The Baptist Faith and Message

The Lord’s Day and the Kingdom

Psalm 33:1–12 (ESV)

Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous!

Praise befits the upright.

Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre;

make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!

Sing to him a new song;

play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.

For the word of the Lord is upright,

and all his work is done in faithfulness.

He loves righteousness and justice;

the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,

and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap;

he puts the deeps in storehouses.

Let all the earth fear the Lord;

let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!

For he spoke, and it came to be;

he commanded, and it stood firm.

The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;

he frustrates the plans of the peoples.

The counsel of the Lord stands forever,

the plans of his heart to all generations.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,

the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!

The Lord’s Day

The first day of the week is the Lord’s Day. It is a Christian institution for regular observance. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should include exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private. Activities on the Lord’s Day should be commensurate with the Christian’s conscience under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

The Kingdom

The Kingdom of God includes both His general sovereignty over the universe and His particular kingship over men who willfully acknowledge Him as King. Particularly the Kingdom is the realm of salvation into which men enter by trustful, childlike commitment to Jesus Christ. Christians ought to pray and to labor that the Kingdom may come and God’s will be done on earth. The full consummation of the Kingdom awaits the return of Jesus Christ and the end of this age.

John 4:1–26 (ESV)

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “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.” The woman said to him, “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.” Jesus said to her, “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 woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “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 said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

It may be worthwhile here to reflect a moment on John’s apparent fascination with water. In the first chapter he made a great deal out of baptism both in the ministry of John the Baptist and the specific baptism of Jesus. In chapter 2 he recorded the changing of water to wine. In chapter 3 we read about Nicodemus, who was told that “no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit” (v. 5). Now in chapter 4 Jesus met a woman by a well, and water once again became a major topic of conversation as it commonly would among thirsty people in a desert land.

Jesus cut right to the basics and offered living water. This confused the woman since she had no context for moving from physical to spiritual water. The expression gift of God appears only here in the Gospels, but it has become a vital part of modern Christian vocabulary. The gift of God is living water, the water of life, life itself through the Holy Spirit. Once again Morris helps our interpretation: “Jesus is speaking of the new life that He will give, a life connected with the activity of the Spirit. Notice that, although Jesus calls Himself ‘the Bread of Life’ (6:35), He does not refer to Himself as the living water. Living water rather, symbolizes the Spirit, whom He would send, than the Christ Himself. Oderberg shows that in a number of Jewish writings water symbolizes teaching or doctrine. It seems likely that the primary meaning here is the Holy Spirit. But, in the manner so typical of this Gospel, there may also be a reference to Jesus’ teaching. If so, it will be to His teaching as issuing forth in spiritual life”

The water Jesus spoke of is for all people.

Jesus clearly had no prejudice as it was common for Jewish people to no speak to Samaritans.

The water Jesus spoke of is easily accessible.

The well of Jacob was over 100 feet deep, 9 feet in diameter, and the water was 5 to 15 feet in depth. Drawing water was not an easy feat. The Gospel is readily accessible.

The water Jesus spoke of is living.

Literally moving. Jesus equates his work with a spring of water that never ceases to flow.