Take your Bibles now and turn
with me to John chapter 4. I want to read for you the first
several verses here in John chapter 4, beginning with verse 3. He left
Judea and departed again unto Galilee. And he must needs go
through Samaria. Then cometh he to a city of Samaria,
which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that
Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore being wearied
with his journey, sat thus on the well, and it was about the
sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria
to draw water. Jesus saith unto her, Give me
to drink. For his disciples were gone away
unto the city to buy meat. Then saith the woman of Samaria
unto him, How is it that thou being a Jew askest drink of me,
which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews had no dealings
with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto
her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith
unto thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him,
and he would have given thee living water." Now I'm going
to stop right there, but in the seeking out of this chosen sinner,
the Lord teaches many lessons. You can go through here and read
this entire chapter. The biggest share of this chapter
is taken up with this one woman with whom the Lord sat on the
well and dealt with in mercy and grace. And there are many
lessons to be taught here. But the greatest of these lessons
that He Himself is the gift of God. That's the lesson of John
chapter 4. He said, if thou knewest. Now,
he didn't say if you knew the doctrines. And I don't mean to
play doctrines that they have no importance
whatsoever. But doctrines are not the result. It's not how you come to faith.
But coming to faith, these doctrines begin to fall in line. It's in
coming to Christ. Christ is set forth before you.
Evidently, Paul said, crucified among you. It's the person that's
set before us. And we lay hold of the person.
This is the lesson. Our Lord sat on the well before
this woman, and He could have presented all kinds of problems
to her. He could have presented the doctrine
of election, or the doctrine of justification, or the doctrine
of predestination. He could have set before her
many things that would have just left her sitting there with her
mouth open. He could have presented all kinds
of things, but He didn't. Here's the one issue set forth
in the gospel. He said, if you knew the gift
of God. Do you? Do we know the gift of
God? Do we understand that everything
in the realm of spiritual matters, everything in the realm of salvation
is by the grace of God? We call this church Grace Baptist
Church because we are Baptists in our fundamental doctrines,
but we believe that salvation is altogether by the grace of
God. Salvation is by grace. He said,
if you knew the gift of God. She knew all kinds of things
and she told him just about everything that she knew. She knew and was
aware of the tradition of her father. She knew a lot of things.
But she didn't know the great thing, the one thing, the way
of God. She didn't know anything at all
about the grace of God. If we knew something about salvation
by grace, it would eliminate what we think we know in religion. It would just check it off. It
would just check it off. But we are ignorant of the fact
that salvation is by grace. That's the first thing he told
this woman, John. He said, if you knew the gift
of God. Do we? Do we understand that? Do we
understand that salvation is by grace, altogether of grace,
in no way owing to anything that we or any potential that's in
us or in something that God, as the Baptist are fond of saying,
looked down through the telescope of time and saw what you would
or wouldn't do? Is God confined to telescopes,
either of time or of reality? Is God confined to these matters?
He's God. He's God. This Samaritan woman saw all
kinds of differences. All of them outward. All of them
are charade. He was a Jew. She was a Samaritan. He was a man. She was a woman.
He worshipped in Jerusalem. She worshipped in the mountains.
He followed his tradition. She said, we follow ours. Now, is that not exactly what
you're confronted with when you talk to men and women? Don't
they say the same thing? You have your customs, we have ours.
You have your traditions, we have ours. You worship this way,
we worship that way. You baptize by immersion, we
baptize by sprinkling. You don't believe in a priesthood,
we do. On and on and on and on and on with these traditional
comparisons. I see in this woman a picture,
an example, if not in our own experiences, I see them in our
day and can make application to our day. She was sectarian
in her beliefs. Now, what does that mean? That
means she identified what she believed as being different from
what everybody else believed. She was sectarian in her beliefs. And she was influenced by the
traditional religion of her people as best she could. She remembered
how she was raised. She remembered the things that
she was taught when she was just a little girl. She remembered
those things. She participated in those things. She talked about how he worshipped
in Jerusalem and they worshipped in the mountains. Evidently,
she had gone and participated in this worship. Thirdly, she
knew something about assembling together in worship, and no doubt
she had taken part in it, saw nothing wrong with it, or how
it was practiced, or what was involved in the worship. She
had a hope of a coming Messiah. She told him that. When Messiah
is come, He will tell us all things. He is going to straighten
everything out. He is going to straighten everything out. And
this pretty much sums up what most people I meet and minister
to in my day believe. They all have their particular
denominations. They look around, and for this
reason or that reason, they've settled in something that suits
them. They've settled in something. And they say, this is what I
believe. They all have strong influential ties by tradition
that they received from loved ones, people they had confidence
in, people that exercised an affection for them, people they
remember. You remember people when you
grew up and you look back on those things. I can remember
teachers, teachers from my grade school. I had one teacher in
particular, a math teacher. She would not let one student
leave that class until they knew what she taught. I don't care
if you had to stay after school. I don't care if you had to come
in on a Saturday. I don't care if she had to come
to your house. You wasn't going to leave her class and not know
what she taught. I remember her. She took a special
interest in me. I had an English teacher that
did that. She took an interest in me. And I had no confidence
in myself whatsoever, but before I left that woman's class, I
stood and recited ten big poems. I didn't think I could recite
Mary Had a Little Lamb. This woman convinced me that
I could, and I did. And before I left her class,
I'm talking about big poems like The Village Blacksmith and stuff
like that. Ten. Ten of them. She took an interest. And we remember folks like that.
We've got relatives, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends,
all who influence us when we grow up. We don't forget those
ties. But brethren, religion, if you
believe anything at all according to this book, is of God. It's
not of these people. And we associate that affection
and that interest and that concern and that empathy that these people
have for us. We get that confused and we use
those things that they teach us in religion as though these
things were founded and grounded and sure because of our affection
for them. And so we receive these things.
And that's what this woman had done. She was in a mess right
now. She was living in adultery. Her
life was upside down, but still she remembered this religion
of her youth. And she held to those principles. And let me tell you this, and
I don't know apart from a revelation of God how to make you understand
this or how to make you believe this, but religion As it is set
forth in the Bible, I'm talking about worldly religion. There
is a true religion. James talks about it. But there
is a false religion. And it's greater. You see it
in the world. It's everywhere. False religion. And false religion, the idea
behind it, the motivations behind it is to confuse. Paul said,
if our gospel be hid, it's hid to the lost in whom the God of
this world hath blinded their mind. It's meant to confuse. It's meant to blind. It's meant
to steer you away from the truth. That's the motivations behind
it. That's the purpose behind it. Our Lord called them blind
leaders of the blind. And He said, if the blind lead
the blind, they're both going to fall in the ditch. whether
you love him or whether you don't. If he's blind, he can't see.
And your affection for him or his affection for you has no
part in the matter. You see what I'm saying? Religion
is meant to confuse. And Satan's a wily, crafty old
man. He knows how to use your affections. He knows how to play on your
affections. He knows how to use these matters.
And he does it, and he does it affectionately. I'll tell you this, it's meant
to confuse. He said, for such are false apostles,
they are deceitful workers. They don't know they're deceiving
men because they're deceiving themselves. They're deceitful
workers. And they transform themselves
into the apostles of Christ. And they are called in Scripture
the ministers of Satan. And I suppose the most well-guarded
secret of the underworld, or Satan and his angels, his ministers,
the most well-guarded secret of the underworld, Satan's reign
over this world in religion. He holds this world by the throat. in religion. Paul said he can
take you captive at his will. We think we are our own person.
We think Peter stood there before the Lord in proud arrogance before
the Lord of glory whose task was To save his soul completely,
all together by the grace of God, he stood right beside the
Lord of glory and he said, they are all going to leave you, but
I ain't. Who put that in his heart? Just a few moments before
our Lord told him, he said, Peter, he said, Satan hath desired to
sift you like wheat. And the sifting began right there. Now they might leave you, but
I'm not. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to leave.
Not only are you going to leave, but you're going to deny me three
times. Huh? You can't see yourself doing
that, can you, John? Huh? You can't see yourself over
there at that little Jewish maiden and your hands over there by
the fire getting warm saying, I don't know the man. Oh, your
speech betrays you. Yeah, but let me cuss a little
bit and that way you can identify me with the fisherman down at
the wharf. Stand nowhere by the fire, I don't know him. I don't
know him. I don't know him. Satan's a crafty old man. He
knows how to play your affections. He can do just about anything
with you he wants to do with the permission of God. How does he do it? By making
men think they're doing God a service in the ministry to this world.
We look at these religions and they feed the poor. They're out
here trying to reform society. They take interest in the home.
They promote the home, the husband, the wife, the children. They
promote the home. They have a lot of good things
to say about the home. Education, sports, recreational
activities, organized resistance and marches, protesting, abortion
and alcohol and drugs. They stand up and take a public
stand against same-sex marriages and all this kind of foolishness
that goes on in our day. And they're so busy and so involved
in these real and needy causes. They are real causes. They are
needy causes. But the church of the living
God is not set on this earth to reform. This world is cursed
of God. I tell you, apart from the restraining
hand of God, they wouldn't have just nailed him on a cross. They'd
have put him in a pot and ate him like those heathens in Africa. Men are restrained by the hand
of God and they mark that restraint and misidentify that restraint
of God as a personal righteousness. And they look at those things
and they say, well, I'm not as bad off as he is. Well, what
have you gotten that you haven't received? You see what our Lord
is telling this woman? If you knew the gift of God,
but you're ignorant of the gift of God, and being ignorant of
the gift of God, we go about, going about, going about. That's
what religion does. It goes about. It ignores the
Word of God. Now brethren, when He found you,
you were ignorant of the Word of God, weren't you? I know you
were. I've got no doubt about it. Boy, you'd stand, wouldn't
you? Huh? You'd stand up before a
man who studied for thirty-five years. Thirty-five years you'd
stand up before this man. Forty years. Brother Mahan had
been in the ministry for forty years. Preached nearly every
day of the week. This man studied, stayed in his
study all day long. Every day he'd go out and preach
and study. And he'd confront men on the
television and they'd come down to the church and they'd stand
there and argue with him. They couldn't even find the book
of Daniel if you told them to turn to it. They wouldn't know
who Hezekiah was. They wouldn't know who Moses
was unless they watched their TV or something. They're ignorant
of the Word of God, totally ignorant of the Word of God, but yet take
a stand and deny the preaching of the gospel. Ignorance. Well, I just believe. I had an old fellow in this,
it's called an Enterprise Baptist Church, kind of like a Southern
Baptist Church, but hillbilly, for lack of a better word. They
were from up in the mountains. Had a lot of superstitions and
had a lot of things that folks up in the mountains have. And
a lot of that carryover from that mess was involved in it. But anyway, He'd stand up and
he'd say, well, I'm just made to believe. And what he was talking
about is it just seemed to him that this had to be right. Well,
don't the Scriptures say there's a way that seemeth right unto
a man? But the end thereof is death
and destruction? All man's ways, Solomon said,
are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weigheth his spirit.
The Lord don't measure you by how you think about yourself. See, that's what we want to do.
We want to sit back and say, well, it just seems to me... That's darkness. That's darkness. That's ignorance. And that's
where this woman was. She was in ignorance. And he
said, if you knew the gift of God and who it is, you won't know the gift of God
until you know who it is. that saith unto you, give me
to drink." You don't know who He is. Once
you know who He is, everything else falls into place. Who He
is. Who is this man? That's the gospel. Who is this man? Why did He come? What did He do? And where is
He now? That's the gospel. You find the answer to those
four questions, you will have learned the gospel. The Lord of Glory went over and
sat on a well that He Himself had given and calmed the sins to share
a drink of water with this woman of ill repute. He draws no lines in the sand.
He doesn't build any walls to divide. She draws all the lines. She builds all the walls. Sitting one-on-one over a simple
glass of water, he uses simple things to point out to this poor
woman the real problem. And the real problem was who
she was. Now brethren, that's what the
gospel ministry is all about. Men and women are in a darkness
that they're not aware of. If they were aware of it, they'd
seek God. They're not aware of it. It said
Israel. Here was a nation of men and
women who got up every Sabbath day, every Saturday, and they
went down to the synagogue, and they opened the scrolls and read
them, and they sang from the Psalms, and they worshiped God. That's what they thought they
were doing. And they were a zealous people. They went out, they believed
in good works, and they went out, and it says they encompassed
sea and land to make one proselyte like unto themselves. They went
out there and tried to promote what they believed throughout
the world. They preached, they gathered, they worshiped, they
prayed, they read the Scriptures, they did all kinds of things.
But Paul said, and he was one of them, Paul said, for they
being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and going about to establish
their own righteousness, had not submitted themselves unto
the righteousness of God. Ignorant. And that's what men
and women are doing today. They grow up in this traditional
religion, whatever it is, and some of them without religion.
Some of them grow up in the bar. Some of them grow up just totally
ignorant of any kind of religion. But it doesn't matter which one
you're in, they both alienate you from God. And they leave
you in your ignorance. And this woman in her ignorance
just believes, she said, that everything is going to work out
all right. Everything is going to work. The Messiah is going
to come and He'll straighten everything out. You say this,
and I say that, and they say this, and when He comes, He'll
tell you. It's too late when He comes.
Huh? It's too late. Now you wait on
Him to come to settle the differences and settle the division. You wait on Him to come. It's
too late. The day of grace is over when He comes. It's over. It's over. And so He sits here
and He talks with this lady. And he tells her that if you
knew the gift of God and who it was, who it is, if you just
knew who it is. If men and women, by the revelation
of God, could come to an understanding of who it is I preach, who it
is. I know I'm Igor. I don't need
you to tell me that. I already know that. But he's
not. And the wisdom that I hold for
wisdom is in a person. It's in Him. If you knew who
it was, if you knew who He was, you'd lay everything down. You'd
lay everything down. You'd turn loose of everything
you got hold of. You'd turn loose of it. You'd turn loose of traditions
and people of affection. You'd turn loose of the whole
outfit and lay hold on Him. You'd lay hold on Him. If you knew the gift of God.
Let me give you just a few things about that gift. He's got a gift
by divine eminence. Eminence. What's that mean? God sets him apart in such a
fashion as to declare him superior to all things. All things. You can read Colossians chapter
1. I've read it to you over and over and over. That He is the
Creator of all things. He's the Head of all things.
He's the Head of the church. And it pleased God that in Him
should all preeminence be. Eminence means superiority. He's
superior as a gift. He's the superior gift. He is
the superior man. He has superior offices. He's
superior in His person. You see what I'm saying? By eminence,
He declares in Hebrews chapter 1, and all through the book of
Hebrews, He declares this eminent one, this superior one. He's
superior to the angels by right of inheritance. This is the brightness
of the Father's glory in the express image of His person.
He's not like the angels. His angels are sent to be ministering
spirits, sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of
salvation. But unto the Son, He said. He's a Son. He's the Son of God. He ain't
a son. He's the Son. He's not just a
light. He's the brightness of the Father's
glory. You see what I'm saying? He's
God's gift by divine eminence, and He's God's gift as He is
comprehensive of all the other gifts. In Ephesians chapter 1,
it said that God the Father has blessed in Him, He's blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. There are no spiritual blessings
outside of Christ. That's why I tell you over and
over and over, lay hold of Christ. Lay hold of Him. All the blessings
are in Him. You can't have faith apart from
Christ. Get it out of your head. It ain't
going to happen. There is no faith apart from Him. Apart from
this man. That's what our Lord brought
this woman to say. Who it is that sat on that well. She said, when Messiah comes,
He'll straighten this thing out. She said, He said, I that speak
unto you am He. You know she's the only one,
I believe, of all the individuals that our Lord sat down with that
He ever just plainly declared, I'm the Messiah. The Jews wanted
Him to say it. If thou be the Christ, tell us
plainly. Oh, He said, I told you. I told you. But you believe
not because you're not My sheep. He's God's gift as He is comprehensive
of all the other gifts. And Christ is the gift of God
in covenant promise. The living God is a covenant
God. All His dealings with men and angels are by covenant. And even so, in the salvation
of sinners, there is an everlasting covenant of grace. You can read
about it over in 2 Samuel 23, that it was the very last words
of the psalmist David, a man after God's own heart. everlasting
covenant of grace. You can read about it in Hebrews
13, verse 20, when Paul said, Now the God of peace that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd
of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.
That's how He was brought forth. By that blood. And He's God's
gift to the sinner as He is the sum and substance of all the
covenant promises. You can't have life and not have
the Son, because God put the life in the Son. You can't have a new birth apart
from the Son. The new birth is purposed in
the Son. You can't have any kind of a
blessing from God apart from the Son, because in Him are all spiritual
blessings.