I

The Book of Deuteronomy is a book designed to cause the Promised Land Generation to remember and to recognize the greatness of God and His Love and His Power and all that He has done on behalf of His People.

It was provided to help the people of God learn to trust and obey Him, because they did not see or experience the deliverance from Egypt; the Plagues, the Pass Over, the Parting of the Red Sea, the issuance of the Ten Commandments…etc..

It was provided that the people who did not witness the Great and Mighty Movements of God could be bolstered and encouraged, to accomplish the great and mighty things that God would call them to, concerning taking possession of the Promised Land…

But know there is a vast difference in the Promised Land and the Possessed Land…

300,000 square miles of Promised Land – given to His People – Guaranteed by God (for Whom lying is an impossibility) to be theirs, if they would only be obedient in placing Him first in their lives, in following His instructions, and in Loving Him with their whole heart, mind and soul…

From the river Euphrates to the Mediterranean Sea, and from Lebanon all the way south, into the desert they had come through –– All this was theirs for the claiming… promised by God Almighty.

300,000 square miles given and all they had to do was walk it, place their feet upon the path given by God, Himself… All they had to do was believe God, and follow His Instructions… and take hold of his promises. Simple Yes???

Not So much.

30,000 square miles is what they claimed because they did not walk in the ways and instructions and Love of God… 10% of the Blessings of God, is all they were able to claim for themselves…

And Yes: the 10% was great. It was magnificent. It was given and acquired in miraculous and awe-inspiring ways. But I ask you: If receiving only 10% of what God has promised is awesome, how would it be to receive 100% of what God has given us, if we would simply lay claim to it, as instructed??? How about if we were able to claim all BUT 10%… I can only imagine…

And that is what I would talk to you about today… how to – inasmuch as we are able – to lay claim to the fulness of God’s promises and blessings in our lives…

II

First, however, I would like to share with you guys a miracle that God has just recently done in my own life and the revelation He provided me concerning the title of today’s sermon: The Sweet Water Well/The Sour Water Well –– Claiming the Promises of God…

While in prison, I took a nine-month course on the Second Peter Principles (2Peter 1:3-13). After finishing the course, I was assigned as a facilitator to teach it, which I did, until it was no longer offered on the Prison Unit I was confined at… During that time, I was under the mentorship of a wonderful woman named, Pat Howard.

One day, she requested of me as follows:

John, I want you to promise me just one thing: That you will not date for one full year after you get out of prison…

My response was immediate… in point of fact, I laughed and interrupted her:

Let me get this straight — You want me, after at least two decades of continuous confinement and forced separation from women, to refuse to even date a woman for an entire year???

Pat, you’re crazy to even ask such a thing…

Patiently, she explained:

I know. I know. It sounds crazy, but when you get out, if you begin to date immediately upon release, the first time some woman wants more than you are willing to give, she will call the parole board and make a false claim against you and you will end up right back in prison –– They will believe her because they will not know the manner of man you are…

On the other hand, if you spend a year without dating, and you tell your Parole Officer you are not going to date for at least a year (and why), they will see for themselves that you are living the Gospel and they will know the manner of man you are…

Then, if a woman makes a claim, she will not be automatically believed and they will investigate her allegations and you will be exonerated…

Please promise me and if you cannot promise me to do it, please promise me that you will never forget the advice…

I told her that what she said made sense and I promised to never forget it, but that I would never be able to do it…

Remember, this was years before I was even eligible for release consideration (and I would receive another 16 years worth of release denials, after I eventually did reach the 20-year eligibility mark).

At the time she demanded this of me, I could not even envision the possibility of being around women – of having the privilege to enjoy their company returned to me – and not basking in that reality…

In the decade and a half, or two decades, which followed Pat Howard’s Wisdom – freely, passionately, and earnestly, given to me – I drew ever nearer to God…

I delved into His Word. I learned His Ways. I became obedient to His instructions, and I enjoyed the blessings which automatically attach to obedience…

I reached a spot in my relationship with God Almighty, that I did not want any other woman than the one He picked for me… I came to know that the wrong woman would be just another form of prison, another trap from which it would be very difficult and painful to escape…

The reality is that I did not date for the year that Pat wanted me to promise. I did not date, period, until God gave me the woman He has intended for me from the foundations of the world… Debra Church.

November 19^th will be 4 years since my release in 2014. I have waited upon the Lord. I have known Debra, for a couple of years. Before Harvey, she faithfully attended the Bible Study I taught, and I became great friends with her through this passage of time…

In point of fact, I wondered if she was the one. I asked God, if she was the one, but I did not hear from Him. So, I awaited confirmation…

Meanwhile, she joined me in the ministry work I am doing. Her help was powerful and impactful, but she could not see it…

Like many of us – most of us, if the truth be known – She couldn’t see how special she was to God. She was waiting for God to use her and she was blind to the ways in which He was already using her. She was blind to her value to God. Like many of us, she took for granted most of what God had done for her…

She had this deep, sincere, powerful, desire to serve God (and it was a beautiful thing to me) and she was waiting for Him to use her mightily…

She had the joy of knowing she belonged to God, but she was constantly in a state of disappointment because she was blind to both; the blessings He had already bestowed upon her, and the reasons for them (that she is a faithful woman) … She could not see herself as being used by God, and therefore could not fully enjoy, or lay claim to, the full blessings of God…

While she did offer Him sincere thanks for her children and the blessings in her life, she could not see that self-doubt, and the lack of the knowledge of who she is to God, of how precious she is to God, was robbing her and Him of the Joy for which He created her… She could not see that it was displeasing to God when she failed to see and appreciate the creation that He had created, in creating her…

Over the course of our friendship, we had many, many biblical discussions. We talked, repeatedly, about God and how He sees us and how He loves us and How He blesses us… and while she understood and appreciated all of that… She had a hard time seeing herself in that light…

I saw her in that light. But I was unable to express those things in a way that brought it home to her — that helped her apply it to herself…

And then, one night at the Golden Coral (and, yes, though we were not dating, we were spending more and more time together, in working toward a ministry I was sent from prison to fulfill)… So, anyway, we were at the Golden Corral when God gave me the Sweet Water Well/Sour Water Well analogy…

And during the course of explaining it to her, I made the statement that when we undervalue ourselves, we are, in all actuality, disrespecting God. Really, we are spitting on His creation, by not acknowledging Him for the fearfully and wonderfully made creations we are (as described in Psalm 139:14)…

The thought of hurting God was devastating to her… and she got it! She saw How God sees us…

In that moment She saw with spiritual eyes and her entire being glowed with new found confidence… She was transformed before my very eyes; her mind was instantly renewed… She sat up straight, she looked me in the eye…and as every frowning muscle in her face shifted into this radiant, confident, permanent, JOY, she proclaimed, “I am going to change… I am through drinking from the Sour Water Well!!!”

My heart surged in my chest and my response was that she had already changed (right before my very eyes) and that it was a Beautiful thing…a Miraculous Thing… in that instant, I knew that she could be the one…

But I don’t do anything without praying and awaiting God’s confirmation… So, I went home and I prayed. God had me to list the reasons she could be the one… They were numerous, and just thinking of them, made me exuberant, excited…

And then He had me to list the reasons that she might not be the one… There was not a single one… and that’s when  I knew, that I knew that I knew, that at long last, God had granted the desire of my heart for the one woman he intended for me from the foundations of the world…

She is my precious Gift from God Almighty and I recognize her as such. I am her precious Gift from God and she recognizes me as such…

So what is the Sweet Water Well/Sour Water Well analogy as applied to the people of God… Both Israel and us Christians, today???

III

The theme of the Book of Deuteronomy is Obedience and Love. You might find that a bit strange, but that best sums up the context.

It is Blessings for Obedience and it is Curses for Disobedience… It is recognizing and remembering God and what He has done and will do for His people…

And it is remembering the attacks, the isolation, the weakness, the defeats, the aloneness that happens to His people when we do not remember, do not follow His instructions, and do not return the love and blessings God has for us…

As we have seen from our study of the first five books of the Bible, the People of Israel – God’s Chosen People – were a grumbling, complaining, forgetful, and disobedient and blind to the truth, bunch.

Is that NOT the state of humanity today??? Are we not a grumbling, complaining, forgetful, disobedient and blind to the truth, bunch???

They witnessed mighty & awful, and powerful & awesome, acts of God on their behalf and yet they could not keep His instructions, nor keep Him first in their hearts and souls and minds…

They could not, or would not, even remember the otherwise impossible feats that God had done in delivering and keeping them…

Again, is that NOT the state of humanity today???

And why do you think that is?

Oh, if you are like me, you’re probably thinking, Good God Almighty, if I had witnessed those miracles, there is no way on earth that I would do anything but follow God…

But is that really the truth???

God had, repeatedly, and forcefully, instructed His people to not partake of the cultures and people whose lands they would possess. He had warned them to not take their sons and daughters for their own and He had forbidden them to worship the gods of those cultures and peoples…

Today’s equivalent would be to not become unequally yoked with a non-Christian (2 Corinthians 6:14), and to not marry into or adopt the ways of non-Christians and practitioners of any doctrine other than Christ Crucified.

In essence, he had commanded them to NOT drink from the Sour Water Wells that these people and cultures would certainly offer… and why is that?

Is it NOT because it only takes one little bit of pollutant to contaminate an entire well of pure water??? Is the water still pure after it is mixed with anything else??? Of course not.

They were to keep moving through the land and claiming the promises of God. They would be able to do this, no matter what came against them, because God had promised it and they had followed His instructions… They were to continue to drink from the Sweet Water Wells by simply refusing the sour water offered by the current inhabitants of the Promised Land…

Failing to recognize the Promises & Blessings of God Almighty is the human condition, since the fall in the Garden of Eden. It was for the people of the Old Testament, and it is for the Christians of today…

We are prone to it: We are born into it. We have to be taught to see God… and we struggle to recognize and remember those things that God has already done in our lives…

We are no different from God’s Chosen People of Old… Today’s Promise Land is Jesus, and the blessings He offers in exchange for our obedience to His instructions…

We, too, dismiss the things that God has done as coincidence, or happenstance, and, as time passes, even the things we knew that God did, and we knew – at the time – that it was He that did them, fade into obscurity in our minds…

What seemed an awesome act of God at the time, fades into a feeling that it was not God at all who did it…that the miracle was the product of circumstance mixed with timing, and that God did not really intervene in the situation for us… We were just so desperate at the time that we called on God, and when everything came out right, we just naturally gave Him the credit…

But, then, looking back, we convince ourselves that we can see how everything got worked out and that it didn’t really have to be God that did it… it just sort of worked itself out… you know, the time heals all wounds mentality of worldly wisdom and living…

Then you place on top of our own natural tendency to discredit God, the fact that many, many people will explain to you how God did not do whatever it was that was done.

They will make very reasonable, very subjective, statements of some natural occurrence to explain away the spiritual certainty that God had moved on your behalf… and you will begin to drink from their Sour Water Wells and adopt and believe their falsehoods…

These are the people that drink from the Sour Water Wells. These are the people who hang out at the Sour Water Wells. These are the people who have become Sour Water Wells themselves… who now offer only Sour Water to every passerby; even those they love… 

It is a habit that becomes almost impossible to break free of, without the power of the supernatural… without the power of God, Almighty.

Sour Water Well Mentality: It is the negative response to whatever is Godly and Good… It is being unable to see or hear the positive, and believing the negative (Jeremiah 5:21; Mark 8:18, speak of seeing not and hearing not and believing not)… And negativity will erode the strongest of foundations, if those foundations are not rooted in God and His Goodness and His Instructions (1Corinthians 15:33; Matthew 7: 24-27 speak to this).

You see, there are only two types of wells, with each containing very different water… There are Sweet Water Wells, which are filled with, and by, the Rains from Heaven, and there are Sour Water Wells, which have been altered by negativity and from which contamination and condemnation spread…

Let me explain…

God created us, designed us, to be Sweet Water Wells (Genesis 1:27; Psalm 139:14; Philippians 4:8 describe our design and intended operation), and to replenish, our wells and drink and offer to others, only Sweet Water from the Rains of Heaven (James 1:17; John 7:38) …

In the Garden, Satan, brought forth Sour Water and both Adam and Eve drank from his Sour Water Well… and I think you can see that a well is no longer pure if a single pollutant is mixed in…

The curse of the Garden is that every child born of man (except Jesus, Himself) was and is born with a polluted well… thus, the need to be born again (John 3:1-10).

Jesus brought to us Springs of Living Water. He came to show us that sour water always leaves us parched and thirsty, that it never truly satisfies (John 4: 10-14 conveys this)…

He came to show us that the only way to cleanse a polluted well is to flood and flush it with a continuous filling of pure, sweet, refreshing, life-sustaining Sweet Water… The Living Water that Jesus offers freely to those that will but partake of it (John 7: 37-38; Philippians 4:8-9).

So what does this mean to everyday living? Well, I am glad you asked…

Self-doubt, which gives rise to statements like: I’m stupid, I’m dumb, I’m worthless, I’m fat, I’m not smart, I’m not pretty enough, I’m not this good thing, or I’m not that good thing, or I am this or I am that negative thing… all of these self-condemning feelings, emotions, and words are products of Sour Water Well Mentality, and the results of drinking from the Sour Water that is offered to us by others and by the enemy…

And, sometimes we are filled with sour water, even by those we love the most. They mean well, but see and point out the negative in what they think is an effort to protect us, to get us on the right path, to guard us against disappointment… It is never their intent to drag us down, or rob of us the blessings God has for us, but it is Soured Water, just the same…

In that moment They are Sour Water Wells, filled with contaminants, and drinking daily from the Sour Water Well of satan himself, without even realizing it (Proverbs 14:12) — much like Peter, when Jesus told Him, Get thee behind me Satan! (in Matthew 16:23).

Because of their love for us, this can be worse than being polluted by those who intentionally want to corrupt us, to draw us to the Well they hang out at and drink from simply because misery loves company.

 Sour Water Mentality makes us blind to the fact that when we belittle ourselves, we are belittling the very creation of God. We are created by God, so when we operate in self-condemnation, we are, in point of fact, disrespecting God’s creation…

Jesus came not to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3:17). He came to replenish the purity of our wells, because we cannot do it ourselves (John 15:5 states that we can do nothing apart from Christ). He has offered to fill our wells with the Rain Water of Heaven (John 7:38) and all we have to do is recognize this and refuse to drink from the Sour Water Well any longer…

The truth of it is that we go around the Sweet Water Well, to get to and partake of the Sour Water because it is all we know from birth. Until we learn and take hold of the promises of God; the promises of Christ, and the Blessings He has given us… All we know is Sour Water Mentality…

But the Good News? Well, all we have to do, is quit drinking from the Sour Water that is offered to us by our own corrupt natures, and by everyone else.

We need only to believe and recognize the things God has done in our lives, and replenish our wells with the Rain Waters of Heaven, by becoming obedient to God’s instructions… Just begin to embrace the promises of God and to see the positive aspect – God’s aspect – in every situation… Negativity is Sour Water and it pollutes just as surely today as it did in the Old Testament…

So what does this have to do with Deuteronomy???

IV

Partaking of Sour Water is the Human Condition. It is the reason the Old Testament People of God were able to claim only 10% of the blessings given and it is the reason that we, today, are unable to receive of God the power, the blessings, the perseverance, the strength to overcome and the peace and true joy of God…

It is the reason we are able to recognize and claim only 10% – if even that –– of what God intends to bless us with…

Deuteronomy: In the Greek language, deuteron means “two” or “second.” Nomion means “Law.” So the title Deuteronomy, means “the second law,” or, in this instance, the second issuance of the law.

Remember, Moses – in his anger – had broken the stone tablets of the original Ten Commandments of Exodus 32:19 and that God had instructed him in Deuteronomy 10:1 to prepare two new stones, for God to write the commandments upon, for this new generation of Israelites…

So let us look at Chapter 11 with the focus on the blessings and curses promised to this new generation, and how the same apply to us today…

This new generation had arrived on the east bank of the Jordan River, a month before they would enter into the Promised Land. The adults of the generation which had left Egypt were all dead, in the desert they had just left.

The dead had witnessed and knew of great and mighty miracles; all done on their behalf, yet they complained and disobeyed God and refused to receive of, or recognize, His blessings…

Consequently, not one of the them that left Egypt were permitted to cross over into the Promised Land… This generation encamped on the bank of the Jordan River had not seen the miracles done to free their grandparents…

The book of Deuteronomy is a reminder of the mighty and great things accomplished by God for His people, lest they forget the provisions by which God’s People were intended to operate from…and the curses received because of disobedience to them…

He starts the 11^th Chapter of Deuteronomy with: Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments, always.

He ends the 11^th Chapter of Deuteronomy with: And ye shall observe to do all the statutes and judgments which I set before you this day…

In Verses 1, 8, 13, 22, 27, & 32 God drives home the point that His Blessings, and well as the Rains from Heaven are directly contingent upon our Obedience to His Instructions… and our Love of Him.

Verse 18 instructs us to lay up God’s Promises, His Words, in our hearts and souls; to keep them at hand and ever before our eyes…

Verse 19 instructs us to teach them to our children and speak of God’s Word to them continually, all the time, and everywhere we go.

Verse 20 instructs that we keep God’s Word present and visible in and outside of our houses and property.

When we obey His Instructions to Love Him and to reflect that love through obedience to His instructions, He will bring the Rains of Heaven in perfect timing to cause the greatest blessings…

Remember: the only way to cleanse a Sour Water Well is to flood it, to flush it, with a continuing supply of pure, sweet, water… This is the analogy that God provided me… It is the pure, sweet, cleansing, Rains of Heaven that provide the water of Sweet Water Wells…

Are you following God’s instructions to remember the great things He has done in your life and for your people? Are you learning and following the instructions of God Almighty? Are you teaching those things to your children? Do you see a positive side in every situation because you know that God works all things to the Good? (Romans 8:28)

Are you dismissive of the things God has done for you and your people? Are you a complainer? Do you see the negative of anything, of everything, first???

Are you living your life blind to the Love of God? Do you listen to the negativity of others? Do you believe that you are no good, or of limited value?

Are you filled with self-doubt, self-loathing? Do you lack confidence in, and appreciation for, who you are and who God has created you to be???

If you can answer any of these things in the affirmative, you have been drinking from the Sour Water Well of the enemy and enemies of God…

But the Good news??? All you have to do is Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, and display that love through obeying His instructions… Doing so is guaranteed by God Himself to bring the Rains of Heaven, to fill your Sweet Water Well to overflowing abundance. Then you will bask in the peace, in the joy, and in the glory, of all the blessings offered by God Almighty…

It is a promise of God to His People… Stop drinking and being polluted by the Sour Water from Sour Water Wells, and begin to partake of the Living Water that Christ offers...

John 7:37-38 promises:

 ³⁷ In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. ³⁸ He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Rivers of Living Water will certainly purify and cleanse a small Water-Well that has been polluted, corrupted, soured…

Come. Learn to Obey and Love God  –– and Receive of all of His promised blessings…

Come. Drink from the Sweet Water Well and be transformed from a Sour Water Well Dweller, into the Beautiful Creation that God has already accomplished in creating you…

Shed your negativity and sour disposition and live the joy of a Christ centered life…Drink only from the Sweet Water Well… and watch the promised Rains of Heaven begin to pour blessings into your life!!!

Come. Drink from the Living Water of the Way, the Truth, and the Life…

Come won’t you.