Refreshment! - Part A

The refreshment couched in the term living water is a spiritual inward condition. It is not a physical condition. It's not an emotional or psychological condition.

It's an inward spiritual quenching of the life thirst of an individual. It doesn't come from having things. It doesn't come from doing things. And it doesn't come from stopping to do things. While refreshments and get-togethers and parties are nice, in the end, it mostly amounts to chips and dip and the need to hit the gym during the following weeks. And that's hardly something we can rely on to help refresh our deeper needs. So where do we turn for real refreshment, which not only satisfies our inner longings, but will continue to refresh us on a daily basis? Well today, Skip Heitzig explores something refreshing that also lasts. But first, let's see what's going on in the Connect with Skip Resource Center this month. Our lives rotate around crucial moments and decisions where everything changes.

We call them pivot points. Here's Skip Heitzig. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials. Do you think Peter is actually saying that there are times when God knows you need a trial? Is that what he's saying? Uh-huh.

That's exactly what he's saying. You can prepare for inevitable upcoming pivot points in your life. Receive your copy of Skip's pivot points collection of six messages. The pivot point package speaks to marriage, death, depression, recovery, fear of the future, and moving to a new location or job.

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Thank you for partnering with us. Open your Bibles today to John 4. Now let's join Skip Heitzig as he begins by telling us how to get some satisfaction. You know, satisfaction doesn't come naturally.

That is, our entire culture is built upon the idea that you should be dissatisfied until you get certain things added to your life. Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived in a small, shabby cottage. He was a very discontented boy. He would wake up in the morning and look around his surroundings and he would say, I can never be happy here ever. What made it worse is that in the evening, every evening he would look out across the valley and he could see way in the distance a big beautiful mansion with golden windows.

He saw it every evening. He looked at his own shabby little shack and he looked at that mansion with golden windows. One day he decided to make the day long journey all the way across the valley to that mansion with golden windows.

And so he walked and he walked and he got there at the end of the day. It was evening. And he was so disappointed because it wasn't a lovely mansion. It was an old barn. And the windows weren't gold.

It was just a reflection of the sun in the afternoon on the windows. It appeared gold to him from across the valley. He was disappointed but he couldn't return. He had made the journey and he spent the night there in the barn.

The next day he got up. And as the morning sun was coming up and he looked back across the valley at his own shabby little shack atop that hill, he noticed that his own house had golden windows. It was the same allurement that drew him to that barn. It cured him of that dissatisfaction. It's the myth of the greener grass that says wherever happiness is, it's not where I am. So I've got to be wherever that happiness is.

I need satisfaction. Now advertisers in our country are banking on your dissatisfaction. Millions of dollars are poured into marketing research to make American viewers of television unhappy with their lives until they buy the product. And so the commercial is crafted with that in mind. And boy is it working. About 100 years ago the average American could come up with a list of 70 needs in his or her life. 70. Today the list is around 500.

Boy if things change. I read an article about an American company that set up shop in Panama years ago. They set up shop in Panama but they had a problem. They couldn't keep workers. Workers kept quitting and here's why.

The economy down in Panama at that time was a barter economy. They didn't have cash for service. But this American company every week was giving cash to their employees. So in one week's period of time the employee had so much cash in his hand, more than he'd ever seen in a lifetime, he quit. He had enough he thought. I have cash.

I'm rich. So after a week or two that worker would quit. They kept losing employees. So the American company did something ingenious. They bought each of their employees, gave one, each a Sears catalog. Now they were seeing things and dreaming of having things they never knew about.

And they kept the employees working. We encounter in John chapter 4 a woman, a gal that Jesus meets who has long given up on any notion of having a happy, satisfied little life. She is hardened by the time Jesus meets her.

She has an edge to her. It's all over the tone of the story. By the time Jesus meets the woman at the well, she is like 20 miles of bad road by the time she meets Jesus. Verse 1 says, Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus himself did not baptize but his disciples.

And we already covered that in the previous study. He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. He waited to go through Samaria. And so he came to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, nearing the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied from his journey, sat thus by the well.

It was about the sixth hour. A woman of 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. Then the woman of Samaria said to him, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?

For Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. And that's a footnote by John. Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says 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 with, and the well is deep.

Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father, Jacob? Can you imagine somebody asking Jesus that question? Who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock? Jesus answered and said to her, Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.

You notice that Jesus doesn't offer this woman more stuff, doesn't offer this woman, I'm going to fulfill 500 of your needs, or here's a Sears catalog. What he promises this woman is one word summed up, refreshment, refreshment, that's the name of this message this morning, refreshment. Now the refreshment couched in the term living water is a spiritual inward condition. It is not a physical condition, it's not an emotional or psychological condition, it's an inward spiritual quenching of the life thirst of an individual. It doesn't come from having things, it doesn't come from doing things, and it doesn't come from stopping to do things. William Phelps wrote this, If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care, then the happiest individual would neither be a man nor a woman.

It would be, I think, the American cow. He's got a point. True refreshment, satisfaction is an inside job. It's a spiritual reality. In Acts chapter 3, Peter will address the nation and say much the same thing.

He'll say, Repent and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out that times of refreshment may come from the Lord. Refreshment. Now there are four realities about this refreshment, about this living water. First I want you to notice, and we'll go back over the text that we read, the need is universal. Everybody has this need. Everybody wants this. It's a deep human need. Does it matter your age, your gender, your economic status?

It's a universal need. You'll notice in verse 3 that Jesus left Judea. That's south. That's Jerusalem area. And he departed again to Galilee.

Now that's north. Verse 4, but he needed to go through Samaria. He's been down south and we've covered chapters 1 through 3, Jesus down in Judea. And there was one notable person that met with Jesus that John writes about in chapter 3, who was a leader down in Judea, Jerusalem. His name is Nicodemus. Chapter 3 is about Nicodemus. He's the first great example that John gives us about a person who needed to hear the gospel and needed a savior. That was Nicodemus. But John wants you to know, and here's the reason for chapter 4 in this story. He wants you to know that there's a lot of other people besides Nicodemus in Judea who also need to hear the truth of the gospel, like this unnamed woman in Samaria. And that's the reason verse 4 is stated the way it is. It says, but he needed to go through Samaria. Now to a Jewish person 2,000 years ago hearing that, they would go, huh?

He needed to go through Samaria. That's like telling somebody now, I need to go to Juarez to go to Los Angeles. And you go, huh? Why? That's the long way around.

Why would you do that? And that's the way the Jews felt 2,000 years ago about Samaria. It was not a place anybody wants to go if you're Jewish. Now I got to tell you why that is, because John says the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

You need to know why. The Samaritans for 700, 800 years had a history of doing worship wrong. It all started when Solomon was the king of Israel, and after Solomon, the kingdom split.

You remember that? South and north, Judea and Israel, two separate countries, if you will. Well, Jeroboam took over the northern part, and Jeroboam instituted calf worship, two golden calves, one was set up at the top of the nation, Dan, and one right in the middle of Samaria.

That's where it started. The rivalry, the animosity between south and north started. Years passed by, and in 722 BC, the great Assyrian empire took the northern country of Israel and Samaria captive, and effectively took their best population out of the country and brought them to Assyria. What they did is repopulate Samaria with other foreign nationals that they had taken from other countries, they had conquered. So now you have a mixture of Jew and Gentile, and with the Gentile, different gods and goddesses and worship systems that got melded into their own worship system. And with their intermarriage of Jew and Gentile in Samaria, over time, those down south began to look at those up north as a bunch of half-breeds.

They're not true. They're not like us. They're not really Jewish people. It got so bad that when in 586, after the temple fell and the Jews went into captivity in Babylon, I know I'm going through a lot of history, when they came back to rebuild their temple, you may remember that in the book of Nehemiah, some of the Samaritans wanted to help. Remember what the Jews said in Judea?

No way. You will not have a part in building this Jewish temple in Judea. The Samaritans weren't allowed. The animosity was so divisive that in 330 BC, the Samaritans built a rival temple in Mount Gerizim, which is right where Jesus is at in Samaria, Sychar. Right above this setting was a temple on Mount Gerizim. It was a rival worship system. They made up their own stories about Abraham coming there to offer his son Isaac, not Jerusalem. So, when it says he had to go through Samaria, the Jewish person would go, why would he want to go there? Why would he need to go there? Because for most Jews traveling to Galilee, they would go way around Samaria. They would go east of the Jordan River, go north, and at Perea, they'd hang a left, and you're in Galilee. It was the long way around, but it was worth it to avoid all the cooties that you would get going through Samaria. But John wants us to know Jesus needed to go through Samaria because people in Samaria need the gospel as much as people in Judea. That's why he wants us to know that.

The need is universal. Now, here's what's interesting to me. You couldn't find two more polar opposites in human beings than Nicodemus, the Jew of Judea, and this unnamed woman of Samaria, totally opposite from each other.

I wrote a list. He was a Jew. She was a Samaritan. He was a Pharisee. She belonged to a rival religion. He was a politician. She had no status whatsoever. He was a scholar. She was uneducated. He is highly moral.

The woman is immoral, as you will see next time. He has a name, Nicodemus. She's nameless.

We don't know her name. He was a man. She was a woman. He came at night.

She came at noon. With Nicodemus, Nicodemus came seeking Jesus. With this woman at the well, Jesus came needing to go through Samaria, seeking the woman.

So you've got two people that John wants us to know about next to each other in three and four. You've got Nicodemus who represents that no one is too high and mighty and lofty so as to be above the need for the gospel. The woman represents you can't sink too low to be noticed and wanted by Christ. Beautiful in their juxtaposition to each other.

So you have two opposites. But they have a common ground and the common ground is their need. Nicodemus needs Jesus. The woman at the well needs Jesus. The Bible says in Romans chapter 3 verse 23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Nicodemus has and the woman has. Isaiah 53 tells us all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. Whether it's the way of religion like Nicodemus or it's the way of loose living like the woman at Samaria. They've gone their own way and they have a common need and that is for Christ.

I love what somebody wrote. If our greatest need would have been for information God would have sent us an educator. If our greatest need would have been technology God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need was money God would have sent us an economist but our greatest need was forgiveness. And so he sent us a savior. Here's the savior going to Jerusalem, Judea and now to Samaria.

The need is universal. Look at the next few verses beginning in verse 5. There's a second great reality about this spiritual refreshment living water and that is the task is formidable. He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore being wearied from his journey. Picture in your mind Christ tired, sat thus by the well.

The idea of the wording is he just sort of plopped down in exhaustion. It was about the sixth hour so it's the hottest part of the day. A woman of Samaria came to draw water and Jesus said to her give me a drink. But his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Now Samaria isn't a place that the disciples would have thought let's go on vacation to. Let's have a little R&R and fun in the sun at Samaria.

But they went there and they walked there. Some of us are going to be in Israel in a few weeks. We're going to be in a bus.

It's a small country but we're still going to ride an air-conditioned bus. Jesus and his disciples didn't have team Jesus bus going through Israel. They're on foot. They're climbing up the Judean Hills and the Samaritan Hills and it's hot. And by the way they have sandals.

No Dr. Scholl lifters in the back or I guess it would be Dr. Shlomo lifters back then. And they're weary. They're exhausted.

They're thirsty. And just let that phrase sink in wearied from his journey. So on one hand Jesus needed to go through Samaria but in so doing he was weary because of the journey. So here you have Christ tired while he is serving others. As I read the Gospels and you probably have noticed it too especially in the Gospel of Mark. There is such a rapid pacing of Jesus' life as told by the Gospel writers. That it seems that Jesus barely had two minutes to rub together for his own quiet. He was always surrounded with people, crowds pressing him. He'd work into the night long hours. When he was alone with his disciples he was mentoring them. They have questions for him. In fact I sometimes think if I were Jesus I'd say Peter if you give me one more question.

This is going to be like too much. So he rarely had any time alone unless he carved it out early in the morning or late at night with his Heavenly Father. The point I want to make is that Jesus reached out to people even when he was on the edge of physical exhaustion. I read something by Oswald Sanders that stuck out to me. He said the world is run by tired men. Men and women.

I mean that generically. Those who are tired. I would say that there's a ring of truth to that. I would say it is that way in the church world. R. Kent Hughes in his commentary writes, Most souls are won by tired people. The best sermons are preached by tired men. The best camps are run by exhausted youth pastors. The third world is being evangelized by tired missionaries. The Christian organizations of our world are being run by tired men and women. Hey you show me a really great VBS, Vacation Bible School.

And I'll show you a whole bunch of tired women. Because to do something great like that requires great energy. You know it's not always easy to find time to spend with God outside the time we go to church. But if we want to feel refreshed by him on a daily basis we need to find some way to do that. Without regular time of prayer, Bible study and worship will just end up being like a dry sponge.

Which really isn't all that useful. Well we're out of time for today but for now here's a unique opportunity to grow in your knowledge of the Lord. Personal or small group Bible study is a great way to learn God's Word. But what if you want to learn more?

Go deeper. This spring Calvary College is offering classes and ministry training. Classes like Personal Evangelism. Learn how to be a dynamic, confident witness for Jesus Christ.

Take evening classes on campus or anytime classes online. An education from Calvary College will impact your spiritual life for the rest of your life. Apply now at calvarychurchcollege.com. That's calvarychurchcollege.com. Well we're out of time for today but if you'd like a copy of this message it's available for just four dollars plus shipping.

When you call 1-800-922-1888. We'll continue to explore how time with God is the greatest refreshment of all. So I hope you can make some time to join us right here in Connect with Skip weekend edition. A presentation of Connection Communications. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast your burdens on His Word. Make a connection, a connection, a connection. Connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.