It's really been amazing to me
how parallel what we see in John's Gospel is to what Paul teaches
in the book to the Romans, in the letter to the Romans. It's
been very neat to see the doctrine taught by John and then the ministry
of Jesus as He reveals these truths. Then to see Paul talk
with the Christians of Rome and just really nail down the Gospel
of Grace. And so for those of you who are
not able to be with us on Wednesday nights, I really pray that you
would be able to go online when you have opportunity and listen
to those. This is, I think, week 29 in John and then I think we're
in week 24 in Romans. So we've been in these teachings
for about a good half a year now, a little over half a year.
And they've been a blessing to me. It's always a blessing to
me to be able to study and teach the Word, period, but especially
in John's writing. It's always been dear to my heart
as many of you know. I want to bring back some things
that I talked about last week in John chapter 4. As we see
the Gospel writer, the evangelist, when I say the evangelist John,
what we're talking about is John the apostle. When I say John
the Baptist, you know we're talking about John the Baptist. So sometimes
it gets confusing when you say John, John, John, John, John,
and nobody knows what we're talking about. But the evangelist here,
the gospel writer, he puts these things in specific order, divinely
orchestrated, so that we can see understand the contrast between
what he would say in one portion and then what he would say in
another portion. So I brought to attention last
week that we see that Jesus met with Nicodemus, the teacher of
Israel, the premier leader and ruler of the Jews, and then now
he moves to a place in Samaria, Sychar, an unnamed person who
is a woman who is nobody, who is unclean, and meets with her. And we see the differences. And
last week we saw the differences in who these two people were
and their relationship to how they responded to their conversation
with Jesus. It's something for us to consider
too as we move on, is that Jesus at the end of last week in chapter
four, he tells the Samaritan woman when she says, I guess
Messiah, when he comes will teach us all things. And he says, the
one of whom you speak, I am. I am. I am He. I am Messiah. And so that's where we'll pick
up today. I didn't really get a chance to finish that last week, so that's where
we'll pick up this morning. So let's look and just read.
Why don't we just read, let's see here. Starting in verse,
well, I lost my place here. 25. Verse 25. The woman said to Him, I know
that Messiah is coming. And John writes in that parenthetical,
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. Just then his disciples came
back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no
one said, what do you seek or why are you talking with her?
So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said
to the people, come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? They
went out of the town and were coming to him. Meanwhile, the
disciples were urging him, saying, Rabbi, eat. But he said to them,
I have food to eat that you do not know about. The disciples
said to one another, has anyone brought him something to eat?
And Jesus said, my food is to do the will of him who sent me
and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, Jesus says, there
are yet four months, then comes the harvest? Look, I tell you,
lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is
receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that
sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying
holds true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that
for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you
have entered into their labor." Let's stop there. Jesus closes
this discourse with the Samaritan woman and he says, I am he. I am the Messiah of whom you
speak. I am Messiah. He proclaims himself to be God. The one that has come from God.
Ironically, it's the very same profession that Nicodemus makes
in John chapter three. We know that you are come, that
you are from God for no one can do the things you do except God
be with them. But the problem is, is that Nicodemus was looking
for someone to come and sort of teach them. Nicodemus was
looking for someone to just sort of come and be from God. And Messiah for Nicodemus was
more than just a Savior. Messiah was a political figurehead.
For Nicodemus, Messiah was a symbol of the strength of Jerusalem,
of the strength of Israel. Messiah would have been their
king on earth, not their king in glory. But for the Samaritans,
who were ridiculed and who were hated because their religion
was flawed, their practices were out of sync with what Scripture
taught, they claimed to be the children of Jacob, but yet they
weren't necessarily walking the way that the Israelites told
them they should. And so when we get all of this
together, we think that, and historically we see that the
Samaritans, they believed that Messiah would come and clarify
a lot of things. The Messiah, when He came, He
would set the record straight as to who worshipped in the right
way. As to what true worshippers were. Isn't that the dialogue
that she had with Jesus? Riddle me this, our fathers say
this and you all say that. Who is right? Who worships in
the right way? Who worships in the right place?
I know I made the comment as sort of a joke. I said a lot
of times we think that what we need for worship, like heat or
chairs or whatever, we think it's necessary. It's not necessary
because our brothers and sisters across the world are trying to
stay alive while they worship. The martyrs and those who are
in other places and other regions are hostile to the church. They
don't care if they sit in the dirt. And I saw a couple of you
who said, well, just take all the chairs out and sit on the
floor. I'm like, no, my back hurts. We don't have to. Praise
the Lord, we don't have to. But the floor and those pews
we had, if they pinch you, it probably wouldn't be much of
a difference. But we don't have to, but it's not required that
we have chairs. It's not necessary for us to
worship the Lord. It's not necessary for me to have a Bible that will
last ten generations because it's got a good cover on it.
Have you ever had one of those paper Bibles and six months later
it's fallen off? So you get one that's a little
bit better. It's like buying a pair of cheap shoes from Walmart or buying
you a pair of decent shoes at a shoe store. It doesn't mean
you have to spend a lot of money on it, but there is a quality
to it. Is it necessary to have a quality Bible to be godly?
Is it necessary to have even the translation that I enjoy?
No. For the Lord showed me the doctrines of grace through a
very, very, very, very bad paraphrase of Scripture. And I studied it
for a year and taught from it the doctrines of grace. I was
called a Calvinist the first time, preaching out of the New
Living Translation. Of course, I would change the
errors as I preached, and I would rewrite it as I went. But listen,
God's Word, if it's there, it'll work. It'll show us. It'll teach
us. Well God's Word went to Nicodemus
and Nicodemus could not see. He could not see beyond his own
ideals. He could not see beyond his own
tradition of what he had been taught so long theologically.
And yet, the Samaritan woman was desperate to know the truth.
She knew that there was a difference. She knew that they were frowned
upon. And in all in all, she knew that the Jews really were
through whom salvation came. Jesus even says that. You know,
you worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation
is of the Jews. So when He tells her, or when
she says to Him, I guess Christ, Messiah, will tell us all things,
what she's done in her mind is resolved to the reality that
the only way her questions are going to be answered, the only
way she was going to be right before God, the only way she
was going to stand and worship correctly, is that if Messiah
just give her the answer. Now, I would like to say that
she had all understanding of her need for salvation and that
she had all the theological inferences down, but we know that through
this discourse she did not. She did not have all the intricacies
of the gospel, but she knew that the only hope that she had in
being right with the Lord is that what Messiah would tell
her. And then immediately, Jesus did something with her that He
did not do with Nicodemus. Nicodemus goes and pleads and
appeals and alludes to the writing of Moses. And Nicodemus goes,
you know, just as Moses raised up the serpent, so must the Son
of Man be raised. Nicodemus didn't get that. He
marveled over and over again. He marveled. As we'll see, the
disciples are marveling. As this woman marveled, I perceive
that you are a prophet. Jesus confesses to her He is
Messiah. Something that He never did to
Jews. Something that He never did in the presence of Israel.
He withheld that information because they should have been
able to see clearly. We learned last week that Jesus
purposely went this way, purposely waited at this well, purposely
knew that His disciples would go into town and get something
to eat while He waited so that He might find this sheep. So that He might reach into the
soul of this fallen, lost woman and bring her to faith. And that's
exactly what's happened there. But look at verse 27, so that's
where we closed last week, that's what we finished with last week.
Verse 27, just then His disciples came back. Now, of course we
can't say the time frame, but I'm willing to bet you that what
they did is they walked up and heard Him say, I am Messiah. I think that's what the Scripture's
teaching us here, is that they came back at the tail end of
this conversation. They're walking up, they're seeing
that he's talking with a woman from afar, and they're thinking,
what is going on here? And as they get up into earshot,
they hear him say, the one of whom you speak, I am. I'm he. And they're marveling. They're
baffled. They're confused. They're a little bit probably
taken back. Some of them. I mean, imagine
Peter. Peter's probably a little bit aggravated. Does Jesus not
know better? This is illegal. This is against
the law. This is something that according
to the Mishnah, according to the tradition of Jewish teaching,
that you could actually be condemned eternally for doing. That's how
deep and rooted the law of the Jews went. Not only did you just,
it was just improper. It wasn't just improper. And
I said last week, I didn't go into all the detail, but it was
even illegal for a man to speak to his own wife in public in
the presence of others. Because they felt like it was
a misapplication of time. It was a misrepresentation of
what he should be focusing on. He should not be giving time
in the marriage relationship in a public way. Don't sit here
and have conversations. If you're going to have conversations
as a man in first century, As a Jewish man, as a God-fearing
man, you needed to be having conversations about God with
other men, not with the women. And this was the pulse of the
misogynistic ideals of first century Judaism. And you know
what? None of that's really changed
in a lot of places. I mean, of course, in America we have a
lot of different things, but in other countries, especially
Muslim countries, it's not changed. It's still the same mentality.
It's still the same ideal. It's still the same piety in
their minds that they should just maintain their patriarchal
society and not allow women to learn the word of God. And that's
really what the Jews felt. And you might not believe me
on that, but if you just look it up, go into some archives, go to
some of these Jewish websites, it'll show you very clearly that
it was against the law. Now what's weird about that is
when did God ever command such things? When did God ever command
not to eat out of the field on the Sabbath? When did God ever
command these things? And we'll see that Jesus breaks
the paradigms of the traditions of Israel. He violates what they
thought was the law, but He then shows them that they were mistaken.
But these people marveled. They marveled. See, at the very
time He was finishing, the disciples came back. Just like Jesus meeting
her there at the specific time. Just like Jesus meeting with
Nathanael and finding the disciples at the exact specific time. Just like the Scripture teaches
us that Jesus could see Nathanael. Just like the Scripture teaches
us that Jesus knew what was in the heart of men. Just like Jesus
knew what was in the heart of Nicodemus and knew exactly what
to say to him because he knew what he thought and believed
about everything. Just like Jesus knew sovereignly and supernaturally
and divinely that this woman's thirst carried itself into lucidiousness
and sexual immorality. She never confessed that. He'd
not gone into Sychar and inquired of her. He knew her. And he knows
us. He knows each and every one of
us. And he knows each and every one of us in the depths of areas
that we don't even know of ourselves. He knows the weakness of our
faith. He knows the nuances of how we believe. He knows the
errors in our doctrine and our theology. And believe it or not,
beloved, we have them. We have errors that we've yet
to realize are errors. It may not be in what we know
and can see and say, okay, this is true. It may be in the implication
of how far we take the truth that we've been given. It may
be in the grasp of how we're to worship out of the truth that
we've been given. So Jesus is God, now what? You
see? Because in our humanity, we're
always going to be striving, sometimes in the wrong direction,
thinking that we have it. and have been able, just like
the Samaritan woman who worshipped in the way that she was taught
and went to the place where she was taught and dressed in the
way that she was taught in the context of her worship. But yet
she knew she wasn't received in that community. She was hiding
from the very people who scoffed at her. She knew what they really
thought because she knew her heart and she knew that she was
not pure. But yet everything that she strived to do tried
to make herself pure. Jesus, as a true worshipper,
worships in spirit and truth, not here or there. Not in this
way or that way, but in spirit and in truth. And so now this
sovereign and divine appointment, Jesus perfectly, listen to this,
perfectly narrates this discourse and dialogues with this woman,
timing it absolutely, absolutely perfectly at their return. to be finished. He's done. He's
not going to talk in front of them. He's not going to give
them time to interject or for Peter to stick his foot in his
mouth. He's not going to give time for Judas Iscariot to figure
out how he can make a dollar off of it. I mean, you know,
He has done it in such a way that when they come, He is done. Now this may not be something
that jumps out at you. But the reason the Gospel writer
puts it, just then His disciples came back, is so that we can
see that this has been uninterrupted and that we can understand that
Jesus is God. We can see it in the details.
We can see it in the discourse. We can know that every single
situation, every single element of the circumstance, listen to
this, Jesus orchestrated. Down to the timing, down to the
wording, down to the second. Now I want you to think about
that for a minute. Remember what I just said sometimes? What we
know in doctrine, we don't really know how to apply it. We just
do things erroneously sometimes. What should that do for us? I
tell you, it should do something for us when we hear the words
of Jesus, as my wife reminded me this morning, to not be anxious
about anything. Easy to say, difficult to do.
But you know who it's not difficult for? Jesus. If Jesus can time
the footsteps of a motley crew of 12 coming back with some subway
from Sycar, If He can time His walking, and His talking, and
His preaching, and His movement. If He can time His movement,
like we'll see in John 11, so that Nazareth had been dead exactly
four days. If He can time those things,
can He not time the universe around our circumstances? Can
He not manage the smallest minutia of life? Yes, He can. And if
you don't want to trust Him in that way, that's on you. It's
not because it's not true. It's because you don't want to
believe. And the only way that you will believe that is if the
Lord shows that to you through text like this. That's why I
like to go slower in preaching because sometimes, and I almost
missed it, sometimes we'll just... I was going to say this last
week, but I didn't get finished. I almost forgot to go back. See,
that's important. It's important. No, it's not
this deep. Triates, it's not like John 1,
but it's shown there in John 1. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was God, and the Word was with God. All things
exist through Him. Time is not our enemy. It is a created thing by God. Now, our faces, our wrinkles,
our bodies, everything in between, might disagree with that. But
God has orchestrated it all. God has orchestrated it all,
and that's what it means to be sovereign. Do you understand?
I won't tell you who, but there's a famous theologian that says
that God's sovereignty is an exercise of His supremacy. That
means that where God sits supreme, that means He's the greatest
thing. Supreme means tacos in our culture, a supreme taco,
supreme Diet Coke. No, supreme is the largest, the
premier, the top of all. God is supreme. And the exercise
of His supremacy is His sovereignty. That means because He is the
top dog, He is the top being, He is the top king, He is the
top God, He is the Lord of lords, king of kings, God of gods. That's why they say those things.
Because if there is any other God, He's the God of them. If
there's any other Lord, He's the Lord of them. If there's
any other king, He's the king of them, of those. Get my grammar
correct. His sovereignty is that He does
as He wishes. Isn't that what we read today
in Isaiah? Isn't that what God did with
Philemon as Brother Jesse read? Onesimus escapes as a slave and
runs for his life. And then God divinely meets him
up with Paul. And Paul becomes a spiritual
father because he proclaimed the Gospel. Now all of a sudden
Onesimus is a brother to Philemon, is a brother to Paul. And for
the sake of the joy of Christ, I pray that you may be active
fully in sharing your faith, that you may have a full understanding
of all things for the sake of Christ. That's verse 6. And that's a real fitting verse
for this text this morning. Because Jesus Christ rules it
all. Beloved, that means the bad too. That means the bad too. I don't know if you take note
of the... I don't really look at a lot
of world news and political news and stuff. I find it out through
a lot of people. But I do look at a lot of news
and christened them. I do look at a lot of evangelical
news and Catholic news and all sorts of things. And the Pope
is decreeing he's going to change the text of the Lord's Prayer.
Lead us not into temptation, he wants to take out because
God does not ever lead us into anything that could cause us
harm. That's his words. And then I really appreciated
the Christianity Today or the National whatever, you know,
church times or whoever it was that was sort of fussing with
Francis on this, on a blog post or an article in the paper actually.
And he says, but we know that that's not correct. He shouldn't
be doing that. He shouldn't be doing that. Because God does
lead us into temptation sometimes. Even though James says he doesn't
tempt us, the devil tempts us. But God does lead us into temptation.
And here's his reasoning. Here's his reasoning. This is
a little side note. But you'll get a kick out of it. Maybe.
You might. You might get sick of your stomach. He says, God
leads us into temptation to see who we really are. Because He
wants to know what's inside of us. And He'll see how we react,
and then He'll know what character we have. Is that the God of the
Bible? No, that's not the God of the
Bible. That's the strangest thing I've ever heard. But see what
happens when we exit ourselves out of biblical authority? We
just get up here and talk? I mean, I could talk a lot about
Jesus being divinely in power. I've read a lot of Marvel comics. Like Magneto, he can lift stuff.
He can lift a rock too big for him to lift. Silly stuff. Maybe
he's like Spider-Man. He can sense things when they're
wrong. I mean, this is just silly, but that's what we do when we
have a caricature of who Christ is. Christ is God. Christ is God. And it should
change the way we live. It should change the way we think.
It should change the way we speak. It should change the way we interact
and the way we worship and the way we deal with life. It should
change the way we look at the world. Yes, there are some heinous things,
there are some horrible things that we see on the landscape.
Every day we see horror. We see death, and torment, and
hatred, and bigotry, and bullies, misconduct, and greed, and all
sorts of stuff. Everywhere we look, we see these
things all over the place and we say, Lord, come quickly. And
we've gotten into a place in our society as Christians that
we have so put away the teaching of the Scripture as it was intended
to be read and learned, that we've lost sight of the sovereignty
of God. That Jesus is a good Savior.
Oh mighty come save us out of the devil's work. This is the
Lord's work. When Babylon came in and took
Israel captive, God says Himself, I send these people to take you
into slavery as a rod of correction. God put His people in slavery. Time after time after time. Here they are. They've been walking
with Jesus for a while now. and they see him talking with
a woman, and that just cuts the cake. Look at verse 27, or the
latter part of that. They marveled. What were they
marveling at? Not even that he just said, I
am the Messiah. Maybe they didn't hear him. And
they heard him talking either way. But what did they marvel
at? That he was talking with a woman.
They marveled. See, as I've already said, the
traditions of Judaism prohibited a man to speak with a woman in
public. But see, what we see in the text of Scripture is that
Jesus never obeyed the legal expression of the cultural mandate
of the law. In other words, He didn't follow
suit by what everybody thought obedience looked like. He didn't
follow suit and say, OK, you know, this is what I'll do because
I'm sort of going to fit in with what people think. And he did
not disobey the law either. See, some people say, well, he
didn't obey that law. No, he obeyed the law. When Jesus
spoke to this woman, he obeyed God. And God did not give him
the call, the command to go speak with this woman in contrast to
the law that said not to speak with this woman. God doesn't
do that. God doesn't make exceptions to
His righteousness and to His holiness and to His commands.
It's this way or no way. This is the way God wants us
to know. So you see how easy it is for us to get mixed up?
See how easy it is for us? Because you might think, well,
these silly disciples. Friends, we marvel at Jesus too. We marvel at Him too. We go,
what was He thinking? What was He saying? Listen, when
you read John 6, which is where I believe the tulip of Calvinism
actually came from when they responded to the remonstrance
of Arminius. I believe that it came straight
from John 6. When you read John 6 in context,
And you've never read that before. You go, whoa, what version of
the Bible is this? And you'll dig three or four
different ones out just to see if maybe you had one of the cult
versions. You know, is this a cult Bible? Is this like the Satanist
Bible? You know, is this a Jehovah's
Witness Bible? And you'll go and you'll dig. And you'll find,
oh my goodness, even the cult Bibles have this. Even the New
World Translation has this. Even the message has this. Maybe I didn't know Jesus as
well as I thought I did. The disciples surely didn't.
They marveled. What Jesus did was always obedient. You hear that? What Jesus did
was always obedient. He never skirted the law. He
never went to the gray area. What is the old saying? If it's
almost right, it's wrong. We don't get to decide what is
right and wrong. God has decided what is right and wrong. And
Jesus always did what was right. And when they saw Him doing what
was right, which in their minds was wrong, they marveled. They
marveled. They were blown away. What does
that show us? Knowing that Christ is God, knowing
that He's supreme, knowing that He exercises that supremacy with
His sovereignty, and knowing that He was talking with a woman
which was a violation of their very law and the way of life,
what do we know about Jesus in relationship to the way we think
about Him? That we don't know, did we? That's what it means. It means that we have no idea
the depths of the mind of the Lord. Well, don't take my word
for it, take the Lord's word for it. For my thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord,
Isaiah 55. For as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my
thoughts higher than your thoughts. Just like in Mark chapter 2 when
Jesus was out in the fields and He was what? He was gathering
up food out of the field to feed his disciples on the Sabbath.
And the Pharisees come to him and they say, what are you doing?
You're violating the Sabbath. Who gives you the right to work
like this on the Sabbath? And Jesus says, the Sabbath was
made for man, not man for the Sabbath. I don't have time to preach that
this morning, but it goes to show you that we don't understand
fully, even though we can know the mind of Christ and the mind
of God as it's revealed to us in Scripture, there are things,
even in our flesh, that we will misunderstand. So we must look
at it from this point of view. But no one said anything, did
they? I mean, not even Peter. Peter didn't go up there. And
you know, Peter was notorious, as we'll see later, for taking
Jesus to the side and going, you know what, teacher? But he
had not gotten the guts to do that yet. He had not built up
the arrogance to be able to tell Jesus, hey man, what are you
doing? You know you're going to ruin
us? You're going to get us in trouble? Like talking to the
woman is really what's going to cause her trouble. They'd
already tried to kill Jesus three times. They'd already started
to hate Him. You'll see very quickly by the
time it gets to chapter 10 and 11, they'd already plotted, they've
got to get rid of this man, but they have no real evidence and
no real motivation. But when Lazarus comes back to
life, they're like, that's it, we're done, he's got to go. They
marveled, but no one said anything. No one said, what are you looking
for? What do you see, Jesus? What are you trying to accomplish
here? You see that? They wanted to know, but they
did not say a word. No one said, why are you talking
with her? They kept quiet and they observed it. You know what
we can learn from that? We can take our cues by observing
Christ. We can take our cues by reading the Bible, reading
the Word of God, and observing the work of the Lord. We don't
have to have a list in the back of our Bible, this is how you
live today. One, get up on time. Two, brush
your teeth. Three, pray as you do it. I mean,
Paul already said pray without ceasing. Scriptures already say
do all things for the glory of Christ. Whatever you eat, whatever
you drink, whatever you say, wherever you go. Jesus already
said the new commandment that I give you. But it's an old commandment. To love the Lord your God, to
love your neighbor as yourself. These are the two that matter. These
are the two on which everything hinges. These are the commandments
of God. These things haven't changed. But we want to know
how it looks? Then we need to look at Christ. How do we look
at Christ? We look at the Scripture. We look at the Scripture and
the Gospels. That's why the Gospels are written
to us, so that we may know who Jesus is, and we may know that
He is God, and we may know that He is the Son of God, and we
may know that through His name and believing in His work and
in His ministry, not only will we observe how God says that
obedience looks, but we will also know that Christ is our
only righteousness, and we will have eternal life. Jesus is the Son of God. The
fullness of deity is pleased to dwell in Him. He is the truth.
He is the life. He is the way to the Father.
He is our aim, our focus, our head. And we do not question
Him. We don't question Him. Because
you know how people question Jesus? They question Paul. I can't remember
who I was talking to this week, but somebody called me and was
telling me about how somebody just didn't believe in the words
of Paul. That Paul was just off base. That's a terrible thing
to say when he is where we get most of our soteriology from,
isn't it? It's terrible. But that's how
we do it. We don't like that Jesus that
Paul teaches, so we're going to get rid of Paul. One of my
mentors back in Cali told me one time, when you're preaching,
And you've got something really polarizing you need to pull out
of the text. He said, put it on John and put it on Paul. Don't
put it on Jesus or they'll put it on you. So you quote Paul, you quote
John before you quote Jesus. Because when you quote Jesus
from the pulpit, they're not going to blame Jesus, they're going
to blame you for the error. You see? And it was wise. Let's see, what is John? Is John
wrong? You see, we know that even what John said is the Word
of God. We know that what Paul said is the Word of God. It is
God speaking through them. We understand that. See, we don't
question Scripture, do we? Because when we do, we question
Jesus. When we question Scripture, we
question God directly. We don't ask why, and we don't
say why not. Nicodemus marveled at Jesus'
teaching, for it shattered his entire theological sphere. The
ruler of the Jews, the teacher of all Israel, was in the same
place as this woman from Sychar, trusting in His works, trusting
in His misunderstanding of Scripture, trusting in His religion, and
trusting in everything but Jesus Christ. And now this no-named
woman becomes the example of grace upon grace upon grace,
and Jesus says, I am He. What happens then? In verse 28
we see what happens. What's the outcome of this? See,
in my days of early ministry, the outcome is, let's gather
all the decision cards up and let's count them. And let's put
it out for publication. You don't know what those are?
The little cards that when you come down the aisle, or when
you raise your hand, or when you pray the prayer, or when
you do some action to prove your intention, We write your name
down and we count it, one, two, you're not important as a face
or a being or a person, you're important as a collective whole.
I mean, how many of you have been a part of that? I'll never forget 2001 when we
were at the church that we were at, one, one, I say one because
that's what it felt like, we won, led the entire state in
baptisms, 300 baptisms that year. Lot of water. Lot of wet people. And we felt good about it. We
felt, there's the outcome. There's the ministry success
that we've been looking for. You know what that does? It's like
in other places of the country, other places that I've served
and other people that I've served with. And when I say served with,
I mean, I've, I made these decisions too. It wasn't like I was a pawn.
I did these things. And we would go, and when we'd
start to see numbers, when we'd start to see large numbers of
salvations, large numbers of baptisms, large numbers of the
real tricky one, rededications. You know, because Lord help if
someone comes and says, I am convicted of my sin, I need salvation.
Why don't we take that away and say, no, no, no, you don't. You
remember? You remember that prayer you
prayed? That saved you. It didn't save you. The prayer
we pray doesn't save us. Jesus saves us. So, I mean, of
course we pray, but it's not our words, it's not our prayer,
it's not our commitment, it's not our decision, it's not us
letting Jesus have our life. What does that look like? If
that's true, then what we just very read this morning was wrong.
Because a Samaritan woman didn't give her life to Jesus. Paul
didn't give his life to Jesus. We sang a song this morning about,
take my life and do with it as you please. What is that? the commitment that we have is
irrelevant to our salvation. It's God's commitment to us through
the work of Jesus Christ that saves us. But as you start to
become a ministry that has all of this visual representation
of growth, the world at large and the larger beast of a convention
or a denomination or partner churches, they begin to look
at you and go, oh wait, why are they growing? Why are they doing
things? We want to know what they're
doing. And so then what you end up becoming is you becoming a
teacher of teachers and a pastor of pastors. And you get put on
a stage with a bunch of people and you tell them exactly what
you've been doing. And you know what is crazy? They
go home and do it and it does the exact same thing. It builds
numbers. More and more numbers. But yet
Jesus' ministry was very underwhelming in that context, wasn't it? Goes
to Israel, and he's in Jerusalem. Nobody believes. Nobody believes. Goes to Sychar, this woman. He meets with her. In John 6,
when he's going over to Capernaum, he's talking to, what, 5,000
men, plus their women and children.
He just fed them miraculously, and he goes across the sea to
Capernaum, and he's talking to them. And he's preaching to them. And he preaches the gospel of
grace to them. He does. My body, my blood for you. You're full, you're satisfied.
It's all you need. It's what life really comes.
I am the bread that comes down from heaven and every single
one of them leave. All of them. The Bible says the
entire totality of the mass walks away, for they could not endure
the teaching. And the Jews there said He was
crazy. I mean, imagine. Let's just say 5,000 people.
Let's just put it in perspective. Let's put all the chairs in the
building now. It's 175. And let's say that there's two
people in every chair. We're cozy. And I get through
starting off my sermon, I do a five minute introduction, and
I pray, and I open my eyes, and nobody's in here. Just one of
two things, rapture, or y'all just didn't want to hear what
I had to say. You can't be raptured out of this one though, it's
got two stories. Hit your head on the way out. And the only thing that's left
is to say, just me and Jesse, just standing here, not wanting
the world. Jesus turned to His disciples. They were the only
ones there. And they go, are you leaving also? And what does
Peter say? Where shall we go? For you have
the words of eternal life. And don't praise Peter. Because
he tried to convince Jesus there was another way than the way
of the Lord. Here's the result of Jesus' ministry.
Verse 28. The woman left her jar and went
away to the town. That's the result. A jar that was necessary. I don't
want to spiritualize this because it's not like John 2 at the wedding. Those jars had spiritual significance
because of what they were. Jars for purification. This is
just a drinking jar. She could have left it there
so Jesus could get a drink. Or she could have left it there
because she didn't care anymore about the water she was looking for
because she found the water that she needed. That's what I think. It's like having your purse and
finding Jesus and dumping your purse out and going, whoo, we
got to go and tell somebody, I found Jesus. Isn't that much
in line with what Jesus says about the treasure, about the
pearl, about the kingdom of heaven? The kingdom of heaven is like
a treasure hidden in a field and a man finds the treasure
and he covers it up and with joy he goes and sells everything
that he has that he may buy the field. Why? Because if he doesn't
own the field, he can't have what's in it. That's the treasure. That's what heaven is like. How
about the pearl of great price where the man just shucks an
oyster and shucks an oyster and shucks an oyster. Well, I don't
know what you call it. I guess that's where they come
from. Pearls. And he just keeps on splitting them open until
he finds the pearl of great price. He continues to fish. He continues
to dip the nets. He continues to labor until he
finds the pearl of great price. And then he rejoices. and this
woman left her water jug. She needed water. She was at
that well because she did not want to face the town's women
because of her reputation, because of her sin. She didn't want to
deal with it. She was ostracized already. Now
the very people she hid herself from, she leaves her intended
duty and she goes to proclaim to them the gospel. I've met
a man. I've met a man. And not only that, she says,
come see. It's very prophetic in the Gospels.
Come see. I have met a man who told me
everything that I've ever done. What has happened here? See a
man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?"
So they went out of the town and were coming to Him. Christ. Oh how I pray God would give
a hunger for Christ in this community. Oh how I pray, just as Brother
Jesse prayed, that God would give us a hunger for His Word.
These people left their businesses, these people left their work,
these people left their lives at that moment and walked to
see if this was Christ. The Spirit of God gives hunger
for Christ. Come see a man who told me all
that I ever did. Did Jesus tell her all that she
ever did? Jesus said, you are a shack up, sweetheart. And you
have had your fill of relationships. and five failed marriages, or
widowed, it doesn't matter. Either way, that's all he told
her. He also told her that she didn't
know God. He also told her that she didn't know how to worship.
He also told her that she did not know anything if it wasn't
in truth and spirit. So that she resolved that everything
she'd ever done was worthless. and everything that she ever
did was worthy of condemnation. But the very one to whom she
spoke was the only one who could save her from that condemnation. The outcome of this woman's heart
then was not to give a testimony of how clean she was. I want
you to hear this. It was not to give a testimony
of the forgiveness that she received even, was it? That's not her
testimony. Her testimony is, behold the
Christ. Her testimony is, behold the
Lamb. Her testimony is, I must decrease that He may increase.
The same thing John the Baptist. Her testimony is, look at Jesus!
Come see Him now! She didn't give a theological
treatise. She didn't go through the conversation that she had
with this man. She didn't go through all the trauma of the
last 40 years of her life and talk about how now she found
peace. That stuff didn't matter to her. It wasn't about her.
It was about him. That's what ministry is. That's
what the church is for. That's what the Word of God is
supposed to do. And that's my role for you this morning is
to point you to Christ so that we get our personal, selfish,
intrinsic minds off of ourselves and put it on Jesus. Why? Because
it is only there that life is found. It is only in Him that
we can have hope. It is only in Him that we have
the celebration of joy that surpasses all understanding. This is where
life is. This is what Jesus means when
He says we live the abundant life now. It has nothing to do
with the temporal manifestations of our materialism. It has nothing
to do with the worldliness that we live in and how well things
go. It has nothing to do with our
health or our prosperity. It has everything to do with
the unfathomable joy that comes from knowing Christ as Jesus
who is God. That's what it means. And it makes a terrible therapist. Because there's no room. I met with a therapist for a
long time after my depression. Not during my depression, after
my depression. When I say a long time, I mean
I went many, many, many weeks to hear this man talk about why
I felt the way I felt. And you know why? Because I was
afraid I was going to be depressed again. And he just said something one
day, and I cut him off, shook his hand, and walked out. Just
walked out. That was pretty cool. That was
like a train come by. That was great. What was I talking
about? Oh, this Christian counselor guy. Before all of that, what God
did to show me the way out is Hebrews 1. God at many times in many ways
has spoke to us through the prophets. But in these last days He speaks
to us through His Son, who is the heir of all things. And we
could add in that entire first chapter, He's the first to last,
He is the beginning, He is the end. He is the exact imprint
of the nature of God and He has finished the work of redemption
and has sat down by the right side of the Father. There is
nothing else that I need but Christ. There's nothing else
you need but Christ. You don't need anything. You don't need I'm not saying
that might not be beneficial, but you don't need anything but
Christ. And you know what's not in these passages? Me. Christ is here. Christ is exalted
through the pages here. James is not. This is James.
John is not. John didn't even write his name
to this Gospel. You know why? because he did
not want the fame of his intimacy with Jesus to persuade people
to gather around this writing. So what do we do? Come and see
this man. Could he be the Christ? We point
people to Christ. That is the testimony of a new
life. That is a testimony of regeneration. That is the testimony of conversion.
I need to be careful of those words too because we all pile
our own meaning in it. What is the fruit? What is the
fruit? It is faith in Jesus and proclamation
of that faith. That is the first and most important
thing. There are a lot of other things
God is doing and commands us in the Scripture as we traverse
this life as the church. There are a lot of things that
we're told to do and empowered to do, and those will all be
done in imperfection. But we strive to know those things
because we know Christ intimately. And because we know Christ intimately,
we want and desire to walk in this manner. But ultimately, it goes to The
Gospel that saves. Grace upon grace upon grace. Jesus did not have to reveal
Himself to them. And Jesus did not have to reveal Himself to
us. But He did. Let us celebrate that. But what
happens? What happens now that the disciples
see this new life taking place, this transformation, this spiritual
rebirth going on in the life of this Samaritan people? who
now the first Samaritan evangelist is about to get a bigger reward
in the sense of the fruit of her harvest than any Jew has
ever seen. The town's going to come out
and see Jesus. Now, did they all get converted?
We don't know. That's God's business. We just know that the Scripture
teaches that they all came to see. Much like an old pastor
told me back when I was in high school one time, if you really
want to draw a crowd, just set the pulpit on fire. They'll come
to watch you burn. Now, I think he meant that in a metaphorical
way, but I took it literally for a long time. But what did the disciples do?
They didn't see what was happening and go, wow, look at Jesus, man,
He's reaching out to the Samaritan. They were marveled that He was
talking to a woman, marveled that He was talking to the Samaritan,
marveled. I would have loved it if the text said that He gulped
out of her jar. I mean, I would have loved it.
Because that would be like drinking after a Samaritan woman. That's gross to them. But what do they do? They do
the very thing that we all do, especially as Baptists. Let's
eat, y'all. Let's eat. Let's just get some food. You
know, we want to get some food. And so to appease the situation,
what happens? Hey, teacher, why don't you eat? Because after all, didn't Jesus
send them into town to get food? Now had He lost His appetite?
No. Was He still thirsty? Yes. This woman topped His head
off and never gave Him any water. But it wasn't the point of His
interaction with her. It was to show her He is the
gift of God. He is the living water. He is
the spring of life that wells up to eternal life. So the disciples
do what the flesh does. Oh, let's eat! Let's just eat,
okay? It pacifies our flesh. We're
okay. Was there anything wrong with eating? No, they were hungry.
Anything wrong with going to get food? No, Jesus sent them
to do that, I believe. But He answers them in quintessential
Jesus mode, right? This is where we marvel. He says,
I have food that you know not of. Now, if you this side of eternity,
this side of the cross rather, we can look at that and go, now
see Jesus was being a little spiritual. He was talking, sort
of tongue-in-cheek. He was trying to trip them up
a little bit and teach them something. We know that they didn't, because
they asked who gave them food. And imagine they probably thought,
that woman has given our teacher food. That nasty woman. He's
going to eat Samaritan food. Probably came from their devilish
temple. We're going to have to leave
the whole country and start a ministry someplace else. Jesus has ruined
his reputation. Talking with her, drinking after
her, eating her food. I mean, so they're like, let's just get
to the point of why we came to this town to begin with, which
was to get us some food on our journey. Isn't that why they
came? Isn't that the way we live every day of our lives? We've
got to go get gas, we've got to go get groceries, we've got
to go get kids, we've got to go get this, we've got to go
get that, we've got to go do this, we've got to go do that. Every
now and then we might go do something for pleasure. Man, let's go see
this, or let's go see that, or let's go to the park, or let's
go to the playground, or let's go on a trip. But even when you're
there, you're working. You've got to go get this, you've
got to go do that, you've got to go pay for this, you've got to go buy that.
So you're never away from the beauties of life. You're always
doing something, and it's enough to drive you insane. You can't
even go stand outside in the summer in Georgia and just do
nothing, because you've got to go buy re-insect repellent, you've
got to go do that. You know, you can't just go outside.
You'll die. You've got to have the right
kind of clothes, you've got to have the right kind of shades, you've got to get skin cancer,
you've got to have the big app. And when you get inside, you've got to
spend two, three days getting cleaned up. These disciples are
like, we came here, Jesus, for food, and here you are, messing
everything up, talking to this woman, and you know that's what
they were thinking. And now you say you've got some different
food that we don't know where it came from. It could be poisonous. Peter's like, I'll eat it! And
Judas is like, go ahead. I'll taste it. So they say, has anyone brought
us something to eat? And Jesus says to them. Now get
this, they say to one another, and Jesus says to them, My food. He's answering them. They're
like, what kind of food is He talking about? He says, My food
is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His
work. See, I'm all in John 6 now in
my head. It's just all there. What is it that we must be doing
to do the work of God? This is the work of God that
you believe on the Son that He has sent. What does food do for us? It
gives us sustenance. What does food do for us? It gives us energy.
What is sustenance? Energy, nutrition, things to
make our body work and our mind work and to stay healthy and
to function and to do all the errands that we so happily troll
along to do every day. the labor of our jobs and our
working, maintaining things that continually fall apart. And we
think that that's the point of life, right? We think the point
of life is just to work, work, work, work, work, work, work,
rest for a second. Now we've got to go work, work,
work. You ever been on vacation and needed a vacation afterward?
Yeah. It's not relaxing. It's a different
type of work. Different type of labor. Different
type of stuff. Trying to satisfy our flesh. Jesus is saying, listen,
The point of life is we didn't come here to get food for our
bodies. I came here to be the food for this woman. I came here
to be sustained by the work of the Father who sent me to reach
into her soul and to bring her alive. To snatch her out of the
domain of darkness and transfer her into my kingdom. That's why
I came. And beloved, let me tell you
something. That is why we are here. That is why we leave this
place. So that as we're working, as
we're going, as we're living, as we're fighting, as we're laboring,
as we're at war, we are in those places for the sake of proclaiming,
come see Christ. And if it's five minutes a day,
it's five minutes a day. Because Lord knows the Bible
also teaches us to work as unto the Lord when we work for our
boss. We have to work. But at the same
time, we live, we act, we speak in a manner that shows the difference
in our soul. Not because of what we are, but
because of who Christ is in us. And the engagement that God orchestrates
divinely is an opportunity for us then to share the faith. And for some of us, it could
become deep theological discussions. And for others, it could be something
very simple. Like Jesus Christ is the Lamb
of God that takes away the sins of the world. In Deuteronomy 8.3 it says, And
He humbled you, and let you hunger, and fed you with manna, God speaking
about the Jews in the wilderness, which you did not know, nor did
your fathers know. Why did God feed them manna? Why did He make them hungry?
That He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone,
But man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Jesus received His greater sustenance
from doing the will of God and seeing God do the works of God.
Speaking to this woman about living water is the best use
of His time. It gave Him the best source of feeling, the best
source of joy, the best source of satisfaction, which caused
Him to forsake His physical hunger. I remember a good brother of
mine in the Lord that taught me a lot in my early years of ministry.
He said one of the dirtiest and evil things he ever saw was the
day after he was converted on a Saturday night in his dorm
room in college by reading the Bible. And he woke up everybody
in the dorm the next morning after he had not slept all night.
They, of course, stayed up late. And he told them all they were
going to church with him, and they found the nearest church, and
they sat on the front row. He tells the story. Kids, I can't
believe the front row is available. Just a miracle. And he said he was just sitting
there, and he was just enthralled. This man was teaching the scripture.
And he said one of the most evil things he ever saw. He just couldn't
believe if he was this excited about his first day in church,
how much more would the people behind him just be hanging out
of their chairs? And he says he looked back, and
half of them were asleep. And he said he saw one of the
most evil things he's ever seen. And if you know this man, he's
very animated. He's very large, and he's very in charge. He probably
said something publicly there, but he doesn't admit it. Sometimes
we care more about our stomachs, our looks, our situations, our
circumstances. We care more about what we've
got to do and what we need in our flesh
than we do about the Lord Jesus. Now friends, let me give you
a way out of that. This is for our instruction,
not for us to stand here all guilty. You hear me? Guilt doesn't motivate us. Love
motivates us. Christ met with this woman because
He loved her. Christ divinely appointed before
the world began to sit on that well and to meet with this woman
and to teach His disciples that there's more things important
in life than getting food. And that's not even what the story's
about. The story's about the work of God, as you'll see. Successful Christian life is
one lived by faith. A successful Christian ministry is one lived
sharing the faith, which is the Word of God. Jesus
taught them this so they would see that they still looked through
fleshly eyes at everything, at their ministry, at their learning,
at the teaching, at evangelism, but Jesus taught us that it's about the
Word of God. He spoke the Word of God. He is the Word of God.
And we should not tangle ourselves up with trying to do something
else to reach a people. We don't need flash. We don't need fame. We don't
need a keyboard. We don't need a singer. We don't
need anything in the community. We don't need it. We need the
Word of God. You don't need anything. You
don't even need full understanding of what's all in here. If you
can read the English, you can get it out. Share the Word of
God. But friends, I'll say what I've
always said. We can't share what we don't own. We can't give what
we don't have. And we can't expect God to use
us when we're not disciplined to desire it ourselves. May the
Lord's Spirit bring us to that place. But look at this next
few verses in closing. Do you not say? There are four
yet four months, then comes the harvest. Now this is commentators
are so funny. Well, let's see what date this
was. No, that's not the point. You plant something four months
later, you harvest it. OK, Jesus wasn't talking about
in four months. This isn't an eschatological
discussion. This is an illustration from
an agrarian society. Look, I tell you, lift up your
eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already
the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for
eternal life, so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together.
For here the saying holds true, a little proverb, one sows and
another weeps. I sent you to reap for that which you do not
labor, and others have labored, and you have entered into their
labor. So here is the out. Don't sit here and feel guilty.
Man, I'm a terrible Christian. You're not a terrible Christian. You're
the Christian that God's called you to be right now. And right now, whether you're
a fantastic evangelizer or a not-so-fantastic evangelizer, God has purposed
for you to hear the Word, and to be encouraged, and to be blessed,
and to be empowered, to see the Lord change you, and to see the
Lord encourage you. See, here in verses 35 through
38, Jesus reminds the disciples of the timing structure of a
harvest. People plant and water and fertilize, and then in about
four months, there's a harvest. Jesus is saying that the field
right now is almost ready for harvest. It's full. It's like
a cotton field. It's not white until it's ready.
And when it's fully ready, it looks like a blanket of snow.
And so that's the image that we see there. Or maybe it was
wheat, and wheat does sort of have white tusks and different
things like that. But he says the harvest is ready now. There's
no need to wait. We're not sitting here planting
seeds, disciples. He's like, we're not planting
these, we're reaping. Now we may plant some seeds,
but we're reaping the seeds that have already been there. Evidenced
by the faith of the Samaritans that we're about to see next
week. See, the reaper and the harvester, the reaper is paid
for what he does. He comes in and he starts taking
in the harvest. He's paid for what he does. He didn't plant
it. He receives the food for the work, the food for the labor. Jesus is receiving the food for
the labor. And the disciples are going to
receive the food for the labor. The food is the souls of men. Peter and them, fishers of men,
Jesus says, I'm going to make you fishers of men. You're fishing
for fish that you eat and waste out. You're laboring for bread that
perishes, Jesus would say in John 6. Don't do that. Labor
for the bread that endures eternal life. You're laboring, you're
longing, you're coming out here in weird hours to a weird place,
lady from Sychar, because you're looking for the water that doesn't
quench your thirst. Let me show you the water that
quenches your thirst forever. And the sower and the reaper
rejoice together. Verse 37, this proverb that Jesus
says, one sows and another reaps. This is to show that the work
of God is what is happening here. And that many of us are to continue
sowing the seed of the Word, being fed by the bread of the
labor, which is the bread of life, the Scripture. We get to
enjoy then, verse 38, what we did not plant. Jesus is saying,
you did not plant these seeds. You did not water these seeds.
Doesn't Paul say the same thing in the first letter of the Corinthians?
Some water, some this, some that. God gives the growth. And why
is it that I was taught as a young man that success in ministry
is about the production of the aftermath of the ministry? And
in our creative ways, we can get the hardest. But it's not
a harvest of life, it's a harvest of false converts. And in spite
of that, sometimes God saves people because the Word of God
is taught to some degree. And then you've got a bunch of immature
converts for decades that just sit around and go, where am I
going? What am I doing? They put on
the face and they play the part of church. Others have been working and
you have come into their reward. Who are these people? I suggest
to you that it is the Word of God. I suggest to you that Jesus
is referring to the prophets, and to the scriptures, and to
John the Baptist. And now to the apostles. We get
to reap the harvest of their work. We get to reap the harvest
of the work of God. As the wind blows where it wishes
and brings the live dead people, we just need to be the mouth. We just need to be the mouth.
For God is the head, Christ is the head. John the Baptist is
gone. And incredibly, he received the
full reward. but he never got to see the reward
of his labor. Beloved, what is it that we live
for? What is it that we're looking to see? We get all bent out of
shape sometimes because of the cults and others who are looking
for this manifestation of some miracle. But at the same time,
in our rejection of those things, we forget that the miracle is
what God does through the teaching of His Word to change and transform
you into believers and to secure you and to seal you for eternity.
Can we rejoice in that? What is so bad right now in our
lives that that doesn't matter? Nothing. Nothing. And there's nothing we can do
to take away the pain. There's nothing we can do to
stop time. There's nothing we can do to change another person.
But God, in His timing, through His Word, will change us all.
Let's pray. We thank You, Father, for just
a glorious truth. Help us not to be haughty. Help us not to be just defeated. Help us not to
be scared. But help us to be resolved to
trust in Your promises, to trust in Your Word, to trust in the
finished work of Christ. Lord, I pray that our children
here today have heard the truth of Christ, have heard the Gospel,
have heard that their only way to eternity, their only hope
they have for the fullness of joy, not temporal happiness,
but joy, is Jesus Christ and His work. And so, Lord, as we
depart from this place, as we sing some song of praise, and
as we leave, let us be ever joyful, knowing that You've assigned
this day divinely for us to hear this Word so that we might become
satisfied. that we might be satisfied in
Your work, that we might be satisfied this moment in Your Son. And Lord, help us to not starve
ourselves for that satisfaction, though we have it eternally because
of Your promise in our flesh, Lord. It wanes so badly. It leaves
so quickly. It sometimes can be so far away
that we can't see it. Drive us to the Scripture. Drive
each of us to pray for each other. Drive each of us to the cross
that we might remember the Word and hold fast to the promise
and share the faith. In Jesus' name.