Episode 9 Jesus

In this episode, I tell my favorite story of Jesus from the book of John chapter 4. The woman at the well. I tell you what it is my favorite and how it applies to us today. 

I hope you will come to know and love Jesus like I do, I hope you will enjoy this episode. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Never Nobody, Never Nothing Podcast. This is episode number nine. Today we're talking about Jesus. Hello. Welcome to Nothing. It's Never Nobody Podcast. I love this always for the story of the Bible. They really are in God created them to be. Oh, it's fine. And me to find the do what I've read about mine ever living. And asking them to tell me their stories from their point of view. The thoughts that they had when they spoke to Jesus, when he reached out and healed them, or told them to simply stretch out their hand. Before I go into my most favorite of these stories, most people know John 3.16 is a verse that's often written on billboards, on signs on the side of the road. Well, there's more to that. And in the conversation that Jesus had with a Jewish leader named Nicodemus, he goes into a little bit more detail about why he's going to the cross, why he has to die, and the choice that each of us has to accept him or reject him, to be condemned or to be free. John chapter three, starting in verse 14, it says, Even so the Son of Man, Jesus Himself, was referred as the Son of Man and the Son of God. The Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. He who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God, and this is the condemnation that the light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, and that they may have been done in God. Jesus sacrificed himself for the whole world, not just for a select few. He did not come to this world to condemn it, and we will see this in all his interactions with all the people he healed, he spoke to, and he set free from the demonic oppression and demonic possession. Jesus himself explained that the state of the world was already that of being condemned, and they're condemned for their wickedness and their evil deeds. The reason people reject Jesus, who is also called the light of the world, and reject his salvation is because they prefer the darkness. They run from the light, they do not want their own evil deeds exposed. By not believing in Jesus, people have condemned themselves. This is a powerful statement of truth. God Himself, Jesus Himself, does not condemn or send anyone to hell. People choose to go there themselves. They reject the light, they reject the truth, they reject Jesus. It is up to each and every one of us to decide whether we're going to embrace Jesus and the light or reject it, and instead embrace the darkness and condemnation. Verse eighteen, Jesus himself says, He who does not believe is condemned already, because he had not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. I beg of you, don't love the darkness rather than the light. Choose Jesus, believe in Jesus. Do not condemn yourself to a place that was never meant for you. It was only meant for the devil and his demons. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it's embarrassing to admit the things that we have done, that we're ashamed of, that we don't want anybody to know. Let Jesus clean you, heal you, and get that out of your life. So you have a testimony for him. And so you no longer have to be ashamed. You no longer have to live condemned. We are promised in God's word that if we ask for forgiveness, forgiveness will be given every single time. All you have to do is believe in the name of Jesus to be saved. Let Jesus heal you and set you in right standing with God so you can be saved from that condemnation, be saved from hell. So that you can have access to the healing and the hope for wholeness and the power that comes from God's Spirit helping you in your daily life. Alright. Now on to my absolute favorite Jesus encounter. It's recorded only in the Gospel of John. It's found in chapter four, and verse three through thirty. I'm gonna read to you the whole thing and then talk to you about why. It's my absolute favorite. He left Judea and departed unto Galilee, but he needed to go through Samaria, so he came to a city of Samaria which is called Sikhar. It's near a plot of land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being weary from his journey, sat thus by the well. It is about the sixth hour of the day. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. When the woman of Samaria said to him, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealing with Samaritans. Jesus answered her and said, If you only knew the gift of God and who it was who asked you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock? Jesus answered her and said, Whoever drinks from this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks from the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water that I might not thirst, nor come here to draw. Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here. Jesus said to her, You have well said, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you have now is not your husband. In that you spoke truly. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He. At this point his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, yet none of them said, What do you seek or why are you talking to her? The woman then left her water pot and went into the city and said to the men, Come see, a man who told me all things I ever did. Come, could this be the Christ? Then they went out of the city and came to him. And many of the Samaritans of the city believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified, that he had told her everything she had ever done. So when the Samaritans had come, they urged him to stay with him, and he stayed for two days, and many more believed because of his own word. Then they said to the woman, Now we believe not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard him, and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. I love this story. If I could go back in time and witness any event in the Bible, I would want to go and see this one. I want to hear the voice of Jesus. I want to hear his tone, the inflection, I want to see the look in his eyes as he's looking at this woman and calling out the things that she has done, but yet doing it in such a way that she was receptive instead of rejecting it and becoming angry for having her sin called out. There's so many reasons that I love this story. First of all, Jesus was very intentional about going to Sikar, this city in Samaria. Jews would literally avoid going anywhere near Samaria because the divide between them and the Samaritans was that great. They would go out of their way, making their journeys significantly longer just to avoid going anywhere near these people. On top of that, it was a major societal faux pas for a man to be alone speaking with a woman. Jesus did it anyway. Women at the time were not considered being worthy of knowing the laws. Their job was to take care of the kids and maintain the household, and they were well, they were nothing and nobody. On top of that, this was a woman that was not held in high regard in her community. She was coming in the late afternoon to draw water from the well. The time of day that was best to come and draw water from the well would have been early in the morning when it was cooler. But because she had been married five times and the man she was with was not her husband, she was considered an outcast. This is why she was there during the hottest time of the day. So Jesus literally not only went to a town that all the Jews avoided, but he went there to meet a woman who was the outcast of her community. He went there to speak to the person who was wounded and broken. Jesus. My Jesus sought out this woman who much like him was rejected, dismissed, mocked, and deemed to be worthless. It was to this woman that Jesus himself first announces, first says with his own mouth that he is the Messiah, that he is the Christ that they have been waiting for. He didn't go to the most prominent family, to the richest, most powerful person in town to announce his arrival, trusting that their own renown would help spread who he was. Jesus went to the nothing and to the nobody of the town to offer her the living water, to give her of himself the spirit of God, which is that living water that refreshes the soul. This woman had gone to relationships to fill her void in her life and in her heart. She had sought relationship after relationship to complete her, to fill her, to satisfy her. We don't know whether she had been divorced from these men or if they had passed away. We just know that she had been married five times, and the man she had been currently with was not her husband. All of us, each and every one of us, has gone to the things of this world and the people of this world to fill a place in our life that can only be filled by God. We turn to other religions, we turn to psychology, we turn to drugs, alcohol, relationships, and every single time these things fail. They leave us empty, they leave us thirsty and wanting again. These systems, these tools, and the people of this world have no hope of ever being for us what we try to make them to be. The only one who can satisfy us, the only one who can give us what we need so desperately is Jesus. Jesus told this woman what she had been longing for, what she had been seeking in these marriages and in her current relationship was not satisfying her, and he could offer her something better. He wasn't talking about the physical water in the well. He was talking about living water. This could be understood by the people of that time because in their scriptures, in the prophet of Jeremiah in chapter two, it says that the fountain of living waters is actually God Himself. The verse actually says, For my people have committed two evils. One, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. Two, they have made for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. So Jeremiah, the prophet, was saying, speaking on behalf of God, the people have one, turned away from God, the only one who could help them, the only one who could give them what they needed, and instead found alternate ways themselves to try to satisfy themselves, but they were broken. The things they turned to, and in this picture that was given is a cistern, it was a well, it was a way for them to draw water. This was a visual picture given to the people of the time. What they had built for themselves and able to get what they believed they needed, it was broken. It could not hold water, it could not give them what they needed. For God Himself is the fountain of living water. What Jesus was offering was God's spirit to come into her life and fill her and satisfy her. So it would be with God's spirit within you that you don't have to go to this place or that place to worship God, to worship him in spirit and truth, his spirit inside of you, you can worship him wherever you are. Jesus, with his loving kindness, spoke to her about what she had gotten wrong and what she was doing that was not right. He addressed her sin. He didn't ignore it, he didn't sweep it under the rug or sugarcoat over it. And he spoke to her in such a way that she was receptive to what he said. She wasn't offended and she wasn't angry. She didn't stalk off or run away or ignore what he said. Instead, it spoke to her heart. It spoke to her wound. I believe that the tone in which Jesus spoke was what the Bible refers to as speaking the truth in love. It's not condemning. Remember, John 3 17, Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He treated her with kindness, gentleness, and meekness. He was reaching out to this woman and saying, You were never nothing. You were never nobody, and you have always been loved. Let me give you what it is that is missing, that you may be well and whole. You know in part, let me give you what you don't have and what you cannot attain on your own. God is very intentional. God knows each of you in each of your stories. He knows who broke you. He knows the things that happened and that shattered your heart. He knows where you need healing. And he knows what addictions you have, and he alone can help you break free. He alone knows what causes you to suffer from depression, anxiety, fear, and all the things that are labeled under mental health. Jesus wants to take the place of those people and those things and those substances that you think you need. He wants to heal what is broken inside. He wants to fill that place inside you that was meant only for him. That you keep trying to fill yourself. He wants to be that living water that gives you life. He wants to be in fellowship, in relationship with you. He wants you to ask him for that drink of water you so desperately need. He wants you He longs for you to choose him, to call on Him and to believe in Him. Believing in the name of Jesus, believing that Jesus did what is documented biblically and historically for each of us is all you have to do in order to get this living water that will satisfy your soul. To be saved from condemnation, to have the power and the ability to overcome every addiction, every mental health diagnosis, every single struggle you have. We are not strong enough on our own, and nothing in this world has any hope of truly helping us or satisfying us. I beg of you to take this step before it's too late. There will be a day when it is too late, and your choice cannot be undone. He came to this world to save it. I thank you for those who took the time to listen to this podcast. I pray that you speak to their hearts and minds, and you draw them to you. I pray you will send people into their lives that will speak truth and love, will be your ambassador into their life to show them that they are loved, that they have always been loved, and that they were never nothing, and never nobody.