Jesus Unfiltered - Believe - Jesus - Models His Mission, Part 1

Who do you know that is hurting today?

Maybe a friend, a neighbor, a family member, maybe you? If life is hard right now and you need help getting unstuck from the pain, stay with me as we learn Jesus' secret to helping those that are hurting. That's today. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. You know, one of the common misconceptions about Jesus today is that he perpetuated a male-dominated society in first-century Israel and didn't really care about women. But as Chip continues his study in the Gospel of John, he'll reveal that that idea couldn't be further from the truth. We're going to learn how Jesus intentionally broke cultural taboos to accept and advocate for women. But before we dive into this valuable program, let me encourage you to get Chip's message notes. He's going to use a lot of verses today to back up his points, so it will be helpful to have them in front of you. Download them under the broadcast tab at livingontheedge.org. App listeners, tap fill in notes.

Okay, if you have a Bible, go now to John 4 for Chip's talk, Jesus Models His Mission. I'd like to have you lean back, and I have the profile of four women. I've changed their names. They're women that you know.

Some of them are your neighbors, friends. Some of them are daughters of people that you know from school. Jennifer is in junior high. Her body and emotions are changing rapidly. Her mom is busy with two jobs.

Her dad lives out of state. She has a yearning to deeply connect relationally, to be loved, to be important, especially to a man. Her mind often still thinks like a little girl, but her body is reaching adulthood. Older boys have started noticing her. She learns to give sex, to get what feels like love, and by her 16th birthday, she's been there and done that. Debbie is a senior in high school. She really found true love. They've been going together for about a year and a half, the last years of high school.

She's had one abortion. Her boyfriend has gone away to college, and they've decided that they'll stay in touch. It's going to be great, and someday they'll get married, except he came home from spring break and let her know that he found someone new. She feels alone, abandoned, desperate. She smiles on the outside. She's dying on the inside. She's doing things she never did before. She got drunk. She's sleeping around, and she feels like there's no hope for her future.

She's been there, and she's done that. Late 20s and mid 30s, Sarah is burned out. She lived with her college flame for about three years.

They had a child together, got married quickly, divorced a couple years later. She's now lived with two other guys in the last 12 years. She dropped out of college to help support her family. She's bitter. She's wounded, and she's tired.

She looks really great on the outside. She's learned how to get what she wants from a man, everything that is but love. Now she feels empty. She's raising a child on her own. She feels like life is passing her by, and at 32, she feels a lot older than she is. Finally, there's midlife Nancy, who's making the best of a really bad situation.

She's got two teenagers and a 10-year-old. She's still working through the emotions of her divorce. Life after his affair shattered her world.

Her violent outburst actually shocked her. She's barely making it financially. She has no hope, no future, but kind of keeps a good face on for the kids. She aches with loneliness. She keeps replaying the tapes in her mind of poor choices that she made and vacillates between feeling sorry for herself, depressed, guilty, and self-hatred, and white hot anger toward those that have hurt her.

Her life is nearly half over, and she feels like she's been there, and she's done that. I'd like to suggest that these four stories, not their real names, are all over where we live, and you know them, or you'll meet them. And the question I have is, if Jesus walked into a local coffee shop and sat down with that junior hire or senior or 32-year-old or midlife woman who's been wounded and hurt and is angry and been used, what would He say? How would He help? How would He view them?

And that's what we're going to find out today. If you'll look at your notes, we're going to find that He meets a woman exactly like this, and here's what I want you to get. He's going to walk into a coffee shop or in a living room, and He's going to have a conversation with them, but the odd part about this conversation, it won't be Him in His physical body. It'll be Him in His spiritual body called the church, and the person that He's going to talk to them through is you, because He lives in you if you're a follower of Christ, and you'll sit down with that junior high or senior or 20, 30-something or midlife woman or man, and you will speak the words of life to them.

That's the plan. And so what I want to do is kind of help you understand, well, how could I do that? I want to help you move from learning what it says then and even being where you interpret it to passing it along. And so I want to try and model something that Jesus models for us.

When you sit down with a person that's hurting, when you sit down with someone who feels like they're worthless, that they've messed up their life, that God could never care, I want you to just go through this process. You can use John chapter 4. First, you can just share the big idea. As you read through it and make observations, you know, paragraph by paragraph, this is just the big idea.

This is what it's talking about. Second, then you can read those verses and when we get done, you'll be able to do it. You can explain to them, this is what it meant in that day, and this is what it means today. And then you can personalize your response. You can say, you know, this is what He was saying to this lady, and this is what God's like, and this is what He's been saying to me.

And so it's really what we've been learning. But the next step is then I want you to pass it on. I want you to learn to communicate it. And so you need to explore their needs and their concerns and their questions.

And what you're going to find is the way you help people the most isn't, this is what I know, this is what you ought to do, here's all the things I'm telling you. Ask questions. How do you feel?

What was it like when He left you? What's going on down inside? Why do you feel like there's no hope? Do you think God could ever care? And when you get on the same page and love and care for people, I want to tell you that God has divine appointments for you in the next few weeks, the next few months, and in this year, where you will be Jesus in you, loving and helping people, and He has divine appointments. So with that, if you'll look at your notes, I'm going to walk you through the process that I learned from Jesus, that He's passing on me to pass on to you. And so you'll look, God wants to use you to share His word, and so we've learned, what does it say? What does it mean? What does it mean to me?

How do you pass it on? Write the word communication. You want to learn to make observations of the Bible. You want to learn to do interpretation.

You want to learn to apply it to your own life, and then you want to learn to communicate. God's plan was never that we come into a room, talk to one another about God, and go into our little corners and live our life. The game plan was that He would speak to us, transform us, and then lovingly, we would communicate that truth by how we live and what we say.

And so, are you ready? In your notes, you'll notice at the very top, I put a summary. That's just the big idea.

I've made the observations. So in verses one through nine, here's the big idea. Basically, what Jesus is going to say is Jesus breaks through barriers.

He's going to break through gender barriers, culture barriers. So follow along as I read. The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John. Although, in fact, it wasn't Jesus who was baptizing, but His disciples. When the Lord learned of this, He left Judea and went back at once to Galilee. Now, He had to go through Samaria. Would you put a little box around the word had to?

We'll come back to that. So He came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son, Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus was tired, as He was from his journey, and so He sat down by the well. And it was about the sixth hour, or noon, our time, when a Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, will you give me a drink?

His disciples had gone into the town to buy some food. The Samaritan woman said to Him, you are a Jew, and I'm a Samaritan woman. She accents grammatically on woman.

How can you ask me for a drink for Jews to not associate with Samaritans? Now, if you understand the culture and what's going on here, you're going to see that He's going to break down a gender barrier, a racial barrier, a social barrier, a cultural barrier, and a religious barrier, whatever He has to do to let this woman know He loves her. Now, what we know, and it's important to know, is that this woman is coming out at noon because most women come out in the early morning. Her jar is actually a jar. It's a leather-tight pouch that's woven together.

You can fold it when you travel. The well is 100 feet deep. It's still there today, and it has a hole in the top and sort of a cover, a large, large cover. And actually, in the text, it says Jesus is literally sitting on the edge of the well. Jews and Samaritans, notice the text says He's going from Judea in the south up to Galilee.

All right? He's going south to north. If you walk directly, you have to go through Samaria. Jews thought that Samaritans were so defiled that they would walk another two or two and a half, sometimes three days to get up to this region so they didn't have to touch the ground that a Samaritan was on. They had 500 years of hatred for one another.

The Samaritans had developed their own kind of religion. They only accepted the first five books of the Bible with Moses. They worshiped on this mountain, Mount Gerizin, the Jews over here on Mount Zion, and so they hated one another.

Jesus is going right through Samaria, breaking geographical cultural barriers. When a Jew was out, not just alone, but a Jewish man never spoke to a woman in public, a rabbi would not even make eye contact. In fact, they had a group of rabbis called the Blue and the Bruised. When a woman would come, they would cover their eyes and they would bump into stuff.

Literally, this is true, because they didn't want to be defiled. So this woman comes up, culturally, when she gets about 20 feet away, Jesus is vulnerable. He's thirsty, he's tired, he has nothing to get it.

He doesn't move. She keeps coming closer. She's coming at noon, not in the morning when most women come, because she's had five husbands, is currently living with a guy.

She's an immoral person, and on the totem pole of social value, somewhere between the very bottom of the bottom, she is a worthless person that no one cares about. But notice, he had to go through Samaria. In Greek, there's a three little word that means a divine necessity. In English, you would translate it DEI. It's a day of necessity.

When this is put in the scripture, it's for purposes we may not understand, there's a divine necessity for he had to go through, not because it was shorter, but because of God's plan. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and Chip will be back in just a minute to finish today's talk. But quickly, this program is supported by the generosity of listeners like you. And right now, during our year-end match, it's a great time to partner with us. Between now and December 31st, every gift we receive will be doubled dollar for dollar.

You can give today by going to livingontheedge.org or by calling 888-333-6003. Well, with that, here again is Chip to continue his message. And so he's on it.

She gets about 20 feet away. He doesn't move. And then he does the unthinkable.

Will you give me a drink of water? Wait a minute. He's dressed. He's a rabbi. He's a Jew. He's speaking to me. One, two, three strikes.

This is unbelievable. She gets closer. Now, a Jew would never drink out of a cup or something that a Samaritan had.

It would be defiled. He not only speaks to her, will you give me a drink? That means she's going to dip her water down in there, and he would drink out of it. How are you, a Jew, speaking to me, a woman?

He gets up, and the conversation starts. And then notice what he does. This is a woman who's been used and abused.

She's certainly made some bad choices, but most people that go through multiple men and are promiscuous have been wounded or abused and hurt and are looking for satisfaction and worth and value, and her life is totally messed up. And Jesus does something very humble. He puts himself in a position of need rather than authority and said, would you give me a drink?

I don't have anything. He says, I need your help. And notice at the bottom of your notes, here's the lesson. We must intentionally break through any and every barrier to the gospel. Jew and Samaritan, male and female, rabbi and Samaritan, social barriers, whatever it takes.

And then he humbles himself. Like you, I'm praying that God will help my neighbors come to have a personal relationship with Jesus. And when we first moved in, I have one neighbor that we've actually become good friends now, but he made it very clear early on, look, I'm not a good neighbor, okay? Don't bother me.

I've got a reputation in the community, and a couple other people confirmed that reputation. And don't mess with me. And I mean, this was like, the walls were coming up, many heard I was a pastor. And it was kind of like, hey, don't get me into that Jesus stuff either. He didn't quite say it like that. But a little later I found out it came from a background where not a good religious experience, and he really has rebelled.

And so I just want you to know, forget it. And you know, we tried little things and helping out and doing things and praying and didn't see lots of results. And I just remember doing some stuff in our garage and I was trying to cover something, it took two people. And I remember thinking, and so I just asked him, could you give me a hand? And he looked at me, I really need your help. And he came over with me and as we were doing it, and then, and these kind of things, everyone's smarter than me. He goes, you know, actually you ought to do this and do that and do that.

He always has lots of good suggestions, or at least suggestions. And so anyway, we did it his way and we got done and something happened. Just something happened. Something happened because this isn't the pastor that's going to tell him what he ought be, should. I needed help. Remember, this is how you build relationships. See, sometimes we think as Christians, we're supposed to fix people and tell them what they ought to do and here's, you know, we've got all this something and they need. Jesus models just the opposite. Who are the people at work that you need to ask help?

Who's a neighbor that you need to ask help for? You build relationship when there's mutual need. The second big section is that Jesus offers to quench your deepest thirst. There's going to be a bit of play on words.

There's going to be physical water and spiritual water. And Jesus, verse 10 answers her, if you knew, underline the word gift, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that ask you for a drink, underline the word who. See, no one cares about this lady.

No one. And his first response is he has a gift. And if she understood who he was, you would ask him and he would give you living water. Sir, the woman said, she looks at him, you have nothing to draw with and the well is very deep. Actually, it's a hundred feet deep. Where will you get living water?

And then she throws in a little sarcasm. I mean, you know, that would be impossible. A hundred feet well, living water, this running water that's a fountain that's even better than well water. You're saying you could offer it. You don't have anything. Are you a greater than our father, Jacob?

You know, and grammatically it's like no way. Who gave us this well, drank from it himself and also his sons, his flocks and his herds. And Jesus answered, now he's making the parallel, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. And he's tapping in thirst as a metaphor for what satisfies, what do you, you know, physical stuff, physical, you drink, you get thirsty again, you drink, you get thirsty again. But whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst indeed. The water that I will give him will become, notice, in him a spring of water welling up to change of topic, eternal life. He's offering her eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so I won't get thirsty and have to come back here and draw water again.

You know, just like the play on words, Nicodemus, the word spirit and wind, now there's physical water and he's speaking of the Holy Spirit and relationship and you know, your life revolves around coming out here alone as a desperate, lonely woman who's wounded because you're rejected by the women and by everyone in the town and your promiscuous past and present. If gift, who it is, God, I want to give you not just something to fix your temporary life. I want to fix your heart. I want to forgive you. I want to restore you. I want to put you on a new path. I want you to know that no one else may think you're valuable. I made you.

I love you. I think you're valuable and I want to help you. And she doesn't quite get it. Basically, she gets the idea that it might be sort of magical water.

You know, if I don't have to make this trip all the time, that sounds good. Here's the life lesson, the application, kind of the timeless principle. Grace, not condemnation, is what draws people to Jesus. Jesus met the woman's perceived need and offered help.

He moved the conversation from her physical needs to spiritual issues and then he sought to give her grace. See, we tend to think these people need this and you know what? Here's what he didn't say. Oh, you know why I'm sitting on this well? Why? Because we need to have a talk. You know and I know why you're here at noon, right?

You're one of those kind of women, right? Now, go clean up your act. And by the way, I know about the husbands. I know about the living boyfriend. I know about your whole lifestyle.

Clean up your act, lady. Then we'll have a talk and we'll get you right. That's kind of the approach that you hear and sometimes it's not that explicit but there's sort of this self-righteous sense when some Christians talk to people outside of Christ and Jesus does just the opposite. If you knew the gift, see, it's serving people. Jot in your notes Romans chapter two. Just put Romans chapter two.

It says this, it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance or to a change of mind. The people at your work, it's your kindness. The people in your neighborhood, it starts with little things. You can bring in their trash cans and for those of you that don't have a gardener, you can mow their lawn.

You bring in their mail. You find out what's going on in their life. You serve them. It's building a relationship with the person that serves you coffee. It's getting to know the person on the treadmill next to you.

It's volunteering and being the assistant coach for Little League and you're going, I just don't have time to do this and you actually meet the needs and invite people to your home. You love people. That's what opens the door. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and the message you just heard, Jesus Models His Mission, is from the first volume of Chip's series, Jesus Unfiltered, titled Believe. Chip will join us in studio to share some insights from today's talk in just a minute.

A.W. Tozer once said, What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. In this series, Chip's going to help us get a clear, accurate picture of Jesus by studying John chapters one through five.

Discover what this passage reveals about Christ as our Savior, Messiah, and the truth. If you've missed any part of this series or want to learn more about our resources, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org. Well, Chip's joined me in studio now to share something that's been on his heart recently. Chip?

Thanks so much, Dave. I think we would all agree as we look at the United States and the entire world, the world needs Jesus, right? We're all on the same page here. But the fact of the matter is, is that the average person who claims the name of the Lord Jesus doesn't look a lot like Jesus. The churches have become social clubs who don't stand for the truth.

They're not hospitals that care for the sick. Pastors literally are admitting only 11 to 12 percent say, I think I'm competent and I know how to disciple people. Churches aren't meeting some of the deepest needs in their community. Somehow, someway, we've lost our way, not just doctrinally, but how we live.

This must change. And Living on the Edge is a catalytic ministry that equips followers of Jesus worldwide to become Romans 12 Christians. We exist to help Christians live like Christians.

We exist and God has blessed us to help train pastors and leaders here and around the world and to reach the next generation. Most believers in the first century at great risk actually lived and spoke and sacrificed their lives. They didn't have our technology and they turned the world upside down.

And it wasn't because they had extra something. It was because they were disciples who reflected the Lord Jesus. I meet so many people that want to be that kind of follower.

They don't know how. They need help. And that's where we step in. If you are committed to Christians living like Christians and changing the trajectory of what's happening in America and the world, would you pray? Would you ask God, what do you want me to give to Living on the Edge to be a part of this movement? And if you will obey Him, we'll have all the resources we need to do our part as God builds His church.

Thanks so much. Well, if you want to be part of encouraging Christians to really live like Christians, it's a great time to become a financial partner. From now until December 31st, every dollar we receive will be doubled thanks to some generous friends of the ministry. To give a gift, give us a call at 888-333-6003 or visit livingontheedge.org. That's 888-333-6003 or go to livingontheedge.org. App listeners, tap donate, and we appreciate you giving whatever God leads you to give.

Well, with that, here's Chip to share some application for us to think about. As we close today's program, I think there's a couple of very important lessons that we learn from Jesus' historical interaction with the Samaritan woman. I think the first and foremost is that we're never too far from God for Him to break through whatever barrier needs to be broken through if you and I are just willing to be honest. And that's painful, and it's hard.

And it was a process for her. But I don't know what's going on in your life. I don't know what your struggles are.

But I know that if you try and work them out yourself, if you keep blaming other people, if you just keep thinking that you can do the same thing that you're doing right now and life is going to get better and right, that's a dead end. But if you'll be honest, I mean absolutely honest, broken before God, He will meet you. He'll forgive you. He'll restore you. Now, the Restoration doesn't mean that everything's going to be wonderful and you're never going to have any problems. The Restoration means you've got to deal with some stuff. The Restoration means you're going to have to have people in your life to do life with you. And so I don't know where you're at in terms of reading the Bible or talking with God or going to a Bible-oriented church, but I can tell you this.

God's grace is available, but those are the tools through which that grace flows. And so you can ask God for help, and He reaches out and says, here's my word. Come, talk to me, share your heart. He'll meet you. These are my people. Let them love you. And if you'll go on that journey, here's what I will tell you.

He will meet you with the same kind of power and love and forgiveness that He met this lady. And so decide today, what are you going to do and what one human being are you going to tell honestly? This is where I messed up.

The secret's out of the bag. This is what I did. And here's the next step I'm going to take.

You do that and God will show up. Thanks, Chip. As we close, are you looking to get even more plugged in with Living on the Edge and our resources? Then let me encourage you to check out the Chip Ingram app. Now you can listen to our most recent series, sign up for daily discipleship and more. We want to help you grow in your walk with Jesus, and the Chip Ingram app is a great way to immerse yourself in Godly, enriching content. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Next time we'll continue his series, Jesus Unfiltered Volume Believe. I'm Dave Druey, and I hope you'll join us then.