is broken and corrupted, plunged into sin.

This is what the fall of marriage is.

And so because we are broken and corrupted and fall into sin, we cannot come to him with purity of spirit.

We come to him with mixed motives instead.

With ways of using him or manipulating him.

We come to him with ways that are not truly seeking him, not true worship.

It's ways that are double-minded, our fingers are crossed behind our back.

It's infidelity.

But here he is telling her this section because of me, you will be able to worship in the spirit.

And so where you are, it will be like a new Eden.

Life flowing, living waters.

So he calls to her, first of all, to his spirit, what she might receive from him, his spirit.

So she responds, Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.

I think that's a good response.

Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or come here to draw water.

You know, I think this is one of those responses where we kind of again we kind of laugh to ourselves because it's like, okay, she's still just thinking about getting water.

But who else does any water come from other than our Lord?

So Jesus in response to this says He do He then will switch the topic from the Spirit to the truth because he wants his bride to be a true worshiper.

And so now he switches the topic to the truth.

In John 4, 16, Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here.

Now, one thing that I want us to see in Jesus in this action here is he's like the anti-serpent in this question.

The serpent comes to the woman and seeks to draw her away from her husband.

Jesus, in in our true marriage of Jesus, he comes in to restore, to restore the husband to the bride.

And so he says, Go and call your husband and come here, but he also knows what he is provoking.

He's calling out a hidden shame.

Because she might think he's offering me this living water because he doesn't know what I'm really like.

And he wants her to know for sure that he's offering her this living water, and he knows more than her what she's really like.

He is not seeking out his bride because of her purity.

He seeks out the impure bride so that she might become pure.

So she responds in verse 17 through 18, the woman answered him, I have no husband.

And Jesus said to her, You're right in saying, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands.

And the one you have now is not your husband.

What you have said is true.

He doesn't ask more questions to pry it out of her, so that she finally admits it.

He just comes out and says what he knows.

Because the important thing for her to know is that she has not tricked him.

She has not fooled him into seeking her out.

She has not played well enough the role of Rebecca so that he might, so that she might win his love.

But he seeks her in her impurity, in her defilement, in her sin.

This is the bride that Jesus comes to rescue.

This is the one that he left the heavens to come get.

This is the wonder of the grace of the Lord Jesus.

We talked about last week how marriage, like anything else on earth, it can't be redeemed from below.

We're the broken ones.

The true husband has to come of his own accord to seek out the fallen bride.

So Jesus shares this with her, and he shares, you had five husbands.

The man that you're with now, he's also not your husband.

Now, when you're reading the Bible and you see six of something, you should think, where's the seventh?

There must be a seventh around here somewhere.

Jesus, earlier, at the wedding in Cana, he takes six jars and turns the water into wine.

And you should be thinking, where's the seventh wedding jar?

Where's the seventh wine?

I would complete this.

It'll be at Jesus' wedding.

It's the Lord's Supper.

Where's her final husband?

Where's the seventh husband?

He's the one who sought her at the well.

She doesn't want to talk about that.

The woman said to her, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet, on account of what you just told me about me.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where we ought to worship.

Now, in Deuteronomy, there are two mountains established: the mountain of cursing and the mountain of blessing.

And Shechem is right in between these mountains, and so this has been a historical place of worship for the people of God.

And the Samaritans had held that this is actually the true holy place.

But as the narrative of Scripture develops and the temple is built and then destroyed and then rebuilt, the center of worship is Jerusalem.

Samaritans had held on to this old place.

The Jews had followed the story to the central place, which is worship in Jerusalem.

So she's saying, which one is it?

Which place do we worship?

But Jesus isn't going to let this topic switch.

It's not a total, it's not as much of an avoidant left-hand turn, I think, as it initially feels.

It is somewhat of that from the woman where she's like, it's great to know about my husbands.

Let's talk about where we should worship.

Because it he had been talking about the spirit and the source of life and in the place that this comes from.

And that's what worship is about.

So she has this question of worship.

But Jesus explains to her that the point of worship is not the location.

That is not really where you experience communion with God.

The Lord is seeking for himself, people who will worship him in spirit and in truth.

This is what he says.

But the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

For the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

Bride.

And his bride is the church.

And the church is made up of people like this woman at the well.

Samaritans, outcasts, impure, sinners, defiled.

This is the bride that Jesus sought to make his.

And that they will be the ones who are given the Holy Spirit, which sanctifies them, so that they might come before the Lord and worship the Lord in truth.

Ones that would desire to hide their shame, they can worship him in truth.

This is the fullness of what marriage is.

All of our marriage stories, you'll notice that this sermon is barely about marriage.

It's in the marriage series, although it's kind of all about marriage.

But that's because all of our marriages, they only find their meaning, their real meaning, in their participation in the true marriage story, which is of the true husband who came to seek his bride.

And he will lay his life down so that she, impure as she was, might be redeemed and brought into the fullness of glory, that this woman at the well might look like Rebecca, might look like Rachel.

Although she is defiled, this is what she would look like.

And so she had spent her life looking for something like a true husband.

And finally, the true husband came and found her.

The woman said to him in John 4 25, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ.

When he comes, he will tell us all things.

Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He.

The seventh husband, the true husband, found his bride.

Who does he go to to reenact this marriage story?

He could have done this anywhere.

He could have done this with anyone.

There are lots of just women in the scriptures that are spoken of as just gloriously righteous.

That is not where Jesus seeks to tell and give us these images of his marriage story because he wants us to get what the true marriage story is.

That God in his grace sends his son to seek out the bride who had been seeking anyone but him.

And him, in his love for her, washes her, makes her clean, gives her the living waters, and presents her to himself.

Jesus is able to say to the woman at the well, I, the one who speak to you, am He.

The true husband has arrived.

There's one more point that I want to make about this.

And it has to do with the particulars of the well itself.

So it mentioned before the super strength story of Jacob at the well where he met his bride Rachel.

That's not Jacob's well, where that happened.

That was at a different well.

That was way up north, where Laban lived, near Nahor.

Take a right at Nahor when you get up there.

This well, where Jesus meets his bride, is in Shechem.

Shechem is a dangerous place.

Shechem is where Joseph gets sold into slavery by his brothers in Shechem.

But it was a place that was purchased by Jacob from the people that lived there for a hundred pieces of money, which in today's dollars is about a hundred pieces of money.

And there was.

And at Shechem, he digs this well.

The well is where the women gather together.

Well, Jacob had a daughter.

And his daughter's name was Dinah.

One day Dinah went out to gather with the women of the land.

And when Dinah went out to gather with the women of the land, which is the well, the prince of Shechem, whose name, just because it's confusing, is also Shechem, takes and lies with Dinah and humiliates her.

Dinah is humiliated at this well, Jacob's well.

That's the history of this well where Jesus is meeting his bride.

The response of Jacob when he hears the news is to do nothing when he hears of the rape of his daughter.

He decides to do nothing.

The sin of Adam in the garden, the sin of passivity.

Her brothers decide to take revenge into their own hands, to scapegoat all of the people of Shechem.

So they go in and murder the men and the women and the children they take for themselves in Shechem.

Dinah is treated like a prostitute, and nothing that her father or her brothers could do in that place was strong enough to atone for the sin against Dinah.

That's this well.

This is Dina's well, where Jesus meets his bride.

This is where Jesus goes to rescue and redeem his people.

He goes to the place of our sin, to the place of our defilement.

He doesn't go to the well where Isaac met Rebekah.

He doesn't go to the well where Jacob met Rachel.

He goes to this well.

This is our hope in Christ.

That the grace of our Lord is that he comes and seeks us his bride while we are yet sinners, so that he can pay the price for our sin and redeem us to himself, placing his name upon us.

This is the hope of the redemption of the world.

It's the shape of the true marriage, so that we might be married together in spirit and in truth, and be true worshipers to worship him in spirit and in truth.

So, what does a good marriage look like?

It looks like Christ in the church.

It looks like love the way Jesus loves us.

That's the essential ingredient.

We must understand that to understand the redemption of marriage.

All right.

Are there any questions today, Carlos?

Great.

It's good because I'm late.

So let's take communion together.

In 1 Corinthians 11, 20, starting in uh verse 23, it says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is broken for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

So Jesus, on the night before he was betrayed, he took the bread and he broke it, said, This is my body, which is broken for you.

He took the cup, he said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

He calls us to this wedding feast together, this picture of that great wedding feast of the Lamb.

Not because when he found us we were pure, not because when he asked us for water, we could give it to him.

But because of his great love towards us, by his sacrifice, he makes us pure before him.

He gives us his spirit that we might worship in spirit and in truth before him.

So come and partake of this by faith.

Your true husband calls you to it.

May he be glorified, as we the bride gather together to worship and honor him in spirit and in truth.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this meal.

Lord, that we would consider the depth of your love shown towards us, and that while we were yet sinners, you died for us, that while we were astrayed, trapped in our guilt and fear and shame, you sought us out.

Lord, I pray that for each of us our understanding of that love that you've shown would equip us for all the relationships in our lives, including our marriages.

Lord, that this is the shape of redemption.

You were able to go down deep enough and come back again, so that we might be saved by your grace.

Lord, we praise you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.