Transcription
We're starting a new series today, and we're calling it Shareable. We're going to talk about our stories because our stories are powerful, and uh, and when shared, they can be multiplied—powerful. We'll talk about that over the next few weeks. But Jesus has one of these Divine appointments in a story in John chapter four, John chapter 4. And so I'm going to read that; we'll look at it, study it just a little bit, and apply it to our lives. Let's go to John chapter 4 and verse 1.
This is now Jesus learned that the Pharisees—say Pharisees together—Pharisees were the religious leaders and the political leaders put together. They didn't have separation of church and state; it was all one. And so they were together, and and they they were mean. Anybody ever met a religious or political leader that was mean at all? Anybody? Okay. These guys were mean, and they're after Jesus. And it says Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John. Let's talk about that just a minute.
In previous chapters, Jesus introduced—in John chapter 1—he's baptized by John the Baptist. What a great name—that's what he does, baptize—in chapter one. And um, and then uh his he he starts performing Miracles. He does what—watering the wine? Um, some of you claim that he still does that. Uh, I'll leave that alone. But anyway, he he'd start he starts to be become known. And John is a preacher; John the Baptist is a preacher, and and he's interrupting the system, and he's preaching repentance from sin, and people are getting baptized. Now, it's similar to the baptisms that we do, but it's not the same. It's an Old Testament baptism. It's similar in that they dunk them and all of that; it's for repents of sin, but it's an Old Testament baptism, and it's can be done repeatedly. I mean, you feel bad, you sin, come to Jesus; it's almost like an altar call. It's their version of an altar call; they would come, and it's a ceremonial cleansing. Uh, and what's our baptisms? Our baptisms are being baptized into the body of Christ. Okay, and normally you do that once. Now, some people do it more than once; I can see that, just in the sense that I've been married 50 years or almost 50 years—47; we're gonna make it 50, I believe. But sometimes you renew your wedding vows; it's not like doing them this the same, but you were—him—baptism can be like that, but our baptisms are New Testament. New Testament hadn't happened yet; Jesus is the New Testament. Okay, does that make sense?
So John's preaching big altar calls, baptized. Jesus starts preaching, and and they're baptizing in the same area outside of Jerusalem, and Jesus' numbers are growing, and as his numbers are growing, John's are shrinking. And there's two people counting. The first set of people counting are John's disciples, and they're going, and they come to John, and they say things like, "Hey, is this girl—his church is growing—our church hidden—what do you do about that? His business is growing—our business isn't—what do you do about that?" Very interesting question, and I love John's answer to it. Um, this is good; this is free. Okay, isn't on the screen? John 3:27. To this John replied—to what John replied when they said, "Hey, our people are going over there"—he said, "A person can receive only what is given them from heaven." That's a secure guy. He says, "You know what? I got more than I can say grace for. God's given us fee. I'm going to love the people that God's given me; I'm going to care for the people that come to my business, whatever it happens to be, and uh, and see it that way rather than being all insecure about the whole thing." But that's not the only people counting. The Pharisees—remember I mentioned the Pharisees, the mean guys—they're counting too, and they're going, "Boy, this guy can be a threat; he's going to be a threat to our power, our deal." Jesus sees that, okay, and here's that, and he wants to fly under the radar because the timing isn't right. He knows there's going to be a confrontation someday; Calvary's coming, the cross is coming. He knows there's going to be a conversation, but he's just getting started; he needs a lot more to do, and he knows that God's promises are about promises and timing. How many of you know that sometimes you get the timing wrong; you can mess everything up? Anybody have a testimony to that? Or sometimes you can go, "You know why hasn't it happened yet?" Timing, timing, timing, timing. And so Jesus said, "My time is not," so I'm getting out of—I'm getting out of Jerusalem. And so it says, "So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee." I want you to see this on a map. Uh, how many of you have been to Israel? Anybody been to Israel? Quite a few people have. If you get a chance, you need to go; you really do, because you'll understand the Bible better, the topography, all of that. Well, he's in the bottom part of Israel—not that total bottom—he's in around Jerusalem, and uh, uh there's Jude—Jerusalem is in Judea, and then do you see Samaria? You see that, and then you see Galilee. Those are all Israel; they're just different parts of Israel, almost like States within Israel. Well, he's baptizing down here in Jerusalem; he's actually from Galilee. What do they call him? The Galilean. Okay, he's from up there; he was born in Bethlehem, but he grew up in Nazareth. Okay, and he's going to go back up to the top of that little Lake—see the lake—that's called the Sea of Galilee. Okay, see that Sea of Galilee? Well, the most surprising thing to me when I went to Israel is that that sea is smaller than Lake Moultrie. Okay, just a lake, but if you name it—you name it anything you want to—so it's the Sea of Galilee, and it's connected to the Dead Sea by what? The Jordan River. Okay, so he's gonna go from Judea, yeah, to Galilee. Next verse, verse 4. He's going to spend—he spends most of his time up at the top of that Lake—95% of his ministries done way up there. We all think, well, it's all around Jerusalem. Now he just goes down for passovers and things like that, lives up there. Okay, but he says he had to go through Samaria. Time out—this is something you need to know—not actually—okay, the the trip from Jerusalem to Galilee up where he wants to go is 122 miles. That's about like walking from where—here to Irmo, the other side of of Colombia—it's about that far. If you're going to walk that far, how long would it take you to walk that far? About five days. That's what it would take. So a normal trip would be five days. Good Jews would add an extra day or two and go around Samaria. They would actually go across the Jordan River down not far from Jerusalem, walk up in what is now Jordan on the other side of the Jordan River, and then go back across the Jordan River up to—it would add a day or two to their trip because they they didn't want to go through Samaria. Why? Because they hated them—Samaritans hated Jews; Jews hated Samaritans—because they have given me 34 minutes to preach; I don't have time to tell you why. Google it; you can find it. Google it. Okay, they hated each other. In fact, he's known as a rabbi. A rabbi cannot go through there; a rabbi cannot uh interact with a Samaritan person, and a rabbi would never interact—it's against the rules; it's in the rules—rabbis don't do this with a Samaritan woman, who you're going to see that he does in a few minutes. Just to meddle a minute—is there anybody that you dislike so much you go out of your way not to be around them? Yeah, listen up. Okay, this will be good for you. So Jesus, rather than going around, he says, "I've got to go through Samaria." Why? I've got to go to Samaria. Why? Because he has a Divine appointment. What Jesus has that you and I don't have is foreknowledge, omniscience. He knows it. Our divine appointments are best seen in in the rearview mirror. He knows he's got a Divine appointment waiting for him in Samaria. Okay, I gotta go through there. All right, there—the destination Galilee isn't the most important thing; it's about the journey; it's about the unexpected Interruption. There's a woman who needs Jesus; she has a story. He won't be surprised by her story, and he will redeem her story to impact a whole bunch of people. That's my sermon in case you don't stay around at the end; it's right there. Now I'll break it out a little bit. All right, let's let's read. "So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's Well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well, and it was about noon." Rather than me tell you the story, the people who wrote The Chosen did a great job. Take about seven minutes and let's take a look at this story.
"Would you give me a drink?" Did you hear me? That's bad, huh? What—would you ask her to drink from me? Or Samaritan and a woman? I'm sorry; should have said please. You know it's not safe for you to be alone out here, Mario. Why haven't you come with others? Am I so late in the day? Don't women come to the wells in the pool of the morning? Yeah, well, none of them will be seen with me. So I kindly reminded me—why won't they be seen with you? Long story. Still like a drink of water if you can spare it. Amazing what a parched the road will do. Aren't I unclean to you? Want to be defiled by this vessel? Maybe some of my people say that about your women, but I don't. Yeah, and what do you say? I say if you knew who I am, you'd be asking me for a drink. Really? And I would give you living water. Would—except that you have nothing to throw water with, and this is a deep well. Besides, what do you need from me if you have your own supply of Living Water? The Jewish water is better than Samaritan. That's not—are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob who dug this well? Your water is better than his? I know Jacob, and everyone who drinks this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. Wouldn't that be nice? The water I give will become in a person a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Really? Yes, really. Prove it first. Go and call your husband, then come back. I will show you both. I don't have a husband. You are right; you've had five husbands, and the man you're living with now is not your husband. I see you're the prophet; you're here to preach at me. No, usually the one good thing about coming here alone is I can escape being condemned. I'm not here to condemn. I've made mistakes too many, but it's men like you who have made it impossible for me to do anything about it. How our ancestors worshiped on this mountain. Would you Jews insist Jerusalem is the only place for true worship? They say that because the temple is there. Exactly where we're not allowed. I'm here to break those barriers, and the time is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. So where am I supposed to go when I need God? I've never received anything from God, but I couldn't thank him even if I did. Anywhere. God is Spirit, and the time is coming, and is now here, that it won't matter where you worship, but only that you do it in spirit, heart, and mind—that that is the kind of worshiper he's looking for. It won't matter where you're from or what you've done. Do you believe what I'm telling you? Until the Messiah comes, it explains everything and sorts this mess out, including me. I don't trust in anyone. You're wrong when you say that you've never received anything from God. It's Messiah you speak of; I am he. The first one was named Ramin; you were a woman of purity; was excited to be married, but he wasn't a good man. I heard you, and it made you question marriage and even the practice of your faith. The second was Farazad; on your wedding night his skin smelled like oranges; with this day every time you pass by the oranges in the market you feel guilty for leaving him because he was the only truly godly man you've been with, but you felt unworthy. Why are you doing this? [Music] I have not revealed myself to the public as the Messiah; you are the first. It would be good if you believed me. You picked the wrong person; I came to Samaria just to meet you. Do you think it's an accident that I'm I'm here in the middle of the day? [Music] I am rejected by others. [Music] As you know these things because you are the Christ. I'm going to tell everyone. I was counting on it. Spirits and Truth; it won't be all about mountains or temples. You promised this. Man told me everything I've done. [Music] Oh, he must be the ghost. [Music] Hey, wait. [Music] Yo, what? Did you forget you're done? Isn't that good? That good an encounter—a Divine appointment. But actually, as we're going to find out, the Divine appointment is not so much about her as it is who God's going to touch through her. Uh, we've just got a few minutes left; let me give you three ideas about your story—her story—what we can learn from the Jesus story. And here's first: We all have a story. Would you agree with that? We all have a story. I love hearing people's stories. Sometimes I'll be standing out in the foyer, and somebody will tell me their story. I love hearing your stories. When they're real short—I have a short attention span; don't want the long story—it's a short one, but I love it. I mean, I just this week I was rehearing a story that I'd heard before—Sean's story—and Sean was in a bad place in his life, and uh, he was out in the clubs on a Saturday night until the club's closing, met a sea coaster there—I'm not going to comment on that—and they told him their story. He was down on church, but he showed up the next morning to church, and people welcomed him, didn't condemn him, and he said, "You know what? Because of that morning in his Encounter With Jesus, he said, 'I've been able to live my best life for 20 years.'" It's his story. I hear that story a lot. Okay, we all have—we all have a story. Listening to stories creates connections, empathy, perspective. It would have been easy to throw rocks at this woman; it's easy to throw rocks from a distance. How do you know that? But if you're going to influence, you got to get up close, and it's messy sometimes. Jesus was great at pulling stories out of people. He engages in a conversation with someone no one else would engage with; he'd listen to her; he knows she has a story. Listen—that story changed when he said, "Go tell your husband." It went from like, you know, surface conversation to, "Hey, it's getting real in here real quick," right? Sometimes our stories are painful; sometimes they are. I mean, she probably didn't choose her story. I was thinking about that this week as as a as a teenage girl—as a young girl growing up—and she had dreams; she wanted to be a mama, and she wondered what her family would be like. This wasn't her dream; this wasn't what she thought it was going to be. There's abuse; there's probably betrayal; there's failure. We know there's a lot of Shame. She's there at noon because she didn't want to see anybody; she didn't want to listen to what everybody's saying about her and her story. Some of it may be her own doings, but a lot of it probably isn't. Some of you really can relate today. Maybe you don't have five spouses, but you've had more than you thought you would, or maybe you thought your story would be different, especially at this season of your life, or maybe the chapter of your story that you're in right now just seems pretty overwhelming. It may even be one of the reasons you're here today. You can relate to that. The first thought is that we all have a story. Here's the second thought; I love this one: God's not surprised by our story. God wasn't surprised by her story. "I have no husband," she replied. Jesus said, "I know you're right; you got five; in fact, you're living with a guy that you're not married to right now. What you have said is quite true." You know, when I used to read that a long time ago, when I used to read that, I would read it kind of as Jesus being condemning, like Christian people are a lot of times condemning, just—and he's not there; there's no condemnation in his voice. And guess what? There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. How many of you are a work in progress? Anybody here a work in progress? Yeah. Jesus knows that; he's not surprised by our story. You know, it's real hard to surprise an omniscient God. How have you knew that? God's never had a time where he said, "My bad; didn't see that coming; I'm sorry." No. And let me tell you why that's important: He doesn't blush when she tells her story; he doesn't look around and say, "You know, I really shouldn't be here with you; it could ruin my reputation." Now, why is it important to know that God isn't surprised by your story? Couple things. Here's one: You don't have to hide from him. So we do when we're not living up to what we think that we should be living up to, or other people think that we're living up to, or maybe there's a failure in our life somewhere, or we're embarrassed about something. Who do we hide from first? God. "I'll come to church when I get my act together; I'll you know deal with God when I—" It's like we got to get our act together in order to be good enough to be in the presence of a holy God. No. God knows. God knows you. You don't have to hide. In fact, not only does God know, but you can be sure that he really does understand. He understands your story. I have a friendship—jet—a lot of you know Chip; he preaches here some, and he's a counselor; he's a combination preacher-counselor, which is awesome, except for when it's not—when he's your friend. No, Chip, I don't want to talk about that. But Chip says this—Chip says, "Most of us are doing the best we can with what we have." He said, "You need to know that most people are doing about the best they can with what they have." Now, your best is not always the best, and your best can be hurtful to someone else, but see, God knows that, and God knows that your situation is a lot more complicated than your critics paint it. And here's—here's something else: You can be confident that he can give your story purpose. If he knows—if he's not surprised—then he's at work on Solutions before you even knew you had problems. You might be having a problem right now with one of your kids, or it might be at work, or it may be a six-year problem, or a 10-year problem, or a 60-minute problem. God knew before you were in it, and he's working it out for your good, according to Romans chapter eight—is that right? 8:28. I think that's where it is; it's a good verse though. He's weaving your story, regardless of how broken it is, or he's weaving it into a bigger story. And that's—that's—that's important because here's the the last thing I want to tell you is: First, we all have a story; God's not surprised by your story; God wants to redeem our story. Let's go back to the original premise: Jesus preaching, teaching down in Jerusalem. Pharisees get win of the fact he's baptized—a lot of people. Jesus knows the timing's wrong for a major confrontation; heads back to Galilee; tells his disciples, "I've got to go through Samaria," because he knows there's a Divine appointment there. Why does he need to go through Samaria? Is it because of her? Kind of. But actually, it's because there's a group of people—the Samaritans—who aren't going to experience the love of God, who aren't going to experience the message because God's people have got problems with them. And Jesus said, "I want to reach him; I love them." And so he's gonna—he's gonna go through Samaria, and uh, who's he going to use to preach the good news to them? I mean, he's got a group of disciples that can do it, but they're on a Chick-fil-A run right then, and some of them are still clueless at this point. If you looked at John 3, he just spent a significant amount of time with a religious leader named Nicodemus; he could have said him, but they wouldn't trust him. And God loved this group of people so much that Jesus sends a woman to preach the gospel to them. She would have gotten creamed on Twitter today—not just a woman—a woman who'd been married five times; he's living with somebody that they're currently not married to. Is all that good? No. In fact, you—you say later—sin will destroy—sin mars the image of God—that will work wherever you are. Jesus met a woman later that was caught in sin; they said they wanted to stone her; you remember that story? And he said, "I don't condemn you," which is why she would listen to him. She says, "Go and sin no more." So you know, "Hey, listen, there's not a premium of messing up your life," but Jesus says, "She'll have an encounter with me; it's going to change her, and not only is it going to change her, I'm going to redeem her story in a bigger way than she thought possible." The woman said, "I know that Messiah called Christ is coming, and when he comes he will explain everything to us." And Jesus declared, "I am the one; I am the—" Did you get the fact that she is the first person he's revealed himself to in this way? I mean, if I was going to reveal myself—a big secret—it would be, you know, somebody important. Well, she is important, just not in the way you and I see it. Millions of Samaritans from that town believed in him because of what? Because of the woman's testimony. "He told me everything I did." So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days, and because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man is really the savior of the world." Here's the point. The point is found in John 3 and verse 16, and we all know it's the chapter before, but it says this: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but will have eternal life." God wants everyone to come to know him; God will use everybody and every means possible to draw people to him. Don't limit what God can do. God loves you. Have you ever wondered if God could really use you? That's the story of my life. I know who I am. This is a kid that flunked public speaking in high school; it's what I do for a living, and I'm scared to death every time I come out on this stage, and I ask God, "God, take that away from me; take that away from me." He says, "No, I'll just use you in the middle of it, because you might be arrogant if I did." It's a good thing prayers are answered sometimes, huh? And you might wonder who God used—me. You need to look at this story and see who God used and how God used them. See, God loves you; he loves your friends; he loves your family; he will redeem you and your story in order to reveal himself to the people around you. The most powerful testimony to the love of God is a changed life. "I once was lost but now I'm found." "I once was lost but now I'm found." Those are words written by a man who left home as a young young boy, went to work on a ship—ship happened to be a slave ship at the time—it was captured himself and became a slave in modern-day Sierra Leone. He was rescued. You would think because of his rescue that he would have compassion; he didn't; he became a slave trader himself, in fact, a…
Pretty prosperous one, tell he had an encounter with Christ. He renounced slavery; he actually became a pastor. And in pastoring, he influenced a young member of British Parliament who came to Christ and contemplated leaving politics.
John Newton, who was the pastor, convinced the young man, William Wilberforce. He said, "No, you don't need to leave politics; you need to serve God where you are. Have you know that God wants you to serve Right Where You Are? That God wants you to be the conduit of his grace and his love where you are?" That young man became a leader in the effort to abolish slavery, in fact, did in the United Kingdom. And that sinner pastor wrote a hymn called "Faith, Review and Expectation." You guys know that hymn; it goes, "Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, saved a Wretch like Me. I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but yet I see."
You may not be a woman who had five husbands and preached to an entire city. You may not be a former slave trader turned preacher and poet who influenced a politician that changed the world. But maybe you know what it feels like to go out of your way not to be noticed, like that woman did. You are someone that God loves, that God knows, and that God cares about. And God loves your friends and your family, and God wants to redeem your story so he can love them through you. God wants to use us in somebody else's life.
Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your goodness. I thank you for your kingdom. I thank you for the stories that are in this room. God, I thank you for how you use our stories. God, help us to be the ones that see others through the lens of the Gospel and not through the lens of their own sin or even our sin. God, I thank you for the power of the Gospel to change lives. Thank you for changing mine, and today I thank you in advance for changing many who are in this room or who are watching online. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen.