From the Fountain to the Flames

From the Fountain to the Flames

September 7, 2008

John 4:16-26

Today’s message starts as a continuation of last week’s theme on faith even though it comes from an earlier passage in John. Last week we focused on John 4:43-53, while today we’ll back up to John 4:16-26, the story of the woman at the well. Before we begin I want you to listen to what Henry Blackaby has to say about faith and miracles. This article is entitled “Faith That Doesn't Ask” and is the May 30th devotional reading from “Experiencing God Day-by Day.”

“An evil and adulterous generation wants a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” Then He left them and went away. — Matthew 16:4

Asking God for a miracle may indicate a lack of faith. Some feel that they demonstrate great faith by continually asking God for miracles. They assume that in every situation God wants to do the spectacular. They presume, for example, that God wants to heal anyone who is sick or provide a miraculous escape from every difficulty they face. Jesus condemned those who insisted that He perform miracles, because He knew their hearts. He recognized that they could not believe Him without constantly undergirding their faith with signs. Their faith was not strong enough to survive without a regular supply of the miraculous. Jesus condemned this lack of faith and left them.

There are times when we prefer the miracle over the miracle worker. God calls this idolatry, and He discouraged it by refusing to provide miracles on demand (Jer. 2:11–13). Sometimes the greatest act of faith is not to ask for a miracle. One of the most amazing statements of faith in the Old Testament came from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as they faced the fiery furnace because of their obedience to God. They expressed true faith when they assured king Nebuchadnezzar: “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up” (Dan. 3:17–18). They were confident in God's ability to deliver them, but they trusted Him so completely that they did not ask to be spared.

Does your faith need miracles to sustain it? Or do you trust God so totally that you can say, “But if not, I will still trust the Lord!”?

If people are spiritually asleep, you have to shock them, startle them or scandalize them, if you want them to hear what you say. Jesus was especially good at this. When he wants to teach us something about worship, he uses a prostitute. Our key passage this morning starts with Jesus talking to the Samaritan prostitute. Turn with me to John 4, verse 16 and follow along as I read: "Go call your husband!" "I don't have a husband." "That's right. But you've had five, and the man you sleep with now is not your husband." She was shocked. You may not sense her shock, so I want you to step back in time and try to put yourself into her shoes. You come by yourself for water. You avoid others, never trusting that you won’t be shunned by them. You are ashamed, and so you should be. So you come alone at a time when the women are done drawing water and the men are in the field. It is safe. But as you approach the normally quiet well you are startled when a man speaks to you. A man speaking publicly to a woman – very strange. And he is a stranger. Not only that, He is a Jew. That is shocking – a Jewish man speaking to a Samaritan woman; but that’s just the beginning. You recover enough to speak, but you are very soon shocked again by the man’s revealing words. You stiffen as if a sudden pain caught you; you recoil as if hit by a club; you grow white as one who had seen a sudden apparition; and so indeed you have, for you had suddenly caught sight of yourself. Your face grows hot and your words ring in your ears.

You are suddenly compelled to face yourself and the looseness and immorality and total inadequacy of your life. You are mortified. There are two revelations in the Bible: the revelation of God and the revelation of ourselves. No man ever really sees himself until he sees himself through Christ’s eyes; and then he is appalled at the sight. Christianity begins with a sense of our sin. It begins with the sudden realization that life as we are living it will not do. We awake to ours weaknesses and we awake to our need of God. But Jesus simply sits there on the edge of the well with his hands folded, looking at the woman with razors in his eyes. Now, He is ready to teach us about worship. Are you ready to learn?

The first thing we learn is that worship has to do with real life. It is not a Sunday interlude in a week of reality. Worship has to do with adultery and hunger and racial conflict. Jesus is bone-weary from the journey, hot, sweaty, thirsty—and he decides: "Yes, even now, just now I will seek someone to worship God—a harlot, a Samaritan adulteress. I will show my disciples the worship that my Father seeks and how he seeks it in the midst of real life from the least worthy. She is a Samaritan. She is a woman. She is a harlot. Yes, I will even show them a thing or two about how to make true worshipers out of the white harvest of harlots in Samaria."

Let's go back to the beginning of John, John 4:4–6. "Jesus had to pass through Samaria on his way to Galilee. So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about noon." Before we meet this woman who comes to the well, recall who Samaritans were. They were the remnant of the northern Jewish kingdom who had intermarried with foreigners after the chiefs and nobles had been carried into exile in 729 BC. They had once built a separate worship place on their own Mt. Gerizim and they rejected all of the Old Testament except their version of the first five books of Moses. The animosity toward Jews was centuries old.

Jesus walks right into this hostility, sits down, and asks for a drink (v. 7). The woman at the well is amazed that Jesus would speak to her. "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" Instead of answering her directly, Jesus shifts the focus of her amazement up a notch. He says (in v. 10), "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." Jesus says that the really amazing thing is not that He is asking her for water but that she is not asking him for water. Are you asking Jesus for water, the water that only He can offer? He calls it living water and he calls it the "gift of God."

But the woman doesn't get it! Her background has not made her a prime candidate for spiritual insight. She was simply enslaved to the flesh. Her spirit was dead. She simply says (vv. 11–12), "How can you give me water when you don't have a bucket? And if you want me to drink water that doesn't come from Jacob's well, then you must think you're greater than Jacob. Well, if this water was good enough for Jacob, it's good enough for me." She's not on Jesus' wavelength yet is she? Are you? Do you get it?

So Jesus again lifts the level of amazement (vv. 13–14): "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The amazing thing is not just that I can give you water without a bucket, but that the water I give takes away thirst forever and, even better than that, it will turn you into a spring that brings eternal life to yourself and others.

What did Jesus mean? Proverbs 13:14 says, "The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life." Perhaps, then, Jesus meant that the wisdom he gives satisfies the soul and turns a person into a fountain of life. Perhaps the water is his teaching. But the closest parallel to verse 14 is John 7:37–39, "Jesus stood up and proclaimed, 'If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.' Now this he said about the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive." Just like John 4:14, this passage speaks of a drinking in and a flowing out. But here John makes plain that Jesus is speaking about the Holy Spirit. It's the presence of God's Spirit in your life that takes away your frustrated soul-thirst forever and turns you into a person who overflows with life for others instead of sucking up other people's life like sponge. If you’re a true follower of Jesus, your sponge has been filled with Holy Spirit water and now you are ready to squeeze the sponge into the lives of others. Are you doing that? Is your life so full of living water that it flows over? Are you filling others with your overflow?

You should be able to say that Jesus' teaching satisfies your thirst and makes you a fountain of life, and that the Holy Spirit satisfies your thirst and makes you a fountain flowing into the lives of your family and friends and neighbors. Jesus kept the Word and Spirit together. For example, in John 14:26 he says, "The Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said." The work of the Spirit of Christ is to make the Word of Christ clear and satisfying to the soul. When we come to Christ to drink, what we drink is truth — not dead, powerless facts. The Spirit and the Word unite to slake our thirst and make us a fountain of life. Listen to 1 Thessalonians 1:5; 2:13: “for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.” The word of promise and the power of the Spirit are the living water that Jesus offered to the Samaritan harlot.

I hope this encourages you as much as it does me. Sometimes I feel so dead and so sinful that I don't see how I can be of any use to the church any more. But up till now God has always come to me at those times and graciously shown me something like this—the hope that a worldly, sensually-minded, unspiritual harlot from Samaria can become—not just saved (which would be wonderful enough)—but a fountain of life. She can be used to give life. I can be used to give life. You can be used to give life. When I speak of life, I mean eternal life not just life worth living. How can you give eternal life? Your not God! But you are part of God’s plan for eternal life by giving the plan of salvation to lost souls. One plan of salvation is the “Roman Road.” The Roman Road is 6 verses, found in the book of Romans, which you can use to lead someone to Christ. You don’t even have to memorize all the verses. Just find a pocket sized New Testament – such as one that the Gideons give out, mark the first verse on the Roman Road – Romans 3:23 – Then beside it write the next verse, Romans 6:23, and so on. Then dog-ear or otherwise mark Romans 3:23 so you can find the start of the Roman Road. I used to use a paper clip in my Gideons Bible. For you benefit, I have place a copy of the Roman Road in each of your mail boxes. The road starts with sin and ends with salvation. Let’s go through it quickly right now: We begin at Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

We all have sin in our hearts. We all were born with sin.

We were born under the power of sin's control.

- Admit that you are a sinner.

Romans 6:23a "...The wages of sin is death..."

Sin has an ending. It results in death. We all face physical death, which is a result of sin. But a worse death is spiritual death that alienates us from God, and will last for all eternity. The Bible teaches that there is a place called the Lake of Fire where lost people will be in torment forever. It is the place where people who are spiritually dead will remain.

- Understand that you deserve death for your sin.

Romans 6:23b "...But the gift of God is eternal

life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Salvation is a free gift from God to you! You can't

earn this gift, but you must reach out and receive it.

- Ask God to forgive you and save you.

Romans 5:8, "God demonstrates His own love for us, in

that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us!"

When Jesus died on the cross He paid sin's penalty. He paid the price for all sin, and when He took all the sins of the world on Himself on the cross, He bought us out of slavery to sin and death! The only condition is that we believe in Him and what He has done for us, understanding that we are now joined with Him, and that He is our life. He did all this because He loved us and gave Himself for us!

- Give your life to God... His love poured out in Jesus on the cross is your only hope to have forgiveness and change. His love bought you out of being a slave to sin. His love is what saves you -- not religion, or church membership. God loves you!

Romans 10:13 "Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved!"

- Call out to God in the name of Jesus!

Romans 10:9,10 "...If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation."

- If you know that God is knocking on your heart's door,

ask Him to come into your heart.

Jesus said,

Revelation 3:20a "Behold I stand at the door and knock, if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him..."

- Is Jesus knocking on your heart's door?

I take heart that if I just turn from my sin and keep drinking at the well of Jesus' words, I may still be of some use to this congregation. And so can you if you just drink deep at the right well.

I think that's what Jesus wanted her to see. But harlots and beer-bellied hockey fans have hardened their spiritual senses so deeply they can't taste what Jesus means. So she says (in v. 15), "Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw." Beware of giving up on people too soon. This woman seems hopelessly carnal. She can't see beyond her physical needs. But Jesus aims to make her a worshiper of God in spirit and truth.

So now he touches the most sensitive, vulnerable spot in her life — "Go call your husband." The quickest way to the heart is through a wound.

Why does Jesus strip open this woman's inner life like this? Because he had said in John 3:20, "Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed." Concealed sin, in this case adultery, keeps us from seeing the light of Christ. Sin is like spiritual leprosy. It deadens your senses so you rip your soul to shreds and don't even feel it. But Christ has set his sights on this woman's conversion. So he lays bare her spiritual leprosy. "You've had five husbands and the man you're sleeping with now is not your husband."

Now watch the universal reflex of a person trying to avoid conviction. She has to admit in v. 19 that Jesus has extraordinary insight ("You're a prophet!"), but instead of dealing with her guilt, she tries to suck Jesus into an academic controversy: "O, so you're a prophet, well, where do you stand on the issue of where people ought to worship?" Verse 20: "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you [Jews] say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." A trapped animal will chew his own leg off. A trapped sinner will mangle his own mind and rip up the rules of logic and discourse. "Why, yes, as long as we're speaking about my five husbands and my adultery, what is your stance on the issue of where people should worship?" Brothers and sisters, that kind of double-talk and evasive, verbal footwork is very common. And texts like this incline me to think that wherever I hear it, someone is hiding something. If your conscience is clean, reason can hold sway; if it's not, you will be instinctively irrational.

It's interesting, though. Jesus never goes back to the issue of adultery. It was a thrust against the sealed door of her heart. But now his foot is in and he is willing to take the very issue she raised and turn it to finish his saving work. She raised the issue of where people ought to worship. Jesus responds by saying, "That controversy can't compare in importance to how you worship and whom you worship." How and whom are vastly more important than where.

Verse 21 turns her attention from where to how: "Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father."' In other words, it is not the location that makes an act of worship authentic. Worship is not merely an external act that you can accomplish by going to a place. Like this place. We come each Sunday to worship together, don’t we? But this is our time of corporate worship. But is should not be our only place of worship as worship happens wherever we are each time we lift the name of Jesus. If there is no worship except on Sunday morning, then you had better examine your heart. Jesus said in another place (Matthew 15:8): "This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me." Worship is first and foremost an experience of the heart. Prayer without heart is vain. Songs without heart are vain. Confession and creeds and liturgies and sermons that don't come from the heart are empty and worthless in God's eyes. So Jesus says to the woman: Don't get hung up on irrelevant controversies. How you worship is vastly more important than where.

Then verse 22 introduces the question of whom you worship. "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews." When all our efforts to be gentle and sensitive and respectful of another person's religion are done, the time eventually comes when you have to say: Biblical worship is true worship and yours is false. That will often be thrown back in your face as a statement of arrogance. But it isn't. If there is truth, and you have bowed humbly before it, then to try to persuade another person to bow with you is not arrogance. It is love. The Samaritans rejected all the Old Testament except for their version of the books of Moses. Their knowledge of God was deficient and so their worship was deficient. And to tell them so was as loving as telling a person with lung cancer to stop smoking.

So in verses 21 and 22 Jesus directs the woman's attention away from the external question "where" to the internal question "how" and the theological question "whom." Worship must be vital and real from within and it must be based on a true perception of God. Now verse 23 sums this up with the key phrase "in spirit and truth": "But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth." The two words, spirit and truth, correspond to the how and the whom of worship. Worshiping in spirit is the opposite of worshiping in mere tradition. Worshipping in spirit and truth is the opposite of traditionalism. Worshiping in truth is the opposite of worship based on an incorrect view of God. Together the words "spirit and truth" mean that real worship comes from the spirit within and is based on truth about God. Worship must have heart and worship must have head. Worship must engage your emotions and worship must engage your thought. Truth without emotion produces dead orthodoxy and a church with no passion for God. Emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates flaky people who reject the discipline of rigorous thought. True worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine.

Therefore, as a pastor I agree with Jonathan Edwards when he said, "I should think myself in the way of my duty, to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with." I think of it something like this: The fuel of worship is the truth of a gracious, sovereign God; the furnace of worship is your spirit; and the heat of worship is the vital affections of reverence, fear, adoration, contrition, trust, joy, gratitude, and hope.

But something is missing from that analogy of the furnace and the fuel. What is missing? Fire/flames! The fuel of truth in the furnace of your spirit does not automatically produce the heat of worship. There has to be holy fire, which is the indwelling Holy Spirit.

When Jesus says in v. 23, "True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth," some take him to mean "in the Holy Spirit." I've taken him to mean that worship must come from your spirit within. But in John 3:6 Jesus connects God's Spirit and our spirit in a remarkable way. He says, "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." In other words, until the Holy Spirit touches our spirit with the flame of life, our spirit is so dead it does not even qualify as spirit. Only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. So when Jesus says that true worshipers worship in spirit, he must mean that true worship only comes from spirits that are made alive and sensitive and vital by the touch of the fire of the Holy Spirit.

So now we can complete the analogy: the fuel of worship is the grand truth of a gracious and sovereign God; the fire that makes the fuel burn white hot is the quickening of the Holy Spirit; the furnace made alive and warm by the flame of truth is our renewed spirit; and the resulting heat of our affections is worship, pushing its way out in tears, confessions, prayers, praises, acclamations, lifting of hands, bowing low, and obedient lives. Notice verse 34. When his disciples come back with food, Jesus says, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work." And what is God’s work? The work of God is to seek real worshipers. Jesus was sent to accomplish this work. And now, we are sent on this same mission – to seek worshippers. Therefore we should see the whole interchange with the Samaritan woman as the work of God in Jesus seeking a real worshiper. In verse 35 Jesus applies his example to us, "Do you not say there are yet four months and then comes the harvest? I tell you, lift up your eyes and see how the fields are already white for harvest." There is a white harvest of harlots in Samaria. I have just made one into a real worshiper. That's why the Father sent me; so send I you. There is a white harvest in Cut Knife. God seeks people to worship him in spirit and truth. Here comes the town of Cut Knife white unto harvest. If you love the glory of God, make ready to reap. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."(Matt 28:19-20)

You are God’s plan to bring Cut Knife to Christ! No one else can do it for you! If you don’t do it, who will? The answer is simple, no one will! Your life is your witness and you are related, friends with, or know virtually everyone in the area. What do they see in your life? Do they see someone just like them, someone with similar interests and priorities? If the only difference they see is that you go to church on Sunday, then you don’t have much to offer them, do you?Do they see the fruit of the Spirit? Do they see someone who loves Jesus? Do they see you living a quiet humble life, living modestly, giving sacrificially? Do they see something in your life that’s missing in theirs? Is it something they want? If so, the all you need do is share what it is that makes you different. Show them your love; share with them The Roman Road.

What about your children? I know that many of you are concerned about the spiritual well-being of your children. Remember that the words you use will influence the way your children view your faith. Larry Burkett writes: “Children are rarely attracted to a weak, watered-down version of Christianity that says one thing and does another …. You may be the only “Gospel” that someone near you will “read.” If unbelievers see hypocrisy in your life, they’ll have no desire to be Christians.” What do your children read when you talk with them? Do you talk about Jesus and church and then live a self-indulgent, self-serving life? Is your life any different from those around you? Do you give sacrificially? Do you support missions? Are you growing in Christ – that is, are you studying His word and showing the fruit of the Spirit in your life? Does your life show a love for God and a love for the people He created? Or are you petty, bitter, selfish, easily offended, or generally having a “bad attitude? If your children and others don’t see Jesus in you, they won’t be interested in Him or in coming to church. Your family and your community are your responsibility! If they don’t see Jesus in you, where will they see Him? Chances are, they won’t.

Finally, let me share with you this quote from John MacArthur: “Churching the unchurched is an absolute fallacy — it is like purposing to let the tares in. It is absolutely bizarre to want to make unsaved people feel comfortable in a church. The church is not a building — the church is a group of worshiping, redeemed, and sanctified people among whom an unbeliever should feel either miserable, convicted, and drawn to Christ, or else alienated and isolated. Only if the church hides its message and ceases to be what God designed the church to be, can it make an unbeliever comfortable. The people of the church must be friendly and loving toward the unsaved and sinful who attend, but even in evangelism they must never hedge on confronting sin and proclaiming the offense of the gospel.” So, what’s he saying then? Simply this – people are not saved in church, they’re saved before they get here and that’s where you come in! Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This message was entitled From The Fountain to the Flames. What does this mean? We come as the Samaritan women to the Fountain of Living Water. There at the Fountain, Jesus fills us with Holy Spirit Flames, flames which are to set fire to our lives. Holy Spirit fire should drive us to want to pass it on to others so they, too, will be passionate about the Kingdom of God.

I am going to close with the words from a song we heard at National Conference this summer. The song is called "Go Light Your World" by Chris Rice. Listen to the words of the first verse and chorus:

Go Light Your Candle

There is a candle in every soul

Some brightly burning, some dark and cold

There is a Spirit who brings a fire

Ignites a candle and makes His home

So carry your candle, run to the darkness

Seek out the helpless, confused and torn

Hold out your candle for all to see

Take your candle, and go light your world

That is my challenge to you this morning: don't just sit at the fountain of living water drinking deeply, take your candle and go light your world.

Let’s pray.