The first time I went to preach
at the church, or for the church at Dingus, West Virginia, Brother
Gary Vance was a member of the congregation. Gary had the scripture
reading and the prayer for the service that evening. And this
is what he said as he prayed for me as I prepared to preach. He said, Lord, Brother Don is
just a man. But he's come here to preach
to us. And I thought, my, what a prayer.
And I've been praying it ever since. God, preach me. If he doesn't speak by me, oh,
you're going to hear some noise. I've been at this thing long
enough, I have learned by lots of experience that my hands are
weak and my labors are utterly useless without God's blessing. But I believe the Lord's given
me a message. Matter of fact, I'm sure of it. There is a day
appointed by God Almighty for the salvation of his elect. There is a specific day fixed
from eternity when grace will come to every chosen second.
You're not going to escape God. Not going to happen. Not going
to happen. Not if you're here. There is
an hour determined before the world began, when the good shepherd
will seek out and find his sheep. Every one of them. Before time
began. It is described in Ezekiel as
the time of love. When the Lord God Almighty will
come to the predestined child, the elect sinner, the redeemed of his dear son, and God will
spread the skirt of his righteousness over you, and he will say to
you, live, and you shall live. That's just so. That's just so. It's my heart's prayer that this
is the hour appointed of God for some of you. I know some
of you here are but a breath away from hell. And I know that I've been praying
for you. I've been praying for some of
you with unusual urgency. Not just for you, but for many
others I know scattered around the country who today will be
hearing the word of grace. And because the Lord's given
me unusual urgency to pray specifically for you, I fully believe this
will be a day of great engathering in God's kingdom. Listen carefully. Oh Spirit of God come. Now you
listen. Some of you probably in such
a state you're already asking yourself, perhaps you've been
asking for some time. If God's pleased to save me,
how will I know it? If God is pleased to grant me
life and faith in Christ, how can I know? How will I know when
the Lord has saved me? How will I know that God performed
his work of grace in me? If you'll turn to John chapter
four, I'll show you how. Before I give you my message,
I want to give you one or two words of warning and caution.
Now listen carefully to this. While the scriptures clearly
show us a pattern of grace, a pattern of God's operation, a method
by which the Holy Spirit brings sinners to life and faith in
Christ. There are several specific things
God always does when he saves a sinner, and there's no question
about that. And yet the experience of believers in experiencing
God's grace varies radically from one person to the other.
God's elect do not all experience grace in the same way. Our perception
of things is not always the same. For some, coming to faith in
Christ, conversion, is a revolutionary, climactic, certain thing, that
it's just suddenly God comes, like he did Paul, or Saul of
Tarsus on the road to Damascus. But that's the exception, not
the root. Read the book. That's the exception,
not the rule. For most people, conversion is
sort of like Mother Simpson described last week as he was preaching
to you in one of the messages. I don't remember whether it was
Sunday afternoon or Sunday morning, but he said, he said, I don't
know when I first believed. I just found myself believing.
You remember that? I found myself believing God.
I found myself believing this message. And that's usually the
way it is. When Lydia heard Pastor Paul
opening the scriptures and reasoning throughout the scriptures, she
had been guided by that big line for a long time. Studying the
scriptures, walking what life she had, and the Lord opened
her heart. She said, well this is it. This is it. This is just it. And the important
thing is not that we'd be able to go through a time and place
experience and tell folks how and when the Lord saved us. In
fact, in fact, if that's the basis of your assurance and hope,
you ain't got any. You don't have any. That's exactly
right. If you were to be fool enough
to walk up to the door and say to me, Brother Don, how do you
know you're alive? And I was fool enough to say,
well, what's the matter? I'm going to get you my birth certificate
and show it to you. We would both belong in the family farm.
My birth certificate is no proof that I'm alive. I'm just breathing,
that's all. I'm just here, that's all. And
I know that I'm born of God, not because of something that
happened 30 years ago or something that happened this morning, but
because I believe Him. I find myself believing Him.
Another word of caution. It's a mistake. It's a positive
evil. to make the order in which we
experience various aspects of God's grace a matter of great
concern. Our perception of things and
experience of them is often different from the reality of it. For example,
when we believe the gospel, we have pardon and forgiveness granted
to us. But the pardon and forgiveness
came a long time before we believed it. When we believe on the Son
of God, we experience justification. But the justification took place
2,000 years ago. It didn't take place when we
believed. When we come to life and faith
in Jesus Christ, So excited to determine which comes first,
repentance or faith. You'll never figure that out.
You'll never figure that out. God fixed it, so you can't figure
it out. Because if you could figure it out, you'd sit down
and start checking folks off who say, do not, sir, you didn't
fix this way, you couldn't possibly be saved. You gotta go through
things the way I did. Repentance and faith are so much
twin graces, though separate graces, that you never find one
without the other. So you've got to go through deep,
deep, deep Holy Spirit conviction. You will. You hear us. You will.
But there's conviction and there's conviction. You find yourself
experiencing conviction in a legal sense because you're scared to
death of going to hell. Because you see the terror of God's holy
law. And many believers go through that period of legal conviction
by which they're tossed to and fro. Some of a long time. But
then there's conviction. They shall look on me whom they
have pierced. They shall mourn for him. Now
that's conviction. There's repentance and there's
repentance. There's a repentance to be repented of, but then there's
repentance to turning to God. Now this is what I'm trying to
say. We must never judge the validity of one person's experience
or grace or faith in Christ by the logic of another. We must
never set ourselves up by our experience to judge whether or
not folks are believers. We must not do so. By the word
of God, the word of God judges men. It's not our business to.
It's not our business to. Folks call me up, write to me,
they want you to... John Wesley would say, Doc, I've
got an opinion about this, but I never knew the fella. He's
dead a long time before I was born. And it doesn't matter.
As far as anything's concerned now, it just doesn't matter.
We have no business fighting the battles of other men long
gone. Nor do we have any business trying
to decide now who's Satan and who's not. I don't know about
Brother James, you know. Had my eye on him. That's not
your business. That's not your business. But
what do you do? You preach and you pray and you
leave things in God's hands. That's exactly what you do. What
about the goats? God will take care of them. What
about the chaff? God will separate the chaff from
the wheat. What about the test? God will yank them up in his
time, and he'll throw them in hell in his time. But you don't
know chaff from wheat. You don't know goats from sheep. You don't know anything true
from anything false as far as your perception is concerned
with human beings. You don't. I had a preacher's
wife tell me one time that, I can give an answer in about five
minutes and no one's out there saved. Yeah, I'll bet you can. By the
way, she's not a preacher's wife anymore and he's not a preacher
anymore. Well, I know. I know. Yeah. No, you don't know. You don't
know. All right, now let's look at John chapter 4. And I'll tell
you what happens when God saves a sinner. Here are five distinct
themes. You don't need to concern yourself
about the take place in your heart if God
saves you. I don't know whether the Lord will ever save you or
not, but I do know this, if ever you are saved, you will be saved
by work of God Almighty, not by work of your own. By God's
will, not your will. By God's doing, not your own
doing. It is not of him that willeth,
nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. And
I can tell you this, nobody has ever been saved by their will. Nobody has ever been saved by
a decision they made. Nobody has ever been saved by
somebody saying to them, now you say this prayer and you pray
and it's all right. It's all right. That's kind of
like going to a confessional booth and the priest says to
you, now if you want to absolve your sins, you want to have a
pardon for these sins, you're going to have to do this, do
this, do this, do the other thing and put some money in the box
as you go out the door. Same stuff. Same nonsense. It's just
idolatry. Cunning deceit, it's not salvation. Nobody's ever been saved by an
altar cross. You walk down here now and put
a little pressure on them, you know, get them to kneel down
here and cry crocodile tears at an altar and this is salvation. No, it's not. No, it's not. So
that's how I got saved. You didn't get saved. It's just
that simple. You didn't get it. You didn't
get it. If God will ever save you, there's something he's gonna
do for you. He's gonna cross your path. He's going to cross your path. Look here in John chapter 4 verse
3. This is what our Lord did for
this Samaritan woman. He left Judea and departed again into
Galilee. He must these go through Samaria. He must because this woman was
given to him before the world began. Then cometh he to the
city of Samaria, which is called Cyprus. He didn't even go to
any place in Samaria. He went to Cyprus, and he didn't
even go into town. He just went around outside town.
To a part of the 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 right at
12 o'clock, about six hours a day. Oh, lucky for her knocking on
wood. Oh no, luck had nothing to do
with it. Knocking on wood had nothing
to do with it then. Then there cometh a woman of
Samaria to draw water, and Jesus saith to her, give me to drink.
Oh, what What a wonder. The Son of God
came to Samaria to seek out a fallen woman from Cyprus. This woman
could not and would not come to Christ, but he came to her. You see, the name of God's church,
you don't have to turn there and look at it, but the name
of God's church in Isaiah 62 and verse 12 is this, sought
out, sought out. Bobby Estes, you're in his kingdom
because he sought you out. That's all. He crossed your path,
stopped you in your rush to hell. So I knew Bobby Estes since he
was a boy. Anybody over in Lancaster tell you he's the nicest fellow
you ever saw. Always has been. Nice fellows going to hell too. That's right. You mama's lie
to your children, you say good boys go to heaven, bad boys go
to hell. No, they both go to hell. They both go to hell. Drunks go to hell and so do preachers.
Homeless go to hell and so do half-wits. Both of them go to
hell. And the only thing gonna keep
you from going to hell is if God Almighty steps in your way
and won't let you go to hell. Only gonna stop you. Salvation
doesn't begin with man seeking God, but with God seeking him. You'll never be saved unless
God Almighty steps in your path and stops you in your way. Paul said, I'm apprehended of
Christ. He arrested me. He arrested me. This is when mercy comes, when
Jesus of Nazareth passes your way. Well might you see, and
every time you come to the house of God, pass me not, O gentle
Savior. Hear my humble cry, while on
others thou art calling, do not pass me by. I wrote to Faith yesterday, sent
her an email, and I said, As you prepare to go to the house
of God tomorrow, I'm praying God will speak to you. Speak
to his people through Brother Todd. Don't forget to pray God
will speak to you too. Mary, Chris, when you come here,
don't forget to ask God to speak to you. Ask the Son of God to
come your way, to visit you, to minister to you. All right, secondly, I don't
know whether you'll ever have an interest in spiritual things
or not. Mamas and Daddies, you try to
create an interest in your children. I know you do, I do. You take them and you try to
get them interested in spiritual things. You try to expose them
to spiritual things all the time. And they get grown and they leave
the house and you sit down to supper and you look at your wife
and say, Doesn't look like it got any
interest at all in anything, anything. All interested in money
and career and houses and property and reputation and all the stuff
the rest of the world's interested in. But no interest in spiritual
things, no interest in eternal life, righteousness, truth, no
interest. No interest in the glory of God,
the will of God, the things of God. The fact is, you will never
have an interest in these things unless God himself creates an
interest in you. You'll sit right where you're
sitting, just like you're doing right now, look over your fingernails
and go to hell. Unless God stops
you. Makes you a little more interested
in your soul than in your fingernails. That's what he did for this woman. He
said to her, give me some water. And that kind of shocked her.
Because he was a Jew. Jews didn't have anything to
do with Samaritans. And then he began to talk to her about
water. But as he talked to her about the water, she perceived
he's talking about another kind of water. He said, if you knew,
who's talking to you, if you knew who it was that said to
you, give me the drink, you would have asked me and I'd have given
you some water that would be in you a well of living water,
springing up into everlasting life. She said, man, I'd sure
like to have some of that. Now, I agree. Her interest was
still carnal, because she was still unbelieving. Her interest
was still fleshly because she was still unregenerate. Her interest
was still an interest after things that would gratify her own flesh,
her own lust, like most people about religion and salvation.
Everybody here would like to go to heaven rather than going
to hell if it didn't interfere with your life too much. Now,
is there anybody here who wants to go to hell? Anybody. Never met anybody in my life
who didn't want to go to hell. I never met anybody in my life
who didn't want to be saved. Never. As long as all it is,
is picking me up out of this pit of destruction and sending
me into glory when it's all over with. As long as it doesn't interfere
with the way I live, what I want to do. But you see salvation
is going to interfere with what you do. Salvation is going to
interfere with the way you live. Salvation is going to interfere
with your life. Because salvation is a radical
change of life. Salvation is a radical change. It's a change of masters. It's
a radical change. It's a change of heart. It's
a conversion. It's a renewing of the soul that's
giving life. This woman, in verses 7 through
15, as the master got her interest, she began to think to herself,
well, who is this man? Who is this fellow talking to
me? I never heard a man talk like this before. What is this
living water he's talking about? Where does he have it? How could
he possibly give it to me? I sure would like some. I sure would like some. Oh, I pray God will create an
interest in your soul. But if he doesn't, you'll never
have it. You'll never have it. All the
singing, all the preaching, all the praying in the world is not
going to change a thing unless God creates an interest in your
soul. Number three, if God saves you, If ever he has mercy on your
soul, if ever grace brings salvation to you, God's going to expose your sin
to you before him. Now that's tough business. That's tough business. Nobody, nobody, nobody is going
to heaven until they've been stripped naked. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody will ever taste grace
until they've tasted the bitterness of condemnation. Nobody. Nobody
will ever experience mercy until they've experienced the misery
of sin. And I'm not talking about just
what you do. What you do is the pretty stuff. Oh yeah, well you're drunkenness
and adultery and fornication and thieving and murder. That's
pretty stuff. That's the pretty stuff. That's
the best of your character. That's the best of your character.
Oh, but what you are. What you are. Oh, what you are. Has God ever shown you what you
are? What you are. This woman's so religious. She's
so good, you know. She's been shacked up with five
different men, but she's religious, it's all good. And the Lord's
talking to her, and she said, I sure would like to have some
of that wine. The Lord said, alright. And then he stuck his finger,
Bob, right in her heart. He said, go call your husband. Man, she
didn't want to talk about that. She said, I don't have a husband. She said, I don't have a husband.
The pastor said, I know. You shacked up the five fellas,
and the one you shacked up with now is not your husband. How did he know that? Because
he's God Almighty. He's God Almighty. He's God Almighty. And you're going to have to deal
with the fact that God knows you and you're naked before Him. Naked before Him. Naked before God. Oh, there's
hope for you now. You see, he never exalts until
he abases. He never heals until he wounds. He never cleanses until he makes
you dirty. He never, never clothes you with
the righteousness of his son and the garments of his salvation
until he strips you naked before him. Never. He never makes alive
until he slays. He never pours in the water of
his spirit until he gives you a thirst. He never feeds you
with the bread of life until he makes you hunger. He never
gives you rest until he makes you weary. Never. Number four. I don't know whether you'll ever
flee to Christ for refuge or not. I don't know. But I know
this. You'll never flee to him for
refuge. until he strips away and destroys your refuge of lies. That's what our Lord did with
this woman in verses 19 through 24. She starts to hide in her
religious refuge. She said man don't bother me
I've got a covenant with them. I've made an agreement with hell
and when the flood comes, it's not going to bother me. I'm a
Samaritan. And our fathers built the temple over on Gerizim a
long, long time ago. And we worship God and our fathers
are told to worship over here. Now, we know our religion is
different from yours, but we've got our way of God and you've
got yours. And the master began to speak to her. And he said,
Leigh, salvation is right here in front of you. And he said,
buddy, God's spirit. If you worship him, you're going
to have to worship him in spirit. And you're going to have to worship
him in truth. What he said. Quit your pretense. Quit making
it. Quit making it. Quit faking,
God. Help you to do yourself a favor
and quit faking. Quit faking. Quit pretending
with God. Quit playing games with God.
Quit. Quit playing this charade of hypothesis. Your soul is at
stake. Quit. Take off the mask. Take
off the mask. I don't know what your refuge
is. I don't know what it is. But you'll never flee to Christ
for refuge, till God makes you to see your bed's too short for
you to stretch over. Your covering's too narrow for you to wrap yourself
in it. Your refuge is a refuge of lies, and he will lay the
lion to the punish, and with righteousness he'll swoop it
away. Now then, look at verse 25. The master said to the woman, The woman said to the master,
rather, I know that Messiah's, Messiah coming, which is called
the Christ Messiah. Another word for Messiah, the
anointed. When he has come, he will tell
us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that
speak unto thee, am he. Now this is when salvation comes.
when it comes. When the Lord Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, by supernatural work of free and sovereign grace,
by his word, by his spirit, reveals himself in you. When the light of the gospel
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ is made to shine
in your heart, so that you knowing him now trust him. Trust him. You see, salvation, faith in Christ, this
thing of looking to Christ, first must be based upon the revelation
of Christ. Bobby, you got to know who he
is to look at him. You got to know who he is to
trust him. He said, I am he. I am he. Now, when our Lord said
this to the woman, he said three things. I can't deal with it. I'll wrap it up and maybe come
back to it another time. But this is what he said. He said,
woman, I am he. Of whom all the scriptures speak.
They're talking about me. He said, the father said, They were talking about me. I'm
the one. I am he. When he says, I am he,
he is saying, I am the Messiah. Never did our master speak so
plainly to anyone as he spoke to this American woman. He chose
this gal as the one to whom he won more clearly, more distinctly
than to anyone else what it was upon this earth declaring who
he was. He said, I am the Messiah. You don't have to look any further.
I am God's anointed, chosen, redeemer, and deliverer. I've
come here to deliver you. I'm the Messiah. Now the Jews
looked for a political Messiah. The Samaritans, though their
religion was more corrupted than the Jews in the outward form,
they looked for a spiritual Messiah. The Jews were looking for somebody
to come bring them out of Roman bondage. The Samaritans were
looking for somebody to come teach them of God. And the Lord
Jesus said to this Samaritan woman, I'm the one. I've come
to deliver. I've come to save. I'm the Messiah.
And he said, I can do it because I am. And that's really what
he said, Merle. I am. I am. I am. You remember how God revealed
himself to Moses? Moses was sent to God to go deliver
Israel out of Egyptian bondage. And Moses said, well, what? Who did I tell him sent me? He
said, tell him I am, Zechariah. I am that I am. God's redemptive
name. 14 times in John's gospel, Our
Lord uses those words to describe himself 14 times. And this is
what he said. He said, honey, standing right here in front
of you is God incarnate of whom the book speaks, the Messiah. You know what happened? She left the water pots, ran
off into town. She said, come see a man who
told me all things ever I did. Is not this the Christ? This
is He. Come and take a look at Him.
This is He. May God make you now to know
Him. And call you now to drink from
this well of living water. that springs up into you everlasting
life so that you never, ever, ever thirst again. Amen.