Just Add Water Series

Template Oct 22, 2006 Messy Spirituality Series 4

Felt Need: I believe God forgives, but I am not sure He forgives me, am I too much of a loser for God?

Hoped for Result: Listeners will understand and believe in their hearts that God Forgives our past and He loves and accepts, us in the process.

Message: Just add water

Scripture: John 4:1-26 NIV John’s Gospel DVD

Synopsis:

1. Jesus see beyond our sins, our weaknesses and failures.

A. What does Jesus see in the Woman at the well?

1. Jesus respects her

2. Jesus turns her from loser to winner.

Ill. Vincent’s story about grace graciously given in the messiest of circumstances.

B Many of us are still trying to repent in a good enough way that we can feel worthy of God’s love and forgiveness.

1. Are guilty of creating our own divine punishment?

2. Are we guilty of trying to earn our way into the kingdom?

C. What are the benefits of the changed life?

1. “After Jesus conversation with Jesus, the woman at the well is just beginning a whole new way of living, but none of the facts of her life have changed”.

2. The good news for us is that if this was true for the woman at the well, it is also all the more true for us. “ The implications for us are overwhelming. Those of us who want to move on from our past, those who have come to the end of the road, can start with our unchanged life, now. We don’t have to wait until we are “mature”.We don’t have to move to a new town or convince others we are serious; we simply start. We begin. We take the first bumbling, stumbling, teetering steps toward the spiritual life, even if we’re not very good at it.”

Metaphor: We built a wall out of paper grocery bags and wrote words and phrases that we use to keep God at a distance. We had water bottles hidden behind that had lable that said "For Messy Christians, free refills" We invited people to keep or give them away.

Music:

Graphic Image:

Just Add Water John 4:1-26

1. Jesus see beyond our sins, our weaknesses and failures.

A. What does Jesus see in the Woman at the well?

Let’s look at this most amazing story in to get a good sense of what is going on here. This is a remarkable story because it comes under the up side down kingdom concept.

Verse 9 is the first clue that there is something different going on. How does the Samaritan woman respond to Jesus request for a drink of water?

The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘You are a Jew an I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans)

This goes back hundreds of years. When the Jews were exiled by their captors. Some of the Jews married outside their faith. This made them half breeds. There was to be no interaction with them, they were unclean, they fell into the same category as pigs which were considered unclean. Rabbi’s were not supposed to talk to women especially alone. These facts alone make the whole story amazing, because Jesus was certainly aware of the cultural taboos of the day.

Jesus respects her, he ignores her question about appropriate behavior and goes to the next level. “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

The woman is ready to go forward in this affirmation relationship that Jesus offers, and then begins to think besides being thirsty who is this man, that accepts me as a Samaritan, as a woman?

Jesus offers the water of the spirit that is beyond the physical. She hears him, but immediately thinks this would be a great deal, then I wouldn’t have to keep coming down to the well in the hottest part of the day alone.

Jesus then goes to her heart and invites her to bring her husband. She says “I have no husband”

Now it really get messy! Jesus tells her what she already knows that she had 5 husbands and she is living with someone.

The woman is sure Jesus is some kind of prophet that he would know these secret details about her life.

The woman changes the subject from herself to places of worship.

Jesus describes a God this isn’t just in the mountains or the synagogue. He describes a God that is of Spirit and truth, that goes beyond the physical places of mountains or synogues. “God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”