Text Illustration:
LOOKING THROUGH CLEAN WINDOWS
A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside.
'That laundry is not very clean', she said. 'She doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap'
Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.
About one month later, the woman was surprised to see nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: 'Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this?'
The husband said, 'I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.'
And so it is with life. What we see when watching others, depends on the purity of the window through which we look.
TEXT: 2 TIMOTHY 4:1-5 (Don’t read yet)
2 Timothy 4
1 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:
2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.
3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
John 4:1-28New International Version (NIV)
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
4 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 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.)
10 Jesus answered her, “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.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 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?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.”
15 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.”
16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 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.”
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 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. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season;
Jesus was ready to talk to anyone. Like the woman the well. You see he would have known Samarians were coming to the well. It was there time to come to get water, because they could not come at the same time the Jews came. Jews did not mix with Samaritans. 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”
correct, rebuke
16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 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.”
encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.
10 Jesus answered her, “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.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 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?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.”
3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
That time is here. Recently I saw a video on Facebook that greatly disturbed me. You see I was trying to prepare for this week and God had stirred some things up in me and I was struggling with weather I should preach today’s passage. The man on the video, what I will call a fire and brim stone pastor was standing by a trash barrel and tearing pages out of the bible and burning them, throwing them away. You see we have churches and church people doing just that. Ripping out and preaching only what they believe to be true. They are doing figuratively exactly what this preacher was doing. We have people saying this is not a sin or that is not a sin when the inspired book of God, the Bible says that it is a sin.
They say that Jesus didn’t talk about it so we should ignore it. Jesus didn’t say a lot of things that God says in the old testament. We need to remember that Jesus was God’s son. Sometimes we put so much emphasize on Jesus we forget God. God is who we worship. God is who sent Jesus. God created the earth.
On the flip side God defined marriage at the beginning of time Genesis 2: 24 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Jesus reiterates this in Matthew 19:4-6New International Version (NIV)
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Jesus said what God also said and yet even if both say it we ignore it.
Others will say that God did not know this or that would happen. You are talking about the creator of the universe. A universe that is so fragile that if something is out of sync that we could either become burn toast or an iceberg. Bodies that are so complex that if your platelets are out of whack you start bleeding through your skin. He did know. God is the creator and he knows everything.
If we are trying to solve a problem in this world like health care for people we care for then let’s call it something else, but it is not marriage.
Let me go back to the scripture in Timothy verse two. 2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.
Again what did Jesus do he told her that her past was sin and pointed out that she had been married several times before and the current person she was with was not her husband. He did ignore the sin he gave her correction and then he loved the daylight of her. Offering her a way to receive eternal living water.
Let me ask you as parents did you or have you ever correct you children and tell them they were wrong. Did that mean that you did not love them? NO.
We live in a society today that does not like to be told that they are wrong. In fact they tell us that we are wrong and we don’t have a right to think they are wrong.
We have a society that does not want a Christian to stand up for what they believe.
We also have churches that stand up for what they believe and forget the encourage with great patience and careful instruction.
You see both sides are wrong, you cannot condone sin and you can’t not love someone. We as a church have to hold people accountable and love them.
People want to condemn sins and not love, yet we have to remember these words in Romans 3:23
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We forget that we have sin in our lives. Everyone has sin and if don’t condone sin in others we condone it in our lives.
No sin is greater than another and all sin can be forgive through the blood of Jesus Christ. Here is the key, we have to repent. No longer want to do it. If it is never want to do it again.
Not like the little boy who did want to clean his room and finally his mother got him to do it and she said now aren’t you glad you cleaned it up and are you sorry you let it get that way? He said yes but it was sure fun making it a mess.
Text Illustration:
Pastor Jack Hayford tells the following story…
Early in his career, Matt Redman, the popular Christian musician in Britain, was singing with his church’s praise band when his pastor confronted them.
They were proud of their musical performance, he said, but they were neglecting true worship.
Insulted by the charge, the members of the band left the church—all, that is, except Redman.
Shortly afterward, he wrote his hit song "The Heart of Worship," which included these words: "I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about you, Jesus."
Where are you today? Do you believe the scripture is God breathed?
We should be ready to talk about Him in season and out of season. We should not accept sin but love the sinner and pray with them and for them.
We need to realize that we are sinners.
