Good morning and welcome - this morning what God has given me has the potential to ruin us completely. How many of you are ready to be ruined?
Open your Bibles with me, if you will, to the book of John. Most of you would by now, if you are at reasonable astute, have discovered that we are studying our way through that gospel - and we come this morning to the very well known 4th chapter where Jesus encounters the woman of Samaria at the well.
While you are turning there allow me to restate something I have said time and time again, and that is once again so clearly demonstrated by our text. At the end of the day, it is all about Jesus. Do you want to know who God is? Look to Jesus. Do you want to know who you are? Look to Jesus.
While we are not perfect like Jesus is, and will never be the Son of God in the sense that Jesus is, we share a union with Him that ought to either profoundly inspire or desperately frighten you.
Watch this if you will - I do not want you to miss it. Jesus Christ is, according to Hebrews 1, “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His character.” In other words, Jesus Christ is the absolutely perfect theology of God and the absolutely perfect revelation of God. May I say that again? Jesus Christ is the absolutely perfect theology of God and the absolutely perfect revelation of God.
Anything you think you know about God that you cannot find in Jesus you may need to question!
Anything you pursue as a believer that you cannot see in Jesus you may want to question.
If you want to know how to live the Christian life, look at Jesus. Allow me to remind you that we are not looking at the imitation of the historical Christ but the manifestation of the life of Christ. I know you know the Then Jesus, but do you know the Now Jesus? You say to me, ‘But Jesus does not change.’ And you are right - but what He does changes. He is no longer doing carpentry in Nazareth. He is no longer simply hanging out with 12 disciples. He is no longer limited to the constrains of an earthly body.
You see, some people know the Then Jesus very well, but they know very little about the Now Jesus. They can see very clearly and debate very effectively about the Then Jesus, but their relationship with the Now Jesus is very limited.
Jesus is both the Then Model and the Now Manifestation of how we ought to live. May I say that again please? Jesus is both the Then Model and the Now Manifestation of how we ought to live.
If you want to know how to live, look at the Then Jesus, and seek to manifest the Now Jesus. Paul says, “It is no longer I that love but Christ who live in me [the Now Jesus] and the life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.”
Watch this - living the Now Jesus is not something you and I have been taught. We were told to live like the Then Jesus, but the truth is that without the Now Jesus you cannot live like the Then Jesus.
Here is something God showed my this week - it is profound - blew me out of the water. Pretty much most of my Christian life, education and training, pretty much most of my theological training at the two seminaries I graduated from were perhaps not intentionally but never the less effectively designed to dumb Scripture down to my level of attainability, instead of growing my life up to Scripture’s level of revelation.
So much of my church life has been spent trying to convince me why I would not, should not could not do what the Bible says I would, should and could do.
The Bible says we are one with Christ and in Him one with God - but all my life I have heard that He is very different to me.
The Bible says that I am clothed with the righteousness of Christ - but all my life I have heard that my sin separates me from God.
The Bible says that I have the mind of Christ - but all my life I have been taught
The Bible says that God has put a clean and a pure heart inside of me - but all my life I have believed my heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things.
The list goes on and on - and while I recognize there is a certain validity to these things, the truth is that in Christ I am a new creature, in Christ I am the righteousness of God, In Christ I am more than an overcomer and in Christ I can do all things! Church, that would be a good place to be happy and say something! How many of us are ready to believe the Bible? How many of us are ready to take God at His Word? How many of us are ready to let go of the demand of our minds to understand and allow God whose ways we cannot understand have His way in our lives, and allow the peace of God which goes beyond understanding to be ours?
Do you know what our need to understand is all about? It is the quest to retain control. Come on now - it is the quest to retain control. While I thing what we can understand we ought to receive with out understanding, but the need to understand will rob us, if we are not careful, of the aspects of God’s character, the depths of God’s ways and the accomplishment of God’s purpose that go beyond our understanding.
All of that to say that I want to live the Now Jesus life. I am tired of simply reading about the then Jesus or trying to imitate the Then Jesus.
2 Cor. 4:11 “For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”
2 Cor. 13:5 “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?”
‘Test’ yourself means literally to put yourself on trial.
2 Cor. 13:3 “since you are seeking for proof of the Christ who speaks in me, and who is not weak toward you, but mighty in you.”
Now watch this - Paul is saying that the Christ in you is mighty. The word for ‘mighty’ literally means ‘the ability to show oneself powerful.’ The evidence of Christ in you and me is the ability He has to show Himself might, powerful. That is why he said we would do miracles, even greater ones than He did.
How many of you are ready for the Now Jesus?
John 4 - I am going to read from verse 1-30. We will never get to our passage of I don’t push forward.
John 4:1-30 - Read, Pray
OK - there are a couple of truth that this passage teaches us that I think are profoundly helpful. I think this will help us understand those without Christ a little better, those with Christ or are not living the Now Christ a little better, and how to live the NOW Christ a little better.
1. Those Seeking Life
A. Are Looking in the Wrong Places
John 4:10-11
It is not about form
It is not about knowledge
B. Are Worshiping the Wrong Heroes
John 4:12
C. Are Pursuing the Wrong Mountain
John 4:20
2. Those Seeking God
This woman encounters Jesus - and immediately she becomes one who was seeking life, but is now seeking God.
What changed her - an encounter with the Now Jesus.
You can sit through years of sermons about the Then Jesus and it will not touch you at all - or you can have one encounter with the Now Jesus and you will never be the same again.
When you encounter the Now Jesus, you encounter truth, and when you encounter truth, you encounter the Now Jesus.
3. Those The Father Seeks
Did you know that God is seeking people who express three profound truths?
Engaged in Lifestyle Worship
Empowered by the Holy Spirit
Established in the Divine Truth
That is what the Father is looking for, and it occurred to me that if that is what the Father is looking for then it may be a good idea if that be what we are looking for and what we are pursuing.
The more I study me Bible with an open mind, the more I look at the life of Christ and the mandate He gives us, the more I look at the life of the Apostles and their testimony in Scripture, the more convinced I become that a Gospel without power is not the Gospel that Jesus preached, it is not the Gospel the Disciples pursued, it is not the Gospel the New Testament teaches.
I am tired of creating a theology that waters truth down to the level of my understanding, my level of accomplishment or my level of breakthrough. I do not want to bring truth down to my level, I want to rise up to the level of God’s truth.
I refuse any longer to adjust my theology to the level of my experience and my expectation. There is no other standard, there is no other record.
Somebody say, “Amen.” Do you know that every time we say “Amen” we are renewing our conviction, our covenant and our commitment.
Let me quickly show you from the Word of God what God anticipated you and I in these days, as New Testament believers would be like.
This is big. In Zech. 12:8 here is what the Bible says, “In that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the one who is feeble among them in that day will be like David, and the house of David will be like God . . .”
Did you get that - the weakest amongst us is like David. Now I don’t care how much you have fallen, how weak you believe you are, how impotent you think your faith is, the bottom rung of the ladder is the David level. That is the entry level - the starting point. In other words, you are anointed to be a giant slayer, an enemy killer, a kingly ruler, a miracle worker, a prophetic worshiper - you have supernatural courage.
1 Sam. 17 - David was tending sheep - and a lion came after a lamb - and he rescued the lamb from the lions mouth - and then the lion came after him - so he grabbed the lion by the beard and struck him then killed him.
How many of you have family or friends that the lion has taken? How many of you have family or friends that are being eaten by disease?
Listen to me if you will - there is a lion and a bear out there that is waiting for your sword. There is a disease and a challenge out there that is waiting for your truth.
Precious believer - that is the weakest amongst us. Did you see what the rest of that verse said? “The one who is feeble among them in that day will be like David, and the house of David will be like God.”
That is Old Testament revelation about New Testament faith.
I believe nature will rise to honor the faith of supernatural courage.
Water is longing to be walked on again.
The graves are longing to release their dead again.
Storms are longing to be quieted again.
Water is longing to be turned into wine again.
The sun is longing to be commanded to stand still again.
This is what happens when you encounter Christ. This is the Christ life. The lowest level is David, and the highest level is like God.
It is time to stop making excuses, and start living the Christ life.
It is time to stop dumbing down Scripture to the level of our expectations, and start to raise our expectation to the level of Scripture.
Let’s stop telling the people about Jesus and start showing Jesus to the people.
If we want to bring people to Jesus, we need to start taking Jesus to the people.
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