Hands and Feet of Jesus: Gentleness
Being the Hands and Feet of Jesus • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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What do I believe God wants them to know? We are to preach and live the Gospel with gentleness
Why? gentleness opens the door for listening ears
What do I believe God wants them to do? Preach gentleness
Why? It can lead to people knowing Jesus
ME/WE
One of things that someone taught me, and many of you know this is our approach has the ability to trump our truth or what we are delivering or sharing.
our approach has the ability to trump our truth or what we are delivering or sharing.
NO MATTER HOW GOOD OUR TRUTH IS IT CAN GET DROWNED OUT BY OUR APPROACH.
We know this
1. How many of us have been to a resturant and they have amazing burgers or tacos or steaks or desserts....out of this world…BUT you said I am NEVER going back
HUH??? WHY?
Because how you were approached, treated by the waiter was horrible, manager was rude, and the food took foreverrrr to come out
You were treated like garbage
2. We know this from businesses, Carly who owns a business knows this....she has a business Bethsda-Wellness
And she knows it matters very little if her company offers great massages and facials, the best in the world,…but if they are rude or arrogant or deeming to the costumer no one wants to come back.
Good news Carly company knows this....because you go get your fascial done there, can’t you tell..
No, Google reviews
She has 77 reviews and how many of them are 5 stars? All of them
Love the massage, love the people
3. We know this is true with people. There are people in our life that we will not go to even though they might be answer to our question or help to us…why because of how they treat you
Why do I bring this up?
God gives us a call to reach the world, our neighborhood, our friends and family for Jesus
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
There is something that sometimes get lost in our American mindset or Roman mindset.
GO SAVE THE WORLD!!! BUT SOMETIMES SOMETHING GETS LOST
What is that? GENTLENESS
but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,
What we often see is people debating on YouTube or on TV and it is a tear down competition, egos get in the way
This sometimes gets us to shy away because we don’t want to be like them…we don’t want to be like the debater, the street preacher who says “turn or burn”
BUT THEY ARE NOT RIGHT
ALSO, how many people have been won to the FAITH by AGRESSIVE ARGUMENT?
HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE BEEN WON TO SOMETHING BY AN AGGRESSIVE ARGUMENT??
OUR BRAINS DO NOT THINK STRAIGHT WHEN WE ARE IN ANGRY
YEAH BUT
but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
WE ARE NOT TO BE A STUMBLING BLOCK
Give a reason for the hope you have but do it gentleness and respect
Gentleness and respect
Gentleness is to come humbly
Too often unfortunately on the airwaves or on social media is often Christians who lack gentleness....AS A RESULT THE GOSPEL GETS DROWNED OUT
GOD BELIEVES IN THIS SO STRONGLY THE QUALIFICATION FOR AN ELDER INCLUDE BEING GENTLE
not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.
ONE OF THE BEST WAYS WE SEE GENTLENESS IS WHAT GENTLENESS IN ACTION. IT IS THE FAMOUS STORY OF THE WOMAN AT THE WELL.
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.
WAIT!?! WHAT!?!
JESUS HAD TO PASS, WELL OF COURSE....LOOK AT THE MAP…THAT MAKES SENSE
SHOW PICTURE
BUT here’s what we don’t realize not know the context....Jewish people did not associate with Samaritans…they were bitter enemies…they intermarried with the Canniates when the Bablyions captured and all mixed parts of there faith the Cannities…because they did this they were considered half-breed and racial inferiors.
Samaritans were dead to the Jewish people
They didn’t go there, but where is gentle Jesus going to go? Hostile territory...
Jesus is going to go there…and you don’t just go there and you are not noticed either..
It would like but much worse us going to a Browns game at Steelers stadium…we have our Browns gear on, Jesus and the twelve of them....and nobody is saying oh I am so happy you are here....thanks for coming.
BUT GENTLE JESUS GOES TO HOSTILE TERRITORY
Gen 12:1-3
Is to reclaim the whole world, not just Israel
So he came to a town of 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.
The journey from Judea to Galilee is a 70 mile journey. A journey that is not an easy geographically.
o Israel is a dry, hilly, and hot land, and it is at sixth hour which is high noon.
o Have you ever been outside working, working out, on a hot day? What’s the one thing you want more than anything?
o Water
- What does Jesus do? Does He go to a 7/11 a Giant Eagle to grab a water bottle or Gatorade? No He goes to a place that would quench His thirst. An ancient place you could get water: a well
BUT WHAT’S THE PROBLEM....Jesus has nothing to draw the water with and also he’s there at high noon the hottest part of the day....This was also the least trafficted hour of the day…why? would you rather draw water in the morning when it is cool out or come at the hottest part of the day?
We see this in some cultures that have a hot climate that take siestas around noon…a nap and rest for a couple hours and then get back to work
But GOOD NEWS HAPPENS
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 it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Jesus is like I am thirsty and you have a something to draw water with...
Samaritan woman says, “Jesus I don’t know if you know this or not, but you are supposed to talk to me....We don’t like each other.”
NO ONLY THIS, THE REASON I AM COMING AT HIGH NOON IS FOR REASON
WHY IS SHE COMING AT HIGH NOON AND WHAT IS STRANGE ABOUT THAT?
When would you typically draw water in Israel for the day? In the morning when it was cooler or at the hottest part of the day?
Morning?
Why isn’t she coming in the morning? Because as we will see she is an outcast of the outcast
Her own people don’t want to associate with her
BUT JESUS DOES
JESUS WANTS TO BE WITH OUTCAST OF THE OUTCAST AND HE IS SO GENTLE TO HERE
LET’S CONTINUE ON
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.”
Jesus turns the question around..
If you would have known who I am you would have asked me for living water
LIFE WATER
She says Jesus I don’t know if you know this or not but you don’t have a bucket or anything to draw water with…what are you talking about?
She’s not getting it
Eventually says give me this water so I will not have to come here anymore…Come out and be shamed…come out and be ridiculed anymore.
JESUS SAID YOU ARE NOT GETTING IT…I AM NOT TALKING PHYSICAL WATER, BUT ETERNAL WATER…WATER THAT FILLS YOUR SOUL…I HAVE WATER THAT WILL FILL YOUR SOUL....THE THING YOUR SOUL WANTS
LET ME SHOW YOU WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT
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 no husband’;
for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
WHAT DOES HER HUSBAND HAVE TO DO WITH WATER??? I THOUGHT THAT FOR YEARS…THAT IS ODD....AND YET IT IS NOT ODD....JESUS IS GOING AFTER THE THING SHE HAS TRIED FOR YEARS TO QUENCH HER THRIST....MEN
We all have the propensity and have gone after other things to satisfy our soul
David Foster Wallace. He got to the top of his profession. He was an award-winning, best-selling postmodern novelist known around the world. But a few years before that, he gave a now-famous commencement speech at Kenyon College. He said to the graduating class, (this is a non-Christian)
-
- Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god . . . to worship . . . is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before [your loved ones] finally plant you. . . . Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful; it is that they’re unconscious.
- We all worship something. We all have an eternal thrist.
- Tragically a few years later he knew it so well he ended his life.
o Jesus is saying, “I have that which every human soul longs for (the thing you been trying to get with sex, money, popularity, etc), and I will not just satisfy you with it, but I will change your insides so much your very soul and heart are new. You will have a whole new purpose, a whole new joy, a whole new dynamic in your inner being.”
Jesus is saying woman I have something to give you that will satisfy you that you are trying to satisfy with men.
Or for us with money or power or beauty
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” - C.S. Lewis
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” - C.S. Lewis
What does she do after this....Jesus is getting really personal, but He’s so gentle.
She does what you or me would do....deflect and change the subject.
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.”
All right all right
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.”
WHAT!?!? THIS BLEW HERE AWAY
YOU ARE TALKING TO ME....you know all my secrets that I have done and YET You are talking to me....you are not supposed to talk to me…everyone else has shunned me....put me away....
Gentle Jesus, bold and wild....FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH
Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”
So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people,
“Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
They went out of the town and were coming to him.
SHE IS RADICALLY CHANGED BY JESUS AND THEN SHE GOES AND TELLS EVERYBODY ABOUT JESUS
SHE SHARES HER TESTIMONY
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.”
So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.
And many more believed because of his word.
They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
GOD USES AN OUTCAST OF THE OUTCAST TO CHANGE THE WHO CHANGED THE TOWN OF SYCAR
SHE BECAME AN EVANGELIST…TELLING OTHERS ABOUT THE LIVING WATER
After her encounter with Christ, she and her whole family were baptized by the Apostles and became evangelists of the early Church. Photini and her children eventually were summoned before the emperor Nero and instructed to renounce their faith in Christ. They refused to do so, accepting rather to suffer various tortures. After many efforts to force her to surrender to idolatry, the emperor ordered that she be thrown down a well. Photini gave up her life in the year 66.
JESUS CALLS US TO BE LIKE HIM....PREACH THE GOSPEL BUT DO IT WITH GENTLENESS
but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,
I HAVE CALLED YOU TO PREACH THE GOOD NEWS OF JESUS TO THE WHO WORLD…DO IT WITH GENTILENESS
WHO ARE THE WOMAN AT THE WELL IN YOUR LIFE....PEOPLE THRISTY FOR ETERNAL WATER THAT YOU ARE TO SHARE THIS WATER WITH?