John 4:10 Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that said to you, Give me to drink… I. THE SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPORTANCE OF WAYSIDE OPPORTUNITIES. Speaking after the ordinary manner this transaction was accidental; apparently unpremeditated on the part of Christ, unexpected on the part of the woman. 1. We go into transactions which involve our highest good or greatest loss as unexpectedly. The woman was looking for the Messiah, but she little expected to find Him a tired traveller. You expect to find God in Church: do you ever expect to find Him in common events? 2. The character of a man, his real strength or weakness, appears not in his seizure of great events but of ordinary ones — not in martyrdom, but in endurance. 3. Opportunities for serving Christ are offered when truth has to be done or spoken, in doing and speaking it not boastfully or independently or impudently, but simply and in love. 4. You meet Christ by the wayside in every duty, great or small, which calls you from the wrong to the right. 5. Opportunities for religious instruction and worship are not confined to. one day, place, or act, but every day, everywhere, and by everything that brings us in contact with God. And as the highest religious truth in nature lies close by the way if we will only pluck it, so in the Bible the great truths lie on the surface. II. How CHRIST USED HIS OPPORTUNITIES. 1. He made them the occasion of a great and effective religious work. 2. The freedom and spontaneousness of Christ's teaching fill us with wonder. It is perfectly independent of times and places, but makes all times and places consecrated and effective. 3. Why? Because religion in Him was a real matter. It is unreality that makes it unnatural, constrained, vague. 4. The man who is truly religious never forces His religion on any one. It goes wherever he goes. If the conversation takes a religious turn, what he says comes as spontaneously as it did from Christ. 5. This is the power of effective preaching. Some preaching is simply the setting forth of abstract doctrines. The real preaching passes the life up into the doctrines, being based on the realities of life. III. THE WOMANS OPPORTUNITY. 1. That of ministration to the necessities of Christ. We cannot do this as she did; but Christ's doctrine is, that what is done to the least of His brethren is done to Him. With every needy, weak claimant by the wayside Christ comes. 2. That of reception. The gift of God was her opportunity. Our evil is that we do not know our wants, and therefore do not know our opportunities. (E. H. Chapin, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. |
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