I have one object this morning, one thing I want you to see.
Oh God help you to see this one thing. None are beyond the reach of
God's omnipotent mercy and grace. No sinner topside of hell is
beyond the reach of God's omnipotent mercy and saving grace in Christ. But Brother Don, you don't know
what I've done. You don't know what I am. No
sinner living on God's earth is beyond the reach of God's
free grace. Now may he stretch out his grace in his omnipotent hand and save
your soul. We've come here today, all of
us with different needs, from different backgrounds, different
experiences, different circumstances. But we all need the same thing.
You and the one talking to you, we need grace and forgiveness
and mercy. We need redemption, atonement,
and righteousness. We need one to put us in good
standing with God and bring us to God. We need God's salvation. in Jesus Christ the Lord. Now
in John chapters 3 and 4, the Spirit of God holds two people
before us. Two people who could not be more
unalike. Two people who are held before
us as great sinners and yet objects of God's great grace in Christ. A man and a woman. a Pharisee
and an adulteress and one great Savior who came to them both
at the appointed time of love. Let's read John chapter 3, verse
1. There was a man of the Pharisees. Those are religious folks that
would make Amish folks look like worldlings. A man of the Pharisees, a man of the Pharisees, his name
was Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. He was head of the abbey
where the priest hid away down the road here. A ruler of the
Jews. He was a big shot in the temple. The same came to Jesus by night,
sneaking in. Didn't want anybody to see him.
Didn't want anybody to know he was coming, just in case he was
wrong. He didn't want anybody to see
him in association with this man, Jesus. And this is what
he said, Rabbi, Master, we know that thou art a teacher come
from God. For no man can do these miracles
that thou doest, except God be with him. Now we know, us folks
down at the convent, us folks down at the abbey, us folks down
at the temple, us folks among the Jews, we know. Us Pharisees
who oppose you, we know you're a teacher come from God. Because
nobody could do the stuff you do if you didn't come from God.
We know that. We know you're a great prophet.
What he didn't realize is he didn't know anything. Jesus answered
and said unto him, Nicodemus, you don't know anything. He said,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the kingdom of God. All right, look down in chapter
4, verse 4. 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 worried with his journey, sat thus on the
well, and it was about the sixth hour. It was about noon. There
cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. This gal came to
the well. to get some water in the middle
of the day, hoping nobody would see her. Not because she was
a Pharisee, but she was an adulteress, and everybody knew it. She shacked
up one man, then another, and everybody in town knew her. And
she was ashamed to show her face in town. She didn't want to have
to be dealing with anybody. So she comes out at daytime in
the middle of the day when nobody comes to draw water, hoping nobody
would see her. But the Lord Jesus came there
specifically to see her. Look at it. Jesus saith unto
her, give me to drink. We recognize that the word of
God is given to us by divine inspiration. It is God breathed. That means that the very words
of scripture were dictated to men as they wrote by God, the
Holy Spirit. Not only do we recognize the
inspiration of scripture, We recognize God's hand of providence
in the order in which the books of scripture have been arranged,
and in the order in which the various authors gave us things.
If you read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and mark
carefully the distinctions, you will see that frequently they
change the order. They'll change the events. And
it looks like that what John said happened just before the
crucifixion happened, Matthew seems to think it It happened
a long time earlier than that. That's not a problem. The reason
they changed the order is to tell the story they're telling
about the character of our Savior, and they did that by divine inspiration. So that as you read the scripture,
the order in which things are related in their context have
a purpose. Here we have this great religious
leader, Nicodemus. This mighty influential Pharisee
coming to the Savior and it's the time God appointed to save
him. Next thing we see, the Lord Jesus
leaves Judea and he abandons the Pharisees and he comes to
a woman who was an adulteress in John chapter 4 because the
time has come for God to save her. And you put the two together. a Pharisee, an adulteress, and
the Savior. And you learn that none, none
are beyond the reach of omnipotent mercy. Did you get that? Now let me hang some good stuff
on it. Nicodemus shows us that none can rise too high And the
Samaritan woman tells us plainly that none can sink too low to
be saved by God's free grace. At the end of these two stories,
look down in verse 42 of chapter 4, we have this great declaration. This is indeed the Christ, the
Savior of the world. He who could save Lindsay Campbell
and save Don Fortner, that's the Savior of the world. He who comes to save this proud
Pharisee and comes to save this adulterous woman, that's the
Savior of the world. The Lord Jesus, the Son of God, Our blessed Christ is the only
Savior there is. He's the Savior of Jew and the
Savior of Gentile. He's the Savior of men and the
Savior of women, the Savior of blacks, the Savior of whites.
He's the only Savior there is. Neither is there salvation in
any other, for there is none other name given under heaven
among men whereby we must be saved. If you would be saved,
you must be saved in the name, that is, by the merit, the authority,
the person, and the work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. All who
are saved are saved in exactly the same way, all of us. Every saved sinner is saved by
grace. There's no such thing as a sinner
who's saved partly by grace and partly by works. Partly by grace
and partly by baptism. Partly by grace and partly by
free will. Every sinner who is saved by God Almighty is saved
by God alone and saved by free grace alone. A local Campbellite
preacher several years ago, obviously he listened to me on the radio.
I used to get visits from the folks who'd come to the school
every now and then wanting to straighten me out. And he wrote an article. He says, the Bible nowhere says
that we're saved by grace alone. And he's right. It doesn't say
that anywhere. It says it everywhere. The words
are not used. The doctrine is taught plainly
throughout the book. Mix anything with grace, and
it's not grace. Mix merit with mercy, and it's
not mercy. Mix your will with God's will,
and it's not God's will at all. Salvation is by God's free grace
alone. Salvation comes to sinners through
righteousness. That is, through the obedience
and blood of God's darling son. And it cannot come any other
way. God cannot save sinners except righteously. He cannot
save sinners except justly. God cannot simply will it and
it be done. You say, don't dare say God cannot. If I say God cannot, but you
better believe I weighed that. God Almighty cannot do that,
which is contrary to His very character. He can't do it. The
Scripture says God cannot lie. And He said the soul that sinneth
it shall die. That means it's going to die. God declares plainly
that He will not justify the wicked nor condemn the righteous,
and He never will. The only way God can save sinners
is righteously, and that's through the righteous obedience of His
darling Son and His death upon the cursed tree as the substitute
for sinners. God saves sinners by the wondrous
works of His providence. What does it take to save God's
elect? Everything that is, has been,
and shall be. That's what it takes. Everything.
everything. Everything that comes to pass
in this world is brought to pass by our God in providence to save
his people, to save them at the appointed time of love, to save
them in a manner that best shows forth God's glory and God's grace
and the glory of his grace. God saves sinners exactly as
he will, when he will, by the workings of his wondrous Prophets. Just briefly the other night,
I was listening to, I don't even know who it was, somebody talking
to Larry King. I just happened to pause as I'm
looking for something fit to see. And she said, it seems to me that if you give
God credit for the good things, you've got to blame him for the
bad things. And I thought, well, that ain't too bad for an idiot. No, we don't blame him for the
bad things. We give him credit for the bad things. What men
call bad, God calls good. And he works that which is evil
for good. And he overrules the evil to
accomplish good. Is that what the book says? Surely
the wrath of man shall praise thee, and the remainder of wrath
wilt thou restrain. Psalm 45 7, the Lord God says, behold,
I make peace and I create evil. I make peace and I create evil. Both of them are my works. God
sends the calm and God has his way in the whirlwind. God sends
the storm and God sends the clouds and God sends the sunshine exactly
as he will. God sends war and God sends peace
exactly as he will and it does it all because this is what's
necessary for the salvation of his people at the appointed time
of love everywhere in the universe for the glory of his grace. How
does God save sinners? By all this He comes and reveals
Christ in them. By all these circumstances and
all these trials and all these things in the background of a
man's life and all the things that he's come through, all the
days of his sojourn on this earth, and then God crosses his path
with a gospel preacher and reveals Christ in him and saves him by
his grace. You see, we don't worship a stump. And we don't worship some imaginary
deity. We worship God. God. And anything less than I
have just described is unfit for the name God. to call anything less God is
blasphemy and idolatry. Yet, though God saves all by
the same grace, we all experience grace distinctly in a very personal
way. No two sinners experience grace
exactly the same way. Preachers tend to like to manipulate
folks, and we like to lay things down and put everything out in
black and white and say, this is the way it is. And if you
didn't experience grace the way I did, then there's something
wrong with you. The reality is no two sinners experience grace
exactly the same way. We come from different backgrounds,
with different experiences, with different things in our lives
that cause us to experience things differently. You take a drink
of water, cold, cold water. If your throat's real sore, it
tastes a little different. If you're real thirsty, it tastes
a little different. Would you like to have some right
now? It tastes a little different. I can make it taste real good
to you, just watch me. I bet you want it awful bad. It'll
be sitting there for an hour and you never think about drinking
it. Now you do. You want some now. You experience things differently
depending on how you've experienced things up to that point. And
that's true concerning God's grace. Now here are two sinners,
a Pharisee and an adulteress, and Christ our Savior. There
are three things I want you to see here. First, there is a great,
great separation, a great distinction that must be observed between
Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. Both were chosen of God. Both
were predestined to eternal salvation. Both were redeemed by the precious
blood of Christ. Both were saved by His grace.
We see this fact with regard to the Samaritan woman in the
immediate context right here in John chapter 4. Once the Lord
revealed himself to her, immediately she left her water pots and said
to the men of the city, come see a man that told me all things
that ever I did. Verse 29, is not this the Christ? And many folks believed on him.
This woman, she's a Samaritan. When the Lord Jesus revealed
himself to her, he said, if you knew who it is talking to you,
honey, you'd ask of me and I'd give you water to drink. She
said, well, give me some of that water. And he proceeded to give her
some, sip by sip, until finally she's drinking the water of life.
And she left the water pot sitting on the well. And she told folks
at home, this is the Christ. This is the Christ. This is the,
I found him! This is the Christ. And many
believed on him. Nicodemus, didn't believe immediately. Nicodemus seems to have gone
back to the temple, gone back to the synagogue, gone back to
his house, wherever he came from, but he is described in John chapter
19 as one of those who came to bury the body of our Lord Jesus. He was converted, but he wasn't
converted immediately. He was converted, but he wasn't
converted as soon as he heard the gospel. He was converted
later. The master said to him, Nicodemus,
you must be born again. That means he must be born again.
And he was born again, but not there on the spot. In fact, you look at these two
men, these two sinners, this man and this woman, It would
be impossible to imagine two people more distinct from one
another than Nicodemus and this woman from Sychar. Nicodemus
was a recognized, sophisticated, important ruler of the Jews.
He was a man with a name. He was one of those fellows that
everybody in the Jewish nation knew him, everybody. Everybody. There's a name like Roosevelt
or Kennedy. Everybody knew him. Everybody.
There's a name that you might not know much about, but you
hear that name, oh, that's somebody. That's somebody. This woman,
we don't even know her name. She was nobody. And nobody cared
to know her name. Nobody's interested in her name.
Nicodemus was a proud Jew. She was a despised Samaritan.
Nicodemus was wealthy, well-educated, a scholar. This gal, uneducated,
probably terribly illiterate, she was a Samaritan. Nicodemus
was a man. She was a woman. Nicodemus was
known and respected for his great morality. She was an adulteress. Nicodemus came to the Savior
by night. to protect his reputation. She
came to Jacob's well at noon because she had a reputation. And it wasn't good. Nicodemus sought the Lord. The Lord Jesus came to Samaria
seeking this woman. This Samaritan woman was converted
immediately. As soon as the Lord revealed
himself to her by the gospel, she believed the gospel. Nicodemus was converted a good while after
he first heard. And yet, Nicodemus and this Samaritan
woman are seated together in glory today. Worshipping the Redeemer. Turn
to Ephesians Chapter 2. In Christ there is neither Greek
nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
free, but Christ is all in all. Now people who are ignorant and
try to use and use the Bible to their advantage for various
things, you will often hear them say, if you listen to such stuff,
or such people, or if you read editorials in the local paper,
they'll say, if you're Christians, in Christ, there's no such thing
as male and female, and black and white, and bond and free.
Well, that's not what this is saying. That's not what it's
saying. Let's see. I see several women. several
men and you know I can still tell the difference. I see a
black face and a white face and I can still tell the difference.
You can too. That doesn't mean we cease to
have distinct personalities, our distinct appearance, our
distinct needs. It means in Christ they don't
matter and I'm going to tell you something The only place
in this universe where they don't matter is in Christ. I know our society, we like to
pretend that we've legislated away racism. You ain't legislated
it away among Indians, blacks, whites, or anybody else. It's
just as real now as it always was. In Christ, it doesn't matter. In Christ, it doesn't matter.
We're one with Him. Ephesians 2 verse 12, At that
time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth
of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having
no hope without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus ye who
sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
For he is our peace, who hath made both one, that is Jew and
Gentile, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition
between us, that is the law, having abolished in his flesh
the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for
to make in himself of twain, of two, one new man, so making
peace, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by
the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. I never will forget
the first time I went down to visit my friend brother Aaron
Dumas in Kingston, Jamaica. I went to his house and we got
to the house. He picked me up at the airport
and we chatted a little bit, got to the house and his little boy came
up and I started playing with him. He was just, oh, less than
two years old at the time. And we chatted a little bit and
Aaron said, we don't see color here. And I said, Aaron, We needn't
pretend that's not so. I can see your face is black
and you can see mine's white. The difference between believers
and unbelievers is not that the believer doesn't have problem
with race. We still do. And we still see color. We just
recognize the evil of it and deal with it. Is that right? Recognize the evil of it and
deal with it. In Christ, it doesn't matter.
Christ made this woman, and this man won. And in this place, it
doesn't matter whether you're rich or poor. I hear folks all
the time, you want to get me riled? Well, he's got some money,
he's got more influence. Not this place. Not this place. He's educated. That don't matter. That don't
matter. Most educated person in the world
doesn't have an edge on knowing God. I have friends, they're about
all in glory now. I have some in other parts of
the world who still just have never had the privilege of going
to school at all, at all. One of the deacons, one of the
best men I've ever known in my life. Brilliant man, brilliant
man. When he was seven years old,
he was an orphan. Roman from one place to the other,
picking cotton, making a living the best he could, never went
to school. But he knew God's grace. Oh,
did he know? He knew this book. He couldn't
read it out loud, but he could read it to himself. And he learned
to read, so he could read this book. That's it. Nothing matters
but Christ. Nothing matters but grace. Nothing
matters but His righteousness. Nothing matters but His blood.
Nothing else. And we are one in Him. Well,
I've got to move on. Here's the second thing. Though
much separated and distinguished Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman
from one another, still there is much about them that's exactly
the same. As I look in the faces of men as I'm about to preach,
I sit here and look at this congregation. Wherever I am, I look at congregation.
I try to assess things, try to remember. I'm talking to men
and women with real needs, real problems, real heartaches, really
going to heaven or really going to hell right now. And I look
at you and I See, some faces sometimes look like they've got
pain on them, and some faces full of joy. Some faces are just
kind of empty, just empty, seem to have nothing behind the eyes,
just empty. Here are some things that were
common to this man and this woman, and they're common to you and
me, all of us by nature. They were both terribly self-righteous. They both had a refuge. They both made a covenant with
death. They both fixed things up with God. They could both
say, me and Jesus got a good thing going. They both say, I've
been saved. I got that taken care of. I'm
not worried about dying. Both of them. Both of them. Nicodemus
was a ruler of the Jews. And this woman, she was a Samaritan. Both of them were so confident
in their religion. Now they come to the Master,
they come to the Lord Jesus. Nicodemus comes to them saying,
we know you're a prophet. We know you're a prophet. And
when the Lord Jesus starts to instruct them, first thing he
does is defend his refuge. First thing he does. This woman,
the Lord Jesus comes to her and starts to speak to her. And they
get along all right, and then all of a sudden, He said, go
get your husband. She said, I don't have a husband.
He said, I know you don't, but you're living with a man. And
he's not your husband. And you've had five before him.
And you know what she did? Oh. Oh. I've been found out. No. I know who I worship, bud. Don't
you tell me I'm lost. Don't you tell me I'm going to
hell. Don't you tell me I don't know God. I know God as good
as you do. Read the chapter. She said, we worship down here
in Samaria. Defends her refuge. Self-righteousness
flourishes wherever humanity is. I remember when Brother Todd
Went over to Lexington, started the church over there, and they
started meeting down on North Limestone Street. He said, you know why we went
down there? He said, I thought we'd go down there where all
the winos and drunks and drug addicts were, and we'd get away
from the self-righteous folks anyway. He said, they're self-righteous
as anybody. They're self-righteous as anybody.
He said, we had winos come in drunk off the streets. They smelled
them when we had the Lord's table, and they'd come in bragging on their
religion. It's amazing. They're self-righteous as anybody.
is I found out self-righteousness flourishes everywhere. That's
exactly right. Everywhere. Men love to think
that they're righteous. And they think themselves righteous
because there's always somebody. There's always somebody. Well,
God, I thank you. I am not like that fellow. I'm pretty bad, but I ain't that
bad. I've gotten pretty low, but I never got that low. Both
of them, both the woman and Nicodemus were spiritually blind and ignorant. They were full of religious knowledge,
but had no spiritual knowledge. They were able to recite facts
out of the book, but had no knowledge of the book. They could quote
scripture, but didn't understand scripture. They could recite
the words, but knew nothing of the meaning of holy scripture. Because man by nature is incapable
of spiritual discernment. I don't mean that man needs to
be helped along the way and taught better and instructed better.
We teach our children the scriptures. We teach them the doctrine. We
teach them the meaning of scripture the best we can. But when they've
gotten all they can, learned all they can, unless God does for them what
we can't do for them. They live and die in blind ignorance
and self-righteousness. It takes more for you to believe
what I'm preaching than for me to make you clear. Now, I'm responsible
to make it clear. I'm responsible to study and
prepare and present things in a reasonable, logical fashion.
I'm responsible to present the message with clarity, but clarity
won't make the message powerful to life. Only God does that. Only God can give life and light. There's something else they had
in common. Both this proud Pharisee and this Samaritan adulteress
were rebels. When confronted with things they
couldn't understand and couldn't refute, Nicodemus poked
fun at the Master's doctrine. I get upset folks do that with
me. I don't know why. He did it with the Lord Jesus.
The Lord said, you gotta be born again. Nicodemus said, now listen,
you're talking to a full grown man. I've been to school, best
schools there are. Are you telling me I gotta crawl
back up in my mother's belly and come out again? Do you think he really believed
that? Do you think for a minute he really thought that? He was
just poking fun. He was just trying to make the
Lord's doctrine appear absurd. You ever listen to anybody on
television? Anybody on television talk about those people who believe
in creation? You hear anybody talk about that? You idiots. It's alright for y'all to believe
that, but don't tell me that. You idiots. That's exactly how the
folks look at it. Because what they cannot understand,
they cannot refute, and all they can do is poke fun at it. All
they can do. This woman, when the Lord confronted
her and spoke to her about living water, she couldn't understand
anything. And she did exactly the same
thing. She said, sir, You've got nothing to draw with. How
are you going to get any water out of this well? Are you greater than our father
Jacob who gave us this well? Let me see you stick your hand
down that well and get some water in the palm of your hand. Let
me see you do it. The fact is all we like sheep
have gone astray and we've turned everyone to his own way. We're all rebels. That's our
nature. We all went forth from our mother's
womb, speaking lies. That's our nature. We may have
gone in a different direction, but we all went our own way,
living with our fist in God's face. I'll tell you something
else. It's true of this Samaritan woman,
and it was true of Nicodemus, and it's true of you. You who are without Christ. Are you listening to me? They
both had something huge inside them called emptiness. Emptiness. Emptiness. Augustine said, You made us for
yourself. And our hearts are restless until
they find their rest in you. Empty. That's where you are. Most what you will, you're empty. Accumulate what you can, you're
empty. Take pleasure where you find
it, you're still empty. Drink whatever you want to drink.
Take whatever dope you want to take. You're still empty. Empty. Empty. And only Christ can fill your
soul. Only Christ. All my life long,
I had panted. for a draft from some clear spring. Some spring I hoped would quench
the burning of the thirst I felt within. Feeding on the husk around
me till my strength was almost gone, longed my soul for something
better, only still to hunger on. Poor was I and sought for
riches, something that would satisfy. But the dust I gathered
around me, only mocked my soul's sad cry." Empty. Here's the third thing. Oh, what a great Savior Jesus
Christ is. The Lord Jesus didn't deal with
Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman exactly the same way, and yet
in a very real sense, he dealt with them exactly the same. This
is always what Christ does when he comes to a sinner. He destroyed
their refuge of lies. He exposed their sin. Exposed it. That's what preachers
are sent to do. Our object is to destroy every
false refuge. and to expose sin. Not to cover
it up, to expose it. Not just the deeds, but what
you are. And then he made himself known
to them. And he crossed them at their
point of rebellion. He met Nicodemus in his religious
self-righteousness and crossed him. He said, as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up. Whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life. Nicodemus, salvation doesn't
come by your goodness. It comes by God's substitute.
It doesn't come by your works. It comes by faith in the Lamb. And it crossed this woman. It
crossed her at her point of rebellion, her religion, and her immoral,
indecent sex. He crossed it and demands surrender,
demands surrender. Oh, the Son of God demands surrender
and he's going to have it or you're going to perish. He'll
either conquer you by his grace or he'll conquer you in his justice
and send you to hell, one of the two. I recall years ago hearing
Brother Mahan tell a story. Back during the days of slavery
in the South, there was a fellow, a black man who he trusted a
great deal, who was a believer. And he was always singing, always
singing the praises of the Redeemer and God began to deal with his
master. And finally he came to him and
he said, Joe, what have I got to do to have the Lord? And he looked at him, and he
said, Master, there stood that white suit and that white hat.
You gots to get in the pig pen. He said, what? You gots to get
in the pig pen. And he just laughed at him and
walked away. But the Lord wouldn't let him go. He kept coming back.
He said, Joe, what have I got to do to get saved? He said, Master, you gots to
get in the pig pen. I'm not going to do that. Finally,
he said, Joe, what have I got to do to be saved? He said, Massey, you've got to
get in the pig pen. And he pulled his hat off and threw it on the
ground and walked over there and threw one leg over his head.
He said, Massey, you've got to get in. You've just got to be willing. What? You've got to surrender
to the Son of God. And if you go to hell, you're
going to hell because you won't surrender. And the reality is,
you won't surrender. You won't. You won't. I know you won't. Because you
can't. Therefore it is written, Blessed
is the man whom thou choosest and causest to approach unto
thee. If he's pleased to conquer you,
you'll surrender. Oh, may he do it for the glory
of his name. Amen.