Can He Use Me?

We are getting back into our series of messages called Who’s Your One this morning.

How has it been going? I hope you have been following the prayer guide that we gave out and are praying regularly for that one individual who you believe needs the hope that a relationship with Jesus can bring.

So far, we have seen that we are all called to follow Jesus and share him with others. Our job is to be disciples of Jesus, learning who he is and what he teaches us to be and do. As we grow, we are to help others become his disciples as well.

When we looked at this idea two weeks ago, we saw that we may have to go to great lengths to bring our friends to Jesus.

Last week, we took a break while we focused on the unique men God has called to serve our church family as deacons.

As we are picking back up on this idea that everyone here who knows Jesus is supposed to be telling other people about him, we are going to hit some of the objections we come up with.

If you and I are honest, when we think about trying to help our friends, family, or some stranger come to know Jesus, it scares us to death!

We can list off a number of excuses why we, of all people, aren’t up to the task.

However, we want to find the answer to this big question: Can Jesus really use me to help others find him?

In case you are planning on ignoring everything else I say from here, the answer is a resounding, “yes,” this morning.

If you are here today, and you know Jesus as your Savior and Lord, then he can use you.

In fact, he can even use people who don’t have a relationship with him, but that is a different topic for a different day.

The person who is going to teach us this lesson is an unlikely evangelist that God used to help many of her friends and neighbors come to know Jesus.

Turn over to , where we will read this woman’s incredible story.

It is a long one, so we may need to summarize or skip some sections of the passage.

Let’s get an idea of where we are in the story: Jesus has been doing a lot of ministry in Jerusalem, and it seems to be creating some conflict with the religious leaders there.

He is on his way back to the main area where he did his ministry, which is the land around the Sea of Galilee in the northern part of Israel.

To get there, he is going to go straight through a place many Jews would go way out of their way to avoid: a region called Samaria.

We will talk about why that is important, but for now, we are going to focus on the impact a conversation he had with a woman had on the village he passed through.

<Read 1-8> We are going to talk through what all is going to transpire, but for now, I want you to jump down with me to 28-30, 39.

So the woman from the well is the woman whose testimony brought many to faith in Christ.

Surely, then, she most have been some super person, right? She had some great religious upbringing or something?

Not at all. As we go back and look at the section we passed over, we are going to find three objections she could make to why she wouldn’t be your first pick.

However, between here and there, we are going to find three objections she could make to why she wouldn’t be your first pick.

However, between here and there, we are going to find three objections she could make to why she wouldn’t be your first pick.

In fact, in many ways, she was exactly the wrong person to share the gospel with anyone.

Let’s go through the rest of this and see

And yet, many in that town believed in Jesus because of what she said.

May those objections help us to see that God can use anyone who follows him to bring others to Jesus.

The first objection we can raise is...

1) “I come from the wrong place.”

One excuse we make is, “Well, I come from the wrong place.”

If you noticed the first few verses of this passage, John made a big deal about where this woman was from. In the first 7 verses, we see the word “Samaria” four different times.

We are going to see the importance of that in just a minute.

Can you acknowledge that the place we grow up can often make or break us?

I heard someone say once that the number that most indicated whether a child succeeded or failed was their zip code.

Growing up in the wrong place can make life hard.

How or where we were raised can make us think, “God couldn’t use me because of where I’m from.”

Maybe you think you aren’t qualified to share Jesus because you grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.

Your whole life, you have struggled with whether or not you matter to God as much as people who have more resources.

Maybe you have fought hard to overcome the challenges you had growing up, but you always feel like you are about to fail again, so you aren’t really worth much. If only people knew...

You might be on the other side as well, though: your life wasn’t that hard, so how can you possibly help other people know Jesus when they are facing so many challenges?

Perhaps you feel like you can’t share Jesus with a certain group of people because your skin is the wrong color or because you come from a different place than they do.

We see clearly in this passage that those things aren’t a barrier to being used to share the Gospel.

Look back at the context. I want to put a map on the screen so you can see what we are talking about.

Jesus has been ministering in Jerusalem, and now he is heading back to Galilee.

That would have taken him right through the area of Samaria, which many Jews would avoid if at all possible.

Let’s talk a little about the folks who lived in Samaria. We have to back up a ways to understand what is going on here.

As we saw when we studied Moses’ life, God gave the nation of Israel a piece of land for them to live on forever.

However, God’s covenant with them also included the warning that God would removed them from the land if they started worshipping other gods. In fact, the nation was divided into two kingdoms, and the Northern Kingdom of Israel started making their own rules on how to worship God.

After centuries of them turning away, God eventually allowed the majority of the people in Israel and Judah to be taken out of the land by the Assyrians and the Babylonians.

When that happened, though, the invading armies left some people in Israel. They also brought people from other nations into the area, and the two intermingled.

The Israelites were not supposed to marry people from other nations, but the people left in the region of Samaria intermarried with these people the conquerors brought in.

That’s where the rift came in: the Samaritans were half-blooded Jews who had twisted God’s law and made up their own system, ignoring much of what God had told his people.

The full-blooded Jews who had come back to the land hated the Samaritans for their compromises, and the Samaritans felt the same way.

Now, look back at our text. Jesus is there, in Samaria, and he is sitting to talk with a Samaritan woman. She is shocked, because that’s not at all what she would have expected. That’s why she says what she does in verse 9.

For one, she is a woman who doesn’t know this man. This whole conversation would have been unexpected in that culture.

Add to that the fact that, in the mind of the Jews, she comes from the wrong side of the tracks.

She is a half-breed whose family line is a series of compromises that took them farther and farther from the one true God.

She came from the backwoods and was backwards, and so how could she possibly be the one to tell others about Jesus?

Yet, jump down to

Yet, as we saw, she did, and God used her.

In fact, the place where she was raised was the place she was most effective at reaching!

Had this woman gone to Jerusalem and tried to win people to Christ, they wouldn’t have given her the time of day.

Instead, she started where she was, with the people who knew her, and she shared what she knew of Jesus, and he used it.

We have to understand that this means God can use any of us, no matter which side of the tracks you grew up on or whatever else about your family or background you think would keep you from being a witness.

Remember back to what we said tripped Moses up when God called him at the burning bush? It was because he thought he wasn’t a good enough speaker to do what God said. He forgot that it was God doing it, not him.

As you are sharing the gospel wherever to whomever, it is Jesus’ power that will save someone, not yours!

It doesn’t matter where you grew up or what your background is or what your skin color is; God can use you!

Okay, so now we see that where we grew up isn’t a barrier to God using us.

There are other objections she could have raised.

“But Sean, here’s the thing...”

2) “I have made mistakes.”

After a little back-and-forth between the woman and Jesus, she is getting curious about what Jesus has been saying.

However, we are about to find out that the woman he is speaking to has a rather checkered past.

Pick up in verse 15-18...

You have to love it when Jesus reaches into the things only God can know and shows who he really is, don’t you?

]\

We have no idea why, but this woman bounced from marriage to marriage and at this point, was living with a man she wasn’t married to, which the Bible indicates is sin.

You have to remember that these are small towns, and in a small town, everyone knows everyone’s business.

Likely everyone in town knew about this woman’s history.

Many of us would

But, does that disqualify her from being used by Jesus to help others know him?

Not at all. In fact, it is likely the transformation in her life that is what God used to show others his power.

Before anyone starts running with ideas that aren’t biblical, though, let me hit this one head on: this is not in any way an excuse for you to go out and sin.

I actually knew a guy in high school who said he was going to go out and party and live however he wanted so that, when he came back to Jesus, it would make for a great testimony.

That isn’t at all right.

The first one sounds cooler, and it gives God great glory

The Apostle Paul dealt with a similar issue in the book of Romans. He was teaching that God gets to show his grace when he forgives, so some were saying, “Well, if that’s the case, then shouldn’t I just keep sinning so God can keep showing grace?” Here’s his response:

Romans 6:1–2 CSB

What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

If you are saved, you can’t just go back to living in sin and be okay with it.

We all still fall, but our heart’s desire should be to walk closer with God, not make it worse.

However, what we see in this passage is that God can take even the worst parts of our life apart from him and use it for his glory.

Here’s how Paul describes some of the people at the church in Corinth:

1 Corinthians 6:9–11 CSB

Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom. And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

If we were honest this morning, we would have to say the same thing about people in this room.

Before Jesus saved you, there were some who were sexually immoral, some who committed idolatry, some homosexuals, some thieves, some greedy, some drunkards and verbally abusive, some who took advantage of others.

Although those are sinful, and although they may have lasting consequences in your life, they do not mean that God cannot use you.

The woman Jesus encountered at the well was living in sexual sin.

Yet, when she put her trust in Jesus instead of another relationship with another man, God could use her to bring many to him.

Remember, this is the beautiful truth of the gospel: We aren’t saved because we did something to earn it; we are saved because Jesus loves us so much that he would die in my place and offer forgiveness for all of my sins.

I don’t care what you did last night, what you did this week, or what is going on: Jesus can and does forgive anyone who will call on the name of the Lord out of a heart to turn from those things and turn to him.

This woman did, and in spite of her sinful past, she became a great instrument God could use to display his glory.

The same can be true of you.

He can use us in spite of our brokenness because he is so good, kind, and gracious.

So don’t let your past stop you from how God wants to use you today for his kingdom and his glory.

Don’t keep living like you were, but realize that God takes broken things and makes them whole in ways we could never begin to imagine.

We see one other objection this woman could have raised to why she couldn’t bring others to Jesus, and we make the same objection:

3) “I don’t know very much.”

After Jesus confronts her, the woman realizes that he is some kind of prophet.

She starts trying to get into a debate with him about religion, and Jesus answers her question well.

Pick up in verse 25-26.

Keep in mind that the Samaritans didn’t believe everything the Jews believed, so what knowledge she had about the one true God was limited and probably wrong.

Yet her conversation with Jesus let her know that Jesus was the Messiah, the special person God brought into the world so everyone who would trust in him could be saved.

In fact, that was pretty much all she said to help her friends come to Jesus.

Jump down to verse 28-30, 39.

She had a brief encounter with Jesus, and although she didn’t know much, she knew that she wanted others to meet him too.

Sometimes we think we have to have all the answers for us to be able to help people come to Jesus.

We are afraid that they might stump us or that we might not be able to explain something well.

If you have been paying attention, that should sound familiar

That should sound familiar if you have been listening. Wasn’t that the same thing Moses said? That he couldn’t speak well, so God needed to send someone else?

You don’t have to speak well; you have to be willing to tell people what you know about who you are, who Jesus is, and what he has done for them.

Now, in 2019, we have about a million different resources to help you learn how to tell other people about Jesus and answer the questions they ask, so there isn’t an excuse for not learning better how to share your faith.

However, if you wait until you feel like you know everything you need to know, you won’t ever tell anyone about Christ.

Let God use you.

He used an unnamed woman from the wrong side of tracks with a rough past and very little knowledge about Jesus.

He can use you too.

In fact, as we have our invitation this morning, I want us to pray through one section of verses we skipped over.

The disciples are questioning Jesus about why he isn’t hungry even though he was waiting for something to eat, and listen to verses 34-36.

Pray that God would help us to be so involved in what he is doing that we would rather follow him than eat.

Pray that God will send us out and more laborers into the harvest field.

Pray that he will bring in a great harvest of people coming to know him through our witnesses.