If you would turn back in your
Bibles to John chapter 4, where we read those first 30
verses. I want to go back and read some of them again,
beginning in verse 16. These are among the words that
our Lord spoke to this woman. Verse 16, He says, "'Go call
your husband, and come hither.' The woman answered and said,
"'I have no husband.' Jesus said unto her, "'You have well said,
I have no husband.'" where you have had five husbands, and he
whom thou now hast is not thy husband. In that saidst thou
truly. And the woman saith unto him,
Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. These verses record some words
of Christ to this woman that almost seem out of place. And
to some, they would seem to be out of character for him. I'm sure some think he was maybe
unkind in that statement, or critical. or was dragging up
something that maybe would have been better off to be left behind. But that is not the case. You
see, she is ignorant of who He is. Just like every sinner He
saves. Just like every one of us by
nature. And she is in her natural state,
though she doesn't know who he is, she's very willing to debate
religion with him. She only sees him as a Jew, or maybe as a prophet. But He was and is the Messiah. He is the Christ. He is God manifest in the flesh. And you have to notice in these
verses one thing in particular, and that is, she was not looking
for God. She had her religion. She was
able even in that religion to excuse her sin. She was just living her life,
which as all our lives are in ourselves, nothing but a life
of sin. And one thing she finds out here,
one thing she learns is His omniscience as God. He knows all things. He knows who we are. He knew who she was. He knows all that we've done. He knows everything that is in
our heart, and our thoughts, and our minds, and our motives
right now. If you look back, we noticed
earlier in John chapter 2 and verse 24, where it says that
Jesus did not commit Himself unto some, Because He knew all,
they professed a kind of faith, but He knew they were without
faith. He knew their thoughts, and their
hearts, and their motives, and needed not that any should testify
of man, for He knew what was in man." That is a frightening
thing to me. The Lord, as was the case with
this woman, He knows exactly what we are, what we're thinking,
what we're trusting, what we believe, what we understand,
And so, the facade of Pharisee-ism is no good. It is no good. As a matter of fact, in Hebrews
4 we have a reference to the Word. Now Christ is Himself the
incarnate Word. But what can be said of Him as
the Word is also true of His written Word. He knows Himself
what we are and how we are, but He has also said, He has also
written and told us just exactly the same thing. So it says, for the word of God
is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing
even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of the joints
and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of
the heart. You don't know your heart. I don't know my heart. We don't know what we are and
how we are, except we believe what He says in His Word that
we are. Because we are what and how He
says we are in His Word. He knows the thoughts and intents
of the heart, and therefore in His Word He addresses that. And then the apostle says, neither
is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but
all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom
we have to do." There is one God, and we all will face that
one God, not based on what we think we are, or based on who
our mom or dad says that we are, or our husbands, or our wives,
or our friends say that we are, but we're going to stand before
Him based on what we really are, which He knows. He knows us. He knows us. And here is a woman
would have been the same if it had been a man. But here is a
woman, a sinner, who stands before incarnate holiness. He's not just a good man. He's
the God-man. He's infinitely, perfectly, and
eternally holy. He's of purer eyes than to behold
iniquity. And left to herself, just like
would be the case with all of us, if left to herself, she'll
walk away, leave that well, go back to that city, go back to
her life, and perish. Perish. She'll die in her sins. She'll go out to meet God not
knowing who He is and how He is, and not even knowing who
she is or how she is. And it is obvious in this blindness
that she sees no need of Him. She's totally deceived by Satan. And she is totally deceived by
her own heart as to what state she is really in. But the Lord Jesus Christ came
into this world to save sinners. And nothing about any sinner
ever takes him by surprise. As a matter of fact, I believe,
I don't remember who it was, but an old preacher said once
that providence is the handmaid of salvation. And providence
is simply God accomplishing in time all His purpose and all
His will in all things, but especially in the salvation of His people. Did you notice, I think it was
verse 4, that it said, He must needs go through Samaria? That was not the fastest route. He of Himself as God does not
need anything. But as that One who came as Jehovah's
Servant, whose purpose and will it was to save His people from
their sins, He must, being that surety and covenant head, that
Savior of His people, He must needs go through Samaria. And men and women, the Lord's
people throughout all the ages, they have thought that it was
a twist of face at the first, or a twist of luck, or this or
that or the other, or bad luck, or whatever it was that brought
them to a certain place. But it was all the time God. bringing them to be confronted
with the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God who is
working in them. And though she doesn't know what
her condition and state is, He does. And these words are to
her. The wounds of mercy. That's what I call this message.
The wounds of mercy. Can you imagine how facing one
that is to her a total stranger, and he in just a few words lays
out her sinful life her relationships, her failures, her sins in just
a few words. And he reveals that he knows
her. He says words that at the first
hurt her, they pierce her. And he must do that in order
to show her her true condition as a sinner. He must convince
her of her sin. There are lots of folks in this
world that just walk around saying, well, I know I'm a sinner. Everybody
is a sinner. But somebody who has found themselves
to be a true sinner, That is, one before God Almighty Himself. One who is an eternity-bound
sinner. So as to confess themselves,
of themselves, as being nothing else of themselves but sin. God does that. He sends His gospel. And it is
to some people such a gospel as to make them feel uncomfortable. It is a gospel that does not
build their self-esteem as the world would like it. It is a
gospel that breaks us down and causes us to bow before God in
His holiness. And so many are offended by the
gospel. I spoke to a lady this week who
came here for a while, and her words to me were something like
this, the Lord led us to go somewhere else. The Lord led you away from
the gospel? Our own hearts lead us away to
smoother words? to those who will brag on us,
to those who will make much of us, recognize us, honor us, promote
us, but not to leave the gospel. You see, even though she did
not know it, she was absolutely lost. She was in herself condemned
before God. She was headed, if left to herself,
for eternal damnation. She was on that course. But He
must need go through Samaria. And here she is now, even His
disciples, they have gone off into town to buy food. So that
there is no one left at this well except this woman and the
Lord Jesus Christ. And my friend, you can mark this
down too. That's going to be the case with
every sinner that God deals with. It's going to be you and Christ. There will be no need to run
and get a second opinion, or ask mama, or daddy, or husband,
or wife, or whoever it is, whether or not you can believe this gospel,
whether or not Christ is everything, whether or not this is the truth
or not. He's going to convince you. And He's going to convict you
of your sin. I mean, there's just no way around
it. And the reason is because only a sinner needs a Savior. You don't go to a doctor if you
don't need a doctor, do you? If you're not sick? You don't
go and ask for help? You don't go to the bank and
beg if you don't need money? You see, this is all coming out
of need, but we have to be first convinced of our need. And nobody,
not the most eloquent preacher, not the most learned person,
not that person who has seemingly the most skills, they can never
do that for you. I could not do that for you. But the Holy Spirit can. If He ever saves you, that's
exactly what it's going to take. It's going to take a divine visitation. And she, just like us, must be
wounded by God before we can be healed by God. Do you understand
anything about that? We see this is often the case
in the natural realm in the cases of physical sickness. Sometimes
we have to be wounded in order to be healed. Your wife is going
to have surgery next week. In order for that healing to
take place, there first has to be a wounding. Does there not?
There has to be a sharp scaffold. There has to be a cut. There
has to be an opening of the wound sometimes. That's the way it is in this
business of conversion. You see, a doctor oftentimes
first confronts us with the bad news. Oh, you've got cancer or
you've got this or that and the other. What does that news do
to us? It causes us to just almost collapse. In other words, we're confronted
with a case and a situation and a disease that makes all our
other imaginary problems and such Just pale away into insignificance. And if you take that and multiply
it a zillion times, that's the way it is when God brings us
before Himself by the power of His Spirit to show us that we're
sinners. You see, we could be healthy
all our lives and live a good life as we call it, and yet die
in our sins, what will it have mattered? He has to wound. And Paul said,
if I just stood before you and I mixed a little mixture of law
and grace, a little mixture of works and grace, a little salvation
that's the cooperative effort between you and God, if I do
that, he said, nobody would be offended. But then the offense
of the cross. The offensive message that identifies
everyone that Christ dies for as sinners, as God-haters. The very natural mind being enmity
against God. And yet here we are, we've been
told by our parents, we've been told by these religious preachers,
we've been told by our own deceiving hearts just what good people
we are. I don't have anything for good
people. Paul said, if salvation would
come by the works of the law in some way, by your doing or
mine, Christ died in vain. And how painful it is when God
strikes our heart with the reality of our desperate condition. You're not just bad shape, you're
dead in trespasses and sins. You've not got a hangnail, you've
got a terminal disease. You can't take a band-aid and
cure this problem, or an aspirin and call somebody in the morning.
Apart from a miracle of God's grace, you're going to hell.
That's just the way it is. You see, the Savior of sinners
had more to say about the reality of hell and eternal separation
from God than anybody else. Don't talk about hell, preacher.
Don't talk all this stuff about judgment and sin. Are you trying
to make me feel bad about myself? If I did, it still wouldn't help
you one bit. Because all you would do, if
I could make you feel better about yourself, you could find
somebody to make you feel good about yourself. And you'd still
die in your sins. Because the soul that sins shall
surely die." There is a God to face, and there
is a death to die, and there is an eternity to face. The Lord Jesus shall be revealed
from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance
on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our
Lord Jesus Christ." You think this is a matter of take it or
leave it, like it's a smorgasbord or something? You think it's
a matter of a decision about whether or not you're going to
decide for Jesus, or choose Jesus, or accept Jesus like is presented
so often times? He's talking about our obeying
the gospel. This woman didn't even know the
gospel. And she probably looked at the
hypocrisy of such as the Pharisees and justified herself. Well,
I'm as good as those Pharisees are. She might have said if she
was a harlot or something like that, these religious people,
they're the ones that come to me by night. Do you know what
the problem is? And there's always a conflict,
especially right now. There's a big conflict going
on between the moral and religious part of a society, and the very
irreligious part of society, immorality. But the truth is,
both camps are going to spend eternity together in hell without
Christ. And just like a farmer who has
to break up the ground in order to plant, the Spirit of God must
do a violent work in us and bring us to the fear of the Lord. That's regard for God and understanding
of God as to who He really is. Because listen to this, the fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The beginning. And that means everything before
that and everything apart from that is nothing but blind, deadly
stupidity. The fear of the Lord. A proper
and true and genuine reverence for God and His Word is the beginning
of wisdom. She had her natural prejudices. She said, you Jews, believe this. And she was about to hear the
truth from the only Jew that could ever help her. She had,
without a doubt, spiritual ignorance. Everything he says, she misinterprets. Just like men and women carry
their Bibles, but because they have no spiritual understandings,
they get out of it lessons for life and examples and all that,
but they don't know the gospel. She could quote Scripture. If
she lived in our day, I guarantee you she knew John 3.16. But here
is the Word of God, but because she's dead spiritually, blind
spiritually, she really does not know what he's talking about
when he talks about living water. She thinks he's talking about
a dipper full from the well. And her religion, and she had
it, was false. Now I just think people in our
day would think this a very unacceptable, politically incorrect kind of
statement to make. Look at verse 22. He said to her, you worship you
know not what. Your gospel is a false gospel.
Your God is not the true and living God. Your God is not the
God of glory. Your Jesus is, as Paul says,
another Jesus. Your gospel is another gospel,
as he said. The Spirit that directs you and
leads you is another Spirit. Isn't that scary? That we have
a kind of satanic trinity of counterfeit. another gospel,
another Jesus, another Spirit. But they're not with Christ. But it's left to ourselves. We'll
be so confident in what we think we believe and know and understand
and how we are, we'll be with that crowd and stand right there
in Matthew 7 before the Lord Jesus Christ and say, have we
not prophesied in your name? Have we not cast out devils in
your name? Have we not done many wonderful works? And here what have to be the
most severe, the most sad words that ever could be heard by a
sinner. Depart from me, ye that work
iniquity. Iniquity is basically inequity. So that Christ is saying to them,
all these things you did, they were not equal to what I require. Ye that work iniquity, you worship you know not what. In Isaiah, he talks about how
people And he uses this basically as an example, although it is
in many cases a reality where they take the wood or the stone
or the gold, whatever it is, and they cast them out of God,
bow down before it. And he said, one is as dead as
the other. But that's no different than
our taking in our minds and our thoughts, or in somebody else's
mind and thoughts, and coming up with a God who is not the
God of this book. That's the one we have to do
with. That's the one we're going to face. I'm going to face Him. You're going to face Him. And
in order for us to be healed of this This terrible disease
of sin, we first got to be wounded, we've got to be dealt with by
God, just like the Philippian jailer when God sent that earthquake. Now, it wasn't the earthquake
that brought about that conversion in him. But that's just a part
of the means that God used to get his attention, whereby his
Spirit would quicken this man to hear and believe what Paul
and Silas were saying. I like to think God rattled his
cage, as we say. That's the way it is. I can't remember exactly who
it was, but I think it was Joab, maybe seeking to get Absalom's
attention, or someone like that. It says that he sent those foxes
with their tails on fire through his corn, burned it down, and
when that happened, he got his attention. In order for God to
save us, He's got to get our attention. And I'm convinced
of this. If it's His purpose to save us,
He will get our attention. We just walk through this world
with our hands in our pockets, kicking cans as it were, walking
down the street, whistling just like there was no problem. But when He shuts us up to this
reality of what we are and our need, just like He did Saul of
Tarsus, Going down that road to Damascus, intent to take and
destroy and cast out these believers who've identified with Christ,
thinking he was doing God a favor. But God stopped him, and he unhorsed
him, and he bowed him down, and he, in the bright light of his
holiness, covered his eyes with scales, shut everything out to
him except the very voice and Word of Christ speaking to him? And when he got his right mind, and
he sought that one that God sent him to find in Damascus by the
name of Ananias, who had more things to tell him. Later on,
this is what Paul said. He said, I was before a blasphemer. That's what I was. Do you know
when you find out what you were before in the after? You don't find it out before.
I remember reading those comic books when I was a kid on the
back or inside cover. They had those pictures of a
muscle man by the name of Charles Atlas. If you were one of those
97 pound weaklings, you could take his course and there was
a before and after. Only when you stand in Christ
by His grace do you find out what you were before. Paul said,
I was before a blasphemer. Our sins, as this woman just
finds out, our sins are against God. They're against His law. They're against His face, His
justice. They're against everything that
is good. They are against the revelation
of Himself in creation. One old preacher says, in quoting
what Paul says about you, has he quickened who were dead? He
said, with quickening comes living sensations. such as conviction
of sin and guilt of conscience, the fear of God, the heart broken,
the spirit of prayer, repentance unto life, in a word, all the
first work of grace in the soul." Someone says, I don't want to
go there. He doesn't ever have anything
good to say about me. You know, you're not the first
that said that. When the two kings, Ahab and
Jehoshaphat, were trying to come to a conclusion and a direction
on whether to go up to Ramoth-Gilead and fight or not, Jehoshaphat
said, well, let's call the prophet of God. And Ahab said, oh no,
I don't want to call him. Because he doesn't ever have
anything good to say about me. Did you know no gospel preacher
can ever have anything good to say about you and yourself? If
I tell the truth, if I say what God says, in your person, in
yourself, I can never say anything good about you. And what's worse
than that? I could never say anything good
about myself. He says, there's none good, no
not one. There's none that doeth good.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But why
would we want to, as we do in our blindness, why would we want
to leave the one ground upon which He's promised Himself to
bless us, to save us? Why do we try to renounce sinnerhood
when that's the only candidate there is for salvation? He says this, See now, I, even
I am He, and there is no God with me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal. Neither is
there any that can deliver out of my hand." Now that's a plain,
broad statement of divine sovereignty right there. I kill and I make
alive. I wound and I heal. That's the
way it is. We'll have to say with Eli, whatever
it is, it is the Lord. Let him do what seemeth him good.
But this is the same thing that's true in spiritual things. God in His sovereignty acts in
mercy and grace to those people He purposed to save that He chose
in Christ and gave to Christ, and He comes to them, He kills
them that He might make them alive. He wounds them that He might
heal them. These words were hard, I expect,
to this woman. This whole concept that a man
standing here before you, especially a Jew, He's the Christ. He's the Savior. But she had to know. And there
wasn't anybody that could deliver her out of His hands. That's
the wonderful thing about it. Somebody says, well, God won't
save you against your will. God won't do this against your
decision or your free will. That's baloney. That's foolishness. Because that would be a Savior
and that would be a salvation that did not recognize and truly
save us from all the entirety of our condition. That would be like saying there's
a blind man who's about to step out in front of that 18-wheel
truck, and I wish him well. I love him. I hope he makes it. I've provided a U-turn for him. That wouldn't be recognizing
his condition, would it? No. If you save him, you're going
to have to go And to his surprise, really, take hold of him and
snatch him out of the way of that truck. That's what God has
to do to us. As a matter of fact, rather than
being near and saving those who describe themselves as good people
and Christian people and all that, it says that he as mine
to those who are of a broken heart and a contrite spirit." You see, Christ alone knows us,
and therefore alone is able to show us ourselves and what we
are. He alone can show us the way
of life. She was an adulterer, a fornicator,
But she was more than that. She was more so a spiritual adulterer
and fornicator. That's something that really
strikes to the core too, doesn't it? But our Lord looked at those
Pharisees. He said, you're just like a grave
full of dead men's bones. You're all painted up on the
outside, but on the inside, you're nothing but a bunch of dead,
dry bones. And they looked at him and they
said, well, see, even his disciples were surprised that he's talking
to a Samaritan woman in daylight by a well. That just didn't happen. And when you look down that people,
that, as we say, that class of people that we find our Lord
meeting with, talking with, eating with, they said, he's gone to
the house of a man that's a sinner. And they issued what I call the
blessed indictment against him. They said he's a friend of publicans
and sinners. They rolled it off their lips
with a touch of contempt. But that's a wonderful thing. You see, she was this, she had
her false religion, she had her self-righteousness, she didn't
mind responding back to the Lord of glory with a defense. That's what we all are apart
from His grace and His mercy. But you see, it's the bad news
that makes for the good news. And that is that Christ is merciful
to sinners. That he saves sinners. That he
died, as he says, for the ungodly. That he came to seek and to save
that which was lost. The true Jesus is described by the angel when he says of Mary, and she
shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call His name Jesus."
Do you know what the name Jesus means? It means Jehovah's Savior,
or Jehovah the Savior. It's bound up with His humanity,
but also with His Saviorhood. Thou shalt call His name Jesus,
For He shall save His people from their sins." If you're not
a sinner, He didn't come to save you. I don't have any good news
for you. Because His death is a death
for sin. The price He pays is the wages
of sin, which is death. And Christ saves from sins, but
if we do not see and are not convicted and convinced of our
sins, we will see no need of Him, and therefore will not seek
mercy." So how does He do it? Well, He
does it through the preaching of the cross. Now, I could go
to the book of Proverbs and pick you out a bunch of good moral
lessons, But did you know that the cross is in the book of Proverbs? Did God enable us to see it in
every other book? Paul said, I determined to know
nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Some say, well, we just preach
a person. Well, men will perish if you do. We preach Christ crucified. We preach the Lord Jesus Christ
who is distinguished as the Savior of sinners, the successful Savior
of sinners, based on a work that He accomplished. Because
if you look at the cross, that's the only place that we're
ever really enabled to see what sin is. You want to know what
sin is? It is such that when the Lord
of glory, at the hand of the Father, in harmony with the triune
Godhead, all the persons together, determined not to impute the
sins of their people to them, and He stood as the surety then,
being the One who guaranteed Everything necessary to save
them. Which was what? Central to that. Coming into this world in human
flesh. And bearing the responsibility
of their sins on that cross. He's not dying for his sins.
He's not dying because he's a sinner. He's dying because He's the Savior
of sinners. Because the Lord, in not imputing
their sins to them, did, on the other hand, impute them to the
Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord hath laid on Him the
iniquity of us all, Isaiah said. And He dies. He's been looked
at by the Father. The one who's described as wisdom
in the book of Proverbs. That was with Him from the beginning.
Had the favor of the Father always. The eternal Son of God. But now
here He is on the cross and the Father turns away. And He says, My God, My God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me? Because charged to His account.
And dying there under the hand of inflexible justice is the
substitute. The substitute for sinners. But if the Lord ever opens our
eyes to see the awfulness of our sin through the dying of
our Lord Jesus Christ, He will at the same time cause us to
see the glory and the grace and the love and the mercy of Christ
in that same cross. Because there is sin, but there
is salvation from sin. Well, our Lord says, you know not what
you worship, but we do. And the hour comes and now is.
What a wonderful ushering in that is. The hour comes and now
is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. That's what Christ is doing there
on that occasion. He's seeking her. If you're one
of His children, He'll seek you. It may not be how you think. It certainly won't be the way
you think." But he said, "'Of the sheep have I that are not
of this foe, them also I must bring.'" What is he doing on
this roundabout delay and detour there in Sychar of all places? He's in search of a sinner. He's
going to heal her. He's going to heal her from that
dread disease of sin, but He first has to wound her. But His
words, His work in her, is a wound of mercy. He caused her to thirst, and
also to drink of Himself as living water. It's odd, just a little
bit, isn't it, what the name of this well was? Jacob's Well. The notorious sinner,
whose name meant conniver and supplanter and liar and everything
else. The one character in this book
that I really can identify with. God says, He's the God of Jacob. One day I sat here and read this
chapter. And I came to those words where
it says in verse 6, now Jacob's well was there. And I thought,
hallelujah, amen, he sure was. And here's a sinner like Jacob
who's brought to drink of that living water so as to never thirst
again. May God in mercy wound us. that
He might heal us of our great sin. May He kill us of every
other hope. May He expose our unbelief, our
self-righteousness, our false profession, all these things,
and give us hope in Christ. If He wounds us, it will be a
wound of mercy. If He wounds us, He won't damn
us. If He kills us of all human strength,
He'll make us alive in Christ. That's what I pray for most these days, is
for the Holy Spirit to do that work that I cannot do, that these
cannot do for yourselves, but He can. Father, we pray this
day that You would, by Your Spirit,
work in each heart to reveal to us the truth of what we are
and our great need. Break our hearts. Give us that
contrite spirit. Cause us to bow before the throne
of Your grace as beggars for mercy. and heal us. Give us to drink of that soul-satisfying
water, the Lord Jesus Christ. As all our salvation, peace with
you, perfect righteousness. And we will praise you. We'll
say as this woman, is not this the Christ? We'll tell others,
come see a man. Tell us that told me all that
ever I did was. Now this is the Christ. And we pray in His name. Amen.