Well, good morning, Christy Church.
How are you doing today? Oh, you look so good.
So glad to be here with you, be able to share God's word with
you. Welcome all of our locations
from all over this area. Everyone that's inside and
online as well. Thankful for all of you.
Hey, we're celebrating the 13th anniversary anniversary of the
Hannibal location. Let's just celebrate that 13
years. God has done so much at that
location. I wonder how many baptisms
they've had there over these 13 years.
I bet it's over 1000. Just absolutely incredible what
God has done at that location, how he's used whatever gifts
people have given back to him for that.
And I want a a reminder of you. You know, there's just been a a
real outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the crossing just
generally. And I think part of that is
because men have gotten very clear about their relationship
with the Lord. And I think that's happened.
A lot of that has happened through the Ministry of Uncommon
and Uncommon registration sign ups is now, you can do that now
and you do that now, You actually save money.
So it's a good time not only to register yourself and people in
your family, but also your friends because it's cheaper.
That means like you know, your money will go farther.
And I would even say you know people that you don't like very
much because if you if you register them, who knows, they
might end up being some of your best friends.
You just didn't even know that yet, you know, because God does
some pretty incredible things and he will with uncommon.
So we're in a series called Jesus is Better Than You
Thought. And the tagline that goes with
that is one you hear a lot at this church and that is God's
way is the best way. And no matter what the
circumstances is in life and I would imagine every single one
of us has had a time in our life, maybe experiencing it
right now. Maybe it's been more of a
chronic thing that we just didn't feel like we fit in.
Jesus is better than you thought, even when you don't
feel like you fit in. You know, when I was a kid, I
lived two separate lives. I'm going to describe this about
me, and I am not. I'm not going to be surprised if
it doesn't describe you too. So I had two separate lives that
I would live. Part of the part of my life was
lived with my school and neighborhood friends, and part
of my life was my church life. Now, the church life that I had
when I was a little kid and growing up was definitely the
best part of me. I I loved learning from God's
Word. I loved having the approval of
my parents and loved that they were proud of me.
And it was true that at church there was a different standard
that that was there for kids and also their parents.
It was a safer environment. It was a more predictable
environment. It was definitely a more loving
environment and and I really appreciated that now.
School and neighborhood life was a very different place, and it
had very different rules. And I learned a lot in my
neighborhood life and in my school life, but it was seldom
good. I learned a different language.
Did you all learn a different language in your school and
neighborhood life? Different set of expectation,
different set of behaviors? And that was before junior high
or Senior High, Junior high and Senior High, all that just amped
up and there was a change up. There was a change up in my
heart in the comparison between, like, the schizophrenic life
that I was leading with, my church life and my school
neighbourhood life. And it was this.
When you get into junior high and Senior High, people start
judging, measuring, condemning each other on the basis of like
all sorts of things. Like, you know, what kind of a
house you live in, what kind of clothes you wear, the people
that you hang out with, all of that.
Right? And we were going to a large
church at the time and the the youth group in that church was a
very clicked youth group. So there were like the cool kids
and there were the other kids, and then there were other kids.
And I was trying to fit in. And the problem with that
environment for me was it just felt so hypocritical that people
really weren't living out their faith in those cliques, and it
made me gravitate more to my school and neighborhood life to
invest in that, especially my sophomore junior year, senior
year. And I was looking for a place
that I could fit in, but I wanted to keep my foot in the
door of my church life or my religious life.
So I still went to church. But I don't think I could be
accused of really living that out.
It was really on the side. College, to me was just more of
the same, and it just amped up. There were things that happened
my senior year, my first second year of college at Indiana
University. All I can say is I'm just really
thankful for the grace and mercy of God.
You know, the mercy of God is not getting what you deserve.
The grace of God is getting what you don't deserve.
And there was plenty of that for me.
But you know, that wasn't the truth.
With a lot of my friends, I feel like I dodged a lot of bullets
that would have completely redefined my life.
And I wasn't making good choices.
And it wasn't until I was 20 years old that God put his call
on my life. And I I wrote here in my notes
that, you know, my direction was back to pursuing God.
And I don't know if that's really true.
I think it's more that God had always been there.
And I just, I just kind of got my a little bit more of my sense
back. It's not like I'm running after
God and he's like way out there. It's like he's been there, was
there before I was there and waiting for me to kind of make a
decision to make him first. And my life has never been the
same after that moment till this one right now.
The reason I'm telling you that is it makes me think about how
our lives are affected by our choices.
You know, it could just be one choice or maybe just a series of
choices. And maybe most of those really
weren't what you would perceive as being dangerous ones.
But you made some of these choices.
And then what it did is it just shifted the trajectory of your
life. Maybe it isn't your choice or
choices. Maybe it was the choices that
other people made that affected you.
Some of you right now may be feeling very victimized because
other people made choices and you're living in the reality of
those choices, right? And you wonder, like I was
wondering as I was preparing this, if those choices or
experiences had gone a different way, how would that have
affected the direction of my life?
Because we all have a back story.
We all have a director's cut of the movie of our life, right?
We all have alternate endings, and they may have just been a
single decision away. Now.
I don't know how many of you were like, what kind of students
you were in high school or college, but I like math and I
like science. And how many of you took a
physics class? I want to see a show of hands.
Physics. Yeah.
People that took physics are kind of like, yeah, I mean, it's
not like, yes, I took physics. I kind of liked physics.
I liked the laws of physics. You know, Isaac Newton was kind
of the he's kind of started the whole idea of physics and he has
three laws of motion and some of, you know, the third law of
motion. You didn't have to take physics
class to know this, right. Third law of motion is this
ready for every action. That's the third law of of
motion. For every action there is an
equal and opposite reaction. And the laws of life are a lot
like the laws of physics, because every action in your
life tends to have a reaction in your life.
You live in the reality of the results of the action of your
life. There's also laws of what's
called thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics
in physics is the law of entropy.
Now you may not. If I would say, would you please
define entropy for me? You'd go, Oh yeah, yeah.
But you know what? You know what it is.
And that is everything in nature tends toward disorder.
It's a law of physics, second law of thermodynamics.
Everything in nature tends toward disorder.
Wood rots, metal rust. Your lawn is going to need to be
mowed again, right? Any of you have a junior higher
living in your house, Just look at their room.
It's the law of entropy. Everything tends toward
disorder. I don't know a parent that says
would you please stop cleaning your room?
Would you please stop picking up after yourself?
Because it just bothers me. Everything tends toward
disorder. For us it might be a decision or
a group of decisions that we made.
It might be decisions that other people made that have affected
us because we all have self-inflicted wounds, wounds
inflicted by others or some combination of those that result
in those two things, reaction and disorder, right.
It's interesting how those laws of physics actually are laws of
life. And that's why the story that
I'm going to speak to you about today is so incredibly
important. It's in John chapter 4.
It's so helpful. It's a story of a woman that
Jesus met at a well in Samaria. And this is what I want to
challenge you to do today with this story, because we tend to
want to read this story in the third person like that was she
did this, and then he did that, and then she did this, and then
the townspeople did that and the disciples did that.
No, I want you to read it and think about it in the first
person, and I think that's going to change the essence of the
story as it interfaces with your heart today.
That's what I want you to do. So let's begin now.
We're going to begin with this story in a place that most
people don't begin, but I think we need to because it sets up a
context to help you understand Jesus a little better.
In the story, it's in the first verse, John 41.
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was
gaining and baptizing more disciples than John John the
Baptist, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized but his
disciples. So he left Judea and he went
back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through
Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria
called Cycar, 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.
So a lot of people will read this passage and they'll just
kind of read over that. And I don't want you to do that
today because it sets up a context that we need to hear
about Jesus. And the Samaritan woman by kind
of looking at Jesus's back story, Jesus is living under
threat. You know, the Pharisees hated
John the Baptist. The Pharisees, the religious
leaders of Israel at that time, did not like the influence that
John the Baptist was having on the people.
And what this scripture is telling you, that they they like
Jesus even less because he was making even more disciples than
John was. Jesus was living under that
threat. As a matter of fact, that threat
was so pronounced that he had to leave Judea and head back to
Galilee. He was in danger.
Now I want to ask you this question.
Do you think that Jesus's mind would have been occupied with
that, like that would have been important to him?
Do you think that he would be affected by other people
threatening his life? Because I think a lot of us,
when we read about Jesus, we we feel like, like he was
impervious to that sort of stuff because he's God in the flesh.
So that's the question. Do you think it affected Jesus?
Do you think it affected him at all?
You know, the whole book of the of John, the Gospel of John was
written for one purpose and that was to prove that Jesus is God
in the flesh, that he was the Son of God and God in the flesh.
And yet you read this scripture and it's talking about not just
the fact that he's God, but that his humanity.
Right. And I don't want you to lose
this, to take away the understanding that Jesus is
fully human. Verse six that we just read is
telling you that he was tired from his journey.
Jesus got tired. He's at a well, which means he's
what? Thirsty.
He's tired and thirsty. As a human being, he was dealing
with those feelings, with those realities.
But does that humanity as human as he is, is that humanity stop
him from being fully into these upcoming moments?
And the answer is no. But the other thing that we need
to see is, is that Jesus understands what it's like to be
human. He understands what it's like to
feel certain ways, like maybe how this woman at the well would
feel. He knows what it's like for us
when we make bad choices, even though he didn't make them.
He knows what it's like when other people make choices that
make life harder for us. Because that did happen to him.
He just didn't let it control him.
He was there for a divine appointment.
John 4/4 says this now. He had to go through Samaria.
I want to. I want to.
I want to emphasize that word had like he had to.
Like really was. He was.
He was he forced to? Well, as a matter of fact,
that's really an interesting part of the story.
There were three different ways you could go from Judea to
Galilee, and the one way you didn't ever go was the way he
went. You never went through Samaria.
Samaritans and Jews hated each other, so there was a mountain
Rd. There was the King's Hwy.
There were two other ways to get up there.
They weren't as easy of a of a journey, but it was the way that
Jews went. But Jesus doesn't go that way.
Do you know why? Because he had a divine
appointment that he wasn't going to be late for with a woman who
was at a well in Cycar of Samaria.
Let me ask you this question. Do you think that Jesus has
divine appointments today? Yes or no?
Say it out loud. Do you think he has divine
appointments with you? He does.
But you know what? If we really look at our lives,
some of us, I think, actually think that he has more important
things to attend to than to bother with you.
I can assure you that Jesus never misses an appointment and
you are every bit as worthy as the woman in this story.
The question isn't whether or not Jesus will be at that
appointment. The question is how do you
respond to those divine appointments when they come upon
you? Now, let's get into the bulk of
the story, OK? Starting in verse seven, it says
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her,
would you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into town
to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him,
You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman.
How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with
Samaritans. Jesus answered her.
If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asked you for a
drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you
living water. Sir, the woman said.
You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.
Where can you get this living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and
drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock?
Jesus answered. Everyone who drinks this water
will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I
give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them
will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal
life, the woman said to him. Sir, give me this water so that
I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water,
he told her. Go get call your husband and
come back. I have no husband, she replied.
Jesus said to her, You're right when you say you have no
husband. The fact is you've had five
husbands and the man that you are now have is not your
husband. What you have said is quite
true, Sir, the woman said. I can see that you're a prophet.
Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain.
But you Jews claim the place where we must worship is in
Jerusalem, woman, Jesus replied. Believe me, time is coming when
you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in
Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you
do not know. We worship what we do know, for
salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and now has
come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in
spirit and in truth, for they're the kind of worshippers the
Father seeks. God is spirit and his
worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth, the woman
said. I know that Messiah called
Christ is coming. When he comes, he'll explain
everything to us. And Jesus declared I the one
speaking to you. I am He.
Here comes the appointment. Everything about this
appointment makes the case that this woman does not fit in.
She knows it. She's coming to the well at
noon. Nobody comes to the well at
noon. They come at the crack of dawn.
But that's when all the other women come to the well, and this
woman is avoiding the confrontation that that brings.
What Jesus prophesied about her was quite true, and it
definitely had something to do with her reputation.
As she points out, she's a woman and he's a man.
Women and men did not associate socially in any circumstance.
In the ancient world. Men stayed with men, women
stayed with women in about every circumstance.
She's a Samaritan and he's a Jew.
Jews considered them half breeds compromisers on faith apostates,
so they wanted nothing to do with them.
She does not fit into talking to Jesus, at least in her own mind.
And I think that many of us don't feel worthy to talk to
Jesus because that is what exists in our own mind.
Whether it's the life that you have now, whether it's the
results of the things that you've done in the past, the
choices you made, the choices that other people made, there's
something that just makes you feel like you just don't fit in.
You know, we really don't know much about her back story, but
I'm sure there were choices. I don't know why she was married
five times. I don't know why she was living
with the man she wasn't married to.
Maybe they weren't her choices at all.
Women didn't have a lot of choices in the ancient world.
Maybe they were other people's choices.
Maybe she looked back on her life and felt like it was very
unfair, like Clayton talked about last week.
Maybe it was a combination of others choices and her choices
that put her life into this place of reaction and disorder,
which is definitely where she is, you know, that's why I think
we have to read this in the first person, because it might
be or could be every single one of us.
We look at this woman like like, you know, she's tainted, like
she's polluted. And I'm going really?
Are any of us any different? Why can't we look at this and
understand that in so many ways we resemble this woman?
In any case, Jesus comes up against this whole array of
defense mechanisms. Like, she starts talking about
religion, I mean, to someone she already recognizes as a prophet.
You worship in Jerusalem. We worship on this mountain.
How can you know you're a Jew? I'm a Samaritan.
She comes up with all this stuff.
Right? Let's go back to physics.
You know what Newton's first law of motion is?
The third law of motion is the law of conservation of energy.
Energy is conserved. That means every every action,
there's an equal and opposite reaction.
First law of motion is this. An object at rest stays at rest.
Yeah, you know that, right? OK, well, that's how we are in
our lives. We're just the same way.
Don't move my keys. You know I don't.
I think my life is pretty lousy. It's pretty crummy.
But, you know, at least I know how to live it.
At least I know what the rules are in it.
So I'm just going to stay here and quit trying to mess me up.
Quit trying to change stuff. This woman is resisting.
Jesus. She doesn't want her life
changed. Why?
Because at least it's predictable.
At least she knows where she stands and whatever this guy's
doing. I don't know, You know?
And I really, I really don't want that.
So she puts up all these defense mechanisms.
We want to protect our lives from change.
Even though change is what she needed the most, we get used to
not fitting in. So when Jesus comes up to you
and he has a divine appointment with you, what defense
mechanisms does he run into? What do you put in front of him?
Look at the 27th to the 30th verse, it says.
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised.
The Bible's so full of understatement, to find him
talking with a woman. But no one asked what?
What do you want or why are you talking with her?
They're all saying it in their mind and you know, in their
heart, but they're not going to say it to Jesus.
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and
said to the people, come see a man who told me everything I
ever did. Could this be the Messiah?
And they came out of the town and made their way toward him.
This is my favorite part of the story.
She left her water jar. You see, that was the whole
point of her being there. She had an agenda.
There was something she was supposed to do, even though it
was noon. She was supposed to get water
and bring it back home. From her point of view, that was
what the day was about. That was what that moment was
about. She needed water and she wanted
to get that water and not of and avoid conflict.
And it makes me ask this question, how many of us spend
our whole lives just filling up water jars that you just do it
this way because you always did it that way, because that's just
what you do at this particular time of day.
Like you're kind of into this groove, you know, no matter how
you judge yourself or what the circumstances are, you're just
filling up the water jar. And I want to ask you this
question right now, right now, what are you filling your water
jar with? I've seen people put out so much
effort to fill their lives with things that they don't need and
that things that will never fulfil them.
How about you? And yet keep going back to that?
Well, we keep lowering that jar. We keep filling it up thinking
that something will change. You know, Jesus, what he says to
her. Everyone who drinks the water
from this well are going to be thirsty again.
Everything that you fill up your water jar with, it's not going
to satisfy people. Sell out for that next jar of
water. Take a lesson from this lady.
It's time to leave the water jar behind and capture something
greater. Second thing that's so
incredible about this part of the story is how instantaneously
Jesus turns her tragedy into her testimony.
It's awesome, you know, that there wasn't a single thing that
changed about her past circumstances.
All those choices, whether she made them or other people made
them or they were some, you know, group of those, none of
that changed. What did change was her attitude
toward them. Her attitude had changed.
There was plenty in her life to be ashamed of, but now there was
something that was greater than her shame.
There are plenty of things in your life and in my life to be
ashamed of, but there is something here in this room and
in all of our rooms that's greater than our shame.
If you can just capture it, you can just see it was greater than
her circumstance and God was letting her know that she fit
into his plan for the ages. Jesus made her into the catalyst
for the greatest gift that anyone could receive for all of
her townspeople. He can do the same thing for
you. Do you think that Jesus was
doing a gift assessment on her? Like, do you think that like she
was filling out a form and it's like, oh, here are the things
that you're actually good at. There wasn't any of the any,
none of that, that she was good at nothing, right?
Not from her point of view, But look what God did to her.
Look what God did through her. I want to ask you what tragedies
in your life can God turn into? Testimonies won't stop the
tragedy from ever happening in the past, but your attitude
toward it can change verses 39 to 42.
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him, Jesus,
because of the woman's testimony.
He told me everything I ever did.
So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with
them, and he stayed for two days.
And because of his words, many more became believers.
Listen to this, 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 really is the savior of the world.
See, this divine appointment began with this woman who was
far from God, but it didn't end with her finding faith.
That wasn't the end of the story.
We leave this story with a whole town, finding faith, finding
faith in Jesus. And while the Samaritans faith
is a great part of this story, Jesus has something greater in
mind. Why?
Because Jesus is better than you thought.
He's better than you thought. What are we seeing?
Faith comes when ownership shifts from the giver to the
receiver. I'm going to say that again.
Faith comes when the ownership shifts from the giver to the
receiver. So Jesus was the giver, and the
woman at the well was the receiver, right?
That ownership shifted to her, and then it changed.
And then she became the giver. Come and see a man who told me
everything I ever did. And I can imagine there were
towns of people going, well, that's going to take a while,
yeah, You know, judging her, condemning her.
And then they did. She was the giver.
They became the receivers and they said it.
They go, now we don't believe just because of your testimony.
We believe because we've heard it ourselves.
And that faith was no longer her faith that found a home in them.
Now it was their faith. And even though the Bible
doesn't tell it, you know that these Samaritans took that story
of faith and shared it with others because that's the nature
of it. That's the nature of faith.
The ownership of faith continues to come as givers.
Share with receivers. Jesus is instructing his
disciples because this is what Jesus does.
He's just going to write another new story and another new story
and another new story in somebody else's life.
And in John 435, when he's teaching his disciples, he says,
don't you have a saying? It's still four months until the
harvest. I tell you, open your eyes.
Open your eyes and look at the fields.
They are ripe for harvest. Just look around you in all the
places where we are assembled right now.
Just look around you. Harvest is right there.
You're going to go to lunch in a little while.
Just look around. You might be hanging out with
your family later on. Just look around you.
You're going to go to work maybe tomorrow.
Just look around you. You're going to go to school.
Just look around you. It's all around you, all right
now. And you, if you can be the
receiver, can then become the giver.
We're moving to a time of decision.
How many years ago did we launch Macomb Clayton 2000?
Seven. So 1717 years ago.
Gosh, you're a lot older. I'm not.
Huh. So I don't know how many of you
know this or not, but Macomb and Quincy share one wonderful
thing. They both have an El Rancho Rito
people ready. Come to the steps right now.
And so we hadn't launched the. We hadn't launched the location
yet. It's one of my favorite stories
about Macomb. And we went to lunch at about
just about two blocks from the church on the same side of the
street as the El Rancherito and back.
Back then McComb felt like a long way away 'cause there
wasn't a four lane highway, it was a two lane Rd. back then and
and we were cleaning up a building that was pretty nasty
at the time. And there's a lot of hard work
that went into that. And we were in the process of
that, had a brand new young team there that I don't think anybody
would have ever thought could ever do anything worthwhile.
And it was amazing what God did. But I remember taking that team
and some people that were working to that El Rancho Rito
that day and here we are feasting on chips and salsa and
it was it was during the school year and so is packed.
Was just completely packed with people.
And I don't know, it's before or after we prayed or maybe we'd
already ordered. And I said I want you to just
look around, just look around, look around you right now.
And so they did. They probably thought and I am
pretty weird. So they probably thought, you
know, that's weird. Why am I looking at all these
people? And I go these people they don't
even know. They have no idea what God is
going to do in their midst. They have no idea.
We had no idea. But I can tell you this Jesus is
better than you thought. And he has done a great work
over those 17 years in that place, and he's done great works
in a lot of other places, right? And we're thankful for that.
But what about in this place, your place, your heart?
What is he doing there? How about right now?
In the words of Top Gun, it's time to quit kicking the tires
and start lighting the fires. Quit attending church thinking
that if I bring my water jar, I can fill it up.
Just quit that. Leave your water jar and find
the living water. Find Jesus himself in an
intimate, personal relationship. If you're here and you've never
made that decision, there's going to be somebody right over
there by that baptistry. Would love nothing more than to
talk and pray with you about that?
How in the world can we be in an environment where we saw 32
people accept Jesus Christ to be baptized last week and not
realize that we're in a life changing environment, eternity
changing environment? And why does that have to be
everybody else? Why does the object at rest
always have to stay at rest? It's the time to move.
If Jesus can come all the way from heaven to earth to be in
this room, to be on the other side of your computer, if you're
online or in that prison right now, you can make up that little
difference of space and just walk up to him and he will
change your life every bit as much as he changed that woman in
Psycharf, Samaria. And many of you are here today,
and you've made that decision for Christ.
But you're carrying all these burdens.
You're trying to be tough enough.
You're trying to be strong enough, trying to do it on your
own when you will always be a child in his eyes and to just be
that child and come to your father, come to your savior, and
pour out your heart. That's what these steps are for,
Just to pour out your heart and to move.
Would you stand with me, Heavenly Father?
I'm reminded of a good friend who who taught taught me to not
say God showed up because God never does.
He never left. It's not us that need to wait
for God to show up. He's waiting for us to show up.
And your son Jesus, he never misses a divine appointment.
But I pray that we won't let this one go by and that we will
show up for you right now in Jesus name.
Amen.