Sermon

Hello everyone. I apologize for the my absence in the past few months. With this post I am going to go a little off course and post a sermon I gave last Sunday at my church. I hope you enjoy it. The text is the woman at the well.







Good morning. Now, even though this is the woman at the well, we are all, men and women, like this woman at the well. All right, let’s start out by with a little background on where this is taking place. This village is off the main highway that ran beside Samaria. It was odd that travelers would come this way, and it was especially odd that a Jew would come to this particular place. Now, Jesus is NOT a gentleman here.. He’s not even a “Nice” person to the woman at the well. Why? This woman is coming out at NOON to get water, which is the hottest time of the day. No one went to a well to get water at noon, so it is fairly safe to assume that this woman is on the fringes of society. She arrives at the well alone and here is this Jew, who is by definition not on friendly terms with Samaritans anyway. And what does he say? He says “Hi, I’m thirsty, give me a drink of water.” He doesn’t say” Why Ma’m, let me help you with that.” His attitude is “I’m thirsty.” Then she says “Look, you don’t have anything to draw water for yourself, why are you even at this well in the first place asking me for water, and how did you know that someone would be here to give you water?” Then he offers her eternal water, she doesn’t get it, he explains some more, and then he she sort of gets it and he says “Go and tell your husband.” She says I don’t have a husband, and then Jesus confronts her with the fact that the man she is living with is not her husband, and she is astounded because there is no way that Jesus, a stranger, could know that about her. She is shown the error of her ways, and accepts Jesus as lord and savior. Then, as if to show the fruits of the Holy Spirit within her, she goes and tell her family.
Please note that Jesus is not acting in a way that we would today call “modern” or “revolutionary” or even caring towards this woman’s feelings. He is acting like God. He isn’t going to help the woman with her water and then walk off, which is an act of kindness, yet still leaving her damned to hell, most definitely not an act of kindness. Jesus really doesn’t’ go in for the mercy ministry silent witness sort of thing. He confronts the woman with her sins, yet doesn’t leave her under the burden of those sins. He offers her salvation. Jesus, during his ministry, doesn’t go around proclaiming himself to be the messiah, he goes around saying and doing everything but that. Here though, he goes ahead and says “I am He.” This is one of the few times when Jesus really lays it out that he is the messiah. He gives her the water of everlasting life and suddenly she is changed; she becomes a Joyous conduit for the Holy Spirit. She is not happy, because who in their right mind goes and tells their family “Hey, guess what- I’m happy”? But she is JOYOUS? when we are joyous we tell people. She is filled with the joy of the holy Spirit and goes and tell her family and as a result many of the Samaritans were saved. This is a perfect example of our attitude as Christian: We have this joy of God within us and we want to tell others. As Christians, we are conduits for the Holy Spirit, through our words people receive knowledge of Jesus. It’s only through God’s word, the bible, spread by Christians, that people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. We can be like the Peace Corp. and do good deeds until the cows come home, but people still won’t be saved. We have to be like Jesus, who taught people what to believe and told them God’s will in combination with good works. Good works are not the gospel, the words of Jesus are. Good works are something we do alongside the gospel, recognizing that until people are saved, we have only helped them out momentarily, but not in the long run. We have to awaken in people a thirst for the gospel.
In John 7: 37-38, it says, “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” The great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon wrote on this passage quote “Proclamation is made most freely, that every thirsty one is welcome. Whether it be the thirst of avarice, ambition, pleasure, knowledge, or rest, he who suffers from it is invited. The thirst may be bad in itself, and be no sign of grace, but rather a mark of inordinate sin longing to be gratified with deeper draughts of lust; but it is not goodness in the creature which brings him the invitation, the Lord Jesus sends it freely, and without respect of persons.”
Let me illustrate it like this. In the sport of swimming, the most common injury to happen to swimmers is dehydration. A study done found that the water regulated the swimmers body temperature enough to where they were unaware that they were thirsty, because they weren’t getting hot. Also, since they were already wet, the swimmers were unaware that they were even sweating. They had to get out of the pool and drink water before they realized their thirst. This is how we are as Christians. Originally, we are in the pool of the world, our spiritual body temperatures’ regulated by the water of Satan, so that we do not realize our thirst for God, and we continue on swimming. Then God comes along and brings us out of the water and we realize our thirst and drink from the fountain of eternal life- The Holy Spirit.
We must bring people out of the water of the world, of Satan, so that they thirst. When the disciples asked Jesus if he needed food, he said no, his sustenance came from the Holy Spirit. We want people to partake in our sustenance, which is the Holy Spirit flowing through us to other people as we do God’s work. We must be like the Samaritan woman, forsaking our earthly requirements. She left her pot that she needed to draw water and started serving God. She automatically goes out and tells her family. This is amazing. This is her pot, maybe with a rope on it so she can lower it into the well, that she uses every day. She needs this pot in order to survive, and here she just up and leaves it. This is one of the things in her life that are essential to existence. Why does she leave it? Because her thirst has been quenched. Most of us wouldn’t leave our car on the side of the road if we had a revelation from God, yet this woman leaves something that is more valuable to her than our cars are to most of us. She automatically steps into a role of serving Jesus as if it were natural and she had been doing it her entire life. Why? Because it is natural to her now. The moment she was saved serving God became the most natural thing for her. This is what it is like for us as Christians. Serving God is the most natural thing in the world for us because we are filled with the Holy Spirit, transforming our sinful, rebellious natures into those of conforming servants, ready and eager to do their masters bidding, spreading the gospel to the world. Now, for those of you wondering, “Well, what do I tell people?” Here is the beauty of all of this. In Malikii 3:6 God says, “I am the Lord and I do not change.” God isn’t going to be like neighbor Steve, who changes his football alliances depending on who’s winning the game. God doesn’t change, so we can be confident that what we tell people about God will be true tomorrow, the next day, and so on. Once we know the plan of salvation, and about Jesus Christ, and God’s law, then we already have the knowledge to witness to others.
We are spiritual water taps for the holy spirit, through our words and actions we tell and show people Jesus, and through us the Holy Spirit can work on peoples’ hearts. We have to serve God in a proactive manner in order for the Holy Spirit to be active in saving people. We must serve God as this Samaritan woman did, forsaking what she needed to forsake in order to bring those around her out of the water of the world so that they might realize their thirst
Our hymn of commitment is hymn #736 . For those of you who are unsaved, Do you realize you are thirsty and Do you want your thirst quenched? If so, come forward.
For those who want to make another decision, whether to join this church, or to rededicate your life to Christ, come forward as we sing hymn#736- Rescue the Perishing.



Thank you all for being faithful readers. -Scribe.