back in the 16th century when
George Whitefield, I'm sorry, the 17th century, when George
Whitefield would preach in this country and God so greatly, greatly
used him, traveling up and down the length and breadth of this
land in what's called the Great Awakening. He frequently stayed
in the homes of individuals and he made an earnest effort always
to witness to people with whom he stayed, always to confront
them with the claims of Christ in the gospel. And on one occasion,
he was staying in a home in Pennsylvania, had been staying there for a
while, and a young maid girl who served in the house was tending
to him and he kept trying to look for an opportunity, and
finally one day she asked him, she said, Mr. Whitfield, I would
like to know the Lord as you describe him. What shall I do? He said to her, young lady, ask
God to show you yourself. And he left. Months, months later
he was passing through the same area preaching again and he came
and stayed at the same house. But after he was there just a
few hours he realized this young lady was no longer in the employ
of the family and he asked the lady of the house what happened
to her. She said, well shortly after you left here, last time
you were here That young lady became so distraught, so distressed,
so utterly in despair. She hasn't worked since then.
And she stays to herself. I don't know what's wrong with
her. So Whitfield said, can you bring her to me? She went and
got her. Whitfield said to us, that young
lady, When you were, I was here the last time, you asked me what
you must do and I told you to ask God to show you yourself
and she said, oh sir, he has. And I can't live with what he's
shown me. He said, now ask God to show you himself. Those two things you must see
or you're going to hell. In those two things you will
never see unless God shows you. Our Lord in John chapter 4 is
on an errand of mercy. He's here seeking a sinner. A sinner whom he is determined
to make to see himself. in his glory, in his grace as
God her savior, a sinner to whom he is determined to make himself
known, a sinner whom he's determined to bring to faith in him. But in the process, he's gradually,
tenderly dealing with her to make her see himself. as Messiah,
Redeemer, and Savior, to see the glory of God in him, her
redeeming Lord and Savior, and making her to see herself. Now
there are several things in this story of the Samaritan woman
which need to be dealt with, and so I'm dealing with them
a little at a time, but I want to call your attention this morning
to two or three things here. First, in verse 15, We see that conversion is not
always climactic. The woman saith to him, Sir,
give me this water that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. Now I can almost get a picture
of the scene. The Lord Jesus has been talking
to this old gal about living water. She's got her mind on
the water in that well, but he'd been talking to her about living
water. He'd been talking to her about eternal salvation, grace. He'd been talking to her about
life and righteousness in himself. He'd been talking to her about
coming to live in a center, making her a new creature in Christ.
But this woman was of such carnal nature, as we all are, that she
didn't understand a blooming thing he was talking about. She
didn't understand a word he was saying. Not a word. All she had
on her mind was the water in that well. She was a bit sarcastic,
crude, cocky, rude. She was, she thought, just engaged
in another battle of religious bacter with some man who was
a Jew. She couldn't care less about
the master or what he was telling her. Now she drops her bucket
into the water, into the well, and holds on to the rope with
one hand and wipes the sweat off her brow with another hand.
I can see her looking up at him saying, man, give me some of
that water. I'm tired of coming here and drawing this stuff.
Give me this water that you're talking about so I'll never come
here and draw water again. And yet, we shouldn't be too
harsh with her. We shouldn't think too meanly
toward her. She's just like myriads of other
folks. You see, the carnal mind is by the necessity of depravity
ever occupied with material, carnal things. The natural man
sees everything with his confined vision of his depraved nature. He lives in cramped, confined
quarters called flesh. and he can't see, sense, taste,
feel, know anything else. He's cramped. He's like a man
who lives in a 4x4 concrete cell with no windows, with no light,
and there he is. All he can see, all he can sense,
all he can feel is just those cold dark walls, nothing else. And I'm telling you, that's the
limitations of men spiritually. Oh, man thinks he's brilliant.
Man thinks he's intellectual. Man thinks he's free. But he's
limited to his flesh, to his carnal, material, fleshly existence. And left to himself. Oh, my soul,
left to yourself. That's where you're gonna die.
Look at this poor woman. The Savior of the world was standing
right in front of her, but she didn't know it. The light of
the world was shining upon her, but she didn't see it. The sun
of righteousness is beaming in her face, but she felt no warmth
from him. She was, like most, full of questions. The Savior spoke to her and asked
her for a drink of water, and she said, how is it you being
a Jew? Ask me to drink. The Lord Jesus
said to her, he said, if you knew the gift of God and who
it is that's talking to you, you'd ask me and I'd have given
you many water to drink. And she said, where are you going
to get it? She's full of questions. The Lord Jesus speaks to her
again. And as he does, she says, sir,
give me this water that I thirst not. I'm tired of coming to this
well. All the while, the Savior was preparing her. Didn't look
like it. If it'd been me preaching, I'd
have got real frustrated. I'd probably got a little upset.
I'd probably pack my bags and gone home and said, go to hell
if you want to. But not the master. The Lord Jesus is all the while
preparing her for grace. He was in the process of making
her willing in the day of his power. Now there's some lessons
for us to learn here. First, learn this. Our Lord does
not deal with all of us the same way. He does not bring us all
down the same road, or the same path. Conversion with some folks
is a climactic experience. That's the way it was with the
Apostle Paul, with Saul of Tarsus. That's the way it is often with
people, but for many folks, conversion is a gradual thing. I don't mean
to suggest that people kind of grow into the kingdom of God,
not anything of the kind, but I am telling you that though
regeneration comes climactically, The matter of conversion, men
and women being turned to Christ with confident faith, comes gradually
many times. It certainly did with this woman.
We must never presume, secondly, That a person will never be converted
because he's not converted immediately when he hears the word. We get
a little frustrated. We witness to folks, we preach
to them, and after a while we just give up. Oh, don't ever
do that. I doubt anybody here believed
the gospel the first time they heard it. I doubt anybody here
did. As a matter of fact, I expect
the first time you heard the message of God's free and sovereign
grace in Christ, you got mad enough you could spit nails.
Now, not many folks like it. Not many folks like it. But God
graciously bears with long-suffering and patience toward chosen sinners. We ought to do the same. And
thirdly, when witnessing to people, we ought to follow our Master's
example. We tend to get in the pit with the snakes, and we get
in trouble when we do. You start to witness to somebody,
they raise questions, and then you start to answer their questions.
Don't ever do it. Now be nice, don't be smart at
it, be nice. Don't even try to answer the
questions. Don't even try. Now you can spot the difference
like that. When somebody's asking you a
question because they're concerned about their souls and concerned
for the glory of God and concerned to know more, or they're asking
you a question because they're cocky and smart alecks and they're
trying to push aside the claims of Christ on them. Don't even
answer them. The Lord Jesus, this woman says
to him, said, how is it that you being a Jew, talk to me?
Find his answer. He didn't answer the question.
He was nice, he just ignored it. He pleasantly ignored it,
but he just ignored it. He kind of smiled at it. A fellow
asked me the other day, he was in the office here, came by and
asked me, he said, this may be a dumb question. I said, I thought
to myself, well, it won't be the first one, but it's the one
I said to him. I said, no, no, they're not any dumb questions,
just dumb answers, and I try not to give too many of them.
No, just the Lord, he considered the source and went home. Don't
expect any better. This guy said, General, where
are you going to get this water? He didn't answer. He didn't even
answer the question. He was probing her heart. His
purpose was not to prove how much he knew. His purpose was
not to defend his doctrine. His purpose was not to defend
his religion. His purpose was to get her heart. And he wouldn't be distracted
from it. We must do the same thing. Suddenly, the master did something
totally unexpected, totally. He's dealing with this gal, and
he's talking to her, been talking to her about water, living water,
talking to her about a well of living water, talking to her
about the gift of God, and she's bantering back and forth. And
I can picture her as she's reaching over to pull up that little water
pot of hers. She's pulling everything out
of the well, and the master suddenly sticks his finger right in her
heart. I mean right in her heart. Right
in her heart. He raised an issue that she really
didn't want to discuss. Been sort of poking around all
the time. Waiting for and creating the opportunity to say what he'd
come here to say. And then precisely at the right
moment, look what it says in verse 16. Jesus said to her,
go call your husband. She almost dropped her pot. Can you imagine the shock? The
surprise? Immediately the woman responded,
I don't have a husband. She wanted a conversation to
end right there. At least she thought she did. But the master
had his hook in her now, and he wasn't about to let her go.
Read on. Jesus said to her, verse 17, Thou hast well said, I have
no husband. For thou hast had five husbands,
and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. And that sets
thou truly. Now here's the second thing.
Our Lord shows us that the conviction of sin is the necessary forerunner
of his saving grace. Conviction always precedes conversion. Many imagine that such talk as
our Lord gave here is unkind. They suppose that preachers ought
never to make people feel terribly uncomfortable. Preaching these
days is intentionally evasive and vague. If evil is dealt with,
it's dealt with in such general, ambiguous terms that nobody could
possibly feel the preacher might be talking about him. Nobody. I try my best to avoid that.
Folks frequently say to me, was that message intended for me?
You bet your life it was. Yes sir. Sounded to me like you've
been reading my mail. I hope so. I hope so. Did you
mean that to say that to me specifically? Yes sir. Every word specifically
for you. Every word. Oh may God make every
word yours. The Lord Jesus, let me see if
I can put in words what he did. He slapped this gal right across
the face. He just flat slapped her right across the face. At
once exposing her deepest guilt. Making her to know that he knows. Wow. Now that slap across the face.
was the sweetest, kindest, most gracious, most loving thing he
could possibly have done for her. Now her pretensions were useless.
Oh, she still tried to avoid the issue and change the subject
later on, verses 20 and 25, but the hook was set. She didn't
really know what was going on, but she knew that all her thoughts,
all her actions, all her heart was known to this man who spoke
to her plainly. She knew that this man was able
to tell her all things that ever she had done. Can you imagine how utterly ashamed,
embarrassed, confounded, distraught she must have been to stand before
such a man? You ever talk to somebody and have them look at
you in such a way because you're a little, you're guilty of something? You've not been right up front.
And the person looking at you, you think, He knows. He knows. He knows. And the sooner you can get away
from him, the happier you are. I sure don't want to deal with
it. He knows. He knows. You kids know what
it is, don't you? Talk to daddy, he knows. I don't
know how he even knows. Here's this woman. standing before
God and woman flesh, and suddenly Lindsay, she knows, he knows. Not many folks ever come to that. Not many. Why did the Lord put
her through this? Surely there must be a better,
easier, less painful way to deal with men and women than by exposing
their sin. No, there isn't. There isn't. If Bobby Estes went to the doctor
tomorrow, found out he has liver cancer, cancer is spread through
his body, and the doctor said to him, now, you got a little
problem, Mr. Estes, We can take care of this. We'll give you some vitamins,
and we'll give you a little medication here, but you're not going to
be sick. It's not going to cause you any
pain, not going to inconvenience you any at all. We won't have
to do any surgery, and oh, those dreaded words, you won't have
to go through any chemotherapy, radiation. Oh, man, we pay doctors
good money to tell us that nonsense. But he's no friend to your health.
Oh, no. doctor who's honest, who's concerned
for you. He said, let's get you in the
hospital. We got a, we got an ordeal to go through. We're going
to have to do some cutting. And you're going to have some
pain. And everybody around you is going to have some pain. But
maybe when the pain's over, you'll be better. Now let me tell you
something, my friends. Preaching, if it's what it ought to be,
does some cutting, and you're going to have some pain. It's not possible to have your
heart cut open and exposed, and it tastes sweet. The Lord put her through this
because he was more concerned for her than for her opinion
of him. You see, the fact is no one ever
sought Christ who didn't need him. Our Lord said, Mark 2, they
that are whole have no need of a physician. That's the reason
most people aren't interested in this message. Most people,
they don't need him. Most people aren't interested
in an absolute Savior. They don't need an absolute Savior.
Most people are not interested in someone in good stead before God Almighty,
all on his own, because they don't need someone. They don't
need somebody. Our Lord said, I came not to
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. You see, salvation
is deliverance from danger. And there's no deliverance until
you know the danger. You'll never flee to Christ for
refuge from the wrath of God until you know that you're under
the wrath of God. For this woman, it was the turning
point. Just like it was with the prodigal son. Here, she came
to herself. And I want to tell you something. I could get you and your sons
and daughters, and with enough ingenuity and work, I could get
everybody in this town to come join this church to make a profession
of faith, to get baptized, to say they believe in Jesus. But
I'm going to tell you something. Until you come to see who and
what you are, you will never come to Christ. Never. And it is a butchering of your
soul for a man to persuade you that you have peace when there
is no peace for you. First, you've got to be disturbed. Disturbed. The word of God declares
that all of us are sinners. There is no man that doeth good
and sinneth not. We've all sinned and come short
of the glory of God. The scripture concludes us all
under sin. The law is given so that every
mouth may be stopped and all the world become guilty before
God. In Romans chapters 1, 2, and 3, the Apostle Paul writes
that great theological masterpiece in Romans, and he begins by laying
down the foundation of human depravity, corruption, and sin.
And basically he tells us by inspiration there are three kinds
of sinners. There are three kinds in the world, three kinds right
here this morning. First in chapter one it talks about hedonists,
that is, just materialists, folks who live for themselves, folks
who are self-centered, many women whose lives have the motto and
the principle of living that everything exists to make me
happy. I don't get to watch much television
anymore, of course I don't miss much, but a few weeks ago, maybe
last week, I can't remember, I watched about 15 or 20 minutes
of one of those biography programs about Alan Greenspan. Told how
he came under the influence of a Russian immigrant to the United
States in New York back in the early part of the century. And
this gal had a philosophy, she was a brilliant, brilliant philosopher. And this was the philosophy which
ruled her and which by and large rules most men. The philosophy
by which Mr. Greenspan considers capitalism
to be the best form of enterprise in the world. This girl said,
the highest law in the world is self-happiness. Hedonism. Hedonism. They imagine themselves wise
and they become fools. They think they're so great they
figure out who God is and what God is and they make God like
a man, then they make God like a frog, then they make God like
a cricket, then they make God like a worm. And at last they
make God nothing. Nothing. Then in chapter 2 he
talks about moralists. Fellas who have a moral code. You know, Benjamin Franklin.
was famous both for his philandering and for his moral ethics. That's right. That's exactly
right. He wrote his code of ethics. And we all have a code of ethics.
But it doesn't matter what your moral code is, you don't measure
up, and you know it. So I live by the Ten Commandments,
do you? Which one have you kept? even
once for a second. I live by the sermon on the mount.
Do you? The sermon on the mount says
be you perfect, fine perfect. Measure up. Well I live by the
golden rule, do unto others as you'd have others do unto you.
Oh no you don't. You just once in a while make
a stab at it to soothe your conscience, but you live by it. And you know
it. The fact is, men are sinners,
guilty before God. But I can no more convince you
of your sin, your depravity, your corruption, I mean the utter
vileness of your heart and nature, than I can make you a new creature
in Christ. No man can do that, but God can. And He does. You see, it is he
who is God Almighty who speaks to this woman to show her her
sin. Now then, look back at verse
16 again. And learn this. If the Lord Jesus
ever exposes your sin to you, if he brings you down into dust, It is that he may bring you up
to himself. He exposes so that he may pardon. He abases so that he may exalt. He strips so that he may clothe. He slays so that he may make
alive. He destroys our refuge of lies
so as to compel us to flee away to him for refuge. Jesus saith
unto her, Go, call thy husband. But the sentence doesn't end
there. He said, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. I know our first immediate reaction,
once we've seen ourselves corrupt and naked before God, is to run
from him. Our first thought is, how can
God have me? How can God embrace me? How can God have anything at
all to do with me, a vile wretch? The fact is, he can't. Bob Pontzer,
God Almighty, can't have anything to do with you, except in Christ. He will not embrace such trash
as we are, except he wash us in his Son's precious blood and
robe us in his righteousness. Ah, but blessed be his name in
Christ he does. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus. First our Lord spoke a word of
piercing truth to this woman's conscience. Go fetch your husband. Go get your husband. He looked
into her soul and said, I want you to see what I see, what you
are, what you are. And then he spoke a word of matchless
grace to her heart and come hither. Arthur Pink said the force of
what he said was this, if you really want this living water
of which I've been telling you, you can obtain it only as a poor
or convicted, contrite sinner. But not only did he say go, but
he had it come. She was not only to go and call
her husband, but she was to come back to Christ in her true character. Now this is salvation, and nothing
less is. You've got to come to Christ
in his true character, in your true character. Come to Him. God over all, blessed forever.
Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. in your character, a sinner in desperate need, desperate
need, desperate need, naked, vile, guilty, undone. If you do, if you do, oh, if
God today will enable you to come to Christ in his true character,
in your true character, seeing that's what we are, that's what
we love, that's what we do, seeing. Like the publican crying, God
be merciful to me, the sinner. I'll tell you what you'll do.
You'll walk out those doors and go to your house justifying. For if we confess our sin, he's
faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness. Amen.