Grace Meets us Where We are

Intro

In thinking about the Easter season this year. Jeff and I were talking and its great that we have contemporary and traditional options for people, but one of the downsides is that we as a church are hearing two different messages. and there isnt anything wrong with that you can go back online and listen to both, but for this Easter season. Jeff and I are in total agreement that what we need is to be unified together as we journey towards the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.

How we are doing that is Jeff and I are doing a series together called Face to Face with Grace. Each week we will look at an encounter someone had with Jesus, where the grace of God displayed through Jesus had a profound effect. Along the way our prayer for you as an individual, your family, and for this church, is that we will all gain a greater understanding and appreciation of the grace of God in this season and fall deeper in love with Jesus.

To kick off this series we are going to look at one of the most fascinating conversations of Jesus we have recorded. Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well in John chapter 4. I think it’s funny that 2000 years later we refer to this woman by where she met Jesus. Imagine if someone named you based off of where you were when they met you. The man at the gym, The woman at Target, the child at the playground. This woman was just going about her day she was at a place she went everyday. but it was there she met Jesus and everything changed for her.

We are going to start in verse 7 of chapter 4 to set the scene here Jesus is traveling from Judea to Galilee. To do this Jews typically took the long way to avoid going through Samaria. Instead of taking the straight line path which took 3 days and was 70 miles. They would take the long way which was 100 miles and took around 5 days. Think about how much animonisity and racism there has to be to walk 30 extra miles to avoid interacting with that group of people. Jesus chose to take the straight path and we pick up his story as he stops for a drink at well.

John 4:7–15 ESV

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 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.”

Jews and Samarians didn’t speak, in their culture men and women didn’t speak in public, and yet jesus initiates a conversation with a samaritan woman. A woman who had been ostracized by her own community, which is why she was at the well at the hottest part of the day so she could avoid the other women. She wasn’t used to anyone speaking to her, and yet Jesus did.

and he cuts right to the chase he moves from talking about the physical to the spiritual. He tells the woman that she needs living water.

1. Every Other Source Dries up, Living Water Never Does.

Jesus tells the woman of her fundamental need for living water. Jesus never said he was was living water like he said he was the bread of life. The living water that he’s referring to is the Holy Spirit, and through relationship with Jesus is the only way for us to have access to the Holy Spirit that acts like a well of living water from within us.

We can’t live without water. We can go weeks without food. but only a day or two without water, and they would be a miserable couple of days. The thing about normal water is we have to work to obtain it, to get to the source of it, wells and cistern have to be dug, filters need to be built and changed, for the woman it had to be drawn and carried, for us we work to pay the water bill, we work to pay for that bottle of water, Even if it as simple as getting off the couch and opening the fridge you have worked for that water. But with normal water no matter much water you drank today, you will have to do it again tomorrow, and it will require that same amount of work.

If we depend on physical water only, we will always be thirsty. all the striving that we do to obtain will only temporarily fill that need. If we ignore our need for the living water of the Holy Spirit we will always look in the wrong direction for satisfaction. Jeremiah had pointed out this truth centuries earlier.

Jeremiah 2:13 NIV

“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Without Jesus and the living water he gives, we will spend our lives laboring to satisfy ourselves with what we can achieve without realizing the cistern is cracked.

The words of Jesus remind us today for all of our work to satisfy ourselves will only be thirsty again. Then he proposes a far better alternative. The water he gives will be like a spring inside of you. No more having to work or search for a source of water a source of life. We can have direct access to the spring of eternal life. We can have a spring of living water within us, even in the driest of deserts.

The woman realized I want that water. The same realization we all must have to begin our walk with Christ. Now lets look what Jesus said next after she came to that realization.

John 4:16–26 ESV

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.” 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.” 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.”

Jesus immediately stops with the symbolism and cuts to the heart of what she had to be thinking. Don’t ask me about my love life… she had to think if only he knew about my failures he would know there’s no living water for me. but Jesus reveals that he knew and still offered it to her. He met her right where she was.

This was overwhelming emotionally for her it starts to get too personal for her so she tries to deflect to a theological debate. The Samaritans only recognized the first 5 books of the Bible they didn’t believe that any of the prophets were genuine after Moses. So the fact that she recognized him as a prophet was huge for her. but the Jews and Samaratains also disagreed where the one place true worship could happen.

Jesus didn’t let her deflection turn into a debate. He cared more about getting her living water than winning an argument.

2. People Need Jesus More Than They Need Your Opinions.

I am pretty confident that if this woman had a conversation like this today with most Christians. They would have just continued to debate over this issue. We are not called to convince people to take our position on issues. We are called to do what we can to introduce people to Jesus. I have never seen someone come to Christ because of a facebook argument.

Jesus always kept the main thing the main thing. Unfortunately if we aren’t careful we can fall into the trap of majoring on the minors. Jesus did an incredible job here of not dismissing her question. listening to her, In this whole conversation Jesus listens as much as he talks, then he answers her question but gets right back to the main thing. She says when the Messiah comes he will tell us what is right. She was looking for the savior. and then Jesus says I am him. This is one of two times in the entire new Testament that Jesus said he was the Christ.

All of the sudden she realized who it was she had been talking to. questions about husbands and places of worship all fell to the side because, She had come face to face with the savior, she had come face to face with grace.

She realized the one who could give her living water was right there. The one she had been searching for all of her life. She didn’t need every answer to every theological question she had because he is the answer. She didn’t need to clean her life up before she could meet him, he came to her where she was.

How often when the people in your life are searching for answers or need hope do you offer them your opinion instead of Jesus? If we really believe that Jesus is the answer to how they can receive a well of living water it is time we offered people Jesus.

Let’s see how the woman responded when she was offered Jesus.

John 4:27–30 ESV

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.

John 4:39–42 ESV

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.”

The woman who had avoided everyone because she was sick of how they treated her ran through the city telling those same people to meet Jesus for themselves.

3. Jesus Meets You as You are, but His Grace Transforms You Forever.

God’s grace is so powerful that it hits us like a train. When we come face to face with it, it is evident to everyone around us.

If I was late this morning… If i said I had been hit by a train… When you have been hit by the grace train. It is clear it is obvious to everyone. This woman who the town had only looked down on were now following her to meet Jesus because they could tell something about her had changed. They came to meet Jesus because of her story but her story didn’t save them. She didnt save them. They said to her we don’t believe because of what you said anymore we have seen for ourselves this is the savior. And they begged Jesus to stay and he did for two days the two days he would have spent by going the long way

When Jesus met the woman at the well that day she was spiritually dry even though she was right next to water. She had lived a life that even by our modern standards would cause people to look down on her, she was an outcast filled with shame. Jesus came face to face with her anyway.

Coming face to face with Jesus and experiencing his grace changed everything for her. She went from being spiritually dry to having a spring of living water within her, She went from being looked down on and an outcast to being the person who introduced her whole town to Jesus. God’s grace hit her like a train. She was never the same.

Have you come face to face with Jesus and experienced the grace that only he can offer? do you acknowledge that the water you keep working for will never be enough and will never satisfy, do realize that Jesus is the only way to get the living water of the Holy Spirit? It is a well that will never run dry. That thing you’ve been searching for that you tried to find in money, relationships, and accomplishments, It is Jesus.

Don’t deflect, don’t let some things about the Bible you don’t understand or the opinions of others hold you back. Don’t try to fix yourself then meet Jesus. You can’t fix yourself and he never asked you to. The invitation is the same as what the woman said to her city. Come and see for yourself.

Come and experience the grace of God for yourself. She started that day an outcast at a well and ended it a daughter of the king. Whatever your situation today. divorced, depressed, lonely, stuck in sin, You weren’t there for your kids, cynical, addiction, struggling marriage, high anxiety, a ruined reputation, bring it to Jesus. Come and see what he can do with it, and he will turn it from a source of shame to a testimony of his grace just like he did with the woman at the well. The story she had been ashamed of an hour earlier became the means by which she brought people to meet Jesus.

Come and see for yourself this morning.

Where we are is not a physical location but a spirtual reality.

We cant hide our sins.

We dont have to be whole to come to Jesus he makes us whole.