Transcript September 20/21, 2014 The Gospel of John: Living Water Aaron Brockett John 4:1-42 Are you guys doing alright today? If you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it and get to John 4, if you would. If this happens to be your first time and you are new with us, we are in a series of messages. We are actually studying through the Gospel of John. The gospels, there are four of them, begin the New Testament; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. What the gospels are, they are the written records of the life and the ministry and teachings of Jesus. We ve got four of them because it gives us a much broader look, a multi- faceted look, at what Jesus said and what He did. These are the guys who had a different angle. They had a different audience they were writing to. So Matthew, Mark, and Luke were the guys who wrote their gospels first. They were known as the synoptic gospels because they give us a very similar synopsis of who Jesus was. So they were writing about 30 years after Jesus resurrection. Their primary goal was to get an accurate account of what Jesus said and did on paper for future generations to read and to know who Jesus was. In Luke 1, Luke just comes right out of the gate and he says specifically that is what he is trying to do. He is trying to get an accurate account down on paper. Well John is a bit different so we are spending about 33-34 weeks as a church in John. I don t know what week we are in. Six or seven or something like that, I ve lost count. The reason why we are spending such a significant amount of time in the Gospel of John is because 90% of what is in his gospel is unique to him. He spends about 2/3 of his time focusing on the last week of Jesus life. He writes his gospel about 30 years after the other guys write theirs, so about 60-70 years after Jesus resurrection. Now what you should know about John is that he was the youngest of Jesus 12 disciples. He was, more than likely, a teenager when he followed Jesus. He was likely a teenager when Jesus died on a cross. But now he is an old man. When he writes the gospel, he is an old man. He has been an apostle, he has been a pastor around Asia Minor. One of the questions I have had in this study is why did John wait 70 years to write his gospel? I think I would have been a little more motivated to write it a little bit earlier, that I would get it down on paper. But he doesn t seem to be in a rush. John has really kind of marinaded in this for a lifetime. Towards the end of his life, when the culture had dramatically changed, it was a very Greek pagan culture, very intellectual society that had begun, not just to have doubts about Jesus, but to completely reject Him. That is when John decides to write his gospel. He says, Look, I knew Jesus personally, He impacted my life, He changed me, so I want you to know Him as well. John is, hands down, of all four gospels, the most theological, but he is the most accessible. He wants us to know that Jesus was much more than a man, that Jesus was God in the flesh and that changes everything. John doesn t downplay His humanity either. We are going to see that in this passage as well. John kind of goes back and forth between Jesus deity and His humanity and he wants us to know that this is God in flesh who has come to be among us. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
The Gospel of John: Living Water September 20/21, 2014 So far, he has introduced us to Jesus as the logos logic of God, He is the Messiah, and He is the Lamb of God. We have been introduced to John the Baptist. We ve seen Jesus first miracle. And last week we took a look at this fascinating conversation that Jesus had with a guy named Nicodemus. Now if you have missed any of the sermons in this series, you can get caught up online or on the church app. Just to remind you of where we were last week, Jesus sits down with a man about twice His age, a man who was extremely religious, a man who was very respected in society. In fact, you could not climb any more religious rungs on the ladder than Nicodemus did. Nicodemus was very knowledgeable, he was very respected, and he comes to Jesus thinking that he was going to do Jesus a favor. He is going to invite this young rabbi, Jesus was in his early 30s and Nicodemus was in his late 60s, Hey man, why don t you come join our team and we will help refine your skills? And Jesus kind of stuns him with this knowledge. Nicodemus, despite how much you know, despite how much you have accomplished, you are still not right with God. You need to be born again. Basically, what that metaphor means is that, Nicodemus, your problem is not morality. You are extremely moral. Your problem is not knowledge. You are very knowledgeable. Your problem is spiritual pride. You think that you can bring some things to the table and you can do about 30% of the work, or 50%, or 80%, to close the deal on the remaining percent. He says, No, no, you ve got to be willing to start all over as a helpless little baby. That is how salvation works. This is a work that Jesus does on our behalf. That was last week. I don t think it is any surprise that the very next person John wants us to know about is this lady known as the woman at the well. She is a Samaritan and she couldn t have been more different that Nicodemus. There are all these differences between the two of them. For starters, she was a woman, he was a man. She was a Samaritan and Jesus was a Jew. Nicodemus actually seeks Jesus out and she did not. Jesus sought her out. Nicodemus comes to Jesus late at night and nobody sees them talking, but she speaks to Jesus in the middle of the day, broad daylight, out in the middle of a public place. There are so many differences between the two. Nicodemus was extremely moral as we have already said. This woman was very broken and she had a reputation around town. She was on her sixth relationship. People said all kinds of things to her and about her. Here is what I want you to see as we read this narrative together. Every single person in this room likely could find themselves on a scale somewhere between a Nicodemus type of figure and the woman at the well. We ve all either come in here feeling pretty good about ourselves, pretty good about what we know, pretty good about how we are living our lives. Some of us are walking in here feeling kind of broken, maybe feeling at the end of our rope. Maybe right now you are in the midst of a marriage that is kind of coming apart. You would like to keep it together but, despite your effort, it is still coming apart. Maybe you feel in a sense that you ve got that scarlet letter on your chest and you wonder if people are looking at you or murmuring about you. Here is what John wants us to know. Jesus desires to meet this woman right where she is at. And He uses the metaphor of being born again to Nicodemus, but He does not use that with her. I want you to notice that as we read this passage. This doesn t mean that she didn t need to be born again technically. It did mean that Jesus wanted to us a different metaphor for her. All of this is under the umbrella of the Gospel of Grace. Jesus addresses her spiritual thirst. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2
The Gospel of John: Living Water September 20/21, 2014 So open your Bibles to John 4, starting in verse 1. What I want to do is I just want to read down through this passage. I want to read it and teach it and then I will really give you one primary application at the end. Look what it says, starting in verse 1. It says, Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, and this was John the Baptist, (although Jesus Himself did not baptize, but only His disciples), He left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And He had to pass through Samaria. I want you to notice that very last sentence. Now John is actually recapping for us a little bit of ground he has already covered. This was a few weeks ago and we talked about the fact that Jesus disciples and John the Baptist s disciples, they get into an argument over who is the most popular. So John says, I want you to understand where this fits chronologically, so let me recap where we have already been. Jesus is fed up with the argument. They are in Judea and He says, I am going to Galilee. Now to help us understand the geography of this, Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, this is about 120 mile stretch along the Mediterranean Sea. Jews lived in Judea to the south and they occupied Galilee to the north. But there in the middle was Samaria. That is where the Samaritans resided, that where this woman at the well would be. Jesus is in Judea and He says, I am going to go to Galilee. Now most of the time if a Jew was traveling from Judea to Galilee, they would not go through Samaria even though it was that shortest route. They would go around. It took a lot longer. It was more costly. But they didn t want to travel through Samaria because Samaritans were sort of considered unclean. They didn t want to rub shoulders with them. It was really ridiculous. It was just a straight shot up through Samaria. This would be kind of like if you were traveling from this campus to Fishers. Let s just say you lived in Fishers. The most direct route would be to get out, head on to 465 East on the north side, drive through Carmel and into Fishers. This would be you saying, No, I don t want to do that. I don t want to drive through Carmel. I want to go south down towards the airport, and I want to go all around the loop and all the way up the east side to go to Fishers because I don t want to drive through Carmel. That is how ridiculous this was. Now I need to clarify this. In all three hours I have had to. I am in no way comparing Carmel to Samaria. So don t send me the email. I ve been to Carmel. The round- a- bouts are awesome. This is just the analogy here. Here is what I want you to see. In that last sentence John says to us, Jesus had to go through Samaria, but He didn t have to. He could have done what the other Jews did. He could have gone around, but Jesus didn t. Jesus knew there was a woman there and He had a divine appointment with her. I love that about His heart. So it says in verse 5, So He came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. So this is a very prominent spot. Back in Genesis you read about Jacob, one of the patriarchs of the Jewish religion. He had occupied this land many, many years ago and he had dug this well here to feed his family, to feed his livestock, to provide fresh water for them. This is the spot, this is the well. I don t have enough time to unpack all the history behind this, but this is largely the reason why Jews and Samaritans despised one another. John wants us to know that Jesus has picked this spot to reconcile with a perceived enemy. So it says in verse 6, Jacob s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as He was from His journey, so John is focusing on His humanity now. Jesus was fully man. He was thirsty from His trip. He was sitting beside Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 3
The Gospel of John: Living Water September 20/21, 2014 the well. It was about the sixth hour. The sixth hour would be noon. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. (For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) Now this doesn t seem like all that unusual but we need to look at some of the details behind it. In the First Century there was no such thing as running water yet. If you were going to get water to do laundry, to use for cooking, to bathe, you would have to get up really early in the morning and you would have to grab your bucket. You would have to travel a considerable distance to the nearest well and you would have to gather fresh water. You would have to gather enough of it for the day s activities. So this meant you would have to get up really early to get that water for the day. This woman is showing up at noon. You ve got to ask yourself, Why so late in the day? Now it is possible that she overslept, but I doubt it. See what we also understand about the watering hole or the well is that it was sort of like the First Century facebook feed. It was sort of like the coffeehouse of the day. This is where you went to hear about the latest news or gossip. After you gathered your water you would sit around with the ladies, you would dish if you will, around the well. Then you would gather your stuff and go home. This woman waits until the middle of the day. Why do you think that is? It is because she was the subject of the gossip. She was the one that people were rolling their eyes about. She was the one people were murmuring about and she was tired of it. She was, as Jesus is going to reveal to us, on her sixth relationship. So she was like, Let me just wait until it is cleared out. Let me just want until there is nobody there because I don t want to deal with this anymore. She is a very broken woman. So she comes about the middle of the day and I would imagine that as the well comes into view, into the line of vision, and she sees this dark silhouette of a Jewish man sitting there, she is probably annoyed. She was probably like, What in the world is this guy doing here? Let me just do my business and get out of here. I won t make eye contact. Hopefully he will get the hint that I don t want to talk to him. And I would imagine she walked up and she was just looking down and she was just going about her business. And Jesus interrupts her world and He says, Would you please give me a drink? Now that would be considered, actually in the original Greek, He didn t just say, Would you give me a drink? He said, Would you give me a drink out of your cup? That is what He says. Now that is considered rude by our standards today. If somebody were to walk up to you at Chick- Filet, and say, Could I have a sip of your sweet tea? You would be like, No, get away from me, you creeper! Here Jesus says to this Samaritan woman, keep in mind all of the societal taboo of things going on here. She is a woman, He is a man. Men would never speak to a woman who was not their wife in public. He is a Jew. She is a Samaritan. He says to her, Could I drink from your cup? Just notice how intimate that is. She is appalled by it. In verse 9, The Samaritan woman said to Him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, If you knew, and that word knew there actually means understood. If you understood the gift of God, and who it is that is saying this to you, if you really knew who I was. If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 4
The Gospel of John: Living Water September 20/21, 2014 Now Jesus is doing something very similar to what we saw Him do last week with Nicodemus. He is using the metaphor of water, He is just using it in a different way. He says to Nicodemus, You need to be born again. He says to this woman at the well, If you knew who I was you would ask me for, not just this well water here, you would ask Me for living water and I would give it to you. And verse 11 begins what looks like a verbal and an intellectual tennis match between Jesus and this woman. Here are two things I want you to know about her before we read the rest of these verses. Number one, she is sharp. She is really intelligent. In fact this is just my opinion, I have no way to back this up so this is my opinion. I think she was a church kid. I think she grew up in church. It is very possible she was in Sunday school all the time because some of the knowledge that she has about the Old Testament history reveals she s got some sort of a past with the church. It is very possible she got burned. It is very possible she got hurt. Just my opinion. Take that for what it is worth. The second thing I want you to know about her is she is not impressed with Jesus in the least. She is like, I don t think You are any big deal, and He just says to her, If you really knew who I was, you would ask Me for living water. Notice her response here in verse 11. The woman said to Him, Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Can you smell the sarcasm coming off that? She is basically looking at Him saying, You are empty handed. You didn t come here prepared. How are You going to get the water? I ve got the buckets. How are You going to give me a drink and what are You talking about with this living water? Then this is what reveals to me that she has some history here with the Old Testament. She says in verse 12, Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. She knows where they are. She knows the significance of that spot. And Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. He is making a differentiation between physical H2O and living water, which is a metaphor for the Gospel of Grace. He says, The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Now notice here the woman starts to let her defenses down a little bit. The woman said to Him, Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water. She is beginning to reveal her spiritual thirst. She has kept her cards pretty close to her chest up to this point. Now as Jesus is patient with her, as He is beginning to draw this out of her, she says, I am actually really thirsty. Would you give me that living water? I don t think she fully gets it. I don t think she is necessarily grasping what Jesus means by living water. I think she is primarily thinking about running water. I am tired of coming to this well every day. Would you please tell me where the faucet is? Will you please tell me where the spring is? Maybe it is preferably a little closer to home and it is not a public spring because I am tired of talking to all these people. That is what she is initially thinking about and Jesus takes it deeper. This is where He turns a corner and it seems as if He changes the subject but this is actually what He has been talking about all along. Verse 16, Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband, and come here. The woman answered Him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You are right in saying, I have no husband ; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true. Now this is a passage of Scripture that it is really important that you read it in the tone it was said. You could read that in a real condemning sort of way. I don t think that is what Jesus was doing here. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 5
The Gospel of John: Living Water September 20/21, 2014 Notice that Jesus basically says to her, Hey why don t you go call your husband? Go call him because he needs this living water as well. And she was like, I don t really have a husband. Because she wasn t married to him, she was just living to him. Jesus says, You are right in saying you don t have a husband. You actually had a series of broken relationships here. You ve given me the truth; you ve just not given me the entire truth. Now here is what I want you to see. Jesus is drawing her towards conviction without condemnation. See that in the passage? He didn t pounce on her, He didn t beat her over the head, He didn t demoralize her here, He is drawing her towards the truth in such a way that she would come to realize the conviction behind it without being completely destroyed by her reality. So it says in verse 19, The woman said to Him, Sir, I perceive that you are a Prophet. So she says, Alright, I get the fact that there is more to You than I originally thought. That is what that means. Verse 20, Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Now what in the world is she doing there? She is throwing up a smokescreen. She is uncomfortable with where the conversation has gone so she decides to pick a fight. What is this fight about? Well, she is a Samaritan and Jesus is a Jew and so the Samaritans had build a temple on Mount Gerizim and, That is where we should worship. And Jesus is part of the Jewish people and they said, No, we should worship in the temple here is Jerusalem. And so she is like picking a fight about all this stuff and Jesus doesn t take the bait. Look at what He says in verse 21. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming. Now every time John says, The hour is coming, or The hour, He is referencing Jesus sacrifice on the cross. So Jesus says, But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. There is a lot in that passage. Jesus is saying, It doesn t matter if it is this temple or that temple, but I am right in front of you and you are failing to see Me. You are very spiritual. You know some things, but you are not quite getting it yet. In verse 25, The woman said to Him, I know that the Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When He comes, He will tell us all things. Now what do you think that is? It is, It has been nice to talk to you strange Jewish man who wanted a sip of my water, but I am going to go now. Goodbye. It is a polite but very direct way of ending the conversation. Notice what Jesus says in verse 26. I think He looked her right in the eye and with a whole lot of compassion, Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He. In other words Jesus is basically saying, For the last 20 minutes, you have been speaking to God. Surprise! I was feeling the weight of this moment as I was studying this last week. Now think about this for a minute. The God who has created the cosmos, the God of the universe in His sovereignty, had come and He has clothed Himself in human flesh and here He is sitting with a woman who was a moral and a social and a religious outcast. He is sitting next to the well and He is just having this conversation with her. Notice this accessibility that He has given to her. He says, I just want you to know that I am God in the flesh. And you know what? You haven t been seeking Me, but I ve been seeking you. I ve come onto Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 6
The Gospel of John: Living Water September 20/21, 2014 your turf. I ve come to the place of your greatest shame, not to condemn you, but to give you living water. Now very briefly let me just point out what I think are three elements of this metaphor that Jesus uses. Jesus says, This is living water that I want to give to you so you will never thirst again. He is spring boarding off our desire for physical thirst. Our bodies are made up of more than 50% water, so you will die more quickly of thirst than you will hunger. Jesus says, Just as you have physical thirst, your soul has a spiritual kind of thirst all of us are trying to satisfy. So there are three elements to living water, this metaphor of the Gospel of Grace. Let me just point them out really quickly. First of all, this living water is surprising. The Gospel of Grace is always a surprise became it is a gift. We don t earn it, we are not worthy of it, we don t deserve it. In fact, Nicodemus went and sought Jesus out but this woman did not seek Jesus out. That is a surprise. Just notice the amount of surprise in this passage. The woman is like, Why are you talking to me? Later we are going to see in verse 27 the disciples are like, Jesus, why are you talking to her? I am sure that the people in town thought the same thing. Here is the point. If there has ever come a point in your life where you have assessed where somebody might be spiritually maybe by the way they look or how they are living there lives and you thought, I don t know how they would ever respond to God, then we are guilty of what many in this society were doing to the woman at the well. Is there anybody in your life right now where you are like, Well, I just think their heart is too hard. I don t think God could ever get through to them. And maybe you would be that person. I just want you to know living water is surprising in who it can reach. The second thing about living water is that living water fully quenches our thirst. Notice Jesus really didn t have much to say about forgiveness of sins in this passage. He never even used the word sin. Whenever we reduce the Gospel of Grace purely to the forgiveness of sins, which oftentimes that is what we do. Now that is certainly a big part of it. But whenever we say, Salvation is I believe in Jesus and He forgave me of my sins, we are reducing it to something that is not the essence of it. Jesus just isn t interested in a get out of jail for free card because you have professed His name and He has forgiven you of your sins. He actually, as He says here in this passage, I don t want to just give you a cup of water, I want there to be a well of water, a spring of water, that would well up inside of you. So what I want each of you to do, even today, as we study this. Maybe sometime later, maybe in your Life group, I think it is helpful to articulate this. Ask yourself right now, in your life right now, what are you living for? What is your primary purpose for existence right now? I would imagine that most of the answers that we would give would be very, very good ones. I would imagine that many of us in this room would say, Well, my primary purpose for my existence is to provide for my family. It is for the betterment of my family. Maybe it would be, I really want to succeed. There are these certain goals I have in my career that I want to achieve. Maybe it would be a social, or some sort of political cause. All of those would be really, really good things but they are just not things that are sustainable. Eventually they will give out. Eventually they will falter. Jesus says, I want to actually give you a deeper purpose, a bigger purpose, that actually functions more like a spring that wells up inside of you. Please don t just reduce the Gospel of Grace to forgiveness of sins. It is far more than that. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 7
The Gospel of John: Living Water September 20/21, 2014 Here is the third element of living water; that it is gradual. What I want you to notice in the passage is that notice how patient Jesus is. It seems like it goes by pretty quick but there are actually narratives in the gospels that are much more concise in this one. John wants us to know that Jesus doesn t let the cat out of the bag too soon. He actually engages with her in thought. You see Jesus meets her where she is and gets her thinking, and then He gets really personal. So what Jesus is doing, is He is preparing her heart for the truth. That is how living water functions. What I want us to see here is I want to read verses 27-30 and then I want to make a primary application about what has happened in her life. So look with me in verse 27. Right in the middle of all this it says, Just then His disciples came back. They are always missing the action. They come back and say, We were at Subway! What did we miss? They see this Samaritan woman walking away and they are stunned. John uses the word marveled, but this basically means they were shocked that Jesus was talking with this woman. Nobody said anything. They are just thinking this to themselves. They marveled that He was talking with a woman, but no one said, What do you seek? or, Why are you talking with her? Doesn t He realize who she is? It is bad enough we are in Samaria but He s got to mingle with these people. It just shows that they don t get it yet. Verse 28, here is what I want you to see. So the woman left her water jar, why does she come to the well? To gather water and she left it. It shows she found something much more deeply satisfying. She left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, the very people that she was previously trying to avoid, the very people who had condemned her, the very people who were harsh with her. She went towards them and it says in verse 29, Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to Him. What I want you to see in this passage is the woman goes back to town and she does not say to them, Hey come and check out this new religion that I discovered. She doesn t say, Hey come and check out this moral code, this value system that I ve decided to employ into my life. No, she says, Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Now think about that for a moment. What has she ever done? Is that something to be proud of? Is this something you would be eager for other people to know? Here is what stuns me about this passage. The woman is actually excited about her repentance. She runs into town and she says to the people, Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. They were like, We know what you have done. Everybody knows what you have done. We don t want to hear about that. That is one aspect of that. Is she ashamed? Is she uncomfortable? She just gave Jesus partial truth just a few minutes ago and now she is okay with the whole truth. Here is the question I want to pose to you this morning. It got brought up last week as well with Nicodemus. Somebody came up and said, How do I know I ve been born again? Here is the question today. How do I know if I ve really tasted living water? How do I know? How do I know I just didn t go through an emotional experience? How do I know this is not just empty religion? How do I know? Aaron I profess faith, I follow Jesus, and life is still incredibly hard. How do I know whether or not I have received living water? Well, I don t know if I can give a full answer to that question. I can say this one thing here. You know you have tasted living water when you are no longer ashamed of your repentance but it actually becomes a great source of joy. You find great joy with your repentance rather than crushing shame in that. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 8
The Gospel of John: Living Water September 20/21, 2014 So relativists; and a relativist is somebody who would say, Well that is true for you but it is not true for me. A relativist is somebody who is a chameleon, so to speak, with their values. Relativists and moralists; a moralist is somebody who says, Let me just put on a show. Let me just clean up my exterior behavior without changing the heart. Relativists and moralists are extremely uncomfortable with repentance because it confronts our pride, because it is shameful. We are always trying to hide in the shadows. You see this woman has found living water in the sense that she actually realizes that her repentance is a really, really good thing because it means that she has been set free from her chains of bondage. And now, here is her automatic response, now she wants everyone to know. I m not going to read the rest of the passage. You can read it on your own. But in this passage Jesus actually says these pretty infamous words, He actually says, The fields are white for harvest. He says in another place, Send workers out into the harvest field. He actually reprimands His disciples. Guys, you ve been following Me around for how long and you haven t told anybody. She has been following Me for five minutes and she went back into town and told everybody. What is the difference here? You see she had her thirst quenched and in a spirit of humility and authenticity, she could not keep that to herself. She had to tell others. Now what Jesus is talking about here is evangelism, which makes most of us here in this room incredibly uncomfortable. It makes you uncomfortable if you are a believer because maybe you have attempted to try to share faith with maybe a family member or a co- worker. If you have ever tried to do that, isn t your tongue just in knots? You thought you knew what to say then you start talking to them and your tongue swells and you are like, I don t think I am making any sense. Or they are rolling their eyes or they have told me, Talk to the hand, I don t want to hear it anymore. You don t want to be that person. We ve all maybe had that moment when we have been sitting down at the dinner table and the doorbell rings and somebody outside is proselytizing and you don t want to talk to them either because it feels like you are being imposed upon. And this whole thing where Jesus starts to talk about evangelism and He says, Look, if you have had your spiritual thirst quenched, you can t help but go and actually share that with others. So, here is where I just want to end. What is the difference between religious proselytizing and sharing living water? There is a difference. You see religious proselytizing is basically someone who comes to another person in a sense of superiority. Hey, I ve figured something out and you need to figure it out. Let me tell you. By the way, what is your name again? No relationship there. No investment there. Hey, I ve adopted a set of morals that I think are more superior to your morals. I ve got a religion that is better than your religion so let me impose that onto you. That is religious proselytizing and can understand why that would be offensive. Evangelism or sharing living water is fundamentally different in a sense that it is impossible to do it with the spirit of pride. Because you ve realized how broken you were. You ve realized how thirsty you were. You love the person more than you do wanting to win a debate with them. You ve heard me say this before if you ve been around here for a while. Don t ever try to sit down with somebody and try to share the Gospel of Grace if you have not first wept over them, if you have not prayed over them. Don t turn this into I ve got to take scalps for Christ, or a drive- by evangelism. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 9
The Gospel of John: Living Water September 20/21, 2014 You see we have learned something very fundamentally true about this woman. She goes in the spirit of authenticity into town and she checks her pride at the door. Come see a man who has told me all I have ever done. If you read the passage, it says that they went and they started following Jesus and eventually they said, Initially we started listening to you because of that woman s testimony because we can tell she is changed but we no longer believe in You because of her testimony. We believe in You because of You. That is how that works. You see one of the greatest weapons that Satan will use against the church is the hypocrisy of Christians. One of the greatest tools that God will use to further His name is the authenticity of Christians. It is a fine line. It is the question of have I drunk deeply of this living water? Father we come to You right now and I am grateful for this passage. I am grateful that John, at the end of his life, took the opportunity to share with us what he knew about Jesus. God I pray that as we look at these different narratives of Jesus and Nicodemus, I pray as we look today at this narrative of Jesus and the woman at the well, that we would maybe check our pride at the door. And we would say, Where do I fit? There are maybe some people here today who would say, Maybe I relate a little bit more with Nicodemus because maybe I feel like I ve always believed. I ve grown up in church. I know the answers. I am living a pretty moral life. But there are others of us who feel like maybe we can relate more to the woman at the well. It is not that we don t know anything. Maybe we have had a church experience at some point in our past. We ve kind of heard some of the Bible stories before. But we are wounded. We are hurting. God I pray that we would come to know that there is a significant difference between moralistic religion and the Gospel of Grace. The Gospel of Grace says, Come and be born again. The Gospel of Grace says, Come and drink from living water. Moralistic religion says, Just say a prayer. Maybe you mean it, maybe you don t. Moralistic religion says, Just clean up your exterior behavior and put on a good show. But Jesus is after our heart. God I pray that in these next few moments as we respond with one last song of worship that Your Spirit would do a work in this room. That You would do spiritual surgery on each one of us. That You would meet us right where we are. That You would get us thinking and that You would get real personal with us. Thank You for your patience with us. It is in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 10