-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Thank you for joining me. Welcome back to KJV Cafe.
00:42 Good to be here today. We are on part 5 of a five-part series in the book of John:4, going through Jesus’ incredible encounter with the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman at the well, learning so much from the Lord Jesus Christ. Hey, it’s so good to get into God’s Word and study it.
01:02 And it’s just amazing what God can reveal or will reveal in His Word if we take time to study it and not just look at it in terms of historical context,
01:13 though that’s important, not just look at it in terms of chronological context, what happened before and after it, though that’s important, but also looking at it in the context of what would God have us to learn from this today
01:27 and how can we apply this to our lives. And I believe as a preacher that’s one of my main jobs is to explain or expound upon what we see in His Word and what it should mean to us as Christians here today
01:39 living in a world that is very much antagonistic towards the things of God and the ways of God.
01:46 And oftentimes we believe this is the worst that it’s ever been and everything back in the day was perfect and now it’s bad, but truly when you look at the Word you realize that it was bad then and there was great unbelief then and there was great sin then and the problems that were happening then are happening now.
02:04 And as Solomon says so aptly, that there’s nothing new under the sun. And he also mentions all is vanity. And so we see here in the book of John a woman that has been through a lot, that’s had many husbands and now wasn’t even married, amen.
02:21 And we see that Jesus says in verse 18 of John 4, for thou hast had five husbands and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband in that saidest thou truly.
02:34 And so who is this Samaritan woman? It’s one that’s been married many times and we know that in that culture it was a big deal if you had had a child without being married.
02:48 That’s why Mary had to not disclose that she was a virgin and still God gave her Jesus because people wouldn’t believe.
02:52 And that’s why Joseph had to put her away for a season there. That is why oftentimes there was a scripture we’ve talked about here in the Bible where they wanted to stone the woman that was caught in the affair.
03:04 And even today I was trying to think, you know, if someone was married two times you’d say, okay, three times that’s a lot.
03:13 Any more than three times it almost becomes a comical in this world. It becomes a joke. And our God, our loving Savior, that’s who he was speaking to.
03:24 Someone that had been married five times and was living with someone that wasn’t her husband. He was speaking to someone that in this culture would be ridiculed and certainly in that culture was ridiculed.
03:32 And that’s who God chose to use to tell us this great truth and who to use to create a revival, if you will, in Samaria to create souls converted.
03:43 He used this broken woman. And what an apt story to help us understand that God can use sinners like you and like me and like those. All of us fall short.
03:55 None of us are righteous. Our righteousness alone is like filthy rags. It’s an abomination to God.
04:01 Goodness without God is awful. It’s terrible. It’s horrible.
04:06 The Bible says that we can do no good without God. And the reference used is like a tree. And a good tree can’t bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
04:15 And we know that without Jesus, we can bear no good fruit. We need him. And so he enlightens this woman.
04:22 He helps her understand her place, her position. He helps her understand that he is the living water. And he gives her knowledge.
04:29 And we see here that she was looking for the Christ. And he explains that that is him. And she goes, tells everybody about it.
04:35 And while she’s going and telling everyone about it, Jesus expounds upon the idea that he wasn’t going to have an earthly meal, that that wasn’t what he was in need of, but that he had food of a different kind.
04:50 And his food, his hunger, his desire was to serve God and to finish the will of God. And that there was a great harvest.
04:57 And that the time of the harvest wasn’t to wait for another season, but it was right then. And that there are wages there for gathering the fruit unto life eternal for both those that sow and those that reap. And that both can rejoice together.
05:02 And in the previous episode, we talked about that great spiritual truth of rejoicing together, of working together in tandem for the Lord. Amen. And the idea of, number one, being yoked up with Jesus.
05:27 And his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Amen. And when we work with Jesus, and we are guided by Jesus, he will bless.
05:34 And we will do his will because we are submitted to him. And then secondly, as Christians working in the field together, we need to help each other. And one may plant a seed here, and one may do this, and one may do that.
05:46 You know, the same person that invites someone to church may not be the one that wins them to church, wins them to the Lord, but they invited them to the church.
06:00 And the preacher that wins them to the Lord may not be the one that edifies them long-term. That may be another one.
06:04 You know, the one that in this Bible study may teach you one thing, and then you may take it, and it may resonate where you learn another thing in a different study.
06:12 And all of this is for the glory of God, and God teaches us that we will reap rewards as we work together and labor together. And then as this chapter, or excuse me, as this parable of Scripture wraps up,
06:25 we see in verse 39, and many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, he told me all that I ever did.
06:34 And so here is so fascinating. We have a Jew going into Samaria, a place where Jews didn’t typically go, and people in that city, in fact many of them in that city, believed this woman who had five husbands, and was living,
06:47 who had had five husbands, and was living with a man that wasn’t her husband. Obviously, maybe her reputation wasn’t the most stellar, and they believed her about a Jew, who normally they wouldn’t speak to, that he was the Christ.
06:59 So they went against all their better judgment to believe on him. Isn’t that what we need to do today as Christians?
07:05 Oftentimes, we need to go against our better worldly judgment, and come to the Lord as children. I’ve got young kids, amen, and if you tell them anything, they’ll just light up and laugh.
07:15 I mean, goodness gracious, we had some frost on the window today, and my daughter, she’s five years old, she thought it was snow, and we were talking about snow, and she said, oh daddy,
07:25 take a broom to that, and just take a broom. I said, no honey, that’s frost, it’s ice, you’re gonna need something a little sharper than a broom, and she said, okay daddy, okay, you know, yeah, you know,
07:36 the smile on her face, and just that childlike enthusiasm, and that childlike belief, is how we have to come to the Lord.
07:41 We have to come to him in that childlike belief, that we believe he is who he says he is, and he’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, amen, and we just need to trust him,
07:50 and the world will tell us, no you don’t, you need to just trust Google, or you need to trust Amazon, or Microsoft, or whoever, you know, you trust the news, oh goodness,
08:00 we don’t want to do that, you know, trust this, trust that, the world will tell you to trust the government, everyone else but the Lord, but at the end of the day, we need to give it to God,
08:07 and we need to suspend our unbelief, and we need to double down on that childlike belief, and we need to believe on him, as he Samaritans did,
08:15 and we see in verse 40, so when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them, and he abode there two days, and so not only did they believe,
08:25 but once they believed, they realized, you know, the Bible says taste and see, amen, God is so good, they see how good he is, and they don’t want him to leave, you know,
08:32 when you believe on God, and when you get a little bit of this spirit living in you, and you get a little bit of that holy forgiveness, and that holy peace, and that holy fellowship that you have with believers, and with saints,
08:43 and all of this, you don’t want God to depart, amen, as a church, in our small little church, we don’t want the Holy Spirit to depart, we don’t want anything to grieve the Holy Spirit, we want God to linger, amen,
08:54 we want God to stick around, we want God near us, we want soft hearts, we want to be close to God, and how do we do that today as Christians?
09:02 We must do it through his word, we must draw close to him by studying his word, because on our own, we’re weak, you know, the Bible says the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,
09:12 that’s Jesus reprimanding the disciples when he told them to pray, and they fell asleep, and look, if you’re human, you’ve prayed and fallen asleep, if you’re human and you’re Christian,
09:22 you know, you’ve prayed and you’ve fallen asleep, in fact, I’d say some of it is that God gives you peace, sometimes he gives you a little too much peace, and then boom, you’re out,
09:29 and Jesus was saying, look, the spirit is willing, okay, the Holy Spirit within you is willing to do a great thing for God, and to draw close to God, but the flesh is weak,
09:36 and oh, how the flesh becomes distracted, and oh, how the devil knows that, and will target you with all these fleshly desires, and distractions, and snares, and problems to get you far off from God,
09:48 and the resolution is to stay in prayer, and in Scripture, because there’s something about that combination of praying fervently, and staying in his word, that will help you stay grounded in the faith,
10:00 will help enrich that Holy Spirit, and not grieve it, and will help you do what God wants you to do, and to believe, and you, when you pray
10:12and when you stay in his word, and when you worship with fellow believers, when you do these things, you will desire,
10:16 like the Samaritans, that Jesus not depart, and makes me think of after the resurrection, when Jesus is walking there with the two people, they don’t know that it’s him, amen,
10:25 and how, you know, they desired when he was gonna leave, their heart burned, they desired for him to stay, because they just loved hearing his word, and being around him,
10:36 and I’ve got news for you, God is a great engineer, and he engineered, or made us to desire him, and by the way, we cannot be fulfilled with anything fully and wholly, but him, and the world will tell you,
10:50 oh, you can be fulfilled with a timeshare, and then I heard on the new radio the other day, that they’re trying to sell timeshares, that people were trying to get rid of them,
10:58 everyone’s trying to get rid of them, and there’s a company, all they do is get rid of these timeshares, I thought that company is probably very successful, because a lot of people get locked into these bad deals,
11:06 and they thought, when they bought that timeshare, it’d make them happy, or might make them complete, if it’s not a timeshare, maybe it’s a pickup truck, maybe it’s a boat,
11:13 maybe it’s a girlfriend, or boyfriend, maybe it’s a job, maybe it’s a new house, or maybe it’s an oven, maybe it’s a pair of shoes, whatever it is, it will not satisfy,
11:23 the only thing that will satisfy is that living water, and that’s the Lord Savior Jesus Christ, and here we see in verse 41,
11:32 and many more believed because of his own words, so Jesus, it tells us, he bode there two days, right, and then many more believed because of his own words, so there was a group that believed because of the woman had said,
11:44 this man told me all that I’ve done, he’s the Christ, is he not the Christ, and then we see in verse 42,
11:50 and said unto the woman, now we believe not because of thy saying, for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world, wow,
12:01 so now we’ve seen a Samaritan woman come a long way, I mean, just a few days earlier, she was going to get some water, unassumingly, at the well, and this man asked her to give her water,
12:12 and somehow she knew he was a Jew, and said, what are you doing talking to me, and then he knew everything about her, and he told her of the living water, and that she’ll never thirst again, amen,
12:21 spiritually speaking, and she goes and tells everybody, and becomes a witness for him, then people start getting saved, amen, then they get around him, and then more are saved,
12:32 and then they say to her, look, we don’t just believe on him because of you, we believe on him because we’ve surrounded ourselves around him, we’ve immersed ourselves in him,
12:40 we have been near, and now we believe he is, this profound statement, Christ, the Savior of the world, amen, what a wonderful story, what a wonderful true story, amen,
12:49 and it tells us so much about when we surround ourselves around the Lord, gosh, we are better for it, and we are believers for it, and is that not true, that maybe someone, you know, certainly someone preached the gospel to you, and you got saved,
13:10 they walked you down Romans Road, and you believed on Jesus, you were saved, maybe even baptized, and then you get in the Word, and all of a sudden the Lord starts revealing these deep truths to you, and you say to yourself,
13:20 I didn’t just believe because so-and-so preached that gospel to me, I believe because I’m in the Word, I understand the character of God, and this character is true, and it’s lovely,
13:29 and it’s perfect, and it’s amazing, oh, God’s providence in our life will show us when we start understanding who he is, and we start seeing what he’s done, and we start seeing things that couldn’t be a coincidence,
13:39 and you know, you say, well, Brother Clark, don’t be too superstitious, I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you when I 1,000% said there must be a God, and I hadn’t been saved yet,
13:48 I was about 19, 20 years old, and I was in an astronomy class, the Intro to Astronomy, and I’m not a scientist, any teacher could tell you that has taught me, that I’m terrible at science,
14:01 and I had a very patient astronomy teacher, and he didn’t read a word of scripture to me, he just told me about how the stars, and the planets, and all these things align just perfectly for us to live here,
14:10 that’s all he had to do, and I saw the solar system, just a very basic premise, a little bit that my brain could understand, I said to myself, oh my, there must be a God, because nature is testifying to God,
14:20 well guess what, when I get into God’s Word, and I read in the scripture, in Job, and in Genesis, and all these different books about nature testifying to God, I say, wow, now I believe, amen.
14:29 So as we wrap up here today, the point is that God is merciful, that he used a sinner there at the well of Samaria, and that we as sinners, he can use us to be a blessing, and to win others to him,
14:43 if we submit to him, and if we only believe, we’re only justified by faith, it’s by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, and when we believe, he will do great things through us, and with us.
14:55 Thank you so much for listening to this, take care, God bless, amen.