Those Who Hurt

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Even though Jesus spoke to large crowds, He was never too busy to care for individuals. Today, you'll be reminded that this is still the model for the mission of the church, to extend God's compassion to those who hurt. One of the primary reasons our faith is so weak and oftentimes so impractical is because of our view of God. However we view Him is going to affect every single aspect of our life. And so I want us to see in this passage of Scripture today what He's really like.

Because Jesus said, if you've seen Him, you've seen the Father. So if you want to know what the Heavenly Father is like, you look at the life of Jesus. You want to know how the Heavenly Father will treat you?

Then how did Jesus treat people in His day? So I want you to turn, if you will, to the fourth chapter of John. And in this fourth chapter is a beautiful example of how our Heavenly Father feels toward us, how He desires to treat us, how He does treat us, even when difficult things come our way. And sometimes we want to blame God and feel His accusing hand, feel His condemning hand.

No, here is a perfect example of how our Lord feels toward us. Now watch what happens in this passage. So John chapter four, and this is probably one of the most beautiful sermons Jesus ever preached to anyone.

Preached it all to one person. So we begin in the first verse, the Scripture says, When therefore the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were, He left Judea and departed again into Galilee, and He had to pass through Samaria. So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. And Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well.

It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria 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, being a Jew, ask me for a drink, since I am a Samaritan woman?

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water. She said to Him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.

Where then do you get that living water? You're not greater than our Father Jacob, are you? Who gave us the well and drank of it Himself and His sons and His cattle. Jesus answered and said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. The woman said to Him, Sir, give me this water so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.

He said to her, Go call your husband and come here. Well, this story goes all the way through the forty-second verse, but I want to stop right there because I want to give our time to this first part of the passage. Now we're into a brief series, the reach of God's love. God is always reaching out to us in love.

Once I understand that He always reaches out in love, something will happen of my view of God. And here is a good example of how He reaches out to those who are hurting. And here is the woman certainly who was hurting.

And one of the things I want us to see here in this passage that's so clear is this. And that is that Jesus knows our hurts. It doesn't make a difference what you're hurting about. If someone has hurt you deeply or if it's some hurt that you have brought upon yourself, whether it's hurt because of guilt or sin or whatever it might be, it doesn't make any difference. Jesus knows every single hurt, every burden and every heartache we all bear.

There is no exception to that. And Jesus knew the condition this woman was in. And so when He met her that day, He looked straight into her eyes. He could see.

He could sense the pain and the hurt. And the truth is He knows every single need before we have it. Therefore, God is never late in meeting our needs. He is always on time in every single aspect of our life.

Now you think about this. You and I walk under the canopy of the love of Almighty God. We walk in the infinite knowledge of a loving Heavenly Father who knows everything about us. He knows the future. He knows the past.

Everything is going around us all the time. He knows where our safety areas are. He knows where those dangerous points are. He knows how we're going to respond. He knows our personality, how we respond to the people, how we're going to react.

He knows every single thing about us. And so therefore, He is always reaching out to us in love. He wants the very best for us. And the one who wants the best for us is the one who knows all the time what is the best. And what I want you to see in this passage is this. I want you to see how He treated this woman. Because you see, when we have opinions of other people oftentimes and those opinions are not the best, we don't always treat people that way.

I mean those of us who are believers. We sort of have our own little private secluded standard of how we treat people if we're not careful. What I want you to see, remember who this woman is. She has been married five times. This woman has a moral problem. She is living with a man to whom she is not married. And she's doing it right before everybody in town.

So everybody knows about it. So we're talking about this kind of woman. We're talking about Jesus and His relationship and how He responded and His attitude toward a woman who had a horrible reputation in her town.

Now I want you to see something here. That not only does Jesus know all about our hurts, but He cares about how you're not hurt. And here is certainly an expression of His caring.

Because you have to understand what the customs were and you have to understand not only the customs, but you have to understand also the conflict that was going on between Jews and Samaritans. And here's the Son of God meeting her this day by what would look like by an accident, which was certainly no accident, a providential meeting of God. He's always the right place, the right time, doing the right thing. And so she meets Him. But I want you to see how significant she is because she gives us the opportunity to say something that all of us need to have said to us and to be reminded of us.

All of us do. So here she is now in her condition. And so she walks up and Jesus says to her, give me a drink.

Well, now, what was significant about that? Well, notice what she said. She said in verse nine, the Samaritan woman, therefore, said to him, how is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman? The Jews have no dealing with Samaritans. Now, Jesus, in his caring love for her, did not allow her being a Samaritan, her being a woman or her being a very, very sinful woman, make a single solitary difference in the way he treated her and the way he would treat someone else.

Not one single bit. He was not concerned about her sins to judge her. He was only concerned about her sins in order to forgive her. So he did not address her and accuse her and condemn her. And when you think about how he responded to her, you see that he was responding with a very caring attitude. Now, all the things that would have absolutely shocked most people and caused them to step aside or go back or do something else and say, well, you know, I just, I don't think I can associate with folks like that.

It may hurt my reputation in some way. Didn't even face him. He overlooked every bit of that.

You know why? Because he is a loving Jesus. If you want to know how God feels about people, how did Jesus treat people? And you see, here is a perfect example of the evidence of how our Lord sees people. He sees them as individuals. He sees them as people in need.

Listen, all through the Scripture, what's the testimony of the Word of God? The testimony of Scripture is, listen, He knows our hurts. He knows our needs. He cares for our hurts.

He cares for our needs and doesn't make any difference what the hurt is, what the need is, what our condition is, where we are from, no matter what the circumstance, none of that affects His attitude toward us. You want to know what the heavenly Father thinks about you? Look and see how Jesus treated people.

There's the third thing I want you to notice here and that is this. Jesus reaches out to heal our hurts and to forgive our sins. Now, I want you to notice, first of all, the approach He took to this woman. You see, here is the perfect lesson in how to deal with people and how to reach them for Christ. What did Jesus do?

Here He was in this situation, totally. Listen, the custom said, don't speak to this woman. His nationality and hurt, don't speak to this woman. Jesus said to her, give me a drink of water. What did He do? He approached her at the point of her greatest interest.

What was it? It was water. She was coming to the well. He approached her at the point of her greatest need. He knew that not only was she coming for water for the body, He knew that she needed something to fill her soul because she was a very empty woman.

Jesus was emotionally giving this woman exactly what she needed. She needed to feel loved. She needed to feel accepted. She needed to feel she was worth something. He was taking time with her. She needed to feel that she belonged. And all of a sudden, this man was talking about giving her something. Water on the inside of her that would spring up into everlasting life. She didn't understand all of what that was about. But she sensed something from him.

Listen, and I would say to you, my friend, it doesn't make any difference where you're from, what the situation in your life is. If you will give Jesus Christ the opportunity, if you'll just give Him a hearing, you know what you're going to sense from Him? Not condemnation, not judgment, not accusation. He's not going to tell you about hell and torment. He's going to tell you how much He loves you. He's going to tell you that He wants you to give your life to Him so that the very best that He has to offer, that's what He wants to give you. He wants to save you from destroying yourself.

He wants to save you from torment, save you from going to hell, save you from wrecking and ruining and messing up your life. He's not a judgmental Lord. Jesus walked among men. The only crowd that He spoke with judgment, and I mean tremendous judgment, was the religious crowd who thought they were so good and thought they were so righteous that they rejected Him and rejected everything that was godly.

You can't get so sinful to turn Jesus off. You can't be so hurtful and so hurt that you will turn Him away because He's a loving Lord. Now what I want you to notice is I want you to know, see, how He appealed to this woman.

And there are four things here I want you to notice as we look at the Scripture primarily now, beginning in verse 10. First of all, His appeal to her was an appeal for her to be kind, that is sympathy. He said, would you give me a drink? Now remember this, the saying in that day was only a wicked person will not give another a drink of water. So when He asked her for a drink of water, she knew that to give someone a drink of water was certainly a right thing to do, a humane thing to do, no matter what. Now it never says He got a drink, because I think this conversation began in such a way that she forgot all about well water and she got to thinking about something else. So first of all, He made His appeal to her out of her sympathy, would you give me a drink of water?

The second thing He appealed to her was out of her curiosity. Now look at this verse beginning in verse 10. Jesus appealed to her at the point of her greatest need, at the point of her greatest attention.

And so here's what happens. The Scripture says He appealed to her curiosity and here's how He did it, verse 10. Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you give me a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.

Now look at that. He says there is a gift of God, there is someone who can give you that gift and what they'll give you is living water. Now living water was far different from Jacob's well. Living water was running water. It either had to come from a spring or a creek of some sort or some fountain. And so her primary immediate interest was living water. Well you don't even have anything to dip with, number one. And second, now where are you going to get living water?

Where are you going to get running water? So what did He do? He appealed to her at a point of her interest and He appealed to her in a way that got her to thinking. Who is this who is offering? Who is this who has no cup? Who is this who has, who is talking about living water? Who is this man? And so He got her attention.

Who is this that can make this kind of offer? So He makes His appeal. His gift He offers and then I want you to notice He makes His appeal by talking about a desire to fulfill something in her that she didn't even realize really that she needed.

Listen to this. So Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, who it is who says to you give me a drink, you would ask Him and He would give you living water. She said to Him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with from the well, it's deep.

Where then do you get that living water? You're not greater than our Father Jacob, are you? Who gave us the well and drank of it Himself and His sons and His cattle but she'd already begun to think. She's asking a question.

She says, Are you greater than Jacob? And then listen to this wonderful, wonderful answer from Jesus. Jesus answered and said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.

But the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. The woman said to Him, Sir, give me this water so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw. Now, the water that she drew from that well would only quench a physical thirst.

It would never quench her emotional thirst which she had so deeply. The water that came from that well would enter her physical body but it would never enter her soul where she was hurting. The water that came from that well would diminish and disappear. The water that Jesus Christ would give her would never disappear. He says, I'm going to place in you a well. It's going to be running water. It's going to be a spring of water that shall go on and on and on.

She didn't understand that. He's saying this water, this well of water springing up into us, when you and I trust that Jesus Christ is our personal Savior or when you do, the Bible says the Holy Spirit seals us as a child of God. The Holy Spirit comes to indwell us. The Holy Spirit comes to live on the inside of us. The Bible talks about the fruit of the Spirit which is love and joy and peace and all these things. That's the fruit of the Spirit.

Indwelling on the inside of every single child of God is the person of the Godhead called the Holy Spirit. He is there. What is he doing? He is there to do what? He is there to release in you and in me the very life of Jesus. All that you and I need to satisfy our soul. All that you and I need to satisfy our heart. All that you and I need to satisfy our spirit.

That which makes us feel whole and complete and fully loved and that we belong and that we're worth something and that we're accepted by Almighty God. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. Who is it that enables us to do the work that God has called us to do? That is the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us. In heaven is God the Father.

See, in his right hand is the Lord Jesus. On this earth, living in the life of every single believer is the person of the Holy Spirit. So when he said to her, the water that you drink of, you'll thirst again. But what I'm going to give you is water that you'll never thirst again. You won't have to come back here and drink again. Not of the physical water but of spiritual water. One drink, listen to this, one drink is so powerful it will do you for eternity.

You have Christ living on the inside of you. He never gives out. He never gives up. He never runs out. He's always there.

What did he say? I'll never leave you nor forsake you. Well, this woman is so excited by now. She drops the pot and heads for the village. And she says to them, I have found somebody who has told me all things about myself. Well, they saw a smile upon her face, some joy in her heart.

And they said to themselves, if somebody's told this woman all there is to know about her, let's go find out who it is. And so they come running out. And so what happens? They find Jesus. They begin their conversation. They say, look, stay here with us.

So he stays there two days with them, sharing with them. And a lot of them get saved, the Bible says. And finally, if you'll notice in verse 42 it says, and they were saying to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, but we have heard for ourselves and know that this one is indeed the Savior of the world. Now listen, my friend. What is the essence of all this?

There's simply this. Jesus knows all your needs, all your sins, all your hurts. He cares for you no matter who you are and what's happened in your life.

And you know what he's doing right now? He's reaching out to you to say, I will forgive your sin and I will heal your hurts. I will take care of you and I will be to you forever everything you need me to be. I will be in you a well of water, ever springing up in the life everlasting. I will always be there.

Once you receive Jesus as your Savior, he is always forever and ever and ever there. Thank you for listening to Those Who Hurt. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.