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 in inward spiritual quenching wife of an individual doesn't come from having pain and it doesn't stopping things was good.

We get a division while refreshments at get-togethers, and parties are not mostly about the chips and dip and maybe Jim during the following weeks is hardly something we can rely on to help refresh our deeper knee sort of return for real refreshment, which not only satisfies order warnings, but will continue to use on a daily basis. Well today Skip Heitzig explore something refreshing. Also, what is let's see what's going on in the connect with Skip resource Center this let's rotate around crucial moments in decisions where everything changes, and pivot points here.

Skip, I think in this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while if need be. You have been grieved by various trials.

Peter is actually saying that there are times when God knows you see a trial though to say exactly what you can prepare for inevitable coming to that point in your life receive your copy of Skip's pivot point collection of six messages point package sticks to marriage – depression recovery. The future and moving to a new location, or job. This package includes a personal message of direction on each topic from scant point package is, I think you when you get $50 or more to this teaching ministry by calling 892 1888, or get online securely connectwithskip.com/offer. We hope will help us take our messages into the top 20 population centers in our country that's our vision for the coming year we help us make it happen. Please call 892 1888, or get online securely connectwithskip.com/offer. Thank you for partnering with us to John chapter. Let's join Skip begins by telling us how to get some satisfaction satisfaction, natural.

That is our entire culture is built upon the idea that you should be dissatisfied until you get certain things out of 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 sought every evening. He looked at his own shabby little shack elected that mansion with golden windows. One day he decided to make the daylong journey all the way across the valley to that mansion with golden windows and so he walked in he walked me 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 were gold. It was just a reflection of the sun in the afternoon on the Windows it appeared golden him from across the valley. He was disappointed but he couldn't return it made the journey in he spent the night there in the barn 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 a B 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 so the commercial is crafted with that in mind, and boy is it working but 100 years ago the average American could come up with a list of 77 zero needs in his or her life. 70. Today the list is around 500 boy 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 that probably couldn't keep workers.

Workers kept quitting. And here's why the economy down in Panama that time is 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 ever seen in a lifetime.

He quit. He had enough.

You thought I have cash, I'm rich. So after a week or two that worker would quit the 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 was long given up on any notion of having a happy and 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 one 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, but he needed to go through Samaria so we came to a city of Samaria, which is called sidecar during the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph know Jacob's well was there, Jesus therefore being wearied from his journey set. Thus, by the well was about the sixth hour woman of Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, give me a drink for his disciples and 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 have asked him and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, stir. You have nothing to draw with 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 on benefit fill 500 of your needs. Or, here's a Sears catalog what what he promises this woman is one word summed up refreshment. Refreshment is the name of this message this morning.

Refreshment 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 in inward spiritual quenching of the life thirst of an individual 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 than the happiest individual would neither be a man nor a woman. It would be. I think the American towel. He's got a point. True refreshment satisfaction is an inside job to spiritual reality in acts chapter 3, Peter will address the nation and save much the same thing you'll say, repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshment may come from refreshment. Therefore, realities about this refreshment about this living water. First, I want you to notice and will go back over the text that we read the need is universal. Everybody has this need.

Everybody wants this to deep human need is a matter your age, your gender, your economic status. It's a universal made you notice in verse three that Jesus left Judeo that self is Jerusalem area and he departed again to Galilee know that's north verse four, but he needed to go through Samaria and he's been down south and we've covered chapters 1 through three Jesus down in Judeo and there was one notable person that met with Jesus that John writes about in chapter 3, who was a leader down in Judeo 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 was Nicodemus, but John wants you to know. And here's the reason for chapter 4 in the story want you to know that there's a lot of other people besides Nicodemus in Judeo who also need to hear the truth of the gospel like this unnamed woman in Samaria. That's the reason. Verse four is stated, the way it is. It says, but he needed to go through Samaria, not to a Jewish person. 2000 years ago hearing that they would go ha he needed to go through Samaria that that's like telling somebody now I need to go to Juarez to go to Los Angeles you go call why that's a long way around. Why would you do that and that's why the Jews fell 2000 years ago about Samaria.

It it was it was, not a place anybody wants to go with your Jewish.

Now I gotta tell you why that is because John says the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans, you need to know why the Samaritans for seven 800 years had a history of doing worship wrong.

It all started when Solomon was the king of Israel after Solomon the kingdom split. Remember that south to north Judea and Israel to separate countries. If you will. Will Jeroboam took over the northern part and Jeroboam instituted calf worship to Golden calf someone 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 greatest Syrian Empire took the northern country of Israel, and Samaria captive and effectively took their best population out of the country and brought them to Syria. 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 of North is a bunch of half breeds are not true.

They're not like us. They're not really Jewish people got so bad that when in 586 after the temple fell in the Jews went into captivity in Babylon. I know I'm going to 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 with the Jew said. And so in Judeo no way you will not have a part in building this Jewish temple in Judeo Samaritans were allowed. The animosity was so divisive that in 330 BC. This Samaritans built a rival temple in Mount reason which is right were Jesus is that an Samaria sidecar right above this setting was a temple on Mount reason, 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 verse ago. Why would he want to go there. Why would he need to go there because for most Jews traveling to Galilee. They will go away around Samaria. They would go east of the Jordan River go North and at Perea they hang a left and you're in Galilee was a long way around it was worth to avoid all the cooties that you would you would get going through Samaria but John wants us to know cheeses needed to go through Samaria because people in Samaria need the gospel as much as people in Judeo.

That's what 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, then Nicodemus, the Jew of Judeo 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 she got to people that John wants us to know about next to each other in three and four. Yet Nicodemus who represents that no one is too high and mighty and lofty so as to be about the need for the gospel.

The woman represents. You can't seek to 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 in the common ground is there need Nicodemus needs Jesus the woman at the well needs Jesus, the Bible says in Romans chapter 3 verse 23, four all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Nicodemus, as in the woman has Isaiah 53 tells us all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, whether it's the way of religion like Nicodemus or it's the way of loose living like a woman in Samaria. They gone their own way and they have a common need and that is Christ. I love what somebody wrote. If our greatest need. Would've been for information. God would've sent us an educator. If our greatest need. Would've been technology God would've sent us a scientist. If our greatest need was money. God would've sent us an economist but our greatest need was forgiveness and so he sent us a Savior is the Savior going to jerk Jerusalem Judeo and now to Samaria. The need is universal.

Look at the next few verses beginning in verse five is a second great reality about the spiritual refreshment. Living water, and that is the task is formidable.

He came to the city of Samaria, which is called sidecar.

The plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph 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 plopped down in exhaustion was about the six hour so it's the hottest part of the day woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink for his disciples had gone away in the city to buy food. Now Samaria is in a place that the disciples would've thought let's go on vacation to have a little R&R and fun in the sun. Samaria, but they went there and they walked to their some of us are going to be in Israel. In a few weeks were going to be in a bus to small country but were still gonna write an air-conditioned bus but Jesus and his disciples didn't have team Jesus bus going through Israel their onslaught there climbing up the Judean Hills in the Samaritan Hills and it's hot.

By the way they have sandals you know Dr. Scholl lifters in the back I guess would be Dr. Shlomo lifters back then and there, wearing their exhausted their 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 such a rapid pacing of Jesus life is 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 worked into the night long hours when he was alone with his disciples.

He was mentoring them ease they have questions forum. In fact, I sometimes think if I were Jesus, I see Peter if you give me one more question is, 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 via Oswald Sanders stuck out to me.

He said the world is run by tired men, men and women mean that generic those who are tired, I would say that there's a ring of truth to that, I would say is that way in the church world are Kent Hughes, in his commentary writes most souls are won by tired people.

The best sermons are preached by tired men the best cancer 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 you show me a really great VBS vacation Bible school show you a whole bunch of tire 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 of time we go to church. We want to feel refreshed by him at a daily basis. We need to find some way to do that without regular time of prayer, Bible study and worship just end up being like a dry sponge which really isn't all that useful well-rounded time for today, but for now, here's a unique opportunity to grow in your knowledge of the Lord personal small group life is a great way to work one more this spring. Calvin College is offering training classes like personal learn how to be confident with Jesus Christ taking classes on campus or anytime classes online education: impact your spiritual life for the rest. I know Calvary church college.com that's Calvary church college.com well-rounded 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 1-800-922-1880 continue to explore how time with God is the greatest refreshment of all. So hope you can make some time to join right here and correctly Skip weekend edition presentation of connection