Morning. Let's open this morning service
with him number 46 in the hardback timinal number 46 old for 1000
tongues. Let's all stand together. Oh, for a thousand tongues to
sing my great Redeemer's praise, the glories of my God and King,
the triumph of His grace. My gracious Master and my God,
assist me to proclaim, to spread through all the earth abroad
the honors of Thy name. Jesus, the name that charms our
fears, that bids our sorrows cease, tis music in the sinner's
ears, tis life and health and peace. He breaks the power of
cancelled sin, He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the
foulest clean, His blood availed for me. Hear Him, ye deaf, His
praise ye dump, Your loosened tongues employ. Ye blind, behold your Savior
come, And leap, ye lame, for joy. Glory to God and praise
and love be ever, ever given by saints below and saints above
the church in earth and heaven. Please be seated. Good morning. Let's open our Bibles together
to John chapter four, the gospel of John chapter four. Thank you all for your prayers
last weekend. I was very encouraged with the
services y'all had here with Sean preaching and the brethren
in Missouri send their love. I feel like our meeting out there
was profitable and I'm thankful for it. Let's ask the Lord's blessings. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly
Father, thank you for the canceled debt of sin.
Thank you for the truth of that great old hymn that we're able
to bring to you in worship and in praise and by your grace with
some understanding. Lord, thank you for the promise
of your presence when your children gather together and open your
word, Lord, that you've You've promised to come down and to
meet with us and to manifest your grace and your glory. Lord,
how desperate we are for that. How caught up in the things of
this world we can be and how easily distracted from the things
concerning you that we are. Lord, we pray in this time this
morning that you would set our affections on things above. For
surely they've been set on the things of this earth far too
much. Lord, that you would cause the gospel to be heard and spoken
with simplicity and clarity and hope and grace and power. We pray for our brethren in Missouri,
and we ask, Lord, your continued blessings on them. Thank you
for the services that you gave us there and here. We look to
you for all the blessings of the gospel. We ask it in the
name of thy dear son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. I wanna try to bring a message
on the water of life this morning. And really I've titled this message,
Thirsty. thirsty, the evidence of life. And my hope this morning is that
we will leave this place having our thirst quenched and yet remaining
thirsty at the same time. It's a paradox, I understand
that. But if the Lord's pleased to bless His word, I think that
we'll have some understanding about what the Lord was saying
to this woman at the well about the difference between the water
of the wells of this world and the water of life that comes
down from heaven and the physical thirst versus spiritual thirst. The Lord had just told her in
verse 10 of John chapter 4, he said, if you knew, he'd ask her
for a drink. He always initiates, grace is
always initiated by God, always. He always takes the first step.
We would have no interest in the things of God if he didn't
come to us first. And he asked her, she chums up
the well, and he asked her, give me a drink. And she said, what are you, a
Jew, asking me a drink? You're a Samaritan. The Jews
have nothing to do with the Samaritans. That's all she saw him as was
just another Jewish man. And he responded to her by saying,
if you knew who it is that saith unto thee, give me to drink,
you would ask of me. You would ask of him. And he would give
you living water. And the woman said unto him,
in verse 11, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is
deep. From whence then hast thou that living water? She's still thinking about Jacob's
well. She had no idea what well he
was talking about, nor how deep that well was. And that in fact,
he was the only one that could draw water from that well that
he's talking about. No other man can draw water from
that well. And so she said to him in verse
12, aren't thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave
us the well and drank thereof himself and his children and
his cattle? Now to her, that was a rhetorical
question because no Jew would claim to be greater than Jacob.
But, oh, she had no idea who she was talking to, did she? Yes, before Jacob was, he was. And Jesus answered and said unto
her, whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of the
water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that
I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing
up into everlasting life. And the woman said unto him,
Sir, give me this water that I thirst not. Neither come hither to draw."
Oh, she would be back to that well to draw water for her physical
sustenance. But she also would learn from
this conversation that the well that he was talking about was
not physical water, it was spiritual water. It was the water that
can only satisfy the thirst of the soul. Isaiah chapter 55,
verse 1, The Lord says, ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the
waters. Now this matter of thirst, well,
think of it in terms of physical thirst. Physical thirst is not
a decision that we make, is it? It's an involuntary reaction
of the body The first signs of dehydration. We get thirsty. We didn't just decide we were
gonna be thirsty. We all of a sudden discover that
our body is in need. It is deprived of life-giving
water. And our body says to us, drink. Being thirsty physically is an
indication of two things. It's an indication that we're
alive. Dead men don't thirst. And it's an indication that we
have a life-threatening need, that if we don't satisfy that
need, we will die, and very soon. How long can the body go without
water? Not long. And so it is with the soul. To thirst after righteousness,
to thirst after Christ is an indication of two things. It
is an indication that we have some spiritual life in us. For they that are after the flesh
do mind the things of the flesh. The natural man doesn't thirst
after the things of God. And secondly, it is an indication
that if we don't have Christ, we'll die. It is an involuntary requirement
of the soul to come to Christ. That's what our Lord is talking
about here. He's likening physical thirst to spiritual thirst. It's
what he said in the Sermon on the Mount. He opened that sermon
with the Beatitudes. And one of the Beatitudes is,
blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness,
for they shall be filled. Now, people hear the Beatitudes
and they think, well, You know, if I hunger and thirst after
righteousness, then God will bless me. That's not how to understand
the Beatitudes. The way to understand the Beatitudes
is hungering and thirsting after righteousness is the blessing.
Blessed are they that are poor in spirit. Blessed are they that
mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are they that are poor
in spirit, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God. The Lord's
not saying if you're poor in spirit, if you can somehow figure
out how to become poor in spirit, then God will bless you with
the kingdom of God. Or if you somehow figure out how to mourn
over your sin, God will bless you with comfort. No, no, he's
saying that if you mourn over your sin, that is the blessing
and you will be comforted. And if you are poor in spirit,
that is the blessing. and you will inherit the kingdom
of God. And if you hunger and thirst
after righteousness, that is the blessing. And if you've been
blessed with the desire to drink for your soul, you'll be filled. God doesn't create a need that
he doesn't give an answer to, always. He creates the need and
then he provides the answer. Our Bibles, the word of God concludes
with, let him who is a thirst come to the river of life and
drink freely, freely. You see, spiritual thirst is
the evidence of salvation. I used to think that men had,
that all men had a God-shaped void in their hearts and that
their fruitless pursuit of trying to satisfy that need could ultimately
only be met by God, I don't believe that anymore. All men do not
have a God-shaped void in their heart. Now, all men know that
there is a God with whom they must do. And all men go about
trying to establish their own righteousness in hopes of being
approved by that God. But only the child of God, only
the blood-bought, born-again child of God has a need in their
hearts for God. The wells of this world are sufficient
to quench the thirst of the natural man. And if they don't find sufficiency
in the well itself, they find sufficiency in the hope of a
little bit more of that water will satisfy me. The natural man thinks that he
can be satisfied with the water of this world. He thinks that
he can be satisfied with the waters, the polluted waters,
the broken cisterns, as the Bible refers to them, of man-made religion,
if I just work a little bit harder. And I'm not quite satisfied yet,
but I'll do a little bit more. And I'll become satisfied. And
the hope of satisfying his needs with fleshly
means, whether it be material means of the world or the religious
means of the world, the hope of having his needs satisfied
with these things is sufficient for him. When God gives spiritual life,
we give up on that. Oh, we're going to continue to
have to drink from the wells of this world in terms of our
fleshly needs, we're still men of flesh. We thirst, we hunger,
we tire, we have relationships and friendships and jobs and
all those different things that must be pursued in our lives. But here's the problem. When
those things become our life, when those things become the
hope of becoming satisfied in life, when we have the notion
that somehow I'm going to be content if I just get a little
bit more. They asked J.C. Penney one time,
how much is enough? And J.C. Penney said, a little
bit more than what I got. A little bit more, and isn't
that the way the flesh is? Just a little bit more. And Mr. Rogers. Some of you that are, I don't
know if that program's still on TV for children, but it was
a children's TV, a children's television show. And Mr. Rogers was a graduate of a Presbyterian
seminary, trained minister, knew the doctrines of grace, and sadly, sadly pleaded with
his wife on his deathbed, honey, do you think I've done enough?
Do you think I've done enough? And she spoke false peace to
his heart by saying to him, yes honey, you've done enough. When God gives spiritual life, We come to this conclusion. None of the wells of this world
will satisfy my need. That which is of the flesh is
flesh, the flesh profiteth nothing. One way that we know that the
Lord has given us life is that all the wells of this world and
all the wells of this world's works religion cannot quench
our thirst. Those that only have a fleshly
nature are satisfied. And if they're not satisfied
with what they have, they entertain the hope of being satisfied with
a little more. The one who's been given spiritual
life, God has brought them to this
conclusion. Be thankful, be generous, enjoy the things that the Lord
has provided, work hard. Yes, lots of wells in this world
that we must drink from. This woman would go back to this
physical well, but the Lord's not talking about that physical
water. That water was her life. Now the Lord Jesus is going to
become her life. And though she might need to
go back to that well to sustain her body, she no longer requires
the waters of this world to sustain her soul. Set your affections on things
above, not on things of the earth. Your affections. Labor not for the meat that perisheth,
but for that meat that giveth everlasting life. Lay up for yourselves treasures
in heaven, not on the earth. All the things of this earth
are corruptible, aren't they? They're corruptible. See, here's
the evidence of spiritual life. The evidence of spiritual life
is that I cannot find contentment in any of the wells of this world. I cannot find contentment in
the wells of works religion. I cannot find contentment in
the wells of all the empty promises of this world. And I cannot find
any hope of contentment in the false notion that a little bit
more would give me, would satisfy me, would satisfy. I can't be
satisfied. I've got to have Christ. Again, in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord said, don't worry about
what you're gonna eat or what you're gonna wear, You know,
your heavenly father knows your needs. These things do the Gentiles
seek after, but you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness
and all these other things to be added unto you. There's the evidence of spiritual
life. Christ is my life. I've got to have him. And I didn't
just decide one day I was gonna be thirsty for him. He blessed
me with that thirst and He satisfies that thirst. When I'm able to
come to Him with my sin, I find hope, I find comfort, I find
rest, I find peace, I find satisfaction. And I don't need to go anywhere
else. I don't need to run to and fro and find some new doctrine
and some new religion and some new idea and some new thought.
I just want more of Christ. David said in Psalm 17, let's
turn there just a moment, I think it's Psalm 17. Yes, Psalm 17. Look at the last
verse in Psalm 17. As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness,
and I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness. That's the only thing that satisfies
the Spirit of God. We've got to be born of the Spirit. You see, the natural man doesn't
have the Spirit of God. These are the things of the Spirit.
The Lord said in John chapter 7 that this well of living water
will spring up and He was speaking of the Holy Spirit. David's saying, I'm satisfied
with Christ for all my righteousness, all of my justification, all
of my salvation, all of my peace, all of my life, all of my hope.
Christ gives to me and is for me that which the world would
be had it not been for the grace of God. but I've not seen him in his
fullness." That's why Paul said, I've not yet apprehended that
which has apprehended me. He's got a hold of me, but I
don't yet. I'm just getting glimpses of his glory. I'm just getting
little measures. The scripture says that the Lord
Jesus as the anointed one, as the Christ, as the Messiah, was
anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows. Now we're
his fellows, and we get anointed with the oil of gladness, but
the Lord Jesus had the full anointing, we just get a little bit at a
time. We touch the hem of his garment, a drop of oil comes
off his robe. And we're content with that. But we want, like David, to see
him and be made like him. Paul said, oh, that I might know
him. That's my pursuit, that I might
know him. The power of his resurrection
and the fellowship of his suffering, what was accomplished by the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ What was proven by the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ that God's people are
justified. He was offered up for our offenses
and raised again for our justification. The resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ proves to me that all for whom he died stand in
the presence of God without sin. That's what it means to be justified.
It means to be without sin. The only hope that I have to
be in the presence of God is to be found in him. And the fellowship
of his suffering. And Paul wasn't saying, well,
I just want to suffer more. No, I want to better understand
and more fully believe that when the Lord Jesus suffered on Calvary's
cross, I fellowshiped in that suffering. I was united to Christ. so that I was crucified with
Christ and that God accepts the death of the Lord Jesus Christ
for the putting away of all of my sin. I just need, I need more of that.
I need more of that. I don't need anything else. The dry cisterns of the law cannot
hold living water. The polluted streams of sinful
pleasures cannot satisfy the soul. The praise of men, oh,
we all love the accolades of men, but they don't meet the
need of the sinner's soul. You see, here's the evidence
of life. I've got to have that living water. I've got to have
Christ. The uncertainty of earthly riches. I can't find any contentment
in that. It's what Solomon said. Solomon
said, vanity of vanities, I've tried everything. I've tried
women, I've tried wealth, I've tried wine, I've tried wisdom,
and nothing satisfies. It's all empty. It doesn't meet
the need of my soul. I've got to have Christ. I've
got to have him. Now, as I said, I'm not, our
flesh has to drink from fleshly things. We've got two natures,
but only the believers got two natures. The unbelievers got
one nature and the wells of this world will be plenty sufficient
to satisfy the needs of that one nature. But when God gives
you a new nature, When Christ comes in you, you've got to have Him. You realize
there's a need that I have now that I never knew I had before,
and only He can meet it. This is the evidence of salvation. Is this your experience? Because
this is what God does in the new birth. He forces us to say, you know,
I pursue that stuff all the time. I'm always trying to be satisfied
with something. I've always got the idea that,
you know, a little more will satisfy me and I've come to this
conclusion. If I had all the riches of the
world, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and
loses his own soul? What would a man give in exchange
for his soul? Well, the unbeliever will give
his soul for the things of this world, but the child of God won't.
He won't, he can't. Turn with me to Jeremiah chapter
two. Jeremiah chapter two. This is what the Lord is saying
to this woman at the well. If you knew the gift of God,
if you knew who it is that saith unto thee, give me to drink,
you would ask it of him and he would give you living water.
Sir, the well is deep and you have nothing to draw from. Are
you greater than our father, Jacob? Oh, you drink from this water,
you're gonna have to keep coming back again and again and again
and again to get more from it. But the water that I shall give
you shall be a well of living water. You can stay right there. You can stay right there, you
don't have to go anywhere, anywhere, right there. Jeremiah chapter two, Look at
verse 13. For my people have committed
two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain
of living water, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns
that can hold no water. Now he's talking about, he's
talking about a works religion. That's the broken cistern that
can hold no water. You go back to that cistern,
we find out that it's all leaked out. And the little pool of water
that's left in the bottom of it is polluted sludge. It can't satisfy the need for
a thirsty soul. My soul is thirsty. Oh, what a blessing it is to
be content. Content in Christ. Where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there's liberty, there's freedom, there's joy. I'm no longer in the bondage
of trying to find my life and my hope in the broken cisterns
of man-made religion and of the empty promises of this world.
I have Christ. I've got everything I need in
him. You remember when Jacob was,
he fled his brother Esau because he stole his birthright. He went
to Laban's and he married Laban's daughters, Rachel and Leah. And he spent 20 years with Laban,
20 years. And now the Lord sends him back
with his wives and his cattle and his children. And he's afraid
of his brother Esau. He's thinking 20 years, my brother's
gonna get revenge on me. And so Jacob sends gifts. He sends his servants with a
bunch of gifts to his brother Esau to meet Esau before Esau
meets him. to sort of, you know, grease
the wheels. He always tried to appease his
brother. And when Esau comes to Jacob,
Esau says to Jacob, what are these gifts? And Esau pleads
with Jacob, keep them. I have enough. Esau's anger had
been assuaged and he was okay with his brother coming back
and he said, you keep your gifts, I have enough. And Jacob insists with Esau. And Jacob says, now let me remind
you before I finish this story, Jacob I have loved, Esau I have
hated. And Jacob says to his brother
Esau, and in our English King James translation, Jacob says
exactly the same thing to Esau that Esau said to Jacob. No,
my brother, you keep them, I have enough. If you look at the word enough
in the original Hebrew, Jacob and Esau didn't say the
same thing to each other. When Esau said, I have enough,
the word enough is the word great. It's the same word from which
the word rabbi comes. It's the word rab in the Hebrew. And rabbi translated means the
great one. And so Esau is saying to his
brother Jacob, no brother, you keep those gifts, I have a great
amount, I've got plenty. I've got enough. When Jacob said to Esau, I have
enough, the word there is translated all or everything. Not enough, not great, not a
sufficient amount. Everything. I've got all. The word is also translated whole,
perfect, and complete. I am perfect in Christ. I've made whole in Him. I'm complete. I've got all I could ever want
in Him. What a difference. to have enough or to have everything. Only a thirsty soul. In closing, turn with me to John
chapter seven. John chapter seven. Verse two. Now, the Jews' Feast
of the Tabernacles was at hand. This is one of the feasts that
God commanded the children of Israel to observe in the Old
Testament, and it was to commemorate their wilderness, their 40 years
in the Sinai Desert before they came into the Promised Land.
And it's also called the Feast of Booths. And it's still celebrated
today by Jewish people. And what they did then and what
they do now is they build these little makeshift booths out in
their yard and they eat all their meals in this little hut. And they sleep in this hut for
seven nights. And it's to remind them of how
the Lord provided for them while they were in the wilderness.
And then on the morning of the eighth day, there was a great
convocation, the last day of the feast. And it was a day of
celebration because the number eight represents a new beginning. And on the eighth day, it symbolizes
when they came across the Jordan into the promised land. And so there's a procession in
Jerusalem and they all go towards the temple and they're singing
songs and praising God for bringing them the eighth day into the
promised land that flows with milk and honey. And in all the celebration, that
last day of the feast, there was a moment of silence. It was a moment of great emphasis. The whole crowd of people would
become deathly silent, so you could hear a pin drop. Nobody
said a word, nobody. And the priest in that time of,
in that few moments of silence, would take water and pour it
out on the altar, the fire, and the water would become steam.
And when the people saw the steam, it symbolized the blessing of
God, the cloud that overshadowed them, and they would burst into
a great celebration. Now that's the scene that's happening
right here in John chapter 7. Verse 37, I had to find my verse,
I'm sorry. Verse 37, in the last day, this
is the eighth day, that great day of the feast, in that moment of perfect silence
among thousands of worshipers, Jesus stood and cried, saying,
if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the
scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water. Oh, can you imagine the shock of this one who would have the
boldness to interrupt such a holy moment and declare himself to
be the water of life? Notice the word if. If you're thirsty. Not everybody
is. Not everybody's thirsty. The flesh cannot thirst after
the things of God. Blessed of God are they that
hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. If
you knew the gift of God and who it is that saith unto thee.
You see there's a condition here, isn't there? If If you're thirsty, God made you
thirsty. It was an involuntary act of
your new soul. And it's the evidence that you're
alive. And if you don't drink, you're
gonna die. You're gonna die. You've got to have Christ. If any man thirst, let him come unto me. and drink, and out of his belly. One last point I want to make
in this message. It has to do with our Lord's
death on the cross. The scripture says that the Lord
cried, I thirst. John chapter 19, I thirst. And there was a basin of vinegar
and they took a sponge and put it in the vinegar and put it
on a sword, some kind of spear and raised it up to his lips.
And when he tasted the vinegar, that all things might be fulfilled
is what the scripture says. He said, it is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend
my spirit." When the Lord Jesus thirsted,
God gave him vinegar. Bitter, bitter vinegar. Vinegar is not going to quench
your thirst. The last thing you'd want to
drink if you were really thirsty is vinegar. What's the picture there? The Lord Jesus had to die. He
drank the bitter dregs of the cup of our sin and was cut off
from the land of the living and forsaken by his Father. Why? Why? So that we could come freely
to the river of life and drink. and drink freely. He paid all
the price. The spirit and the bride say,
if you're thirst, come, come, drink freely. The only, only water that quenches the
thirst of a living soul Let's take a break.