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00:37 Thank you for joining me. Welcome to the cafe. Good to be here today.
00:42 I hope you’re having a wonderful day. And today we’re continuing our five-part series on the Samaritan woman, Jesus’ encounter with her at the well. Amen.
00:50 We’re in John 4 and we’ve been enjoying this. I’ve been enjoying it. I hope you have too.
00:55 Amen. And again, as a reminder, you can catch all of these messages on YouTube. We have a special playlist for the KJV Cafe short messages as well as our 30-minute messages and a bunch of other stuff on there.
01:05 So you can look up Enduring Promise on YouTube or go to kjvcafe.com and there should be a link there to click off too. So in case you miss any of these, and I do think they each have value on their own, amen.
01:18 I know I listen to radio preaching all the time and I’ll listen to, you know, message number three and miss number one or number two and I always still get something from it by the work of the Holy Spirit in me.
01:29 I always get something from it. I enjoy radio preaching. I’m a fan as well as a participant, I guess you could say.
01:35 All right, diving back in here. Each day in John 4 we’ve had a purpose. We’ve had a providence.
01:41 We’ve had mercy. These are the subjects that we focused on in here in day four. We are focusing on the solution or what God would have us to do after reading this message, what the solution is, amen.
01:50 And so here we are in John 4 and we have Jesus conversing with the woman at the well. And I’ll just start off here, verse 7 again, and work our way through, amen.
02:00 Jesus said unto him, how is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.
02:12 Jesus answered and said unto her, if thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.
02:42 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?
02:55 Jesus answered and said unto her, whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.
03:01 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.
03:11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither.
03:20 The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband, for thou has had five husbands, and he that whom thou now hast is not thy husband, in that saidest thou truly.
03:29 The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive thou art a prophet.
03:40 Our father is worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. And so here we start getting to where we were leaving off last time in verse 20, 21 here of John 4.
03:53 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. And so what we’re seeing here is a very significant act in Scripture of God foretelling the calling out of the Gentiles and then moving away from dealing with the Jews for a season.
04:11 And so of course a few books later in our Bible we get to what’s called the Pauline Epistles, and we see that Paul is, he is going to deal with the Gentiles, and he is going to be this apostle to the Gentiles.
04:19 And we see that this is a big change from the Jews, where the Jews were God’s people. They’d been knowing that they were God’s people.
04:29 God was with them. Moses, in the Exodus story, he was in a cloud, amen, in fire and so forth. He appears unto Moses, and Moses has that glory upon him as to where the veil and so forth.
04:44 And so the supernatural was happening often to the Jewish people. God, of course, appeared to Abraham, angels that appeared all the way up, you know, the Samaritan woman mentions Jacob.
04:54 God appears to Jacob and so forth and wrestles with him in the form of an angel.
04:59 And all of these things we see God dealing with the Jews. And here Jesus is telling the Samaritan woman, you have your place that you think is holy. Well, you don’t know, but Jerusalem is, you know, Israel is the holy place.
05:11 But either way, you’re no longer going to be set into that caste system where you’re not of the appropriate caste, therefore it’s not for you.
05:19 Because now is the time, as God is teaching through this, that the Samaritans can be saved, as the Jews could have been, as the Gentiles, as anybody can be today, amen. And that’s where we get to this idea here of who God is.
05:32 It’s very powerful, and this is our solution for Christians when we read this, understand who God is and worship him, amen.
05:40 Verse 22, you worship you know not what. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews.
05:45 But, but, when Jesus says but, that’s a big deal, right? But, or kind of like you say, okay, well this is what it has been, but here’s where it’s going. But the hour cometh, and then he says, and now is.
05:58 So he’s saying the time is at hand, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him in spirit and in truth.
06:04 I preached a message not too long ago about worshipping God in spirit and in truth. And these are, the truth is, comes from God’s Word, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit living within us.
06:18 God is a spirit and desires to be worshipped as such, as we see in verse 24.
06:24 God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. Of the woman saith unto him, I know that the Messiah cometh, which is called Christ. When he is come, he will tell us all things.
06:35 So this is funny, because she’s saying, hey, you know, Jesus is coming one day. And God’s like, yeah, that’s me. I am Jesus.
06:42 And it’s funny, because this particular reference, I don’t think it’s unbelief, because it looks like she believes very quickly after this. It’s more just ignorance. She just doesn’t know.
06:53 But it reminds you of the Pharisees and others that would be talking to Jesus, and he’d be explaining who he was, and they wouldn’t believe it’s him. It also indicates that the Samaritans at that time were looking for the Christ.
07:06 And so people wonder, maybe in the time of the Bible, many thousands of years ago, did they understand the doctrine of a Messiah or the Christ coming? The common people, did they understand? And they did.
07:16 And she explained that to Jesus, because she said, oh, this guy’s a prophet. Well, I’m looking for the Christ. And here we see in verse 26, Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.
07:28 He just plainly tells her, I’m the Christ. I can’t imagine the look on her face. It was probably a long look of shock and excitement and all kinds of things.
07:35 And again, remember, Jesus had just told her her life. He told her all about her five husbands and all these things. And so if someone comes to you and tells you a truth that there is no way they could have known otherwise, you realize God is upon them.
07:49 And God is right in front of her here. Verse 27, and upon this came his disciples and marveled that he talked with a woman, yet no man said, what seekest thou or why talkest thou with her?
07:59 So the disciples came back. So we now have this private moment of Jesus and the Samaritan woman ending.
08:07 And now we segue into this more public affair. And we see here that the disciples were curious because typically Jews did not speak to Samaritans. They couldn’t believe it, but they didn’t say anything because he is God after all.
08:16 Verse 28, the woman then left her water pot and went her way into the city and saith to the men, come see a man which told me all things that ever I did, is not this the Christ?
08:27 And so she left her water pot. That tells me that she was excited, that she wasn’t concerned about material things, that she wasn’t concerned about whether the water pot would be there when she got back, that she was just too fired up.
08:37 And she ran and told everyone she knew, is that not what you should do when you encounter Christ is tell others about this one that told her everything that she had done? And then what happened? They believed her.
08:50 Verse 30, then they went out of the city and came unto him. In the meanwhile his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat. But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.
09:00 Therefore said the disciples one to another, hath any man brought him ought to eat? And so here we see an interesting dual thing happening.
09:09 We have the woman at the well in Samaria taking him literally saying, where’s your water pot to get this everlasting water? And then we have the disciples taking him literally saying, oh, did someone feed him?
09:21 Where is his food? And yet he’s talking of spiritual things here. Verse 34, Jesus saith unto them, my meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.
09:34 Say not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.
09:49 And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And here it is that saying true, one soweth, another reapeth.
09:55 I sent you to reap, that whereon ye bestowed no labor, and other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors.
10:02 And so Jesus gives several spiritual truths here, saying that his meat, his food, his desire was to do the will of God, the one that sent him, Father God, and to finish his work and be obedient. And that’s what he had to do.
10:14 That’s what he was feasting on. That was what he thirsted for and hungered for, was doing the will of the Father. And he immediately says, don’t say that there’s time for that later, because he says the harvest is now.
10:27 The harvest is plentiful. And the idea here is that when we understand who Jesus is, and what he’s called us to do, we shouldn’t say later on we’ll get to the harvest. We shouldn’t say later on this will happen.
10:37 We need to go ahead and take part in it now. And the Lord gives a great spiritual truth that we share in the reaping and the sowing.
10:50 And so one person will plant a seed, another one might help nurture or water that seed, and another one may go ahead and reap the harvest from that seed, amen. And all of this is part and parcel of being a Christian and serving God.
10:59 And I gave an example in our Bible study recently of a young man that had been coming to our church, and I preached my heart out, and I prayed that he’d be saved, amen.
11:07 He wasn’t sure that he was, and I preached and preached and preached, and I gave some altar calls, and it was what it was. And then we ended up at youth camp that summer, and he was having a conversation with our music minister.
11:19 And our music minister won him to the Lord.
11:25 And a couple things from that example. One is the music minister and myself, and most importantly the Holy Spirit and God himself, is what saved that young man. And so there were several co-laborers in that salvation.
11:36 Another point I made is I wish we had more of those stories. We are a small church, and it kind of grieved me. I couldn’t tell hundreds of those stories.
11:44 And so, hey, if you’ve been blessed by this ministry, send me a message, because I’d love to hear it, amen.
11:51 Because preaching on the radio, sometimes you don’t see people, you don’t know the impact that it’s making. But we did see that impact with that young man, and we did see this idea that the Lord is saying here in John 4,
12:01 in these verses 33 through 38, that, you know, that there’s some that will look at the fields and say, hey, we can wait on the harvest, but he’s saying the harvest is now.
12:10 And that, you know, you may sow and you may reap, but you’ll reap together.
12:17 One soweth, another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon you bestowed no labor, other men labored, and you’re entered into their labors. And so we are building upon the work of others that have worked in the faith, and we all are partakers in this work.
12:30 And God has given us that honor. God doesn’t need us to do it, amen? He allows us to do it. It’s his mercy and his love that allows us to do it.
12:37 And our theme today is the solution. So what is the solution for us as Christians after reading this? What can we do? What can we, what kind of action can we take?
12:50 And number one is accept Christ as Savior. Number two is get on fire for God by staying close to him, repenting of your sins, cleansing your hands, drawing nigh to him, amen.
12:58 And then number three is understanding that we’re co-laborers with Christ, and we’re co-laborers with others, and that we may plant a seed, amen? And that someone else may water that seed, and yet someone else may harvest it.
13:12 But we are all equally benefiting from that. And the kingdom, of course, is the great beneficiary. And so, you know, you hear a lot, especially in the modern church, about kingdom work and so forth.
13:24 And sometimes I don’t fully understand when people say that, oh, it’s all about the kingdom, we’re doing things for the kingdom, but they look like they might be doing something they enjoy or they want to do.
13:34 But at the end of the day, true kingdom work is winning souls to Christ and telling people about Jesus and edifying the saints, amen? That’s kingdom work, and we do that in tandem with others.
13:43 And gosh, the Bible says something to the extent of one can catch this many, but two can catch much many more, amen. And that is the truth.
13:56 And so how many more could five, ten, or a dozen people catch if they are on fire for God? And so we want to win souls to God, and the angels rejoice over one, amen.
14:01 We want to win souls to God, and that starts with a commitment to Him and seeing our purpose and what He’s calling us to do and what He’s explained here to His disciples and to the woman at the well.
14:11 Thank you for joining me. Tune in for part five soon. Thank you so much. God bless. Amen.