Forget Your Waterspout

Amen.

All right.

Today's study in the book of John is called Forget Your Water Pot.

Forget your water pot.

All right.

We'll be in John.

We'll start in verse 27.

When you're playing poker, I've been told that there's this moment when a player pushes all their chips to the center.

Right?

It's going all in, right, Simon?

Yeah.

That happened to him on Thursday night.

Okay.

You know, there's no holding back to later.

There's no second chance.

There's no, you know, keeping a stack in reserve in case things don't go well.

It's all or nothing, you know, all in is what we call it.

There's, you know, once it's out there, you can't pull it back and say, never mind, I don't want to do this.

It's a decision that you make and then you're it's like sealed in, right?

Most of us don't live like that.

We don't do that in our life.

We keep a reserve back in our everyday lives.

We commit to a point and then we we stop.

Because uh a person who has held something back always has somewhere to land, right?

And that's that's kind of the conservative, maybe wise-ish way to live.

But Jesus didn't live like that, he went all in.

He didn't hold anything back for later.

He goes all in for us.

And this morning, we're gonna watch as something happens when uh to this woman at the well, when when that truth hits her, and the question that this passage is gonna ask is what we did with our own stack.

What did we do with our own stack?

So let's read in John chapter 4, verse 25.

John 4:25

The woman said to him, I know that when Messiah is coming, who is called Christ, and when he comes, he's gonna tell us all things.

Okay, so let me just back up for a moment and reset what we learned last week and what we've been.

So Jesus is walking through Samaria and he uh with his disciples, and they're it's noon, it's hot in the middle of the desert, and they come to this well, and they Jesus is tired, so he stops by this well.

Uh, and and the disciples go on into the city to buy food, but then this Samaritan woman who Jews do not speak to Samaritans.

We talked a lot about the conflict that these two cultures had, and so Jews thought the Samaritans were half breeds and had denied the faith, and and so, and then men didn't talk to women, and so Jesus is sitting there, this woman shows up, and Jesus starts a conversation with her about water, and he says, Would you give me a drink?

And she's like, Why are you talking to me?

And then Jesus is like, you know, if you knew who was talking to you and the gift of God, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.

And she's like, Whoa, that's crazy.

That's uh that's something.

So they start having a conversation about living water and what it means to be truly satisfied in the heart.

And Jesus promises her that God is gonna uh accomplish this in in her very lifetime, that that she's gonna see this satisfied life come.

And she says, Well, I know that's gonna happen when the Messiah comes, what we just read.

And then Jesus says, Yeah, that's me.

That's me, girlfriend.

That's me.

So then, verse 26.

So Jesus said to her, I speak to you, am he?

And at this point, the disciples came and they marveled that he talked to a woman, yet no one said, What do you seek?

or why are you talking with her?

Okay, so it's funny that his disciples walk in and they miss this whole revelation that Jesus just made about his identity, saying, I am the Son of God, I am the Messiah, I am the one that's going to satisfy your heart.

And they completely miss that because they're just weirded out that he's talking to a woman.

Their focus was on religious things and cultural things, and they didn't hear the words that he said about who he really was.

Isn't that interesting?

Religion can absolutely get in the way of hearing Jesus.

Our culture can absolutely get in the way of hearing Jesus.

And we just want to hear Jesus because he alone has the words of eternal life.

I watched a uh a pretty good movie last night.

It was called May Day, um, with Ryan Reynolds, and he's like an airplane guy in the 80s in the Cold War, and he he crashes in Russia, and he uh he gets found by this Russian ex-KGB guy.

I probably shouldn't spoil the whole movie for you.

Um it's a good movie.

Basic premise is him and this ex-KGB guy become friends, and uh he learns as an American that there's some incredibly loving and kind people over there when he had some he didn't really expect that.

So uh that's the basic story.

He had this cultural idea that wasn't necessarily true about all the people there.

All right.

We're free to love people just because they're people, we are free to do that.

Uh Jesus has given us permission.

You can look past everyone's failures, you know, and you can you can love them.

Uh people like to put other people in boxes, but we're free.

We don't have to put anyone in boxes.

Jesus is for everyone.

Now it doesn't mean you accept everyone's philosophies as being true, that because that that gets into this whole philosophical idea of of modern relativism.

Have you guys heard of modern relativism?

This philosophy, it's a very humanistic philosophy that what's true for you is true can be true, and what's true for me is can be true for me, and that whole uh truth is relative.

You know, they kind of take the Einstein theory of relativity and they apply it to just all truth, and it doesn't work at all because if one truth says, no, this is true, and then another truth says that's true, they can't both be true at the same time.

One of them has to be true.

Now, if you don't if you don't want to decide what truth is, that's that's a philosophy you can take, I guess, if you don't want to know what's true.

But I want to know what's true, and I think almost all people want to know what's true.

And so uh we're not saying we don't talk about truth or what is truth, but truth is not relative.

There is one truth.

You know, we believe that this Bible contains all truth, that everything it says is true.

Uh why?

Because God gave it, God preserved it, and and every time science has come to something that that's in this Bible, every time it can be verified, the Bible is proven to be trustworthy.

And I will fight you in a back alley if you say otherwise.

Uh just kidding.

I but I I really have a lot of passion about us knowing how verifiable archaeologically and scientifically the Bible is just so wonderfully full of truth.

And it helps us to know we're not just having this blind truth, uh, but we have a truth that is verifiable, a truth that you can measure.

There's so much wonderful measuring you can do uh with scripture.

And so just if if that's out there, if you ever have concerns about that, send me an email or or give me a call and we can talk through that more.

But we can offer Jesus to everyone, even though we don't say, you know, what you what you say is true.

We don't have to tell them what they believe is true if it's wrong.

We can just say Jesus loves you, and that's true, and Jesus gives himself to you, and I have been given permission by God to offer Jesus to you.

That's true.

Those are all true things.

Every human can be forgiven by Jesus, and that's true.

Every person is loved by Jesus, and that's true.

These are the truths that we can hang on.

Um, so question what is there a prejudice that you may have that keeps you from offering Jesus to someone?

Who's the person that you would be relieved if you found out someone else already shared the gospel with them?

Oh, I'm glad I don't have to talk to those guys.

Is there anyone that you've quietly written off in your mind as being too far gone?

Those are those are really important questions for you to talk with with your heavenly father about.

Do you remember Jonah?

You know, remember he got swallowed by the big fish and taken over to Nineveh, right?

Jonah's problem was not that he thought Nineveh couldn't be saved, he knew God could save him.

He he was afraid that they would be.

And he hated them.

And he hated them for good reason.

He he he knew that God was merciful, and if he went out there and preached, some of them might receive mercy.

But he didn't want that because the Ninevites were Assyrians and they had murdered and pillaged the Jewish people for hundreds of years.

They were bitter sworn enemies and fish slappers.

John likes that one.

Uh they were they were mean.

And Jonah was like, You they don't deserve a second chance, they don't deserve to be saved.

He was offended that God would give mercy to any human being that calls out to him for mercy.

How how do we get the heart that Jonah was missing out on?

Jonah was missing the heart of love.

How do we get that heart?

The ans there's one answer to that, and that the only way we get that heart is the cross.

The cross.

When we start to stare at the cross and the meaning and the power and the blood and the love starts to penetrate in our stony hearts, we gain the heart of love that God has for people.

But what does the grace of Jesus do with offensive things?

What do we do about those things that have offended us?

The things that people have done that have been so evil and wrong and and the things they're still doing, what do we do with those offenses?

Well, in Colossians 2.14, it says this in the New Living Translation, he has canceled the record of charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.

See the cross, the cross, the cross is it's got it's good news for sinners.

All of our sin, all of our mess and muck is nailed to that cross.

Now, when was it nailed to the cross?

When it when Jesus was nailed to the cross, our sin was placed in him, and that is what's so it's good news for prideful people who think that you know they're better about themselves because they compare themselves with other people.

The cross changes that heart, the cross melts that pride away because we see our sin was nailed to the cross right in the same body that their sin was nailed to the same cross in the same body, and that's what's so beautiful about it.

So back in John, it says the woman left her water pot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, Come and see a man who told me all things I ever did.

Could this be the Christ?

All right, before we get to what she told the men, look at that little detail.

She left her waterpot.

Don't you hate it when you leave your pot behind?

That was a good joke, right?

Boo.

She, yeah, I love this detail that she left her water pot, right?

It's she made a choice.

And and so John, the disciple that's writing this, that's something he noticed and something he put in the story so that we would recognize she made a choice.

And it was it was a choice, but it was also maybe like a little bit of forgetfulness.

It's funny how sometimes you can forget things that don't matter anymore.

It's like you're making a choice to leave them behind, but really you you've just found something that's so much more important that it looks like you're just forgetting everything else.

When she shows back up at the city, it's clear that the she only has one thing on her mind, right?

She's forgotten her water pot.

She's got and she is she starts proclaiming to all the men of the city, because the women don't talk to her anymore.

Do you guys remember why?

Because she's had five husbands, so now these women are like, stay away from my husband.

Don't talk to, don't talk, you know, so she's not accepted in the community.

And so she's talking to the men, and it's very clear to everybody that she's left everything behind, right?

If she's the poker player, she's gone all in.

All in with one thing, which is whatever this Jesus is giving, I'm taking.

Whatever he's stepping in, I'm smelling.

Did you leave your water pot when you came to Jesus?

Or did you bring it with you?

Did you were you so enamored with him and his character and his identity that you were either this is truly all you were, or were you just yeah, this is cool.

Let me check it out, but let me get this real quick first and make sure you carry that with you.

When you meet Jesus, you you have this choice.

You can receive him as Lord and Savior, leaving everything behind and following him, or you can just add him to your life.

Only one of those works.

Only one.

And I want us to consider what did we do when we became Christians, when we when we heard the gospel, when we believed Jesus, what did he do?

Let's think about him first.

He pushed all his chips to the center of the table, he went all in fully for you, he gave his full life for you, left nothing behind, literally was left naked, hanging on a cross because of his devotion, commitment to you, to his father, and to uniting us together.

He had to do that.

He didn't have another poker tournament scheduled for the next weekend that he was saving some chips for.

It was you.

He was all in for you, he was all in for love because he loved you.

And that all in is what, make no mistake about it, that is what he asks of you.

Just like when a husband is all in love with his wife, he says, Will you marry me on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays?

Right?

No, it's an all or nothing.

We're all married, all 24 hours and every all warts and everything, or not.

That's the only way love can work.

By the way, happy one year anniversary to you guys.

Yeah.

Just dating, don't get too excited, but still, it's pretty exciting.

And thank you, Taylor, wherever you're at.

Massachusetts, Taylor.

Alright.

So let that let that love sink in to your heart.

And then ask yourself, do I really need this water pot anymore?

See, this woman found what her heart was searching for.

She'd gone through five husbands, she had gone through all these choices, just flesh choices, just things she was trying to do to meet that need that was in her heart.

She tried everything you could think of, along with some of us.

Well, some of us in here have tried everything you could possibly think of.

And she finally found the thing that touched that place in her heart where she needed love.

You know, it's that they say that we're all born with a hole in your heart that only God's love can satisfy.

Only God's love can fill.

And that's why we search out other things.

That's why we search out uh loving relationships.

That's why we search out power and prestige and all these other things that we think might meet that need.

The world lies to us and says, this will meet your need, that'll meet your need.

If you're this type of person or if you're involved in these type of things, it will meet your need.

Then every single part of the world has that to offer you.

But Jesus says, I'm the only one.

And this woman discovered it, she found it.

So she leaves this water part, water pot behind because she says, only he can satisfy me.

And what does she do?

She goes and offers it to all the people connected to her, even though she's hurt many of them, even though they don't like her.

She has found so much value, she has found so much identity, she's found so much love that it's overflowing her, and she wants to give it to people, even people who may not have treated her well.

She know she knows I have found something that has transformed me so much, just in this one conversation, I know it will transform all these people that I truly care for, that I'm connected to.

And so she starts offering it to them.

So she says this 29 come and see a man who told me all things I ever did.

Could this be the Christ?

Now remember who she's talking to.

She had been married to like half these people.

So they're probably like curious, really curious.

Okay, if if someone knows everything this woman's doing, then I might be in a little bit of trouble, right?

But it's pretty miraculous.

The way that she's saying it, this is this is the word she said.

This was her witness.

So I want you guys to think of this question.

How can you be a witness for Jesus?

Well, take a lesson from her, and all you have to do is just share what Jesus has done.

You don't need to know anything special at all.

She didn't say anything smart or powerful.

She didn't, uh you know, all she did was point people to him.

Yeah, I think this guy might be important.

I think he might be the only way.

And she said what she said, I believe, firmly, with joy.

J-O-Y.

Joy.

I think whatever was in her heart now was being expressed on her face with so much joy that everyone was deeply impacted by that.

In John chapter 4, or sorry, verse 30, then they went out of the city and came to Jesus.

John 4 · chapter mention

That's all.

That's how she witnessed to them.

With joy, she says, I think this guy might be the one.

Verse 31.

In the meantime, his disciples urged him, saying, Rabbi, eat.

But he said to them, I've had food to eat, eat, which you do not know.

Therefore the disciples said to one another, Has anyone brought him anything to eat?

And Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

Now, Jesus is not saying that eating and drinking and resting is not important.

He wanted his disciples to know that life is more than just those things.

It's man does not live by bread alone, right?

Is what he's saying.

And this reveals the secret of Jesus' effectiveness in ministry and in life.

And it also reveals at the same time the weakness of his disciples right now.

His effectiveness was because he lived and served and obeyed God and trusted God to supply what he needed.

Where the disciples, it was flipped around.

They had to have their needs met first, and then serving God was something they would do only if they had their needs met first.

That's the upside down.

And that's why his ministry was empowered and powerful, and their ministry was weak at this point.

Now they'll get it because his life, you know, they'll get his life after the resurrection.

But um so loving another is truly the only thing that can satisfy our hearts.

Loving each other.

Loving another person, loving God first, and then loving men that have been made in God's image.

These two things are the purpose of life.

You uh what is the grand purpose of life?

To love God and love others.

What that's literally what one two is about.

Love God and love others.

That's where we'll find our meaning, our purpose.

That is what we've been made to do.

Now, how do we do that?

We have to find that heart through the cross and through Jesus.

You can't just produce love on your own.

You can't just say, Well, I'm gonna love God today and I'm gonna love other people today because we will fail at doing that.

But we find it in relationship with God, it flows through us, his very love flows through us.

The experience of countless people throughout the ages teaches us that this statement of Jesus is absolutely true.

You can be satisfied through loving God and loving others.

Your heart can be satisfied by that.

And it might be counterintuitive because our nature when we're born is completely self-seeking.

That's how we're born.

Every baby is only concerned about themselves.

It's just the way that it is.

And we have to learn selflessness, and you can you can learn it, but we can become truly selfless uh as we connect to Jesus and unite with him.

So that's our mission, uh, to learn selflessness, to learn love from the cross, from Jesus.

So when someone looks at you and says, What are you all about?

Are you about your will or are you about God's will?

It'll be played out in your life.

You'll be able to tell by how you you love your spouse, you love each other, and you love your kids, and you love the people on the island, and you love your family, and then you love strangers on the street.

It will be played out what your identity flows from, it always it always comes out.

Jesus says you can know a tree by its fruit.

So you will know.

It's it will come out through your life.

And this is the moment of faith when you say, at one certain point in your life, you say, You know what?

Not my will be done anymore, but your will be done.

Have you come to that moment?

I think many of us have come to that moment.

Usually it happens when we have screwed up so badly that we we don't see hope anymore.

We have nothing left and except this this echo that Jesus loves us and and that he is available.

And so we kind of throw out our last hope in prayer to Jesus, and we say, you know what?

I'm done doing things my way, I'm gonna do things your way.

And he meets us there and he delivers us.

So verse 35, do not say, There are still four months, and then comes the harvest.

Or sorry, do they do you not say?

So he's saying this is a popular phrase, there are still four months, and then comes the harvest.

But behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest.

And he who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life.

That both he who sows and he who reaps may have rejoice together.

I want to see those words.

Very, very, very important.

Rejoice together.

Rejoice.

For in this the saying is true.

For in this the saying is true.

One sows and another reaps.

I sent you to reap for that which you have not labored, others have labored, and you have entered into their uh labors.

So, what is he talking about here?

He's talking about ministry, he's chained, he's uh training his young who are gonna be apostles, they're gonna be pastors, they're gonna be leaders in his church, and he's training them how ministry is so supposed to happen.

And the one word that's supposed to define all of ministry is tithing.

Wait, no, it didn't sorry, it did not say that.

The one word that was supposed to define all of ministry was rejoice.

Rejoice together.

He's saying, Yeah, there's different people working, and to be honest, most of the working is God planting all the seeds, doing all the spiritual stuff that we can't see, and then we go in and we just harvest.

We say we give the gospel to people, God's already been working in their hearts, we make the offer and say, Would you like to follow Christ?

Do you need to understand anything about Christ?

We can help you, and their heart is ready already.

Why?

I don't know, because God has already been working.

And God says He will share his joy with you.

We get to rejoice and that's the whole picture.

And he calls it white for harvest.

Now, what was that?

That that's a weird phrase.

If you know, does that mean it's like the cotton I drove by and you saw the cotton fields and they had like their white puffs out there?

And I was like, Wow, I'd never seen a cotton field before in my life.

And so about two weeks ago I saw my first cotton field.

Well, is that what he's talking about?

Some people think yes, but another way that it could possibly mean is that we know he's out by this well and there's a big field between him and the city.

Okay.

And we know that the Samaritans, they lived with they they the men put turbans on their heads, and they were generally white.

And so you have this image, Jesus is there, his disciples are just talking to him about ministry, and then he's saying, Look, the fields are white for harvest.

What is it?

It's all the men who are coming out to Jesus, and all you can see is their turbans bop bopping up and down in the in the field, you know.

I picture just like corn or whatever.

So that's probably what he's talking about when he's talking about the fields being white for harvest.

So here's our picture.

We have the field, which is like the people who need Jesus.

We have the ripeness, which is they're they're ready to receive the gospel.

They're they're hungry, they're spiritually hungry.

And then the harvest is people who are actually believing in Jesus, which we're gonna see next week.

And those who, you know, the workers are those who freely share what they have received.

That's which is what this woman did.

So this woman is literally the first worker that God employs in his kingdom work here in this area of the world.

And we're we're reading her story.

I think that's pretty special.

So the look at the focus of all of ministry.

Ministry is not on how impressive the worker is.

The only thing that matters is how powerful the message about Jesus is.

How focused is it on Jesus and what he does and what he accomplishes.

Paul later says in uh in 1 Corinthians, um, that one person plants and and another person waters, but God gives the increase.

Because it's all about his work that that gets us done.

So verse 39, and many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified, and he told me all I ever did.

So when the Samaritans had come to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.

And many more, many more believed because of his own word.

Then they said to the woman, Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard him, and we know that this indeed is the Christ, the Savior of the world.

Isn't that a beautiful testimony they give?

So she she only brought people to Jesus, right?

But his own word caused them to truly believe, right?

And that's how every single person in the whole world gets saved.

That's really the only way.

Romans chapter 10 says this for the scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is writ to all who call upon him, for whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

So it didn't matter if she, you know, if they believe just because of her or if they actually, you know, because of him.

Anyone who calls gets saved because calling on Jesus is an act of faith.

It's the act of faith.

It's the only act of faith that that matters.

And this is why faith is the only way of salvation.

It's the only way someone can be saved.

You can't be saved by going to church, you can't be saved by donating money, you can't be saved by doing good works, you can't be saved by calling certain things or being born in a certain place.

There's only one way to get saved.

By placing your personal faith in Jesus Christ dying on the cross, rising again, and forgiving your sins.

That's it.

That's how it works.

It's that simple and it's that true.

God can save, God can promise, God can give.

All we can do is believe.

Now, when we believe, our lives are transformed, our fruit is transformed.

Uh but believing is truly our part.

And that's what we see here.

These these all the people of this city are now believing.

A great revival is happening.

And this harvest is not produced by human striving.

The disciples had no plan for this.

This was all Jesus' idea, all his work.

He said, Some sow, others reap, but God brings people to faith through me.

I bring people to faith, that is what he is teaching us.

So today, you know, there all believers around the world are united with Jesus.

We're one with him.

And what that means, he is the one who gives life.

He's giving this new life.

You can call it resurrection life, you can call it being filled with the Holy Spirit, you can call it being a good person, whatever, just being who you're supposed to be.

But it's life, it's this new spiritual life.

And all of us believers share in that life to the exact same level.

You're just as much sharing in the life of Jesus as the most holy, wonderful person that is super old or whatever.

We're all share the exact same level his life.

You don't have to work to uh make yourself approved or acceptable to him.

We live from his indwelling life inside us.

That's what we're sharing.

We're sharing his life, and he's so ready and excited to give it.

He loves giving it.

And so we're gonna close by by just reading this passage in 2 Corinthians about how to share this life with other people.

It's called reconciliation, where God uh has reconciled us to himself and he gives us this ministry of reconciliation.

But what was the key word in all ministry?

What's the key word supposed to be?

Joyfulness.

Joy.

We have to know the joy of God in our hearts in order to be able to share his message of joy and reconciliation with other people.

That's the only way that it works.

So if you think it's a burden to share Jesus with other people, please don't.

Please stop telling people about Jesus if you think it's a burden to tell people about Jesus.

If Jesus is still a burden to you.

And I'm not saying that meanly, I'm saying it's let God impact your heart with his joy, with the good news of the gospel.

Just connect with him through scripture, through the Holy Spirit, spend time with him, giving your burdens to him and receiving what he says about you as being true and that joy.

Then let that joy just leak out onto everybody else around you.

That's how to share the gospel.

So in Christ, you know, we are freely given this and we can freely give it out.

But you can't give out what you don't truly rejoice in yourself.

And here's the last connection I'm gonna make.

You've got to leave that water pot behind.

You're never gonna truly be able to give out the joy if you still got your own stuff that you're concerned about.

It's all in, it's a hundred percent in move all your chips to the table and say, My life, not my will be done anymore, but your will be done, Father.

Amen.

Let's read this last text real quick, and we'll end just by reading this.

Second Corinthians 5 17.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Old things have passed away.

Behold, all things have become new.

Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us.

We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God, for he has made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

It's with you, it's with you, it's with you, it's with you, it's with you.

God turns face to and give you peace.

Amen.

God's words to you uh today is you are loved, you are forgiven, rejoice in what Jesus has done for you, and take that joy with you this week.

Bless everyone.

Uh God bless you.

We'll see you next week.