Divided We Fall
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Overview
Overview
What are some of the headlines today?
Presidential Election (Democrat v. Republican)
Racism (Black v. White)
Corona Virus (Pandemic v. Conspiracy)
It is no secret that society today is divided and everyone has somebody to hate.
“A divided nation needs a UNITED church” - Carey Nieuwhof
One thing I would like us to do today as we unpack the truth of this passage, is to check our hearts against it, both students and leaders.
Do our convictions, actions, speech, and hearts look like Jesus or have we allowed the sin and broken worldviews dictate the direction of our hearts?
Read
Read
1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 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.
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 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.) 10 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.” 11 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? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.”
Teach
Teach
This passage teaches us 2 filters that we can use to fight division and truly live like Jesus Christ:
1. Our Heads (vv. 1-9)
1. Our Heads (vv. 1-9)
I remember being little and playing my Nintendo 64! I was so close to beating my cousin playing Mario smash bros for the first time and this man uses some sort of cheat code and sends my donkey kong loving self off of the spaceship and in to oblivion to finish the game. I was TICKED. I stayed mad for weeks! Every time he would try to talk to me, I would give him the silent treatment. Eventually, he came over and told be I was being dumb and stubborn. That I should just move on and get over the past.
I tell you that because I think the Samaritan woman had the same issue. When Jesus who was Jewish approached her, she was so quick to try to shut down the conversation with Him simply because of an issue from the past that was effecting the present.
We see an important lesson here, there is ALWAYS hope for change when Christ is in the picture.
Just because Jews and Samaritans did not get along in the past did not mean that was is the way that is was meant for all times.
Is Jesus big enough to change your mind?
3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.
We have to stop believing that cultural, ethnic, and even political differences are a road-block for salvation.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Don’t hear me say that there isn’t a restriction on salvation because there is. It COSTS you all of the sin and brokenness but its a light trade for redemption and grace!
19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out,
2. Our Hearts (vv. 10-14)
2. Our Hearts (vv. 10-14)
Toddlers are difficult. My son Titus is 3 and pretty much knows it all, or so he thinks… Titus loves trains, lots of trains. Thomas the train, train blocks, train cartoons, train stickers, real train, train pictures, train backpacks, train shoes, train shirts, do you get the point?
Well he owns a massive tub of train toys. Which was all over his room.
I asked him to pick it up, which we made a game out of. He would throw a piece in and I would block it. Then he would throw another and I would “miss” it and he would laugh. Well it took about 20 minutes to finally get all the mess up.
I told him I would be right back and as soon as I get out of the room, I hear a massive crash. I run back in to the room and all of his trains were all over the floor. He wanted to play the pick up game again.
He missed the point.
Just like my son, the woman at the well missed the point as well. Jesus wasn’t offering her an actual drink of water. He was offering her something far more valuable, fulfillment from the only one who could totally complete her.
Do you think that she was looking for something after having 5 husbands? (verse 18)
Our hearts have a missing piece when we don’t have Christ in our life. We have a deep need to feel whole and complete, but we tend to try to fill those things up with temporary fixes.
Guys/girls
Sports or athletic success
Academic or professional success
Drugs or alcohol
Popularity
Lust
Listen, if you fit that bill, I don’t blame you because I've lived in that house before. But I am here to tell you that after moving out of it that I have found something far better.
As Christ followers, we are called to choose Jesus and allow Him to constantly fill us up and let him be the source of our contentment. But somewhere in the process we find this high and mighty perch that we want to live and act like everyone else that walks through the same stuff that we did has some sort of cooties.
3 For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.
4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Response
Response
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.