Thank you all for that hymn.
That's one of my favorites. And I guess you know the story
behind that hymn, which makes it so much more special. I want to thank you all for your
kind hospitality towards me and Tricia. We've been blessed to be here
with you. Eric and Michelle, they treated
us so well. And I told Michelle this morning,
I'm gonna have to go home and quit eating for a few days. But
that's always the way it is when you When you travel and when
you go to a conference, we always enjoy good food. Hopefully, the
spiritual food will be blessed of the Lord. But there's always
an abundance of physical food as well. And we're thankful. Fred, I don't know if I've ever
heard a clearer message on justification and works as the one I just heard,
and I'm very thankful for it. I love the subject of justification. I love the one who justifies.
And to know that that justification goes all the way back to the
covenant of grace and the lamb that was slain before the foundation
of the world, that we are without sin before God. That's what it
means to be justified. You know, I've heard people say
justified means just as if I'd never sinned. That's not what
it means. No. No, God can't look at something
just as if it was. It's either one way or the other.
And as He is, so are we in the sight of God without sin. That's what it is to be justified.
And yet at the same time to be zealous for good works. That was such a blessed message. I'm very, very thankful I got
to hear it. And I plan to listen to it again
and pass it on. I believe the Lord will use that. I want to try to... Preach on
Christ, the living water, from the same passage of Scripture
where we were yesterday. If you'd like to open your Bibles
with me to the fourth chapter of John. John chapter 4, the
woman at the well. She didn't know who she was talking
to. She didn't know that it was her
creator that she was talking to, that it would be her savior
she was talking to. He's going to reveal himself
to her. But at this stage in the conversation,
she still didn't understand. Am I on? You're good. Yeah. OK. I'm just going to adjust
it. I've learned to take my hearing aids out when I get up to preach.
So I don't have to listen to myself so well. So I don't know
how loud I am. If I need to be louder, just
Fred's got such a wonderful voice, speaking voice. And I wish I
could project my voice like that. John chapter 4 This woman after
the Lord said to her if you knew The gift of God and who it is
that saith unto thee give me to drink. You would ask him and
everyone that knows does ask and Everyone that ask does receive
It's just that's the way it works and But She said, why would I
ask you for a drink? You don't even have anything
to draw from. The well is deep. Oh, she only knew how deep the
well was that he was talking about and how he would be the
only one, the only one that could draw water from that well. She's
still thinking he's talking about this physical well. This is Jacob's
well. Look at what she says in verse
11. The woman said unto him, sir.
Well, there's clear evidence that she did not know who she
is talking to. We would never refer to our Lord
as sir. He's Lord. But she thinks he's
just another Jew. Is this not at the real heart
of the problem why men don't call on the Lord? Because they
just see Him as another man. The Lord tells us in His Word,
you thought that I was altogether such a one as yourself. You know,
we're all idolaters by birth. And we come into this world and
the idol factory of our darkened imagination begins pressing out
little idols from a very young age. And all those idols end
up looking like us. I love what our Lord said in
Psalm 115, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name
be glory. And then he goes on to describe
the idols that we make. They have eyes, but they cannot
see. Ears they have, but they cannot hear. If we ever are able, by God's
grace, to catch a glimpse of His glory, of His deity, of His
omnipotence, of His immutability. We'll fall before Him in worship.
We'll worship Him. Men don't worship God. We don't
invite people that have never heard the gospel, unbelieving
friends and family members to come worship with us. You know,
you see signs on church buildings, come worship with us. The Lord's
gonna tell this woman, they that worship God must worship Him
in spirit and in truth, for such the Lord seeketh after. There's
no worship without the Spirit of God, and there's no worship
without the truth of the gospel being given to us. So the natural
man's not able to worship. Only the spiritual man can worship
God. And that's what we desire to
do. Lord, give me your spirit. If you, being evil, know how
to give good gifts unto your children, how much more your
Heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?
There's another example of ask and you shall receive. If you
knew, you'd ask. Lord, I need Your Holy Spirit. And I need for You to open the
eyes of my understanding. And I need for You to reveal
Yourself to me if I'm ever going to be able to bow before You
in truth. and worship you as I ought, and
as you so deserve. But here, here she calls Him,
Sir. She has no fear of God before her eyes. God is standing in her presence. Can you imagine what it's going
to be like when the trump of God sounds and the dead in Christ
are raised? The Lord Jesus comes riding on
that white horse and sending His angels to reap His harvest
and gathering His wheat into His barn and the chaff to the fire? Well, the scripture
tells us, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess
that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And in the
book of Revelation, they cry, let the rocks fall upon us. They
run to the hills and they cry, let the rocks fall upon us, lest
Hide us from the Lamb. Hide us from the Lamb and from
the wrath of God. That's the one that we worship.
But left to ourselves, we'll have no fear of Him. The fear
of God is the beginning of wisdom. You know, it's really not our
place to... In religion, men will use the fear of hell to
try to get people to get their lives in order, won't they? Just
fear God. Just fear God. There won't be
any reason to be afraid of hell in the fear of God. The fear
of God will work all that out. But men left to themselves, and
you and I left to ourselves, we won't fear God. If men could see Him for who
He was, they would fear Him. And the evidence of that is that
when men do see Him for who He is, they will fear Him. They
will fear Him. Though it will be the rod of
His wrath that smites them on the back of the knee, they will
bow and they will confess. What is the difference being
brought to that place of worship now? She's gonna worship Him,
but as of yet, she just says, sir, Sir, the well is deep and
you've got nothing to draw with. How can you give me water? This
living water you're talking about, I don't see anything in you that's
capable of giving me that. You just look like another man.
You just look like a Jew to me. You look like another man. You
look like me. Oh, but how glorious it is when the
Lord gives us eyes of faith so that we see him now, not then
in the wrath of him and the judgment of God, but we see him now for
who he is. And we're brought to, not with
the rod of his wrath forcing us to our knees, but we're brought
to willingly love him He makes us willing. He makes
us willing in the day of His power. Willing to what? Willing
to worship. Willing to believe. Willing to
love. Willing to serve. These things are not burdensome.
It's the will of God that He puts in our hearts. This has always been the issue.
Seeing Christ for who He is. The fullness of the Godhead bodily. The natural man cannot see it.
He just sees Him as another man. Oh, in religion, men will honor
Him with their lips. They'll call Him Lord, Lord. But, He said, their hearts are
far from Me. For they deny the very essence
of what Lord means. They deny that He's sovereign. They say He's Lord, but then
they rob from Him His sovereignty in being merciful to whom He
will be merciful. Don't you love the... Later on in this, well, no, actually
it's in Luke chapter 4, when the Lord goes back to Nazareth
and goes into the synagogue, this was basically the inauguration
of his public ministry, when he declares himself among his
own friends and family members. Nazareth was a small village,
small town. He knew everybody there. He lived
there 30 years. And he went, and he opened up
the scroll, and he read from Isaiah 61, and they knew that
was a prophecy relating to the Messiah, the Christ. And they wondered at the gracious
words that proceeded out of his mouth. They thought, surely not. Surely not. This can't be the
Christ. Why, we know his father, Joseph,
and his mother, Mary. We know his family. He's just
one of us. And then he declared, this day
has this prophecy been fulfilled in nine years. And they thought,
could it be? But then what did he do? What
did he do? He interpreted the prophecy when
he said, in the days of the prophet Elijah, there were many widows
in Israel. But God showed mercy on none
of them except for the widow of Sarepta, who was not a Jew,
but a Gentile. And in the days of the prophet
Elisha, there were many lepers. in Israel. But God showed mercy
on none of them except for Naaman the Syrian. What was he saying? He's declaring himself as God. He's saying, I will have mercy
upon whom I will have mercy. I'm sovereign in salvation. It
is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth. It is of
God that showeth mercy. It is not by your works of righteousness
that you're justified before God. I'm God. What does faith do? Faith bows
to that. Faith says truth, Lord. Faith
glories in that. Faith rejoices in that the Lord
Jesus is the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and he by himself
put away our sin and satisfied the justice of God, and we glory
in the fact that our Lord is God. But what does the unbeliever
do? They do exactly today what they
did in Nazareth. They gnashed their teeth at him. And they tried to murder him. They tried to murder him. They
hated what he was saying. What he was saying was robbing
them. You see, the bottom line is that 2 Thessalonians 2, man
has set himself up on the throne of God. We will not have this man reign
over us. We're not going to do it. And
I won't do it. And you won't do it unless the
Lord reveals to us who he is. And when he does, all we bow. Lord, save me. Lord, have mercy
upon me. Lord, stand as my surety before
God. Be my advocate before a holy
God. We cry with the prophet Isaiah. When Isaiah saw the Lord high
and lifted up, what did he do? Woe is me. I'm undone. I'm a
man of unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean
lips. My eyes have seen the King. How can I stand in the presence
of a holy God unless he does something for me? Oh, talking about justification,
the book of Job. Job is justifying himself. before God, I don't deserve this. And I was thinking, Fred, as
you were preaching, a faith untried is a faith unproven. And God was trying Job's faith
to prove it. And in the end, it was proven.
But during the trial, much like what you and I do in the midst
of a trial, we often justify ourselves, we murmur, we complain.
We feel sorry for ourselves. But in the end, that's part of
the trial. You understand that. Part of
the trial is to expose our sin and our unbelief. Because that's
really where the root of our problem is. When the Lord said
that it's expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away,
the comforter will not come, but when he comes, he's gonna
do this. He's gonna reprove the world
of sin because they believe not on me. You don't need the Holy
Spirit to convict you of bad behavior. You got a conscience
for that. When men do stuff that's wrong,
and you say things that are wrong, and you act in a wrong way, and
you feel guilty for that, that's not necessarily attributed to
the Holy Spirit. You were born with the law of
God written on your heart, and you know right from wrong. You
were talking about, Fred, people wanting to know what to do. They
already know what to do. They know what to do. They know
what they should be doing and what they shouldn't be doing.
They want the law to be preached so that they can boast in their
righteousness. But here's what men don't know. Because you believed not on me. You see, it's not the manifestation
of sin that's the problem, it's the cause of sin that's the problem. And that's where the Holy Spirit
ministers grace and repentance and forgiveness, is when he shows
us through these trials, even as we're trying to justify ourselves. And he exposes more and more
of our unbelief that there's the problem. There's the problem. The problem is in our unbelief. And what a blessing it is when
the Holy Spirit shows us that. And we're able to fall before
the Lord and say, Lord, I, oh, help thou mine unbelief. Or that's
my problem. That's the, you know, the sin
that does so easily beset us. I've heard that back in religion,
we used to say, well, you know, each one of us have got a sin
that easily besets us. And your easily besetting sin
might not be the same as my easily besetting sin. And I suppose
there's some truth to that in terms of each person having a
different weakness or habit, whatever it might be. But the
easily besetting sin that besets each one of us is one thing,
unbelief. Unbelief. Because that, my friends
and my brethren, is the root of all sin. That is the fountain
of all sin. That is the cause of all sin. That is the seedbed of all sin. It's unbelief. And what you and I need is for
God to give us faith. For Him to give us faith. Oh,
Lord. Lord, save me from myself. Yeah, I need to be saved from
the wrath of God, but I need to be saved from myself. I need
to be saved from all the unbelief that's so You know, we hear a
lot today about systemic racism in America. I don't know about that. I don't
know. I don't see it, but I'm not on
the receiving end of that. Maybe there is. But I know something
that's systemic in me, and that's my sin. It. The roots of that fruitless tree
entangle every part of me. And the more I see of who He
is, the more I see of who I am apart from Him. Growing in grace
and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ is growing The way
up is down. The Lord refers to his children
as trees of righteousness, the plantings of the Lord. A tree
has a root system and it has another system. It has a fruit
system, doesn't it? A fruit system and a root system,
and they both exist in us. And the dark recesses of our
unbelieving heart and the roots of unbelief that entangle every
part of us become more and more evident
the more we see of him. The more we see of him, the more
we see there's nothing in me like him, nothing in me. And when the Lord said to Job,
who is this that darkens my counsel without knowledge? Job, I'm gonna
ask you a few questions and you're gonna respond to me now. Where
were you when I, and God begins to reveal himself to Job. What does Job say? First words
out of his mouth. Behold, I am vile. I had heard of thee by the hearing
of mine ear, but now mine eyes have seen thee, and I repent
in dust and ashes. Surely I had spoken without knowledge. Now that's where this woman wasn't. She says, sir, sir, the well
is deep. I'm looking at you. You didn't
even bring anything to go down in the well with. You're just
another man. How are you going to get that
water for me? Men by nature deny the Lord Jesus his glory as God. And religion does that. Every
form of religion. There's only two messages of
salvation, and that's grace and works. And grace gives to him
all the glory, and all the praise, and all the honor, and looks
to him for all the work. And if it is of grace, it can
no longer be of works. Otherwise, grace is not grace.
You can't mix the two. I have a glass of water here.
I assume it's pure water. If someone suggested to me before
I took that drink, that they had put a drop of arsenic in
it, I assure you, I wouldn't have drank it. Why? Because it would have filled
the whole glass. It would have made the whole
glass poisonous. And so it is with the works gospel. Men want
to add a little bit of something of what they do. They deny Christ his glory. They
rob from him his righteousness and his Essence, in essence,
his deity. Sir, thou hast nothing to draw
with. The well is deep. From whence
hast thou this living water? Turn with me to John chapter
13, quickly please. John 13. Speaking of the evidence of faith,
the evidence of faith. And yes, faith works and faith
produces evidence. And as soon as we start looking
to that evidence for the proof of our faith, we've slipped over
into works, haven't we? You remember when the Lord separates
the sheep from the goats on the Day of Judgment? He said, I was
naked and you clothed me, and I was hungry and you fed me,
and I was in prison and you came and visited me, and I was a stranger
and you took me in. What do the believers say in
that day? Lord, when did we do those things? When did we do
those things? My brethren, I wanna encourage
you with this. Because in fact, you, preaching
is not a one man show. Preaching, I tell our folks,
if I went down to the church on a Saturday and preached to
an empty building, I wouldn't be preaching. I could preach
just as clearly as I preach to you, but I would not be preaching. And we don't preach at people,
we don't even preach to, we preach with people. What are we doing
right now? What are we doing right now?
I'll tell you what we're doing. We're clothing the naked. We're
feeding the hungry. We're taking in the stranger.
We're visiting those that are in prison. Because that's what
the gospel does. But what have men in works religion
do? Well, they've got their soup
kitchens, and they've got their food closets, and they've got
all of these good things that they're doing, and they're gonna
stand before God on the day of judgment, and they're gonna say,
but Lord, we did many wonderful works in thy name. And the Lord's
gonna say to them, depart from me, you workers of iniquity,
I never knew you. You see, but we're not sitting
here right now thinking, well, I'm clothing the naked, but God
sees it. God sees what we're doing right
now as putting the robe of righteousness on naked sinners, feeding the
bread of life to hungry sinners, giving water to thirsty sinners. That's what we're doing. And
he's gonna say to every one of his children, Oh, the kingdom which has been
prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Come. Come. Well done. That's what he's going
to say. Well done, my good and faithful
servant. God's going to say that to me?
Yes, he is. He's going to say it for two
reasons. Number one, because your good and faithfulness is
in the person of your substitute, the Lord Jesus. But as a result
of him being in you and giving you a heart for him and a heart
for the gospel and the desire to support his work, to pray, It's what the body of Christ,
that's what our Lord, look, you have your Bibles open in John
13, look. Look at verse 13. You call me
master and Lord. You call me master and Lord. And you say, well, for I am. I am. We hear people talk about
making Jesus Lord of their life. Too late. God's already done
it. You can't make him something
he already is. And whether you bow to him or not, he's Lord
of your life. What a blessing it is to rejoice
in him being Lord. You call me Lord and Master,
you say, well, for so I am. And if I then, your Lord and
Master, have washed your feet, You also ought to wash one another's
feet, for I've given you an example that you should do as I have
done to you. Now, the servant in the lowest status
of a home back then, would have been the one on its knees at
the door with a basin of water and a towel, washing the feet
of those who came into the house. If you were gonna be a servant
in a home, that's where you started. Lord, don't wash my feet. Oh. If I wash not your feet, you
have no part in me. We've got to be washed with the
water of his word. We've got to be cleansed. Peter
said, wash me all over. And old Peter, you're already
clean. But you need your feet washed. Why? Because every time
you go out that door and go out into that world, you come back
in with dirty feet. And what are we to do? What's
the Lord saying? To you and me, every one of us, wash each other's
feet. How do we do that? We love one
another. You brought that out in 1 John
3. This is the commandment, that
you believe on me and love one another as I've commanded you.
And that you wash one another's feet with the gospel. Why? Because
we get our feet dirty, every one of us. Every one of us. There's no exceptions. You can't
walk in this world and not have dirty feet. You can't do it. It doesn't matter who you are.
For us to, you know, think, well, my feet are cleaner than your
feet. No, no. Wash one another's feet. Here's
what the Lord said. This is the evidence that when
you say, I'm master and Lord, you mean what you say. That you're
washing one another's feet. You're loving one another, forgiving
one, be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as
God for Christ's sake has forgiven you. Being able to forgive one
another is the result of being forgiven. If we try to figure out how am
I gonna forgive this person or that person and try to find some
reason to, no, just look at what's been done for you. No, the debt that you owe the
master is, you remember the parable the Lord told about the two servants
that owed the master and he forgave the one and then that one servant
turned to his servant and held his feet to the fire. He didn't
wash his feet, he held his feet to the fire. Oh no. That servant ended up
being tormented by the prison keepers, which is what an unforgiving
spirit always does. An unforgiving spirit always
leaves you tormented by your own conscience, your own guilt,
your own shame, and the Holy Spirit. Forgive one another,
even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. Wash one another's
feet. Verily, verily, verse 16, I say
unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord, neither
is he that is sent greater than him that sent him. If you know
these things, happy are you if you do them. Happy are you if
you do them. Lord, where are you gonna get
this living water? She didn't know he was the living
water. She didn't know that he was the
river of life. She didn't know that he was that
stream, clear as crystal that flows from the Lamb and from
the throne of God. She didn't know it. You know, in John chapter 2,
the first miracle that our Lord performed was the changing of
water into wine at the wedding feast at Canaan. And he tells
the servants to take those six number of man, stone, picture
of our stony hearts, fill them to the brim. What were these
six water pots? They weren't water pots like
this. They were water pots like sinks or bathtubs. They had 20,
25 gallons. Scripture tells us how big they
were. And they would have been lined up. And when you came in
the door, after you got your feet washed, you would have dipped
your hands in the first one, dipped your hands in the second
one, dipped your hands in the third one, and you would have
gone down through all six water pots, washing your hands, ceremonially
trying to cleanse yourself before you participated in any kind
of religious activity. And the Lord told the servants,
fill them to the brim. And then He says to them, go
and draw out and take it to the governor of the feast. Now, in
the original language, the word to dip is the word baptizo. And if they were taking the water
out of these water pots that people have been washing their
hands in, the word baptizo would have been used. But the specific
word in John chapter two is draw, go draw out. And the only other
time that word is used in the New Testament is right here in
our text. The well is deep and you have
nothing to draw with. I don't believe those servants
got that water out of those filled water pots. I believe they got
it from the same place they got the water that they put in the
water pots. Those water pots were filled to the brim, representing
what the Lord Jesus would do in not destroying the law, but
fulfilling the law. He was going to meet all the
needs of the law. Every requirement will be fulfilled
by his perfect obedience. And then he told them, now go
get some more water. Draw it out of that inexhaustible
source in the well, the one that goes down to the aquifer, the
one where the rivers of life flow underneath the earth. That's
where you get the water from. And she says to him, he says
to her, go back with me, Tartex, and I'll finish this. Verse 12. Art thou greater than
our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof
himself, and his children, and his cattle?' 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 her,
Sir, give me this water that I thirst not, neither come hither
to draw." All the wells of this world that
we try to quench our thirst from, can never satisfy the needs of
the soul. Never. Doesn't matter what they are.
Doesn't matter if it's material things or religious things. Doesn't matter if it's intellectual
things or, it doesn't matter. Solomon said it like this. And
Solomon had tried wine, women, wealth, and wisdom. And by wisdom,
he's not talking about because he said, I sought wisdom and
ye too was vanity. He's not talking about the wisdom
of God. He's talking about the knowledge of the world. And he filled his
life with these things. And he came to one conclusion.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. And whoever drinks of that well
will thirst again. They'll never be content. They'll
never be satisfied. They'll always need more. Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verse
18 says, the eye can never see enough. The ear can never hear
enough. There's never enough. It's always
laboring, in that verse it talks about laboring to see more and
to hear more and to have more and to do more. The Lord's saying, none of those
things. You know, religion, we used to,
we were always looking for a new doctrine, a new teacher, a new
preacher, a new truth, a new idea. We gotta, you know, we
gotta figure out something. We were throwing away old stuff
and taking on new stuff all the time. Now, what's the Lord saying? If I give you to drink of this
water, and he is that water, you'll never thirst again. You
won't have to go to this well again. For out of your belly will flow
rivers of living water. Oh, you'll want to know more
of him but you want to know something in addition to him. We long to, Paul said, I've not
yet apprehended that which has apprehended me. I want to know
him more. I want to know more of the power
of his resurrection, more of the fellowship of his suffering.
I want to know more of Christ, but we're not looking for anything
other than Christ. We know that He is all, and He
is in all, and He is sufficient. Oh, we... I'll close with this. Turn with me to John chapter
7. I promise this will be it. John chapter 7. The Lord is in Jerusalem. The Feast of the Tabernacles,
which was one of the feasts that God gave Israel to celebrate
annually. It's also called the Feast of
Booths. And the Jewish people for seven days would build these
little makeshift huts out in their yard. And they would live
in those huts and eat in those huts and sleep in those huts
for a whole week. And at the end of that week,
there would be a great convocation where they would come together
and worship God. And they did it all in memory
of their time in the wilderness, the 40 years that they were in
the desert. And at the end, there was a great
procession. And they were rejoicing that
the Lord had brought them out of the wilderness into the promised
land. That's our salvation. Moses couldn't bring the children
of Israel into the promised land. Joshua had to do it. Moses had
to die on the other side of the Jordan. The law can't save, Christ
has to do it. And so this whole feast was a
celebration of that. And singing and worshiping, and
then in the last stage of the feast, on the last day of the
feast, everything would go silent. And the priest would take water
and pour it out on the fire. And the water would go up in
great smoke. And when the people saw the steam,
they would then begin to worship God again. And in that profound
moment of silence, the Lord Jesus is there. And
look what happens. Verse 37 of John chapter seven. In the last day, that great day
of the feast, Jesus stood and cried. He broke the silence of
that worshipful moment. No one would have done that.
And he cried with a loud voice, if any man thirst, let him come
and drink. He that believeth on me, as the
scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water. The Lord Jesus is the well that
the water was taken from. He's the river of life. He's
the river that flows clear as crystal. He says, believe on
me. Trust me. You won't have to go. Oh, where? We're constantly trying to quench
the thirst of our flesh with worldly wells, aren't we? And
with every one of them, we're left unsatisfied. We're left unsatisfied. And the
Lord reminds us again, I'm the only one that can satisfy you. Come unto me. All you that labor,
all you that are heavy laden, I'm meek and I'm lowly. Come
unto me. Take my yoke upon you. Find rest
for your souls. I'm the only one that can meet
that need. That's what the Lord is saying to the woman at the
well. Sir, how are you going to do it? This is how I'm going
to do it. I'm going to show you who I am.
And then I'm going to be the only one that in fact is able
to get the water out of that well. It's a whole lot deeper
than you think it is. But oh, what precious water it
is. And all of God's word says, you
that thirst, come. Come, drink freely, freely.