Pastor Kevin, I'm speaking about the woman at
the well. This is a bottle of water. It's
my prop.
Here we go.
Yeah. On a more serious note, when
David was sharing, you know, your wife gets a
diagnosis of cancer and go through six
surgeries, and here she is. You can trust him.
Michelle and I looked at each other because we both experienced this
and said, and when he takes them home, you can
still trust him. Because you can.
You can. Yeah. The last time
I was up, six, seven weeks ago, something, whatever it was
I was speaking, I had been assigned
Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones. And I got up and I
complained about that assignment. I, you know, I said this, you know,
once I found out that was what I was going to be speaking about, I
was going, oh, yeah, great. But. And I started a
trend because the next two or three people who were up
kind of followed suit. I, I need to
somewhat make amends this morning and say, I love
this story. I, I,
Kevin had asked us, Pastor Kevin had asked us last year
for some topics that we would like to cover under
Greatest Stories Ever Told. And I think I
sent him five, four, five, six, something like that. I got one,
but it was the one I really wanted. And it's,
and it's this one, the story of Jesus coming to the woman in
Samaria. And I love the fact that it
happens one chapter after another
encounter over in John chapter 3, that
Jesus has with a prominent Jewish leader
named Nicodemus. Last week, Pastor Justin,
where is he? He baptized somebody. Oh, there he is. Okay, over there. I just
wanted to be sure you hadn't snuck out on me. Now, last
week he brought a terrific sermon about the
wedding of Cana, turning the water into wine. And he started
out by, I want to give you some context. So he went back and he
preached through chapter one as well. And I went, you don't have enough
to say about turning the water into wine, do you? So that's why you went
back and did that. But it turned out that he had
plenty to say about both of them, and he, and he melded them together
beautifully. So this week I thought, well, I'll go
back and do chapter three as well. Well, I'm not going
to, but,
But I love the juxtaposition. I'll talk about it a couple of times.
The juxtaposition of this prominent
religious Jewish leader coming to Jesus and the way
Jesus shared with him and ministered to him, and then
this Samaritan woman and Jesus coming to her
in the way that he ministered to Her.
I love the
juxtaposition there.
Jesus left an area of fruitful
ministry. In fact, it says, we're going to read it here
in just a minute, that he was making and baptizing more
disciples than John, than John the Baptist was. He left an
area of fruitful ministry, not because of opposition,
but because he had a divine appointment
in a little town called Sychar. It's the only time it's ever mentioned in
scripture, and it may still exist, but it
not Sychar anymore. That's lost to history.
With an unnamed woman. And we
don't know her name, but God does.
Jesus wasn't just telling a parable.
He wasn't just blowing smoke when he talked about
leaving the 99 and going after the 1. He did
it, and he's still doing it. He still
does it. Okay, I want you to stand with me. It's going to be kind
of a long reading, but it's a good story. It's really
good.
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that
he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John,
although in fact, it was not Jesus who baptized,
but his disciples. So he left Judea and went
back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go
through Samaria. 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. Jesus, tired as he was from
the journey, sat down by the well. It was about
noon when a Samaritan woman came to draw water.
Jesus said to her, will you give me a drink?
The Samaritan woman said to him, you are a Jew
and I am 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. And who it is that asks 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 also his sons
and his livestock? Jesus answered, everyone
who drinks this water will be thirsty again.
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 Call your husband and come back.
I have no husband, she replied. Jesus said
to her, you are right when you say you have no
husband. The fact is you have had five
husbands and the man you now have is not your
husband. What you have just said is quite true,
sir. The woman said, I can see that you
are prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on
this mountain. But you Jews claim that the place
where we must worship is in Jerusalem. Woman
Jesus replied, believe me, a 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 has now
come when the true worshipers will worship the Father
in the spirit and in truth. For they are the kind of
worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit,
and his worshipers must worship in the spirit. And
in truth. The woman said, I know
that Messiah called, called Christ is coming. When
he comes, he will explain everything to us.
Then Jesus declared, I the one speaking
to you. I am he. Father, I thank you for your
word. I pray for the presence of the Holy
Spirit. I pray, Father, that the Spirit would be
manifest in each person here, giving us ears to
hear, hearts to understand. And I pray, Father, that you would filter
the things that. That come out of me and that
truth would go forth in Jesus name. Amen.
This last week for me has
sort of been a Wayne Berry week.
Yeah. First of all, we
had lunch together. I am a name dropper. I
had lunch when we married. And then
secondly, while we were there, he had a cassette tape that he
wanted me to hear. And in fact, he wanted me to hear this cassette
tape so much, he brought a cassette player to
the. To load it to me just in
case. And it's a good thing he did.
I was listening to it and I'd heard really everything on
it. And a lot of it, I had
a lot of it. I already had recorded in other forms and could
hear it. But one of the songs really
caught me. And it was a song that Wayne wrote
called Word about Jesus. And great
song. It's a terrific song. The full title of it is probably
how come you never say a word about Jesus?
But what really got me was the introduction to the song,
which I will never forget.
I did the introduction. It was not one of my better moments.
And it went on for about two minutes.
I opened up by saying, this song's about witnessing
and I'm the world's worst,
you know, I mean.
And I spent the next Two minutes, just kind of stuttering and
saying, you know and I know and you know, about
50 times. And I finally ended up with,
there's this guy at work and he comes in
almost every day and says, what do you know? And I
hate it when he says, what you know, because
I know what I know. And I don't, you
know, and
I don't. I don't shout out something really great like Jesus
is Lord or Jesus loves you, Bill.
Instead I usually say,
you know, don't you see, I was brought up in a.
In a church culture that was very much about witnessing and
testifying. And, you know, you're supposed to go out there and you're supposed to just
lay it on the line with them.
And it did. It bothered me every day when Bill would say,
what you know. Now, it probably would not have been a very
good idea to stand up in the middle of the Social Security
office and yell, jesus is Lord maybe once.
But he says this every day. And
it probably would have been a pretty good idea
to say, jesus loves you, Bill.
Only I would not have said, jesus loves you, Bill.
I would have said, jesus loves you, Bill. And you need to get that through
your reprobate skull before you split hell wide open
and fry for eternity.
Amen.
This passage that we have read
is how Jesus does it. Perfect
example of
how to witness. The first thing that
he does is he empowers this woman by asking her
for help. You
give me a drink. Kind of dry. I could
use a drink here. We tend to
start off by letting them know that they need our help because
we know what's wrong with them and we can tell them what's wrong with them
and we got the answer. And eventually
we might actually get around talking about Jesus. But first of all, let's fix you.
We need to flip that mentality. We need to turn it on
its absolute head.
News flash. With the way the church acts
in our culture, also known as
arrogance, the last thing
the world is going to respond to is us telling, as
a know it all attitude. Really,
I'm going to say this in this service, too. I bet some of you got
it. But I'm not talking to you. So, Holy Spirit, if you hear,
you know, I'll drive down the road, sometimes I'll see a bumper sticker or
I'll see a, you know, license plate. Sometimes I don't know. In
fact, there was a guy in the first service, had the tattoo. It says,
don't tread on me. And you know,
and I know what they're Saying is, get out of my way
and don't mess with me and everything. There was a guy,
I saw this last week who had taken it up a notch.
He had a bumper sticker and had a snake on it that kind of had
a, you know, a sort of grin on it. And it said,
tread on me, come on, make
my day kind of thing. That's our mentality,
you know, we tend to go out with, okay, yeah, come on,
bring it, big boy. Hey, you got Satan, I got God. Bring it, come
on. Humility is
so disarming
because as soon as we come with,
guess what they come with.
But when you come with humility, like, can you help me?
I need your help. Let's start at that point.
Jesus with this woman uses the metaphor of living
water to draw deeper into the conversation.
He used a metaphor with Nicodemus. Does anybody know what it was?
Born again. That's right. Have to be born again.
Draw Nicodemus deeper because that's, that's what
each have their, each has their own path. And
Nicodemus walked an intellectual path which,
you know, some might deride. I know I was kind of brought
up in the culture that, you know, if you, if you had more than an
eighth grade education, you were kind of suspicious. We were, we were sort of suspicious
of you. But I'm glad,
I'm glad that that's a legitimate path. If it weren't a legitimate path,
we'd all have to learn Greek and Hebrew to read the Bible. But
God, you know, has brought people in who have the ability to
translate and do things for us. And had Nicodemus
not come this way, and Jesus went,
finally said Nicodemus, let me explain it to you plainly,
intellectually, but plainly, if we had not had him there,
we would not have. This is the intellectual
explanation. Plainly. God loves the world
so much that he gave his one and only
son that whoever believes on it would
not die, but have everlasting life.
So, you know, I'm glad that way.
This woman just simply wanted something to drink.
This woman was simply interested in getting some water.
And so that's how Jesus came with her.
What, what you're interested in, what your needs are, the way that you're going,
that's the way we're going to, that's where we're going to start. Because you can
start from anywhere to get to God.
She was simply interested. There is no one size fits all.
So that's the first thing we need to know. You know, somebody.
It may have been, and I don't Think it was the case. In fact, I
think Bill was a Christian. But now that I look back on it. But,
you know, some. It may have worked with some people to go,
jesus loves you, and you need to get that through your thick skull before, because
you're going to hell. Otherwise. That may be what works with some people. That's not
what's going to work with a lot of people. And it's not size fits
all. There's no script except the
Holy Spirit. And we may not have
the perfect metaphor to bring to the
conversation, but living water should flow, not
vinegar.
Jesus said, the water that I give them will become
in them a spring of water welling up into eternal life.
And that's. I don't know about you,
I don't like the smell of vinegar,
but if it's around, I can smell it.
And when it's coming forth, they can smell it.
And then the woman says something that always brings a smile to my face.
I mean, I just have to kind of go, oh, yeah, right.
Are you greater than our Father Jacob?
I mean, think about that for a second. She's talking
to God and going, are you greater than
Jacob? You know, and it would have been. It would have been
easy. Jesus was not offended
nor distracted by that comment. And we
often get so easily offended, so easily distracted.
All it takes is just, you know, a little and we're
gone. Not in the moment anymore. We've
lost point on where we're going.
And it's because we tend to come with an attitude of war rather than an
attitude of humility. We somehow think that the
disastrous approach of the Crusades will somehow work this
time. I think this time it'll turn out good
if we do it that way.
Jesus comes with love. I mean,
who doesn't love love?
In fact, it's what everybody's searching for.
And we know where it is. And the term may be born again,
or the term may be living water, but what it is, is
it's Jesus and it's love.
And he was. He was a revolutionary. He was
a radical revolutionary.
Jesus was not intimidated by social norms.
He was talking with a woman who did not know him.
Now, in our culture, that's not a big deal. Guys do it all the time
or try to do it. You know, if the woman's got any set, she just
kind of goes, yeah, whatever. But you know that.
But there are cultures, and not just. Not just the culture of Jesus today,
there are cultures in the world right now where that's a big, big no,
no. And yet
Jesus wasn't. He was totally
disregarding or disrespectful of the cultural norms because
I'm sure this was not something he did all the time, but God had told
him something and that that's more important
than what the culture around us tells us to do. But
it's not just the world that intimidates with social norms. The church
does as well. I
wonder. I wonder if God
had pause when giving the law or having.
What's that guy's name? Paul. Having Paul write some
of the things that he wrote. I wonder if God stopped
and thought, they need to know this,
but they're going to turn it into something it was never intended to be.
Think about that for a second, because that's what we do with it.
The scripture does not instruct us to. To
confront the lost with. To convict the lost
of their sin. That's the job of the Holy Spirit. Jesus
says when he comes, he will convict the world of sin and
righteousness and judgment. That's his job.
Our job, actually. How many of you like to bring bad
news? How many of you like to
bring good news? How many of you just don't give
a flip? I'd always
rather bring good news than bad news.
And we're called to share the gospel of the kingdom,
so. Well, now we're also called to tell people to repent.
To repent means to change your mind, change your
mind about something. And yes, there are things that.
That the world needs to change their mind about in terms
of morals and
other stuff. There are things that I need to change my mind about.
There are things that you need to change your mind about,
but those are just things.
The thing that they really need to change their mind about is how they
think about God. Not sure
if he's there or not. No, I. He is there.
I don't know that he loves. He does love me.
Well, I don't know how Jesus fits all the. Jesus came
and gave his life for me. That's.
That's repentance. That's. That's changing our mind
about things. When I was a. When I was. When
I was a pastor. Yeah, when I was a pastor. Kevin's in charge
now, and if you got a problem, talk to him. If you're a woman, talk
to Barbie. It's that cut and dried.
My number's now unlisted.
But I would try to travel. I traveled incognito
as a pastor. And nothing
against those who. That's not what they're called to. Do,
you know, those who. Because of the structure
that they're in are required to wear a collar. Or those who
feel like they're supposed to dress in a certain way that kind of says,
you know, man of God, woman of God. You know, because there are places, there
are times where people go, man, I really need a man. Oh, there's
one, you know, and that's okay. There's times to be
identified. But I would travel incognito because as soon as
somebody found out I was a pastor, you
could see. You could see them rifling the files and go, what have I said
to this guy? You know, what am I not going to say to this guy
in the future? And the wall's there. You
can't. You can't really get through it that way.
Jesus was not intimidated by social norms.
Jesus was also not concerned with race or ethnicity.
Back in the 80s. A lot of you already know this.
I lived for a while in Zimbabwe, which was just
north of it. Borders South Africa.
South Africa's south, obviously. Zimbabwe is just to the
north of it. And it was a period of apartheid.
And for those of you who don't know what apartheid is, it
was a political system that separated the races from each other
legally. You know, if you're this race, this is what you'll do. And if
you're this race, this is what you'll do. And it was a big deal as
far as the world was concerned. A lot of countries were
boycotting South Africa and all kinds of things.
In fact, interestingly enough, it occurred to me in the first service
that the one country that
was the major trading party was South Africa. So they could get around things
was Israel, which is where Jesus is at this
moment right now.
And they had. They had racial classifications in South Africa,
but probably the most despised were those of
mixed race, as they called them.
That's who the Samaritans were to the Jews.
See, interesting enough, most of the Samaritans were Jews,
but they were not able to trace their ancestry back
the pure line of those returning from
Babylon. It astounds
me that some who
claim to be Christians can make an issue of race.
First of all, if you believe in Adam and Eve,
then we're all mixed race. We all came, we
all got the same daddy, the same mommy back
there somewhere. And also,
Jesus died for all over. In
Revelation, chapter five, there's this scroll, and
it's got seals on it. And no one's found who's
worthy to open the seals. And John is weeping because the
seals can't be opened. And then he's told, don't weep
anymore. The lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lamb of God,
has been found worthy. And a song breaks
out in heaven. You are worthy to take the scroll
and open its seals because you were slain. And with your
blood you purchased for God persons from
every tribe and language
and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God.
And they will reign on the earth from every tribe
and language, people and nation. And then
there's, you know, there's Galatians 3. 28. In Christ,
there's neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There's neither
male nor female. You're all one in
Christ.
And yet some of
us don't feel that way.
I was at least 30 years ago. It was more than that.
I remember bringing a sermon over in the old
sanctuary about
race. Had
several people leave the church after it.
What you're saying it's okay
for us to be together? Can't be.
Jesus was not put off by any of this.
The Samaritans were despised. And even she
said, you know, you're a Jew, I'm a Samaritan. You guys don't have anything to
do with us. Jesus didn't fall for it.
He didn't get into a discussion. He didn't talk about, oh, well, let
me tell you why I'm talking. No, he just said,
if you knew who you were talking to, you'd ask me and I'd give you
living water. Is that even on the subject? Yes, it is on
the subject.
Okay, let's get into the good ones. Now, there's two more.
He was not put off by her morals.
There's a reason why she was coming in the heat of the day
to draw water. All the other women came early in
the morning when it was cool. She came in the heat of the day.
I have learned, as I've gotten older,
some things about women.
Yeah, See, the early service crowd was a lot older, so
a lot more of the guys went, yeah, yeah, you know,
But I've learned some things about women, actually.
And one of the things that I've learned about women is
they're mean.
They have a tendency to be mean. Michelle
is the exception. Just
wanted to say, but they're mean. They hold a grudge
sometimes. You know, they can be ra.
And so this woman had a reputation.
And so when it came time to go to the well, all the other women
are going to the well. And there's a reason why she didn't Go with them.
Keep from getting her face scratched.
And she's finally intrigued enough.
She still doesn't get it, but she's finally intrigued enough. Go, yeah, I want
some of this. I want some water. You know, you don't have to understand everything
about God to want God. You don't have to understand
everything about Jesus to want Jesus. The important thing is that
you want him. And so she says, yes,
I'm in. Give me this water so that I won't have
to keep coming here to draw water.
And when she does, he
shines a light on her morals. He doesn't condemn them, he just shines a
light on them because they're
not what this conversation is about.
Had he began going, yeah, you know, well, let's talk about
that here for a minute, then the conversation would
have never gone where it was supposed to ultimately end up.
You're right. When you say you have no husband, go and call your husband.
Come back, oh, you don't have a. Well, you know, you're right. The fact is
you've had five husbands, and the man that you're. You're with right
now, he's not your husband. Even what you have just said is
quite true. In fact,
rather than going, and so, yeah, we need to talk about this because, yeah,
I bet somebody, he goes, I commend your truth.
I commend your truthfulness. I just want
to note that it's true.
God hasn't told me to give you all the details
about what a sinner I am, but
take my word for it, I am.
Paul writes in Romans, chapter seven,
the things that I want to do, the
things that I know to do, I don't always do them.
And the things that I don't want to do, the things I know I shouldn't
do, every now and then I.
Yeah, I do. Am I right, Justin? Yeah.
Every now and then I do those. What a wretched man I
am. Who can possibly save me from this?
Well, actually, I do know who. That's what he says.
When I came back to the lord in the 70s,
there were quite a few. There were a lot of people who would kind of
say, well, now, that was before Paul was saved. After
Paul was saved, that wasn't his condition anymore.
They lied.
Jesus tells the woman, you know, yeah, you. You
don't have a husband right now. You've had five, and you got a guy, but
he's not your husband. That's a word of
knowledge, and that is a
supernaturally revealed piece of knowledge.
According to First Corinthians 12, 8. It's available to all
believers. And
when I say supernatural revealed, it's not like, you know, a parent and a child.
You know, when you were a little child, you do something, and you.
And how your mom knew, how your dad knew
it was just a mystery. And they say, well, I have eyes in the
back of my head. Well, you know, that was not true
either. What they were actually saying is, you're
just not very good at it. You know, I can
catch you pretty easily. And besides, I've already been there and done that.
But God gives sometimes a supernatural
word that's kind of like, oh, my
goodness, you know, the Lord just. Just read my mail. And it's
never given for a floor show.
It's never given for a performance. Lots of maze people here.
Yes. The amazing ministry of Mr. Amaze,
you know, can tell you these things. He gives it
for a purpose, and he gave it here
for a purpose, a godly purpose.
So he's not sidetracked by her
morality. That's not the issue right
now. It's not where he's taking her. And then
here's a pretty big one. He's not put off by her
religion. He's not sidetracked by her religion.
And this is where most of us, we run off the rails.
Yeah. As soon as she realized
that she was speaking to a prophet, she had a question about
religion.
And I believe there was a measure of sincerity in her question. For years, I
kind of could hear her saying it. Our fathers worshiped here. You Jews
say we're supposed to worship over there. Which is it? You know, But I don't
think she said it that way. I think there was some sincerity there. I
really want to know. You know, we've been worshiping here, but I've heard
it's supposed to be over here. You know, what is it?
And Jesus replies with one of the most
powerful declarations, proclamations in all
of Scripture. Woman, believe
me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father. Neither
on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship
what you do not know. Worship in Samaria was set up by the
Northern kings because they were afraid, politically,
people would leave them and go to the southern kingdom if they had to
worship in Jerusalem. We worship what we do know
for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has
now come when the true worshipers will worship
the Father in spirit and in truth. For they are
the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is
spirit. His worshipers must worship in spirit.
And in truth,
some might argue, well, yeah, no, I mean, he. He said right there, you. You
Samaritans got it wrong. We got it right. No, we didn't.
No, he didn't. I mean, yes, they.
The Jews were doing according to what Moses had said, the Samaritans
worshiping according to what the northern kings
had said. But Jesus didn't say one was wrong and one was right.
In fact, he said, the time is coming and is now here.
When that doesn't matter.
When. That's not the point.
So what is the point? Well, this actually brings us to the
point. And the point is this. And it's so
beautiful. I know that Messiah
is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything
to us. And then Jesus declared, I
the one speaking to you.
That's me. That's what this whole
conversation is about. We had the
opportunity to go off the track here and off the trail here and down the
bunny trail there, but we stayed on the road. And this
is what it's about.
I said, this was a Pastor Wayne week for me. I don't
usually look at stuff on Facebook, but occasionally I'll get an email
saying, you might want to look at this. And most of the time I don't.
But if it's Wayne, occasionally I will. And I did.
And Wayne had posted something like this. He said,
a Dear Kingdom cohort of mine said,
when the pulpit has been traded for a podium.
He said, I'll add, the
church at large has a serious problem.
He was completing the sentence, when the
pulpit has been traded for a podium, the church at large has a serious problem.
He was also speaking prophetically
because all you have to do is look around, kind of go,
oh, that's where we are.
Another brother asked for an explanation, said, are you talking
about something specifically? And this just interestingly enough,
was a brother who post a lot of
political stuff and opinions and social stuff. Are you talking about something
specifically? And he asked for an explanation.
And I know this brother and I know that he has a soft heart. And
when I was his age, I was just as dumb as he is.
But I responded to him and I said, oh, so many things.
We were talking about trading the pulpit for a podium,
offers of prosperity doctrine,
social issues, personal opinion,
which, quite frankly, I think those are the same thing
because most of what we feel about social issues is our personal opinion. You
may go, oh, no, Pastor. Everything I believe about social issues is what
God thinks.
Really? Oh, really?
Yeah. Those things
that so easily draw people away, draw people
to themselves, draw people to focus on Them
and away from Jesus.
I, I
guess about the third time through this outline, getting
ready for this morning, this hit me and I'm just going to say
it. I'm going to put it up here and we're going to post it on
Facebook. And so, you know, it's true,
as the church grows in political power and influence,
it declines in spiritual power and influence.
And historically it's true. I mean,
I grew up as a child in the 50s and in the 60s and the
50s and 60s, the church had great influence on
the culture in the nation. And then in the early 70s, we
decided to get political
and you know, our influence in the
halls of power, if you will, of this world has been on the
ascendancy ever since. And the number of people who claim
Jesus Christ as their savior and attend church has been on the decline
ever since early 70s. Go,
go back and check it out.
The real issue is
this. The spirit and truth
issue is always
not what we think about these other things. That's not
the issue. We don't stand before God to hear
him say, well, now there was, let's see how you
what your opinion was on this. And it's
only one question. You know my son,
you know, my son, God isn't even
interested in real religion. He's interested in real
relationship.
Besides, what we think about. Our thoughts are not his thoughts.
His ways are not our ways.
But both our thoughts and our ways can become more like
him, but only as we stay focused on Him. See,
we tend to think we have this kind of thing. Well, if I got the
right opinion about all these issues, I'll be closer to
Jesus. No, you won't.
You get closer to Jesus and all this stuff will
fall into place where it's supposed to be.
Worship team, you can come out. This woman
was the wrong gender, she was the wrong
race, she was the wrong culture, she
was the wrong morality, she was
the wrong religion.
Yet Jesus came to her in person.
And apart from his disciples, she's the only one
recorded in scripture. Jesus plainly
revealed himself. I am
He, I am the Christ.
You got something to say, brother? Oh, you're just gonna sing?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah, I'll
get there in a second. If you
don't,
no matter what you've done, no matter
which side of issues you come down on,
I've had people, I've had people literally say to me,
I don't know how anybody can be a Democrat and call himself a Christian.
And I've actually had others say, I don't know how anybody
can be a Republican and call themselves a Christian. And I
don't answer that question because they don't. They're not. They don't want
an answer. It's a rhetorical point that they're making.
But if. If you wanted an answer, I got one.
The reason you don't know how anybody could be that other
party and be a Christian is because you don't know
what it is to be a Christian.
You don't know what that means,
because it's not about this stuff.
It's about Jesus. No matter what you've done,
no matter where you come down on particular things or whatever,
if he came to this woman and everything was wrong about
her, he'll come to you.
He's offering you living water as well.
That's just too good to be true. You're just
in the world. In the world,
virtually everything that sounds good is too good to be true. But in the
kingdom, the half has never yet been told.
It's just. We only have a glimpse of what
good actually is.
With those who are going to minister, come forward, if you would stand with me.
We're going to. We're going to do a song here that.
It's probably been 20 years since we've done this song.
And I didn't say anything to Jonathan and
Brittany about it, but just
early service, they started playing it and I went, whoa,
who told you to do that? And we know who told them
to do it. It was God. If you're here, you need
prayer for anything. These brothers and sisters,
all these sinners down here,
they'll pray with you. God will hear.
Let's do this. Let's do this song.