Hey y'all! It is so wonderful to be back with you. My family has been fighting the crud and so it is just so nice to actually feel like a functioning human again. But anyway, I am so excited. We are in episode 8 of season 1. So this is actually the last episode of season 1 of The Chosen and so it, of course, happens to be one of my absolute favorite stories in the gospel accounts of Jesus as he engages with this woman at the well. But I really hope that you are enjoying the series so far and again, if you're not watching the show, it really doesn't matter at all. These are just a way for me to pick out some of my favorite gospel stories that we can go through together. So this one is in John chapter 4 and it's Jesus and the Samaritan woman and basically the context that we need to understand is that there was an immense hatred that existed between the Jewish people and the Samaritan people. They would not... Jewish people would literally... and remember back in the day they weren't driving cars on trains. Like they had to go by foot and rather than traveling through Samaria, they would travel all the way around Samaria to get to where they were going. And Jesus, being Jesus, who just... just love this so much, so beautifully goes through Samaria and meets not just a Samaritan woman, but a Samaritan woman who all of the other Samaritan women loathed. So he meets with this woman at the well and it's the heat, the hottest part of the day. And the fact that the woman is at the well at this time of day alone is very indicative of a social issue there because women would always go to the well together early in the morning or later in the evening in the cooler parts of the day. And it was you know part of their social cultural normal everyday practices. And so this woman is going alone at a time when she knows she's not gonna have to see anybody. And who does she encounter but Jesus Christ. And so he sits down and he talks with her and she's like, how are you even talking to me? You're a Jew. I'm a Samaritan. You want me to get water for you? Like what's going on? And he's like, yeah, you know, go get your husband. She's like, I don't have a husband. He goes, yeah no, you've had five husbands. And the man that you're currently living with is not even your husband. And so this woman is just all of a sudden everything that she has tried to hold so tight and not let anyone see, all of a sudden Jesus is like, I know all of that. Like you can take the walls down. I know things about you that you might not even understand. And I know the things about you that you think you're hiding but you're not doing a really good job of hiding it from me because you can't. And when I think about that, as I go to God in prayer so often I have to like check myself and honestly evaluate, okay, my heart. Like I don't need to, okay God, well you know I've been praying about this one thing and like I feel like often I feel like I need to position myself in a way and it's, he knows the desires of my heart. He knows the worries of my mind and he knows the shameful parts that I try to keep hidden. And what he wants to do with this is to say, I love you through that and I have a solution for it. So the woman then asks, Jesus says to her in verse 13, everyone who drinks from this water will thirst be thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water that I give will become a well, become, okay, sorry, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him to eternal life, for eternal life. The really cool thing that I've learned recently in one of my seminary classes is that the word eternal life, we so often have a context of heaven one day, not right now. Eternal life was a life of abundance that begins the moment that we accept Christ into our hearts. And so this woman is like, okay yeah, if I'm not gonna have to come back to this well, that means that I can like stay hidden in my house all the time. I'm never gonna have to come out. I'm never gonna have to see these women again. So yeah, give me that water. And he's like, you don't understand. I'm gonna take that shameful part of you that you try so hard to keep hidden. What if I just got rid of that part completely? What if you didn't have to hide? I didn't just help you hide, but I fixed the problem. And then actually, you know what, I'm gonna go ahead. And he says, the woman says to him in verse 25, the woman said, I know the Messiah is coming who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us. Jesus told her, I, the one speaking to you, am he. He then uses this woman who has been shamed and just afraid of being out in public that wanted nothing more than to hide. He cleanses her of the shame that she has rooted down in her heart. And he says, go live a different life. Live life to the full, which means not just hiding, but living in community. And by the way, you know what, I'm gonna let you be the one that tells everyone I'm here. You would assume that Jesus would go to one of the priests or a religious leader to say, okay, yes, here are the Messiah's here. He goes to a woman who is in a society that loathes him and his people first. He goes to a woman who feels worthless and lets her know not only is she worthy, but he can fix all the shame that she keeps buried. I'm not just here for temporal, I am here for eternal. Just love it.
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