A RECIPE FOR LIVING WATER
Read John 4:5-26
[Thematic Statement]: “Jesus promises the Samaritan woman living water. Today, by the preaching of His word and the powerful operation of His Spirit, He promises that living water to you as well. Will you take it? Will you drink it in and finally, finally, satisfy that longing, that unfulfilled desire that has haunted your entire life? I pray that you do.”
I. What we have in this passage
a. A Sinner
b. The Savior
c. The Savior’s solution to the Sinner’s biggest need: Living Water
II. ILLUSTRATION: A pastor of mine recently moved out of state, and I miss him dearly. Before he left, though, he threw a dinner party at his house. Now, that sounds very uppity, but you must understand. This guy was born and raised in the Bronx around WWII. He grew up fighting and getting beat up regularly and generally scrapping to survive. He went into the Navy at the order of a certain official of the New York State judicial system. Eventually he got some discipline in his life and wound up flying jets off of carriers in combat missions during Vietnam. What I’m trying to tell you is that this pastor was a “man’s man” by anybody’s standards. So as you might expect, the men at that dinner party, though all unique and different, were basically cut from the same cloth. (I am surprised I was invited.) A lot of us were ex-military types. Man’s men, all of us. As you also might expect, there were times when the conversation got a little too “colorful” for polite company. But what horrified me was that at one point in the evening, I suddenly realized that here we were, nine or so manly men and what was the conversation about? Cake recipes. That’s right. And not just stuff like, “Dang, my grandma had a great cheesecake recipe,” but detailed stuff like, “Grandma used to add a teaspoon of vanilla to her cheesecake.” Yikes. I’m glad no one was watching us at that moment.
Here’s the point. Any young, robust, manly man can appreciate a great cake. But it takes some wisdom, some maturity to really come to grips with the fact that a great cake doesn’t happen accidentally. It starts with the recipe.
III. In this passage, if we will see it, we have a recipe for something even better than a fantastic cheesecake, as outlandish as that may seem. We have here a recipe for living water.
STEP ONE (v.9-10): Ignore human classifications like race and social status and reputation.
Why ignore them? Because Jesus does. These things are totally irrelevant, not even worth His comment on them. Don’t allow them to stand between you and his offer.
These classifications are really all methods of comparing one person, one sinner, to another. The only person you need to be compared with is Jesus.
STEP TWO (V.10,14) Hear the offer Jesus makes.
Everlasting life
Holy Spirit
Satiating spiritual thirst/dryness
STEP THREE (V. 17) Be real.
The Samaritan woman makes no excuses (e.g. first husband was a no account drunk who was never home, second husband couldn’t hold a job, third husband and I just “grew apart”, etc.) She simply acknowledges that Jesus is right.
That’s what we need to do: agree with God about our sin. Don’t dress it up.
Jesus knows the truth anyway!
STEP FOUR (V. 20) Don’t demand perfect understanding.
The woman tries to get it all worked out in her head first.
Go ahead and ask your questions, but understand: there is a vast difference between legitimate questions and questions meant merely to delay your decision/release you from your duty to decide.
ILLUSTRATION: One Christian speaker writes of a time of preaching and explaining the truth of the Bible at a particular college campus. After each meeting one young man kept coming to him and asking questions. “Yes, pastor, but what about this…?” and “Yes, pastor, but what about that…?”
Eventually, the preacher had enough and asked the man point blank, “If I could give you a perfectly reasonable answer to all of your questions, then would you follow Jesus?”
The young man thought about it and confessed that he probably would not.
The preacher then suggested that the man’s problem had more to do with an unwillingness to obey than with any lack of understanding.
God’s under no obligation to make sure you know how it all works before you are required to obey. The offer is on the table. Living Water! Take it, or don’t, but don’t use your lack of understanding as an excuse.
STEP FIVE (v. 24) Be ready to change from the inside out.
Don’t know if you’re ready to be saved or not? Here’s a question to help you tell. Are you hoping that God can come into your life and help you turn things around, help you fix your problems, help you live a more moral life, or feel better about yourself? Or, Are you hoping that God can come into your life and change WHO YOU ARE?
If your main concern is that God can change for the better all the situations of your life, you are not ready to drink from the well of Living Water. But if you are aware that deep within you there is a thirst that has never been quenched, and this thirst, this terrible dryness is about to drive you insane for lack of being able to satisfy it (though you try with many things like sex and alcohol and drugs of “divers manners”), then maybe you’re close. If this dryness and deadness inside is enough to make you cry out, “Lord, either change me or kill me!” then maybe you’re close.
Are you ready to be changed forever on the inside, deep where your spirit resides, by the mighty truth of the living God? When Jesus offers living water, this is what He is talking about.
STEP SIX (V. 24) Understand that this change comes with a purpose.
ILLUSTRATION: My wife and I bought our first house in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Though I am not a gardener, and so should’ve known better, I boldly decided to start a vegetable garden in our back yard. Dutifully, I rented this enormous machine designed to plow up the earth and crush all the big clods of dirt, and so I started. After a couple of hours of hard work, I had a respectable space of earth torn up and ready for planting. Thing is, I got tired. I would plant the seeds tomorrow. Well, tomorrow turned into the next day, then the next and you know how it goes. Anyway, on the day when I finally remembered that I had the beginnings of a garden sitting out there waiting for me to plant seeds, I looked out the window and was astounded. A very large, very healthy crop of the tallest, most beautiful weeds you ever saw was now occupying my plot of ground meant for the garden! I had worked hard (for a day at least) to change the condition of the soil, and I had been successful in causing that change. But then, I forgot the purpose and let it go, and the final state of that patch of ground was worse than the first, because at least before I messed with it, there had been real grass growing there. My point is that God is not nearly that stupid.
God’s not in the business of working great change in people for the fun of it. If He changes you, it is with this purpose in mind…That you will become a worshipper.
1st Question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to worship God and to enjoy Him forever.
God is not about changing people for the heck of it. He is building a church.
STEP SEVEN (V.26) Believe that Jesus is the Christ.
Son of God, taking upon Himself the likeness of sinful flesh, for the purpose of becoming man’s representative, a priest before God, the only one able to offer once and for all the perfect payment for sin, His own body on the cross, who rose from the grave on the third day and has been received to the position of authority and power in the heavens, where He rules as King of King and Lord of Lords, until all His enemies be made His footstool, who will return again to judge all men for the things they have done and give to them the reward that is due.
REPEAT the Thematic Statement above and close.
