The following was given at the Southeast Missouri Young Life all-area club 04/22/02
Hey I’m Aaron, and I’ve had the unique privilege of helping out in both YL clubs in Jackson
and Cape. It’s been a lot of fun seeing the two groups and helping out, but it’s been tiring.
What I have here is a CalMax magnet. One day a few weeks ago, James, Kim and myself noticed that the Max, our office, was just covered in these. They were everywhere. On the desks, on the fridge, on the doors, the cabinets, even on our cars.
We were wondering just who could have possibly blanketed the Max with all these magnets. I didn’t take very long to realize that the only one devious enough to pull such a prank, was none other than Brian Mueller. Mueller makes magnets for his job, and as you can see here, he does an excellent job of them. Being the maker of these fine magnets, he saw it fit to give us a few so we could enjoy them as well.
I wondered, just what is calmax? Why should I take it every day? So I gave them a call. Those of you who have been around me for any length of time, shouldn’t be surprised by this. When they answered, I asked the man, ‘Just what is calmax?’
He told me ‘calmax is guaranteed to make your life better. I promise you, calmax is the best thing you can possibly have.’
That intrigued me. I’m willing to do anything to make my life better so I replied ‘Well that still doesn’t tell me what it is’
So he told me, ‘Calmax is a calcium supplement that gives you energy and life. You take it once a day, and your life will be better for it.’ The man then went into his sales pitch. ‘I know you’re a smart man because you called us, and no one can possibly refuse what calmax has to offer. We’re giving you life, and enjoyment of life. How can you not want that? Tell you what; I’ll give you 4 bottles of Calmax, that’s about 3 months worth for only $79.95. It comes with a money back guarantee if your life isn’t better from taking it. But I know that won’t happen, you won’t want your money back, because this stuff works wonders. I use it, everyone I know uses it, and it makes our life better. It really does.’
At that point, I decided calmax wasn’t for me. Even though the man promised to make my life better, his promises were empty. It’s no big surprise that all he wanted was my money, what little of it there is. HE didn’t care about me, he was just interested in what I’d do for him.
I realize that the man was trying to do his job, but that made me think, the world is just like that man. He only cared about what I could do for him, and he was full of empty promises. Turn on the TV or radio, or pick up a newspaper. We are bombarded everyday with false promises from things like calmax that are guaranteed to make our lives better. The world tells us that in order for us to have life, in order for us to enjoy life, we have to have stuff. Be it calmax, be it a 2002 excursion, that district championship, a relationship with that really cute guy or girl in our English classes.
The world tell us that in order for us to be somebody, for us to be somebody that the world cares about, we have to have something, we have to have money, prestige, popularity, success, in order for the world to know who we are, and care about us.
But whenever we build our lives around the things of this world, we set ourselves up for a major disappointment.
One reason, is that all the things in the world, the things that we can see, touch, the things we buy, our achievements, our relationships with each other, will all be gone one day.
Another reason why we only set ourselves up for a let down when we invest ourselves into the world, is that the world is fallen. It’s no secret how cruel and harsh the world is. Just watch the news for 5 minutes, and we can very easily see just how much pain and suffering there is.
And it’s all because of us. We as humans, put ourselves, our success, our stuff, in front of the needs of others. A wise man once said, ‘I see now what is wrong with the world, and it is me.’ We’re the ones who hurt each other, and make empty promises. We’re the ones foul everything up. We all do it. It’s part of our nature.
As a result, our investments into the world will only leave us empty and hurting.
There’s a woman in the Bible who buys into the false promises of the world, and it gets her into some trouble. It causes her pain.
Before I read it, let me tell you what’s going on.
She goes out to this well where Jesus is, and she talks with Him. I’ll pick up the story here.
John 4:7-26
When a Samaritan
woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give Me a drink?’ His disciples had gone to town to buy
food.
The Samaritan woman
said to Him, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan, How can you ask me for a
drink?’ for Jews did not associate
with Samaritans.
Jesus answered her
‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it
is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given
you living water.’
‘Sir,’ the woman
said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep, where can you get
this living water. Our father Jacob
who gave us this well and drank from it himself and did also his flocks and
herds?’
Jesus answered, ‘Whoever drinks
from this well will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give, will
never thirst. Indeed, the water I
give will become a spring of water, welling up to eternal
life.’
The woman said,
‘Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming
back here to draw water.’
He told her, ‘Get your husband
and come back.’
‘I have no husband’ she
replied.
Jesus said to her, ‘You are right
when you say you have no husband.
The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not
your husband. What you have said is
quite true.’
‘Sir’ the woman
said, ‘I can see that you are a
prophet. Our fathers worshiped on
this mountain but you Jews claim the place we must worship is
Jerusalem.
Jesus declared, ‘Believe me
woman, the time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem. You
Samaritans worship what you do not know, we worship what we do know, for
salvation is from the Jews. Yet a
time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father
in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must
worship in spirit and in truth.’
The woman said, ‘I
know the Messiah called the Christ
is coming and when He comes, He will explain everything to
us.
Jesus declared, ‘I am
He.’
Alright here’s what happened. Jesus goes up to this well, and a woman comes up also. He asks her for a drink, and she’s wonders why, because the two of them were not supposed to interact with each other. Because she’s a Samaritan, she’s considered to be unclean. But Jesus talks with her anyways. He tells her about this water that will always satisfy her and never leave her thirsty, unlike the water at the well, which will only leave her needing more.
The woman gets curious and asks Jesus for some of this water. Jesus the tells her to get her husband and come back. The woman says she has no husband. Jesus tells her that she is right, but instead has 5 husbands, and is with a man now who isn’t her husband. This just blows her away, and she knows she’s in the presence of a great man. She tells Him this.
Jesus talks to her. He her tells her about His Father God. The woman says, ‘I know the Savior is coming, and He’ll tell us everything.’ And Jesus says to her, ‘I am Him who you seek’
Take a look at this woman. She had bought into all these false promises that the world had told her. She looks to relationships as a way to become someone, but instead it was just destroying her. Jesus can tell just by looking at her, that she’s in pain. There was no way she could go through that many relationships without getting hurt. She buys into this false promise told to her by this fallen, upside down world, and it crushes her. I’m sure This woman is told by the men she was in relationships with that they loved her, that they cared for her, when the truth is, they only wanted what she could do for them.
How often do we do this to each other? More times than we like to admit. And as a result we hurt ourselves, and we hurt each other. How often do we use each other? How often do we make false promises?
We do this because we have sin. Sin is anything we do that God doesn’t want us to do. When we flip our parents off when they’re not looking, when we cheat on our tests, or when we cheat on the ones we love. God never intended for us to hurt each other, or make false promises, every time we do that, we’re rebelling against Him. Sin separates us from God, and alienates from one another.
Because of us, the world is in the shape that it’s in. And we’re the ones who are hurt the most for it.
Anytime we buy into what the world has to offer us, we let ourselves down, and we’re the ones who are at fault.
But where the world will always disappoint us and hurt us, Jesus will always come through. He always keep His promises, and He is only thing that can satisfy us. He doesn’t want us for what we can do for Him, because we can do nothing for Him. He doesn’t need us, but He wants us. He wants us more than anything than we can imagine. When we rely on Him, He will always be where we need Him. Everything else is empty and a false promise. Everything else will leave us wanting more, just like the woman at the well.
Jesus could have simply ignored her, or condemned her for being in all those bad relationships, but He didn’t. He loved her too much, even though she was a mess. Jesus saw through all the crap in her life, and met her at her point of need, and as a result, her life was better because of Jesus.
We can buy into the false promises that the world tells us about how to make our lives better, but in the end, we’ll only hurt ourselves and hurt. The woman at the well wasn’t truly satisfied until she met Jesus. He gave her what she truly needed. CalMax wouldn’t have satisfied me, it would have only left an $80 dollar hole in my wallet.
Only Jesus can give us a true taste of what life can be. Everything else will leave us empty and hurt.
Only He can truly satisfy us.
Speech Editor: Frances VanDeventer Slatery
Delivered by: Aaron V.F. PICAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!
