It’s a great privilege me this morning to bring you God’s Word. I want to speak with you this morning about a doctrine that was understood and embraced and explained thoroughly by our forefathers in the faith. It’s a doctrine which, in my opinion, is essential for a vital and robust life with God and […]

Installation Service of Nathan George

Let’s pray. Remember O Lord, Your Word to Your servant in which You have made us hope. This is our comfort and our affliction, that your promises give us life. When we think of Your rules from of old, we take comfort, O Lord. The earth is full of Your steadfast love. Teach us Your statutes, we pray, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 4. John chapter 4, verses 16 through 26. Moving our way, as is our habit, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, through a book of the Bible. We have been in John for several months, and in particular taking three weeks, this is the second, to look at this story of the woman at the well. John chapter 4, beginning at verse 16:

“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 to 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.”

I want you to keep your Bibles open, but I want you to take out your bulletin, okay? Almost everyone has a bulletin. I want you to look at this, it’s got the nice design on the front, Christ Covenant Church, it looks sharp. Now you go inside and you see the very top. You see what it says there? “Morning Worship.” You can go over to the back and it says “Evening Worship.” Nothing too revolutionary there. Probably could have spotted that before. Morning worship, evening worship. As simple as that is, and as obvious as that might be, I want to encourage you to keep in mind every Sunday you’re here what it says right there. This is why we’re here, right? To worship. Not to be entertained, not here because it provides some social standing in the community, not here that we might just fulfill a religious duty, “I go to church, that’s what I do.” We’re where because of this label: “Worship.”

Now let me just say some of you may be here because you want to learn more about Christ, and that’s wonderful, we love to have visitors, we love to have the curious. And so you may not be here to worship, you’re here to learn more about what Christians believe. We’re glad you’re here.

But for most of us, we call ourselves Christians. For most of us, this is our church home. And we simply need to realize that coming to church and worshiping are not always identical. They ought to be, we wish that they were, but if we’re honest, they’re not. It is very possible to come to church, go to church, to do it for years and years and years, with your parents bringing you or your spouse bringing you, or even you just come to church, and yet not be worshiping. Sometimes it happens slowly, imperceptibly. We lose sight of why we really are here or why we really ought to be here. This is called a worship service. It begins with a “call to worship.” The bulletin lists those assisting in worship. Under the offering,

Let’s pray. Remember O Lord, Your Word to Your servant in which You have made us hope. This is our comfort and our affliction, that your promises give us life. When we think of Your rules from of old, we take comfort, O Lord. The earth is full of Your steadfast love. Teach us Your […]

Installation Service of Nathan George

Let’s pray one more time as we come to God’s Word. Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my Lord, my God, you are very great. You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment. Stretching out the heavens like a tent. Bless the Lord, O my soul, praise the Lord. We ask, O Lord, that you give us ears to hear, minds to understand, hearts to feel, wills to obey, that we would not be hearers of Your Word only, but doers also. Speak to us, we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the Gospel according to John. If you are visiting this morning, we are very glad that you’re here. It’s our practice to go through the Bible verse by verse, and I’ve been working through the Gospel of John for several months now, and you’ll want to follow along in your Bible because what I have to say is not very important unless what I have to say comes from this book.

John chapter 4, beginning at verse 1 through verse 15: “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 in 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 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.'”

Today is Palm Sunday. If you know the story, you know the crowd of Galilean pilgrims, together with His disciples, praised Jesus as he approached Jerusalem and put palm branches along the way, and He rode on a new colt, a symbol just as Solomon had entered into his reign, that Jesus was the coming king. Later in the week, the Jews in Jerusalem would not be crying “Hosanna,” but chanting “crucify Him.” With very few exceptions, perhaps no exceptions at all, Jesus was not the Messiah people were looking for. He was not the Christ they expected, and for most of them, He was not the Messiah they wanted. Jesus was often surprising. He was oftentimes scandalous. His birth was not what they expected from the Messiah. The way He spoke, the things He did, often astonished, marveled the crowds, sometimes to their delight, sometimes to their great disappointment. And clearly no one thought that the Messiah would come and suffer and die. No, He was supposed to get the Romans off their back. He was supposed to put an end to their suffering. He surely could not be the Messiah if He would suffer and die, and they were not expecting that once dead, He would be raised to life again.

Jesus was full of surprises. He was not what they were expecting.