Almighty God and Father, we come before you
to give praise and honor for what you
have done, what you have done in your
Son, Jesus Christ.
And I pray that you would minister to
us from your Word by your Spirit this
morning as we come before you.
Know us, hear us, and pierce us in
Jesus' name.
Amen.
I would like it if you'd turn to
your Bibles to John chapter 4 and we
are taking up this continued dialogue with the
Lord Jesus Christ and this woman at the
well.
This is the extraordinary epic moment in Jesus'
life where he has come to meet this
Samaritan woman at the historic well of Jacob.
And as we're progressing through this morning, I
am coming to that point in the text
which is the most difficult because it faces
in us and it faces for all time
the oldest religion that has opposed the gospel
of the Lord from the beginning of time.
I say the oldest religion.
If you go back to the preachers of
the last 2,000 years, they will say
over and over, all of you see multiple
religions, but in the eyes of God, there
are two.
There are only two.
There have always been only two.
His and the one that comes from us.
And although the one that comes from us
is multiple, the same premise undergirds it.
And that premise dominates our thinking.
It's how we were born.
It's how we think.
It's the nature of the fallen mind.
And it's a religion I have found very
difficult to confront, not just in the world,
but in the church.
It's a religion being preached in the name
of the Lord in the church.
And it's believed upon amongst Christians.
And I say mature Christians.
And it's only known and only revealed in
the time of testing.
And here it's confronted straight on by the
Lord Jesus and by this woman.
What happens in this text is extremely important.
We've looked at a couple of factors.
The one that Jesus initiated the conversation with
her, which was against cultural barriers to that.
He spoke of the kingdom of God.
He moved the conversation, not just in politeness
and the things of the day.
He moved to talking about the kingdom of
God.
That's what missionaries do.
We move the conversation, not just out of
the common, but into the things eternal.
So he moves the conversation out of water
to the water of life.
He's a missionary.
The third thing he does is rather than
giving her the water of life, he convicts
her of sin.
This is an unpleasant moment.
He looks at her and says, go call
your husband.
She responds.
I have no husband.
He said, you're right.
You are so right.
And then he exposes her heart.
She's had five.
And today she lives in immorality.
The one that she lives with is not
her husband.
And that the Bible calls immorality.
And so there she stands.
And upon receiving that word, she immediately deflects
to the religious topic of the day, the
debate of the moment, anything to deflect from
the piercing eyes of the Lord, seeing us
as we are.
She deflects to the topic of the day.
Where do we worship?
Here at the mountain in Samaria or in
Jerusalem?
This is the great debate.
And it's here that Jesus has a choice.
And this is the choice that is so
bothersome.
He could leave it at that.
You, dear woman, are a sinner.
I have come as a missionary.
Repent.
I personally like that way.
It's got that little Baptist element in it
that no, no, John, the Baptist element.
He chooses to do something unprecedented.
And for most of us wrong.
He chooses to reveal the secrets of the
glory of the mysteries of God to her.
He had not even done it with his
twelve.
The Old Testament had never revealed what he
chose to reveal to her.
As the scriptures in the New Testament say,
these things were hidden from ages past and
now made known through the apostles.
By the Lord Jesus Christ, he reveals to
her, he imparts to her, he entrusts to
her the glories of the revelation of God.
Does the president of the country go out
on the street of wall of the White
House and pick a commoner and speak to
the commoner, the mysteries of the federal government,
the CIA, the Pentagon?
Does the CEO of a company take somebody
at the lowliest position in the company and
reveal the strategies of tomorrow?
What is he doing with that woman?
Telling her that he knows who she is.
She's immoral.
She's adulterous.
She's a sinner.
In that day, listen to this.
She's a woman.
You know, in the synagogue of that day,
the seminaries of that day, even up to
this day, it's men who handle the word
of God, not women.
So funny.
Usually when I say that, I get a
reaction, but that is the way it's been
historically.
It's men who handle the word of God.
The women do what they do.
The men do what they do.
He's revealing it to her.
She's a Samaritan.
Great divide from the days of Solomon on
the day when the kingdom divided between Israel
and Judah, Israel became idolatrous and the Jews
held to the faith of Judah, the covenants.
And Jesus says this, you don't know the
God we worship.
Salvation comes from the Jews.
And yet he tells a Samaritan woman this.
He's identified that she's a sinner.
She has a reputation back in town.
That's why she's come alone to the well
and she's branded as an outcast.
Why has he chosen to honor her?
Because that's what he's done.
He has chosen to name her with the
highest distinctions of value and esteem and grace
and mercy, compassion upon her.
What is the revelation?
The first time the Bible ever says these
words, God is spirit.
This is a big topic.
We're not going to take it up today.
This is big topic.
This is the word incorporeal.
This is the word he is without body,
without body.
He is unlimited.
He is everywhere.
He is the creator of space.
He is outside of space.
Therefore, he is everywhere.
There is no place you can run that
he is not because he is spirit.
Father is spirit.
Son, holy spirit from eternity, from endless ages.
He is giving to her this unbelievable mystery.
One, God is spirit and two, God is
incarnate.
I am he.
He had not even told the disciples that
they had not yet even figured this out.
He declares he is Messiah, the coming one.
Paul phrases it like this, beyond the mind,
in Jesus, all the fullness of deity dwelt
in bodily form, limitless, confined in fullness, and
he chose her.
Anybody who's anybody would say, wrong move.
Why is it a wrong move?
Because there are those of us who are
deserving to hear this, not her, not a
woman, a man, not a Samaritan, a Jew,
not a sinner, but us who are blameless,
righteous.
Those of us who don't have a reputation
in town, but who are distinguished, respected, and
worthy to receive the revelation.
And that's the structure and system that we
are born in.
There are those of us who are deserving.
We are not like her.
That's what's happening in this text.
There's an outrage here amongst us in our
structures, in our systems, because the Lord breaks
them down.
He tells her what he should have told
us.
We are not like her.
And that's where this other religion begins to
pop its ugly head.
It's real.
It's alive.
And I believe it's here in the midst
of us.
There are some of us who believe we
are good.
This is the oldest religion that is known
to man.
When Cain came before God in the beginning
of the Bible, he brought his best and
he said, this is enough to atone for
my sin.
He brought the labor of his hand.
Why?
Because there's a belief inside of fallen us
that believes we are good, that what we
do is good.
We are doing our best to do our
best, and therefore it is pleasing to God.
This is the most dangerous and most difficult
of all the doctrines that are here.
And I'm telling you, it's inside of us.
When is it known?
It's known in the time of testing.
And it has always scared me.
I have watched it mostly at funerals, where
I have been with Christians who have been
longstanding Christians, and this person has died.
And up comes the preacher, and up comes
the wake and the conversations, and out go
the eulogies, and there is one premise.
This person was good.
This person did good things.
This person is therefore in heaven.
And that's what I hear.
I hear it all the time.
I hear it amongst the Christians.
I hear this.
Not long ago, I was with an elderly
woman who had been in the church for
many, many years, and an elder in the
church.
And she got into her upper years, her
senior years, and she received from the hand
of her family the worst betrayal of the
worst kind.
And it broke her.
It was the most severe pain she had
ever encountered in all her life.
As betrayal often is, it pierced her heart
so that she was completely wasted by this
hurt.
And in my presence, as we were ministering
to her in her pain, she said, I
don't know why this has happened.
I have lived a good life.
I have been a moral person.
I have chosen the right path.
There it was.
At the end of the day, in the
most severe trial of her life, I don't
get it because I am good.
I have lived a good and moral and
decent life.
Why has this happened to me?
And there it is.
It is a stronghold underneath the human constitution.
We believe we are good.
We believe our kids are good.
We believe our families are good.
We believe at the end of the day
that we are going to be accepted by
God based on our goodness.
We believe that deep down here.
Even the person who is suffering extreme problems
of self-esteem believe at the end of
the day.
I hear it all the time.
When we die, we will get to heaven.
We were holding a conference one day and
we were asked to lead the conference and
not many people came.
I didn't associate those two points together, but
you clearly did.
You remember Dan, he was formerly on our
staff.
So it became an intimate time together.
And so I began to, we began to
lay out the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus
Christ and who he is.
Everybody loves this topic.
Ah, the Lord.
If you're a Christian, you love this topic
until we came to this point, until we
came to this point and this man stood
up and lost his temper publicly.
Do you know why?
Because somebody he deeply loved died without Jesus.
And the idea of their loved one, not
being in heaven became the outrage of his
heart.
And he opposed us.
He opposed me.
I understand why he opposed me.
We've got a very basic religion.
Love God, do good.
That's the religion.
That's it in a nutshell.
Live moral, live decent, live good, do good,
raise up your family.
When we all die, we go to heaven.
That is the gospel of the day.
And it's been the gospel for all these
years from the beginning.
When Cain said my way, it's called deserving.
We believe we deserve this.
And at the day of death, we put
our trust in whatever innate goodness and the
things that we have done.
And we die quote in peace, believing that
we can stand before the almighty God on
our own.
I do not know how to break this.
This gospel comes from the pit of hell.
Why do I say that?
I say that because of Galatians 2 21
that David read for us this morning.
If you've got your Bibles, it's sitting right
in front of you.
Galatians 2 21.
If you don't have your Bibles, it's still
in Galatians 2 21.
It's right here.
The glorious passage of 220.
I am crucified with Christ.
No longer I who live.
Christ lives in me.
Life, which I now live in the flesh.
I live by faith, by the face of
the son of God who loved me and
gave himself for me.
Look at 21.
I do not nullify the grace of God,
for if righteousness comes to the law, what
does that mean?
It means this.
If I can find my rightness before God
by what I do and by who I
am, then did you get that?
If, if I am able in myself in
who I am and what I have done
to live a right life before God, if
that is possible, then here are the striking
words of Galatians 2 21.
Christ died needlessly.
The Bible that David said for no purpose,
some of your Bibles in vain, we eliminate
the purpose and point of the cross.
You don't need a cross.
You have another savior.
Who is that savior?
You, you are your savior.
You and who you are, you and your
goodness, you become your own savior.
And we say it to the person who
died, they were a good person.
They lived a good life.
They're in heaven.
Now we are saying in those words, Jesus
died in vain.
He came in vain.
He did not need to come.
We do not need a savior.
That's why it's not just a belief contrary
to the gospel.
It's a belief that opposes the gospel.
It mocks what Jesus did on Calvary.
It mocks the salvation.
The reason he came to die for us,
that we might live.
Why?
Because listen, this is why people hate the
gospel.
You are no different than that woman.
There's a belief out there.
I love this analogy.
It's always worked for me.
Here comes the bus and people get on
the bus and then the door closes.
There are some people who are right there
when the door closes.
And there are people way, way, way, way,
way, way, way, way back who are nowhere
near the entrance of the bus.
Those who are in have been saved by
the blood of Jesus.
Those who are out, the first person that
stands there is the moral person.
The good, the upright, the blameless, the holy,
the righteous.
And they look back at that impoverished woman
at the well.
I'm not like her.
I'm not immoral.
I'm not adulterous.
I'm not a sinner.
I'm not an outcast.
I'm not a hopeless person like that.
That woman who has lived like that.
And she looks back and said, you didn't
get on the bus either.
Well done.
You, you got right up to the door
and went to hell with me.
Congratulations.
Maybe there's a, there's a gradation hell somewhere
where I get a lower part and you
get a higher part, but you're not with
him.
But you see what our mind does.
We structure everything around our own system of
what it means to live in this world
before God.
The issue is, are you on the bus?
That's the issue.
And that issue has been that the Lord
has given to us this, this, this understanding
that we need a savior, that we are
no different than that woman.
You and me, no different.
For this reason, I turned to Romans in
chapter three, in the most extraordinary text the
gospel can ever know.
It's found in Romans chapter three.
And it's found in verse that most people
actually know by heart.
If you've ever done any memorization, it's one
of the first ones anybody will remember verse
23 for all.
And, and of course the keyword here is
all.
This means that there's no gradation between the
first person who missed the bus and the
last person who sits in the great immoralities
of life.
All have sinned all for short of the
glory of God.
All of us do.
What does the next verse say?
Key verse of this whole gospel of Romans
being justified, meaning be made right as a
gift by his grace through the redemption, which
is in Christ Jesus.
Listen to it again.
Justified as a gift by his grace, by
his grace, through the redemption, which is in
Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a
propitiation in his blood through faith.
That's what happened on Calvary's Hill.
His body upon that cross, bearing our sin,
that blood come to atone for our sin
by faith to receive by grace.
It's a gift.
It's all a gift.
Grace upon grace.
It's a gift.
The Lord gives this gift to us through
his son.
It's a gift, not because we've deserved it,
but because he has given it.
It's the difference between trusting us and trusting
him.
Trusting what Jesus did for us.
Trusting Jesus.
Trusting what he did at the cross.
Trusting him.
Trusting his name.
It's not trusting us.
And at the end of this, this is
the most amazing part about grace.
It says to us that we are undeserving.
This is not the gospel we're healing, hearing
in America today.
We're hearing the opposite gospel, that there is
something inside of us.
We are a people that have lost our
way.
We are trying to find value and esteem.
We're really working hard on relationships because relationships
are pointing to our greatest failures in life,
because inside we know that there are problems
inside of us.
And so we're trying to work on, and
we want our preachers to tell us that
there is something inside us that is good,
that we can work on.
And then you come to some stupid church
in a middle school, and here it's the
exact opposite.
It's the exact opposite.
Give up.
Completely give up.
Are you trying to live a good, decent
life?
Give up.
This is the whole wonder of the gospel.
That woman at the well is alone, completely
isolated by life, by circumstance, by situation.
But she's got inside her an understanding that
the big people in town, all those big
men with the big houses and the big
money and the people of respect and have
found their way in life don't have.
She knows something.
She's not good.
If she was, she would be trying to
work and coming down to the well with
her friends.
She doesn't have friends.
Why?
Because her friends know her.
She's been married five times.
The one she's living with is not her
husband.
She's immoral.
She's adulterous.
She's a sinner.
She's an outcast.
That's who she is.
Praise the Lord.
I am not like her.
No, no.
Praise God.
I am like her.
Why?
Because my sins, though you don't know them,
which is why I don't have a reputation,
aren't, Bill, are known before the Lord.
And in terms of him, I am an
outcast.
In terms of him, I'm a stranger to
the covenant.
To him, my sins have barred me from
the glory of God.
This is why the whole working my friends,
you and I spend an entire lifetime, all
of us do trying to get into that
place where in society we are accepted.
Most people run their entire existence just trying
to be accepted so that when we get
accepted, which we never believe, by the way,
but when we try to get there and
finally get there, we thank God for it
because we wanted it for so long to
say there's something inside of me that's right,
that's good, that's accepted, that's deserving.
I should be the one that Jesus says
this to, not her.
And yet he comes to those who are
undeserving and he lavishes upon them grace upon
grace upon grace upon grace.
I don't know what you believe, but I
know that you're not going to know what
you believe until you're tested with this.
I cannot tell you how many times Christians
who are mature do not know this simple,
simple truth today.
They get to the casket and they hear
in their, in their ears, the people around
them saying he or she was good and
we have no response.
Do you realize in those statements we are
saying, Jesus, you are no longer needed.
We are blaspheming his name when we say
this.
We are spitting on the cross in those
words.
That's what we're doing.
No, this person was not good.
This person was a sinner.
There's only one testimony going to the grave.
It is Jesus Christ and him alone.
Do you trust in Jesus?
I'm sorry about your loved ones.
I'm sorry about the argument.
I'm sorry you're mad that, that it's not
the other gospel, but it isn't the other
gospel.
If you only knew it was this gospel,
you would run to your loved one before
they died and say, please trust in Jesus.
He has come.
They have showered.
He has showered his love.
The father has sent the son.
Trust in Jesus.
When you write your gravestone, don't say was
good.
Say trusted in Jesus.
There's no other hope.
There's no other possibility.
There's no other way.
And that's why Jesus at the womb of
the well is such a powerful story.
I am he.
Into this woman's heart comes the, comes the
mystery of the ages.
The boys who are getting food in town
have not yet known what she now knows.
He lavished grace upon her.
Why?
Because he's God.
Because in mercy, he rescued by grace.
We have been saved through faith, not of
ourselves.
It's not because of works so that none
should boast.
That is the gospel.
But do you believe it?
Have you trusted in Jesus?
Do you believe it?
Or are you hearing the whimsical nature of
the gospel that's being preached in America, but
because your ears are not trained, you don't
know this truth.
I literally had one person say to me,
you don't look at, don't mess me up.
You guys, you Christians have all your particular
gospel and all your ducks in a row,
all your little doctrines in an order.
Love God, do good.
That's the key.
If you believe that, then you spit on
Jesus.
It's a lie.
And that lie is in many of us
here today.
When you come today to the table, that
is the sign of grace upon grace, upon
grace, upon grace, upon grace, upon grace.
You do not deserve this.
But thanks be to God.
He has loved us with an everlasting heart.
Thanks be to God.
That door right now of the bus is
still open.
There will be a day when that door
closes.
Like the day that the Lord closed Noah's
Ark and no one else could get in.
The Lord will close that door.
Today that door is open and it's only
opened saved by grace, by the name of
Jesus.
Dear friends, are you trusting in you?
Is the religion of your friends and family
trusting in you today in your hearing?
I say to you, there is a Savior
who has come.
And at the time of my death, I
put my trust in Jesus.
What he did on Calvary's Hill, that we
are rescued and saved, justified and made right
by faith in him.
Today, Lord Jesus, I pray by the grace
of your Holy Spirit, you would root out,
root out of us this stronghold that possesses
our minds.
It possesses our hearts.
It has actually established our identities.
It has made us have prejudice over other
people and count ourself more worthy of life
than others, more worthy of your love.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us.
Forgive us our sin.
Root out of us this principle inside us
that trusts in us and not you.
Open our hearts.
Help us to fall upon our faces and
say, Lord Jesus, thank you for what you've
done.
Praise you for what you've done.
Your name is a strong refuge, a strong
tower, and we trust in you today.
Help build our identities, Lord, that we trust
in you and you alone.
Bring us to that place, Lord Jesus, and
there let us celebrate and give thanks for
what you have done in Jesus' name.
Amen.