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Newington Three Angels Church

Eric Walsh

Your Purpose Over Your Past

Our scripture reading today is taken from John 4, 23 and 24.

John 4, chapter 23, John 4, sorry, verses 23 and 24.

The scripture says, but the hour cometh and now is when the true worshiper shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

For the Father seeketh such to worship him.

God is a spirit, and They that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Our message this Sabbath is entitled, Your Purpose Over Your Past.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to just discuss and look into your word on this, your holy Sabbath day.

Lord, I ask in a very special way this Sabbath that you make me a nail upon the wall, a rusty, sorry nail, Lord.

But upon that nail, Lord, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Lord, let Eric Walsh not be seen or heard.

Instead, Father, Let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

It's our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name.

It's been an eventful last couple of weeks.

The country itself has been rocked to its core.

All while this is happening, we have watched the resurgence of the coronavirus.

In fact, In many ways, the numbers are worse now than they ever have been since the epidemic or the pandemic began.

There is a great deal of uncertainty, even as we now go through what seems to be a reluctant transition of power at the top levels of government.

We had a meeting this week and I had on 1 of the calls 1 of the top officials for the Centers for disease control.

I was very happy to be able to be on the call where we were able to ask questions of this individual.

I want to submit to you that as tough as things seem right now, all the news is not bad.

The reality is, Although the number of cases seem to continue to climb, hospitals stays are shorter, and the actual death rate is dropping from the coronavirus.

Of course, nowhere in the world is testing probably more readily being done than in the United States of America.

The ability to treat it has actually gotten significantly better.

The other news that brought hope to many people and at the same time probably caused others to shudder is the idea that Pfizer has come up with a vaccine that is 90% effective and they say is completely safe.

With all of that said, there are now those who are looking towards the end of this pandemic.

In fact, the questions that came up at least twice on the call with this individual, this senior official at the Centers for Disease Control, is in 5 years what will happen next?

I submit to you that right now people are so on long-term adrenaline that the idea of normalcy is beginning to scare people as well.

The idea that it all goes back to normal and all this goes away is actually a little bit frightening for some folk.

But I wanna submit to you that as Christians, we see the world differently.

We understand that a tumultuous time is coming that will be unpredictable, that man will not be able to control.

And as Christians, we ought not get the anxiety the world gets.

2 Timothy 1.7, 1 of my favorite Bible verses says, For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

We do not get overly emotional about elections.

We stay level and We stay on 1 trajectory, understanding that God has a purpose for us.

And all that is happening around us are merely signs, like you're driving on a freeway, and the sign tells you how far it is till you get to the next town.

What is happening around us are simply the signs of the times declaring to us the surety of the scripture.

You better be extra careful like we are here at church.

I feel like a dignitary, like this is bulletproof and somebody wants me out.

I guess if somebody threw a tomato at least, I wouldn't get hit.

But there are other issues that the Christian ought to be focusing on right now.

The story that we're gonna go through today is 1 of my favorite Bible stories.

It is 1 of my favorite Bible stories because I see myself in the story and many of you will see yourself in this story as well.

We're gonna go to the book of John and this was talked about briefly in the Sabbath School lesson this week.

John chapter 4 verse 1 says, When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus himself baptized not but his disciples, He left Judea and departed again into Galilee.

Verse 4 says, and he must needs go through Samaria.

The scripture says that when Jesus realizes that his life is in danger by the religious authority in Jerusalem and in Judea, he understands he must go to Galilee where he will be safer.

But the Bible also says that there is a necessity in Christ going through Samaria.

It is not happenstance that the story we're about to read happens.

In fact, when you look at a map of where Jesus has to go, the Jews usually took a more, a route that circumvented Samaria because there was such animosity.

People say it was racial, but it weren't.

They were really very much the same people, honestly.

It was more of a difference of cultures and of religion, religious practices.

And so the Jews would literally go out of their way and around up to Galilee because Samaria cut across.

Jesus took the path straight through Samaria.

He, It was a necessity that Christ went this way.

There was something that needed to be done, and I wanna submit to you that when God has a meeting planned for you, he does not go the long way to get to you.

The God of the universe takes the shortest route to get to you.

John 4, 5 says, then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, which is actually far from the actual city of Samaria, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph.

Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well, and it was about the sixth hour.

So, to make the story make sense, it speaks to Christ's humanity.

They had gotten up at about dawn, and now it's noon.

They had gone through the hot desert roads that they would have to take, and Jesus had been walking probably for 15 to 20 miles.

When he gets to this well, Jesus sits at the side of it in order to rest.

John, the writer of this gospel, is trying to give you very much reassurance, even in this seemingly innocuous verse of verse 6.

What he's trying to tell us is that Jesus felt fatigue like you do.

In fact, many who think that somehow God has forgotten them, they sometimes seem to forget that Christ suffered in ways we cannot even fathom.

Jesus, parched, thirsty, hungry, weak, sits on the side of the well.

In order to regain his strength at the noon hour, he has no way to get water out of the well.

So he's sitting by a well he actually cannot get water from.

Verse 7, the key character of our story shows up.

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water.

For his disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat, to buy food.

As Jesus is sitting there, a strange thing happens.

You see, in the region that is now called Palestine or Israel, depending on which side you're on, in that region, When women would have to go and draw water, they would never go in the heat of the day.

The women would come out first thing in the morning and they would make a sojourn as a pack, as a group.

Along the way, they would discuss all of the local gossip and what was happening.

They would talk about how their children are growing and how everything is getting along.

They would talk about how their husbands got on their nerves.

Somebody said the amen louder than everybody else.

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Your Purpose Over Your Past

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