"I've Been With Jesus"

You know, it’s been thirty three years ago, this past May, since I graduated from high school in Chattanooga, TN! I was just sitting on the back deck yesterday afternoon, thinking about the time that we have here in this fleeting thing that we call, “life”.

The frailty of it and the illusion of length that it offers to the natural mind!

You know, as a teenager, I felt immortal, like time was standing still for me and no matter what I did, I was impervious to any real danger and I would always come out on top!

As a man in my twenties, I saw the world as some great source of pleasure, with unlimited ammenitites that were mine for the taking.

Then as a man in my thirties, I saw the world view through the lens of a husband and a father’s eyes and it began to dramatically change my perception of “life” and of how it wasn’t really standing still, quite like I thought so, while I was a teenager.

My forties brought with it a slap of reality, as I began to see immediate family and friends passing away and my little girls growing up, faster than I could keep up with!

And now, in my fifties, I see and understand the very thing that my father told me would happen to me, all those years ago, as we stood in the backyard of the little house in which I grew up in, talking.

He said, “Just wait. One day time will begin to absolutely fly by and you will not be able to keep up with it and where it’s going!”

And do you know what, he was exactly right. Time is moving faster now, than I can keep up with.

All of the advice that my father gave to me that pertained to life and dealing with others, was pretty much, spot on!

I wish so very much, that I could go for a walk with my father again, or sit in our little “v” hull boat that he had saved up and bought, so that we could fishing together and have those father/son discussions again!

I long for his words of comfort and exhortion and the wisdom that came from this simple country boy from Union County Tennessee!

But life and time do not wait for anyone and as many of you already know, you blink an eye and 10 years have already passed by!

Some of you may have met my father before, as he came to a few of our services here at CWC, but probably most more of you have never laid an eye on him before.

BUT, even if you had never met my father and you never heard him talk about and share things of his life, you can get a pretty good understanding of who he was and what he stood for and what Don Palmer was like, just by talking with me for a short period of time!

I am after all, my father’s son and I learned much about my father, by spending time with him, throughout the years!

And so, if you wanted to get to know my father, especially now that he’s in heaven, you have to go through me, the son, and allow me to introduce you to who my father is and was!

I have spent much time with my father throughout the years and because of this, you can see him through me!

A lot of his mannerisms and attitudes and witty statements can be seen through me!

This morning, I want to look at a few Biblical accounts and the people who were mentioned in these accounts and what took place within their lives.

In John’s gospel, chapter 4, we read of a very familiar account of Jesus, as He and His disciples were traveling through the region of Samaria, and His stopping by the well of Jacob. In this account, the Bible says that the disciples had left Jesus, to go into the village of Sychar to buy some food and that Jesus was tired and very thirsty from His traveling.

Jesus stops at the well and while He was sitting there, a woman from the village comes to the well to draw water.

Jesus says to the woman, “Give me a drink.”

The woman is shocked that a Jewis man would be there and asking her, a Samritan, for a drink of water!

You see, there was a lot of bad blood between the Samaritans and the Jewish people!

To the people of Israel, the Samaritans were half-bloods. That is, they were Jewish blood mixed with gentiles.

This goes all the way back to the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, when the Assyrian armies came in and captured and took the people away, around 720 BC.

The people of Israel who were left behind, began to carry on their lives and they also began to intermarry with the gentiles that the Assyrians had brought in that region to live.

Thus, giving us the Samaritan people and thus the people that Israel regarded to be racially impure!

And because of this, you would normally never find a Jewish man sitting at a well and talking with a Samaritan. Especially a Samaritan woman!

The Bible tells us that the woman was there at the sixth hour, which was around noon and thus in the hottest part of the middle eastern daytime!

Normally, the women in that day and age, would have come in the cooler parts of the daytime to draw water, like in the morning, or the evening hours, but not in the hottest part of the day!

The fact that this woman came alone, and in the hottest part of the day, when no other women would be there, suggests that she was an outcast and that she didn’t want to be met by any of the other women!

In fact, the well of Jacob was around a half of a mile from the village of Sychar and there would have been a well within the village area.

The fact that she was there at this well and the distance that she was traveling to get some water, at this time of day, could almost inevitably suggest that she was probably ostracized and forced by the other women to go to this extreme, because they may have very well rejected her from joining in with their company!

So, in verse 10 of the account, Jesus says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

To a Jew, “living” water was running water, not the static, stagnant water in a cistern, or a well.

And the running water, the “living waters”, were the most desired and the most refreshing.

The woman says to Jesus, ““Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

The Samaritans regarded Jacob as their ancestral father, as they claimed that they were direct descendants of Joseph. Though the Jews denied any such lineage.

And so, quite possibly, she was questioning Jesus’ statement of giving “living water”, with an almost implied offense, because if the great father Jacob had to dig a well to have water, who did this guy think that he was, to ride in to town and make the claim that he had dibs on a source of running water nearby, that no one else had ever found?!

And to this, Jesus replies, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The Jews knew of such prophetic writings about Yahweh offering and giving such waters, as were mentioned in the writings of Isaiah, where He says in , “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.”

Or again in , “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.”

and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

The Lord was alluding to a source of Spiritual water, which would sustain and bring eternal refreshing, as Isaiah again records God saying, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.”

The Lord God was calling for those who wanted eternal life to come to the source of life, which would forever quench their spiritual thirst.

come to the waters;

Just as the Psalmist wrote in ,

and my blessing on your descendants.

Psalm 42:1–2 ESV

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?

And so here we find THE SOURCE of the life giving waters of Yaweh, Jesus the Christ, standing before this broken woman and telling her, in such a way that would require her to think and draw a conclusion for herself, as to what He was saying and who He must be, to say such a thing.

And so here we find THE SOURCE of the life giving waters of Yaweh, Jesus the Christ, standing before this broken woman and telling her, in such a way that would require her to think and draw a conclusion for herself, as to what He was saying and who He must be, to say such a thing.

And she quickly replies, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

This is almost a repeat of the chapter right before this one, where Jesus encounters the Jewish leader, Nicodemus and who Jesus made the statement to that a person, “must be born again” in order to see the kingdom of God.

And through this type of symbolic rhetoric, Jesus was making Nicodemus and this woman THINK for themselves and draw a conclusion about what He was really saying.

And we find later on, at the death of Jesus, that Nicodemus, just like this woman, had the same ultimate conclusion and the same ultimate life changing encounter!

And so the woman quickly replies, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

The frustration and the pain that she must have been feeling from the years of harshness and mistreatment from the others in the village, were likely prompting her quick reply to Jesus, as His statement implied to her that she would not have to go to such extremes, just to get a drink of water any longer!

She didn’t realize it yet, but she was standing before the Lamb of God and of who we read of in Revelation 7:16-17, where it says of all those who come to Him,

Revelation 7:16–17 ESV

They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

And at the closing of the book of Revelation, Jesus, the victorious Lord of all says this, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.”

This is who the Samaritan woman was standing before and being offered life giving water from; the Great I AM, the Alpha and the Omega, the Lamb of God, the Messiah Himself, Jesus the Christ!

And so, the account goes on and we find Jesus asking the woman to bring her husband to the well, to which she says that she has, “I have no husband” and Jesus replies, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

The woman replies, “sir you must be a prophet” and then she begins to question Him for answers about the claims of Jews, versus that of the Samaritans, as to where God is to be worshipped, whether in Jerusalem, or at Mount Gerizim.

Just like today and with the exhausting and continual debates between the different church buildings. Jesus is standing right before us and in our midst and yet we argue and squabble over who has it right about where and how we are to worship the one true God!

And it’s here that Jesus ends that debate, by saying that it is not a point of geography, or a building or a certain race of people, that determines how and who can worship Yahweh, but rather it is those who come to God to worship Him in spirit and in truth!

Jesus said, “But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

And it is here, that she begins to fill in the blanks, about the one whom she is speaking with and His claims of offering “living waters”, as she says, “I know the Messiah is coming—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

23 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

John 4:26 NLT

Then Jesus told her, “I Am the Messiah!”

25 The woman said, “I know the Messiah is coming—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus told her, “I AM the Messiah!”

It is here in John’s gospel account, that the woman runs back to her village, leaving behind her jar (the very reason that she came to the well to begin with) and going and saying to the people, “you’ve got to come and meet this man at the well! He told me everything about myself and I think that He may be the Messiah!

The Bible records that the people of the village began to go out and meet Jesus and talk with Him.

John goes on to say, “Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony” and they asked Him to stay on with them, which Jesus did, for two more days.

And many more believed, because of His word! John records the people of the village saying to the woman, “Now we believe, not just because of what you told us, but because we have heard him ourselves. Now we know that he is indeed the Savior of the world.”

Let me break it down for you as to what happened in this account. This woman’s life was changed, because of who she had been hanging out with that afternoon at the well.

When she runs back to the village and she is BOLDLY proclaiming to the very people who do not want here around them, about what has happened, you know that someone, or someone’s must have asked her, “What has happened to you, where have you been and what have you been doing?”

And I can almost hear her saying to them in with all honesty and boldness, “I’ve been hanging out with Jesus!”

“I’ve been with Jesus!”

And it is here that I make the point of my message. I mentioned a few minutes ago about the fact that even if you had never met my father, you would still know him, just by spending time talking with me and watching me and my mannerisms and the way that I express myself, because I spent years with that man and because of that, much of him is seen in and through me!

You see, you and I become a direct reflection of the people that we spend the most time with and with whom we hang out with most often!

Some people use the adage, “Birds of a feather, flock together.”

I like the quote that says,  “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.”

This one has a very real Biblical understanding, as the wise Solomon said, “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.”

The Apostle Paul said it this way in , “ Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”

Within the realm of Psychology, there is what is known as, the social proximity effect.

In a nut shell, it means, “Who you spend your time with will have an impact on the way you behave.”

In this account in John, we do not know the entire conversation that took place between Jesus and this woman, as the Bible is not a transcription of their conversing, but a recording of the account itself.

We not know how long the meeting took place for, but only that she spent some time that afternoon with Yeshua and it changed everything in her life, as well as the lives of those in the entire village!

You cannot spend time with Jesus and stay the same!

It will force you to either reject the entirety of the TRUTH of His gospel and return to what you once were, or it will compel you to draw even closer.

The danger that many people face is that even when they have spent time with Jesus and have been touched and changed in their lives and then they start hanging out with others who are opposed to the truth, or who are lukewarm at best, the social proximity effect kicks in.

And one of two things is going to happen; either you are going to begin to influence them, or they are going to begin to influence you!

One or the other will take place.

And the amount of time that you spend, hanging out with Jesus, will be the deciding factor.

You will either mimic Him and sound like Him and love like Him, or you will begin to gravitate to the words and the mannerisms of those who you are hanging out with in your life!

Look at this account of the woman at the well and what a brief time with Jesus did for her. Look at the account of Nicodemus in . You see no change in this chapter within Nicodemus and yet we know that his hanging out with Jesus changed his life, because upon the death of Jesus, it is Nicodemus who boldly comes out and asks for the body of the Lord to give Him a proper burial! Nicodemus had spent time with Jesus and it changed his life!

There are others in the Bible that we read of who lives were forever changed and transformed by hanging out with Jesus. and then there were those who rejected Him and returned to what they were comfortable with.

Zaccheus spent a few hours with Jesus one afternoon and was so changed by that brief encounter, that he gave half of his wealth to the poor and also said that anyone who he had wronged on their taxes, he would give them back 4x as much in return!

His time spent with Jesus showed him that there was no greater wealth than a relationship with the Son of God!

In retrospect, the rich young ruler spent an evening talking with Jesus and he decided that his wealth was worth more than a relationship with Jesus and he walked away sad and grieving!

The thief on the cross, spent a short period of time beside the Lord, as they were both dying and he came to realize that he was looking at the TRUTH of God and he repented and gave his life into the hands of Jesus and was rewarded with salvation!

Right before Jesus went to the cross, Pontius Pilate was staring face to face with the TRUTH of God and conversing with Him and even asked Jesus what the TRUTH really was, but then turned and walked away.

Let me share with you some accounts of what hanging out with Jesus does for someone!

A father’s testimony shared in the Men of Integrity, Vol. 3,

My son called.

My son called.

Through years of drug abuse, Scott had stolen from our family, manipulated us, and failed us.

It had been a relief not to hear from him for two years.

Scott told me he’d been through a rehabilitation program a year and a half ago that provided something no other had offered.

"I met Jesus Christ. I’ve been forgiven for my past. I want to ask you and Mom to forgive me, too."

He said he was now helping other addicts get straightened out.

I was torn between hope and cynicism.

The well-groomed, bright-eyed young man who arrived at the airport looked like a stranger.

In the days that followed, Scott told how, in the midst of drug withdrawal, he’d seen a vision of Jesus Christ on the cross and cried out to him for help.

His withdrawal symptoms ended instantly.

That experience had led him to a church.

"I asked Jesus to be my Lord," he quietly explained, "and my life hasn’t been the same since."

The change in Scott was too dramatic for my wife and me to ignore.

Today, Jesus has given us the same new life he gave our prodigal son.

Read the account of Brooke Bronkowski from Crazy Love, page 49

Read “Regret For Not Witnessing”

Mention about the ancient art of Japanese kintsugi. (Show pictures)