Well, good morning. It's great to see everybody
who's here today. I am excited to lead our study
again because I have the best thing to talk about there is
this. God's Word is good, man.
It is a beautiful section of scriptures we have to cover this
morning. And thank you for being here.
If you're a visitor, thank you for joining us for worship.
If you're from the community, we welcome you.
And what a great day to be together, to worship.
We're going to be taking all of our texts in John chapter 4.
We're not even going to do any reference scriptures.
I don't think this morning, I don't think I had any reference
scriptures. So if you want to stay in one
place, have your Bible open, we're going to be right there in
John chapter 4. And this morning I'm just kind
of continuing A spontaneous series that originated from, we
started in Nicodemus in John chapter 3, talking about the man
and his God meeting together. Then I went back and talked
about John chapter 1 and we learned some lessons of
evangelism from John chapter 1. And I'm just kind of keeping the
flow. I'm just moving on through
because I found too much good stuff in John chapter 4 to pass
it up as an opportunity to study.
So if we remember back, we're trying to get the flow of how
this book is written. John is a, his writings are very
deifying. They focus on the divinity of
Jesus. And the other gospels have
different, you know, focuses or different angles, points of view
this letter or this, this epistle is very much for the
point of view of God's deity and Jesus's deity.
And so we noticed that how it applied to God coming down the
word became flesh, which is Jesus himself.
God enters, he provides, he spreads his word
evangelistically through people. John chapter 2 talks about a
wedding feast, how Jesus comes in and he's actually supporting
the celebration. He's he's doing his miracle, his
miraculous work in celebration. And then he moves right into
cleansing the temple. Jesus cleansed the temple.
He, he supported the celebration, but cleansed the
temple. The place you might think he'd
be happy with, He actually came in and ripped into him.
He drove him out. You remember Brooks Cristwell is
not here too long ago. He covered that.
And so I wasn't going to dive back in.
Brooks covered when Jesus cleansed the temple.
Then we're working our way into John chapter 3.
You have Jesus speaking with Nicodemus, and now we have Jesus
not just speaking with a Pharisee, Nicodemus, but
speaking with a woman and a very specific type of woman.
That's where we land in this grand view of this deity coming
down and spreading amongst men. So let's start here.
Here's our outline. We're going to cover another
man's treasure. We're going to cover spirit and
truth. We sing about that this morning.
It's been mentioned in our prayers a lot lately.
Where does that come from? It comes from this chapter.
Section 3 is going to be a work that sustains Section 4.
The model works. So section one, another man's
treasure. Starting in verse 3, it says,
Speaking of Jesus, he left Judea and departed again to Galilee.
So here's Jesus's journey. He's travelling from Ephraim all
the way up to Galilee where he's headed, and here is the path
that he takes. It says verse 4, but he needed
to go through Samaria. You can notice there's there's a
pretty direct path if you're going to go straight from here
all the way through. We know there's terrain.
They had to navigate lots of mountains.
Jesus chose the direct path through, but most people did it
because most people travelling here were also Jews.
That's where Jerusalem was. This is the Pharisees.
This is the religious leaders. This is their cream of the crop
and what most people do coming from from from Jerusalem and
Judea is they take a path and they go all the way around
Samaria or they go around the coastline.
If you take the coastal path from Judea all the way up to
Galilee, it's about 120 mile journey on foot or however they
travelled. Likely Jesus and his apostles,
his disciples were on foot. So Jesus takes this direct path
where other people would have gone 120 miles this way, or some
others would take the Jordan River Valley and go over here to
the to the east and take 100 mile journey.
The journey Jesus took was actually the straightest shot, a
70 mile journey, 70 to 80 miles. So there were Jews who would
have gone an extra 30 to 50 miles in the other direction to
avoid going through Samaria. You're like, what's going on?
What's wrong with Samaria? Is it stink?
Kind of kind of to them it's stink.
It said Jesus needed to go through Samaria.
We just established he didn't need to.
There's other ways around. He could have gone another way,
but Jesus needed to not for a physical reason.
He needed to go through there for a spiritual reason.
He had a path. He had an appointment to make
and he had an appointment with this woman.
Verse 5. So he came to a city of Samaria,
which is called Cycar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave
to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there.
Jesus therefore, being wearied from his journey, sat thus by
the well. It was about the 6th hour.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
I'm going to come back to this. So don't don't forget about
Jacob's well and what we've read so far.
A woman of 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.
Then the woman of Samaria said to him, how is it that you being
a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman, for Jews have
no dealings with Samaritans. OK, this is where we're going to
get the context and we're going to go back and read what we just
read through. So what is going on with this
situation? Number one, there are at least
three barriers here that Jesus is absolutely plowing right
through. Here's the first barrier.
There is the cultural rift. This is the biggest one that she
is calling out when she says Jews have no dealings with
Samaritans. What is the barrier?
During the Jewish history, there was a period, several times,
there were several periods where the Jews were taken into
captivity. Because God said if you will but
do my will, you will flourish, you will grow, you will be
provided for. Nations will fear you.
Everyone will get out of your way and the world will be yours,
so to speak. But they would sin, he says.
If you sin, then I will bring on all the destruction and the
plagues that you've seen. I will crush you.
I will make you a laughing stock.
God tells them this, So what happens?
They don't listen. And So what happens?
They go into captivity multiple times.
They lose their freedom. They lose their homeland.
To who? To the Assyrians.
There are several empires. They were just kind of like
getting whooped by every empire that came through and the most,
the last one, the most recent one was the Roman Empire.
It just kept happening. The Assyrians, though, captured
them and they were sent into exile out of their nation.
They were sent out when they wanted to, well, when they
wanted to come back. So they, when they're, they
turned back to God, God restored them and they're starting to
rebuild their nation. The Jews wanted to rebuild their
temple and they say we want to erect the structure and we're
ready to, to honour God again. Well, there's a problem here
because the Samaritans were a group inside of of the Jewish
nation that wanted to help. They wanted to help build this
temple too. But you know what happened when
they were in exile, instead of staying separate and apart from
the nations, the Assyrians that captured them, the Samaritans
just kind of said, well, we'll just intermarry with them.
We're just going to, we're going to adapt some of their cultures
and we're just going to kind of assimilate.
We're going to become like this, this worldly nation.
And the Jews were like, what are you guys doing?
We're in captivity here. Why are you intermarrying?
And remember, during this time, the Jews were supposed to be
separate and apart. Today we are a melting pot.
There is no neither Jew nor Greek.
We are all one in Christ Jesus. But that's not how it was back
then. They were by law supposed to be
separate from the nations around them.
So the people, the Jews were right in a sense when they said
you, you shouldn't be intermarrying with these people
and just accepting that this heathen culture.
And so the Jews had a disdain for what the Samaritans did.
So guess what? Hey guys, let's rebuild the
temple. Let's all get back together and
and build this thing back again. The Jews say no, you guys, you
guys stay away. You were separate from us.
Now you made your decision. You sided with the enemy, you
sided with sin itself. And the Jews opposed them
because of their unfaithfulness. They perceived.
Well, guess what? Then the then the Samaritan
said, well, forget you guys, then we're going to stop you
from building the temple. And they actively opposed read
the book of Ezra. They actively fought against the
rest of the Jews rebuilding the temple.
So you have this head to head. You're you're judging us.
You're going to be hard on us. We're going to come right back
on you and we're going to fight you too.
And so the Jews and Samaritans have this age-old conflict that
has established a long time before.
And that's the biggest factor in which this woman is saying, why
are you even talking to me? You have nothing to do with us.
Now let's go back. Why is he here?
Jesus could have chosen any path and he could have chosen any
location to meet this woman at. What did he choose?
He chose Jacob's well. Why did he choose this place?
Jacob's Well in the Bible is a place where a theme of where
special relationships are built. You think about where Moses met
his wife Zipporah. They met at a well.
You think about Isaac meeting his wife Rebecca.
It was at a well. That's where the interaction,
the the key interaction happened.
His servant met at the well. These new relationships are
started at the well and there's a new relationship about to be
built with this woman at Jacob's Well.
Jacob's well was a place of common ground.
So where these Jews and Samaritans both had common
history was at this place. They both revered this place as
a special heritage point. Jacob's well, the one he dug
himself. Jesus goes out of his way to
find a place of common ground in a foreign, a foreign people's
land, a place where relationships historically
begin. And why the well?
I also think it's because he's going to build the perfect
illustration for a sermon. Jesus was brilliant with this.
He set up a sermon about living water by walking to a well.
And I think fourthly, and maybe just as significant as the
others, Jesus is teaching that worship was no longer going to
be about a physical place. They had their temple, they had
their well, this place that was revered and it's no longer going
to be a physical place of significance.
Jesus is going to teach her that it's in spirit and in truth.
It's going to be a spiritual person that is the location and
the object of their worship. This location is not an
accident. The Bible says that God, if you
tried to write down all the things that Jesus did, the world
cannot contain this, the scrolls, right?
So he chose these things to show us because it's all significant.
OK, so we're at Jacob's well and Jesus therefore being wearied
from his journey, sat thus by the well.
It's likely that Jesus had just travelled about 30 or 40 miles
up to this point and going through this mountainous region,
he was wiped out. And as kind of the two main
points we're going to make about this lesson, this is one of
them. Your work and your weariness.
Jesus was no stranger to that. Jesus comes into the scenario
already dog tired, and when is it?
He sits by the well about the 6th hour.
So that should tell you how Jesus is feeling.
It's the middle of the day, it's hot, He's been hiking, he's been
climbing, but what else does it tell us?
It tells us something about this woman.
Would you go in the middle of the desert in the middle of a
hot day to get water in the middle of the day?
You want to do that. For those of you who have the
schedule flexibility, you do your grocery shopping in the
morning, you get your walk in in the morning or in the evening.
So why is this woman coming in the middle of the day?
Seems to be that she's trying to avoid people.
She's trying to avoid the rest of the crowd that's going out
there to get water themselves in the morning.
Why is this woman trying to avoid other people?
We're going to find out. Jesus said to her, give me a
drink for his disciples. I got away into the city to buy
food. It's so convenient that he
didn't have a somewhat thing to put his water in, right, Jesus,
he did that on purpose. He didn't have anything to get
water with. So he had to ask her.
He had to engage this woman. He had to set up a strategic
interaction with this woman to make some ground with her.
And what happens the woman says, how is that you being a Jew, ask
a drink for me, a Samaritan woman.
So the only it wasn't just the barrier of the Samaritan rift.
She's a woman. Women don't talk to the rabbi's
in this culture. It was even more separate.
You think the men versus women thing is, is something today.
It was bigger, big, big back then.
A rabbi would not have talked to a woman in public like this.
So you have the woman to man barrier, you have the Samaritan
to Jew barrier, you have the immoral and pure barrier, and
you have the private past to open truth barrier.
Jesus has plowed right through all this to talk to this woman
and she is confused. She's like, what are you doing?
Why is this Jesus showing us that there is no category you
can put yourself in when he can't get to you?
There's nothing he's going to, he's going to shy away from.
There's no hard thing that she's going to shy away from.
He comes to all and He came to this woman despite all the
things that were between her and him.
Verse 10 Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of
God and who it is who says to you, give me a drink, you would
have asked him and he would have given you living water.
And so here's where the the devil speak comes out.
You're starting to see probably the the metaphor starting to pop
in here. He's talking to her about water,
but he's talking out of both sides of his mouth.
It's no longer just about water anymore.
And it's it's unclear whether she really understands that or
not. Sometimes these people just as
talking to her confused sometimes maybe they're getting
the hint, but he says he's basically saying I'm the gift of
God and I'm coming to you with with something more with living
water. Verse 11, the woman said to him,
Sir, you have nothing to draw with You didn't you didn't bring
a you didn't bring a bucket here.
You didn't bring a jar and the well is deep.
Where then do you get that living water?
I believe the metaphors continue here.
He is seeking to draw into this woman's heart, but there's a lot
deep there. This well is deep.
There's a lot of problems here. There's a lot of stuff.
And I don't even know if she realizes what she's saying, but
Jesus knows the well is deep. Where then do you get that
living water? Are you greater than our father
Jacob who gave us the well and drank from it his self as well
as his sons and his livestock? Jesus answered and said to her,
Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever
drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.
What's the spiritual parallel He's drawing out here?
She He is coming to her in her daily routine.
He's coming to her in the monotony.
He's coming to her on any old Tuesday.
She's not coming in seeking truth, asking questions.
You know, he meets her on the way praying like sometimes
happens. This is not one of those
situations. Jesus meets this woman in the in
the normal, in the mundane and she is going back to the same
place she's always gone to for sustenance.
And we're going to find out in a minute.
It wasn't just water she kept going back to, she kept going
back to man about to find out this this woman has a history
and she keeps going back to the same old place.
How about us? How about our vices, our
addictions, whether it's emotional or spiritual
entertainment, whether it's substance, whatever it might be,
our habits, habits, habits that might work into our life and
take over and control us. What do we keep going back to
for sustenance to keep us going? That's really just not working.
We just keep trying to add more and more things to our
collection of stuff we do to fill that hole.
It's all the metaphors. She's going back to water again,
But Jesus says I will give water that will make you never thirst
again. We see what he's saying, right?
We see he's saying that only Jesus will satisfy.
He has the living water. He has the only thing that's
going to fill. But the water that I shall give
him will become in him a fountain of water springing up
into everlasting life. What he's saying is if if you
have the living water of this kind, it's going to come out of
you too. What happens with the fountain?
You push water in, you get water pressure in.
You get water pressure out. If fountains everywhere, it
waters other things besides just the channel that took the water
in. He's making kind of a
foreshadowing here, too. What's about to happen with this
woman? I would ask you if you really
have living water in you, it should be coming out.
And if it's not coming out of you, if it's not coming out of
me, I better be asking some really tough questions.
Is there really living water in me, or is it a dried up pool?
Is it an empty well that used to be tapped into the right source
but is no longer tapped in there anymore?
Or maybe never was? Maybe the the dig started and
you got just above the water table and never struck water.
Maybe you dug but never tapped into that source of living
water. Jesus says if you tap into this
living water, what will naturally happen is it will
become as fountain of living water springing up into
everlasting life. We're going to see more.
He's going to expand upon what he's saying in just a minute.
Verse 15, the woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, then I
may not thirst nor come here to draw.
So she's still stuck on the physical.
She's like, yeah, I love to not keep walking out here all the
time. Can you give me some this this
special invention you have where I don't have to keep trekking
out here in the middle of a hot day.
Now you go watch out. Whenever you ask Jesus to give
you something, you better watch out because he's about to cut a
little bit. As Tanner said this morning,
he's about to cut a little bit and she better be ready.
But he's going to expose without condemning.
He's going to heal and not humiliate.
He's exposing for the purpose of healing and not humiliation.
You cannot heal what you hide. And so Jesus presses in.
Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here.
So it's kind of like he he's, he's doing what would typically
be said like, hey, you know, bring another man with you
because it's always appropriate to, you know, man and woman
interaction because sometimes be inappropriate.
So you just want to bring, you know, bring someone else with
you so we can talk and make sure this is all appropriate.
Totally normal thing to say, but brilliant for him because he
knows what's going on with her. The woman answered and said, I
have no husband. OK, She thinks that's the end of
it, right? Jesus said to her, you have well
said you have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and
the one whom you now have is not your husband.
In that you spoke truly. So yeah, you were telling the
truth. But Jesus sees past her attempt
to put up a wall as you're going to see this woman's going to
deflect and she's going to put up walls quite a few times.
And Jesus says, yeah, you're right, but that's not the whole
story. This is why she's shamed.
This is likely why she's coming in the middle of the day in the
hot burning sun to draw water, because she's ashamed that
people know her. People know her past.
Now, we don't know what exactly is the cause, but no matter what
the cause is, it's shameful. It is shameful.
It is. It is embarrassing to have been
through this many men. Now.
Maybe it's because these men were were dirtbags.
It is true that the Old Testament had had started with a
permission to divorce because of the hardness of their hearts.
We learned that from the Scriptures that Moses, Jesus
said permitted them to divorce because of their own hardness.
And that's not God's will. Divorce period is not God's
will. But you know what these Jews
started doing? They made a list of what they
said was a reason you could divorce.
The list is ridiculous. It is the most minute things
that were obviously, this is a list written by men who want to
get out of their marriages. It's ridiculous.
It's things as simple as like, basically the equivalent of they
like the dinner she cooked. The list of ways these men could
have divorced her was extensive and ridiculous.
It may have been these men who are just jerks, but there's
always the other side. We don't know.
She could have had her own, you know, her own part in that.
It doesn't matter what the cause was.
It's embarrassing. It's shameful.
She doesn't want people to see that.
She doesn't want to let people in.
Other people might not even know.
And so they just doubt her. They just look at her with a
side eye. Jesus talks to her, though he
doesn't walk away. He has a conversation with her
Section 2 spirit. And in truth, the woman said to
him, Sir, I perceive that you're a prophet.
So we talk about deflections. She it goes from her life and
she immediately kind of starts a different conversation.
She wants to kind of move the conversation away from her life
and she brings up a religious disagreement.
Is this really a question she has or is she trying to deflect?
You know, a lot of times what people do when they feel
convicted by the word of God, they want to talk about how much
church is bad and hypocritical and how much it's just a bunch
of cheaters. And they just want to bring up
all the disagreements. They want to bring up the
conflicts. And I think that's what this
woman is doing. She's bringing up religious
conflict in an attempt to kind of excuse her own responsibility
in the situation. And she says, our fathers
worshipped on this mountain. So where you're standing, this
is where we say we should worship.
And you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one
ought to worship. You're like, how does this even
happen? Well, back in the old Law, they
were supposed to worship in the holy city of Jerusalem.
They were unified in one place. They're all supposed to come
back there. But what happened is the kings
got, the Kingdom got divided, and they started saying, oh,
just come over here and worship instead.
And we set up worship places over here and here.
And so it's easier for you. They had divided up where they
were supposed to be worshipping. And so it was confusing at this
point. This lady's like, what do you
say? What's right?
You Jews say it's supposed to be Jerusalem.
But notice she didn't really ask the question.
I think that's a deflection. Jesus says to her, woman,
believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.
You worship what you do not know.
So what he's saying is he's, here's the transition point
we've talked about. He's taking it from a place of
physical importance. Jacob's well, or even the
mountain that they worshipped on, or even Jerusalem.
He says it's not going to be about that anymore.
It's not going to be about this, this physical place of
significance. It's going to be about who
you're worshipping. It's going to be about the
spiritual side of their worship. And here's their whole problem.
You worship what you do not know.
And I think this is kind of a clue as to where Jesus said that
the Jews are maybe a little bit right about the Samaritans.
By drifting from God, they no longer knew God and they're
calling them out for the, I'm not even going to get into the
location problem first. He's like, you've got more than
a location problem. You don't even know who you're
worshipping. That's the first problem.
And that's the problem that transcends generations, that
transcends covenants when you don't know the God you're
worshipping. And when we say no, we mean
relationally, we mean obedience wise because that's what the
book of John says. First John says, how do you know
that you love him, that you know him, that you keep his
commandments? It's he's like, these people
don't even know me. You worship what you do not
know. We know what we worship for
salvation is of the Jews. Verse 23 But the hour is coming
and now is when true worshippers will worship the Father in
spirit and truth. There it is.
He doesn't one side her argument.
He doesn't say it doesn't matter where you worship, it just
matters that you know God. He didn't say that.
He says spirit and truth. You got to have both.
You can't miss either piece of this puzzle.
And He's building toward a Kingdom where the ethic of the
new Kingdom is going to be rebuilt on this foundation.
They should have known this in the Old Testament.
They should have known that it was important to obey God and
have a heart for God. But he's rebuilding that
foundation, stripping away the physical.
There's no more temple. We could worship on the grass
outside here in a park out there.
It doesn't matter where we're at.
We could be in in my house. We unfit my house.
My house isn't big enough, but for the Father is seeking such
to worship him. How cool is that Then throughout
generations, people have always sought to do grand things,
especially for God. You know, the the the ascetics
would go into the mountains and fast for for for days upon days,
weeks upon weeks, they would do great things.
And God says, I'm just seeking people who will worship me in
spirit and in truth. Makes you feel like what you're
doing is pretty important. It's not something big, it's not
something complicated. It's just worship in spirit and
truth. We don't have to do something
enormous to be what God is looking for us to be.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in
spirit. The woman said to him, I know
that the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ.
When he comes, he will tell us all things.
Do we see like a fourth wall come up as soon as he hits some
some tender spot here? She's like, whatever, he'll come
tell us later, the Messiah is coming.
She's deflecting at every turn, her life, her worship, her
current situation. And little does she know her
last deflection tool doesn't work because this is actually
the Messiah. Jesus said to her, I who speak
to you am he? What did her face look like?
Can you imagine? And we don't know what her face
looked like because I said at this point his disciples came.
You see, like a, you know, in the movie, sometimes they'll
have a scene cut in where the big thing happens and people
walk in and all of a sudden you're left at that tension of
what just happened. The disciples roll in and they
marvelled. They're just talking to a woman.
Yet no one said, what do you seek or why are you talking with
her? The woman then left her water
pot, went her way into the city and said to the men, So she she
drops the reason she was even there.
She didn't care about this water anymore.
There was something more important happening.
She said to the men, Come see a man who told me all the things
that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?
She still has questions. In fact, the thing that she
tells them is a question. She doesn't have all the
answers, but she's telling people she's becoming the
fountain already. Just tell people what Jesus did
for you. Don't overcomplicate it.
Don't doubt yourself the living water's in you.
Just tell them what happened. And if you're not excited about
Jesus to where living water's coming out, dive deeper to where
you get excited. And if that doesn't work, you
probably need to be more involved because you get excited
about what you're committed to, what you're involved with, what
you're putting your time and energy into where your treasure
is there your heart will be also.
Your heart follows what you put stuff into.
And this woman is becoming the fountain and what she tell them,
not something good she's confessing.
Actually, she's putting herself in vulnerability, saying he told
me all the things I ever did. Could this be the I think it got
cut off the Christ. So section 3A work that
sustains. Then they went out of the city
and came to him. These people heard this woman
talk and they they come and see. In the meantime, his disciples
urged him, saying, Rabbi, eat. But he said to them, I have food
to eat of which you do not know. Likely he just walked 15 to 20
miles in the mountains. They're like, you got to eat
something, man. I have food to eat of which you
do not know. Everything he's saying is
intentional. He's giving us the model for how
we should as his apostles, little a those who reach the
World, how we should be functioning.
How does it work? You get tired, but you know
what, there's food to eat. There's spiritual sustenance
that you don't even know about. He tells them, So if Jesus is
talking to the people who are literally eating with him and
talking to him and learning from his teachings, and even they had
no idea about this spiritual food, I'd say there's a pretty
high percentage of us in this room who might not have enough
spiritual nourishment. Even his closest friends did not
understand this. But let's look deeper.
Let's find it. Let's find the spiritual
sustenance and find it in him instead of all the the wells.
We keep going back to verse 33. Therefore, his disciples said to
one another, has anyone brought him anything to eat?
Right over their heads, Right over their heads.
He's taking it from immediate needs of food or water at a
well, and He's making an eternal analogy out of it.
Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent
me and to finish his work. When we engage in God's work,
helping, serving, sharing the truth, we begin to experience a
kind of life that outweighs the exhaustion.
That's what Jesus is saying from what drains to what sustains.
We can be exhausted because we're not sharing your thought
about that. Sometimes we don't start working
because we're too tired. But maybe we're too tired
because we're not working because Jesus says the stuff
he's doing is what sustains him. It's all backwards.
Jesus whole kingdom's upside down.
The way up is down. We already know that we will
still have jobs that tire us, responsibilities that stretch us
in days where we feel depleted. But alongside that, you and I
are invited into a different kind of work.
A work that aligns with God's will, a work that impacts others
eternally, and a work that feeds your soul even when your body
and mind are spent. From what drains to what
sustained. The goal is not to escape during
work, but to anchor your life in a sustaining work.
Because that's what Jesus did. If you need to be more
sustained, I'd be very surprised if a lot of people didn't feel
like that. I I me too.
If you need to be more sustained, check your alignment
1st. In every single area of our
life, check it. If there's one thing you're
doing that doesn't have a way to align with God's will, maybe
it's not alignment. Does that mean you can't have
fun? No, God give us all good things
to enjoy. Don't like many people have this
wrong perception of God? Like he just wants us to be
miserable and don't ever have any fun.
That's not God's will. Maybe in my fun I can glorify
God. Maybe in my recreation I can
glorify him. So every area, maybe your
family's making you tired, maybe your job, maybe your commute,
maybe maybe in your commute you can you can be kind toward
people who are on the road. It's every little thing could
have a way that aligns with God's will.
It all goes back to alignment. But it's not just for the
masters benefit. It's for your and my benefit
because we're not sustained when we don't align.
We are not sustained when we don't align.
We break down, we get brittle, we get tired, we get bitter when
we are not, when we are not aligned with him, it's going to
happen to us. It's not just for his benefit,
the master's work. It's for our benefit.
Now, remember, this is a quality check for alignment.
We're not saying you need to do a bunch of more stuff.
It may be the case, but right now let's check for the quality
of what we're doing. Is the work you're already doing
aligned to God? That's the first and most
important question. Is the work that I'm already
doing aligning with God somehow? We're not into quantity of work
yet. Doing the same job versus more
jobs. We're talking about the same
job. Number 2, if you need to be more
devoted, don't be afraid. He will sustain.
Maybe you do need to pick up your quantity.
Jesus challenges his disciples at every turn.
He does. He really does and and he
provides grace for the process, but he challenges quantity.
Maybe some of you don't need more quantity.
Maybe some of you are maxed out. It's true, it happens.
But if you do need to pick up your quantity, because we all
know, I think in our heart of hearts, we all know, don't be
afraid. He will sustain you in that
number three, if you're working, just be aware He is sustaining
you in whatever capacity is. You might not think I'm getting
enough, but He is sustaining you.
In the Old Testament, when they finish their wilderness
wanderings, they come out of that wilderness and they were
just probably dog tired after those 40 years of wandering
around. And God tells them, did you not
recognise the soles of your shoes did not wear out, your
feet did not swell? Those 40 years?
Yeah, there were areas where they were absolutely beat.
But he, they needed to realize that there was a lot of areas
where God had kept them completely sustained that they
might not have even thought about.
God is sustaining you. Praise him in that and, and
think and meditate on that so that you are more aware and in
tune with what He's doing for us.
And #4 what if you just can't see what he's doing?
What if you can't see it? What if you can't see the
benefit of what he's doing for you?
This is a life of faith. That's kind of point.
Have faith even when you can't see the fruit.
Verse 35, Do you not say there are still four months and then
comes the harvest. Behold, I say to you, lift up
your eyes and look to the fields for they're already white for
harvest. He he's talking about how they
understand the crops in this in the valley.
We know when almond season's coming.
We can tell you the timelines. We can tell you how long.
We know when it's ready. He's saying you guys can do that
with your crops, but you don't see the spiritual crop that's
right in front of you blossoming and blooming and ready for for
picking. It's right in front of you.
What's he's saying? Maybe in our day's terms, you're
planning for next quarter, but the deal is ready to close
today. You're still in prep mode, but
the launch window is already open.
You're waiting for perfect conditions, but you already have
what you need. You're waiting for a sign, but
this is it. Maybe we just need to get up and
go. That's what he's telling them.
Get to work now. What's their work, though?
Do they have to start from scratch and do this huge,
massive project of tilling this fuel?
No, because he says next, he who reaps receives wages and gathers
fruit for eternal life, and he reaps, receives wages and
gathers fruit, that both he who sows and he who reaps may
rejoice together and keep going first.
For in this thing is true, 1 sows and another reaps.
I sent you to reap that for which you have not laboured.
Others have laboured and you have entered into their labours.
What's he saying? You're coming through.
It's already right. Pick the fruit.
Don't overestimate what's in front of you to do.
You know, when people don't start a project, they're
overwhelmed and why people don't finish projects because they
never start. So what's he saying?
Pick up the fruit. I've got a lot of students who
in the summers in their breaks work in the fields, picking,
doing the great packing. They didn't till the field.
They didn't do all the work that led up to that.
They just come through and they pick the fruit or they pack the
fruit. He's saying we're just doing our
little part, reaping for what other people have already put in
the hard work for, and it's for eternal life.
It's not just a an immediate benefit, it's eternal benefit
that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
The shared labour equals shared joy.
How cool is that, that the person who tows the field, who
works hard, the person who goes out and picks it, they all get
to share at the table. I just picture an eternal
scenario where where you're high fiving the apostles because what
they did so many years ago, you got to kind of connect and link
up with them on. And we were working together the
whole time, even whether we knew it or not.
But we are working together. Maybe it's just generations
before someone from the 1700s. Who God was using somehow to
bring about the present fruit. God's God's working through it,
all right. And so we one day will be able
to look back with all these people who've worked before us
and celebrate and share in that joy.
Maybe that means in this congregation, to the elders who
are here, the work you put in, the faithfulness you have
embodied all these years. We get to share in the in the
growth, any positive growth that's happened here, we share
together. It's not whoever one person
might have been the lead contact.
It's the mutual work together. And maybe it's just two people
working side by side because the Bible says some, some have
water, planted water and others have reaped.
Some people are better planters and waters and some people are
better reapers. Maybe it's people working side
by side, but we all get to share in the joy of our labour.
We're almost finished here. This remind us you're not
carrying everything alone. God is already at work before
you arrive. Others have laboured and others
will continue after you. It's not the end of the line.
This kind of work sustains because it connects you to
something bigger than yourself. It removes the pressure of doing
everything and allows you to participate and not control.
That's the that's the good stuff.
Finally, just wrapping up right here with the section of model
that works. Let's just remember nothing
anybody has done in the situation is super impressive.
I would even argue Jesus as human effort on this whole
scenario is pretty basic. He's talked to a woman, he had
supernatural knowledge, which is amazing, but he didn't do
something extreme effort wise. He's showing us a human model of
how simple it can be. Verse 39 and many of the
Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the word of
the woman who testified. He told me all that I ever did.
One of Jesus first high producing outreach tolls was a
woman. He went straight to a Pharisee,
Nicodemus, top dog, important guy.
Then he immediately went to a woman.
This isn't an accident. He's showing you your part in
the Kingdom is huge. Do you feel like I can't teach
or convert anybody because I'm not allowed to give a sermon at
church and that's not my job? Wrong, absolutely wrong.
Jesus went to a woman and she produced big time.
It wasn't the same place, the same role.
It's true. But apart from the worship she
was teaching and talking to people, I don't see any less
fruit coming for her. We all have different talents,
so I'm not saying everybody needs to bring in a whole
truckload of people. It's not what we all may be
blessed with the opportunity to do.
But keep in mind verse 40. So when the Samaritans had come
to him, they urged him to stay with them.
We might be surprised who would welcome us in if we would first
step over into their scenario to first make the effort and go out
of our way. We may be surprised.
They urged him to stay. They didn't like Jews either,
but they urged him to stay. And he stayed there two days,
and many more believed because of his own word.
Then they said to the woman, Now we believe not because of what
you have said, for we ourselves have heard him, and we know that
we are indeed that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour
of the world. It took its own seed from the
right source. Sometimes we could be worried.
Well, if I plan it this way, this person's not working out.
They're not really, you know, growing into Christ in the
foundation they need to have. I'm afraid it's too much about
me. You know what?
You plant new water. A good hearted person will seek
to find foundation in Christ themselves.
It's not all our job to take over their part because these
people, they learn from her. But then they took it further
and they went into Jesus themselves.
Here is our outline today. This woman was just another
man's treasure, one man to the next, but she didn't know that
she was really the treasure of another.
She was the treasure of the King himself, another man.
And we learned that actually the work that sustains when most
people see their work as a weariness and a drag.
Jesus saw his work as his treasure.
He saw it as work that could sustain.
Maybe if we leave here with a prayer on hearts today that we
can take to God going from this place, God, maybe it's prepare
us to seek these encounters with graceful hearts and holy
strategy. Jesus was good at that.
He had omniscience, which we don't have, but we can ask for
guidance and we can solicit that too.
I don't see why God wouldn't answer that.
Prayer for guidance seems like pretty well aligned to his will.
Maybe a second prayer is help help us to welcome draining work
for you and we trust you will provide sustaining for your
purpose. If you've heard the word today
and you are not tapped into the living water.