“Come See a Man” (Part 4 of 4)

Jesus had a conversation with someone about their sin and their need for salvation. He did not shy away from uncomfortable topics. He face them head on.

He addressed them directly, always with both truth and grace. Today, untruthful life. Alister Meg explains how Jesus Frank and genuine interaction with an outcast woman in Samaria led to a village wide invitation to come see a man.

Meanwhile, verse 31. Meanwhile back at the well.

The disciples are urging Jesus to eat, you catch that, don't you, Rabbi. Eat something and then this little dialogue.

It follows that borders on the humorous doesn't it. Jesus said to them, verse 32. I have food to eat that you know nothing about and that is I was we got to look at one another and said that somebody bring them food when we were away.

I look at the disclosure verse 34, the disciples complete misunderstanding opens up the way for Jesus to teach them this vitally important lesson.

My food said Jesus is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work.

Now this is a theme which runs throughout the gospel. Certainly throughout the gospel of John back to verse 34 of chapter 4 my food said Jesus is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work argued I would finish in mind because it is the bit it is the same route that you will find if you read all the way to chapter 19 and you find Jesus upon the cross and from the cross.

Remember, one of the things he says it is finished. Not a cry of despair but a declaration of the flag that he has completed what he said out to do, namely to die in the place of sinners, so that those who deserve God's judgment on his raw may not expedience. That judgment and brought caused by grace through faith we have come to believe in the sacrifice of Jesus, who, in this moment is explaining to these disciples that food and meat and drink for him was simply to do what his father had sent him to do and that becomes the occasion of him saying and I'd like you to wake up and see the harvest is not a phrase there in verse 35 I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields. This is a wake-up call. Not just of these fellows on that day, but it is a wake-up call to all who are the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ because it is a reminder to us that very easily like these fellows we can become preoccupied with what is mundane and miss the overarching mission to which we are called we can actually get preoccupied with the doing of church and the way everything works and fits together and whose where and why, and when and forget the fact that Jesus is saying to his eye. When you wake up and see the harvest. I want you to open your eyes, not simply when you're in here, in order that you might read the Bible, but when you're out of here, in order that you might see the people and what he saying here is that the seed that is stolen.

The seed sown in this woman's life is already bearing fruit in the harvest of the advancing Samaritans. Now this parable of one sewing and another reaping is capable of all kinds of interpretations some of said that Jesus is referencing John the Baptist and his Preparatory work in now is disciples are entering into the benefits of reaping what John himself at Solon are all kinds of legitimate ways, I think, in which we might make application of this but it's hard not to see ultimately John chapter 12 and verse 24 in Jesus statement and for this, you're going to have to turn to it. Otherwise, it will make no sense at all the people in common wanted to see Jesus. Verse 23 on hearing this, Jesus replied, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many see Jesus is predicting his death isn't. It is only as the seed of the life of the Lord Jesus is sown in death. The death of the cross that the fruit of eternal life may be reaped by anyone and in an ultimate sense. It is Jesus who has finished the work so that we might enter into the benefits of that for which we did not so far we have reaped from his work. Eternal life, and when takes hold of our lives, then we will understand that he intends for those who have been so changed to be the agents for change and for reaping in the lives of others. That's why last time we tried to anchor. Chapter 4 in chapter 3, and I invite you just turn by one page to chapter 3 to verse 16 all over again.

We said it was the most famous verse probably in John a be in the Bible look at it again.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. What is it mean that God is love the world. Well, it means that the message of the good news is not restricted to the Jew. It breaks the boundaries of that and bleeds over into the Samaritan world, and indeed this the harvest amongst these Samaritans is the indication. The first indication in John's Gospel of the fact of the inclusive nature of the gospel that it is for all men and all women everywhere God so loved the world that he gave his only son, and that there is eternal life as we saw in verse 15 of chapter 3 are all who believe. Just underlying this God is our seeking and saving God that gives the lie to the notion that an actual fact, men are seeking for God and God somehow is hiding from them know that's not true. Men and women today may be seeking for peace. They may be seeking for fulfillment. They may be seeking for all kinds of things but they are not seeking God but God is seeking them. He is the God who comes to Adam and Eve in the garden and says, where are you if we were to believe the way it is told to us by anthropologists and sociologists. It is the absolute reverse of that is that the God is a way hiding somewhere and Adam and Eve are going on the garden going where are you where are you I'm looking for. You know, Adam and Eve are highly look at John chapter 3 what is it say this is the verdict 19.

Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. So you have these two things set side-by-side men and women hiding in the darkness and the light of the world coming to penetrate that darkness. Here the darkness is represented in the actual expedience of this no-name woman at the well and into the darkness of her life comes the light of Jesus, which, first of all, is a painful light in that it shows up her dark spots, but it is a purifying light insofar as it shows her condition in order that it might radically change her condition is why we said last time that the work of the gospel is not simply to expose our search for satisfaction but is to expose our need of a Savior and God's great purpose for a world that is rebellious and lost his purpose of grace and salvation. He seeks out all kinds of people. Religious fellows with a background in intelligence as in chapter 3 and disenfranchised women has in chapter 4. I'm so very grateful for parents, and I reiterate this as an encouragement to other parents. I want to do it always sent and and vigorously. I'm so grateful for parents who did not listen to my nonsense when it came to my desire to remove myself from the teaching of the Bible in every shape and opportunity. I'm glad I'm glad that they put me places I didn't want to go in order that today I might be in a place I never plan to be in on a Sunday afternoon, having already been out in the morning and getting ready when I finish this to go and sing in the junior choir, which was a great punishment to the choir teacher and that for an hour before the evening service began I spend their time between 230 and 330 in the afternoon in a boys Bible class. It was there I learned this song he did not come to judge the world. He did not come to blame.

He did not only come to seek it was to save.

He came and when we call him Savior, and when we call him Savior, and when we call him Savior, then we call him by his name, and you will give him the name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Jesus does not sit at this well as an example to this woman of how she could live her life if she could only sort herself out.

He does not stand before her as an example, that she may begin to approximate 21 are sorely hopeless charge that would be for those of you who play golf and play in the company of those who are good at golf, you realize that the example that you have of those who are very very good is so paralyzing. Ultimately, because we can see what they do. But we cannot do what they do because it takes them to do what they do.

But of course if there genius could come and inhabit me that I could do what they do. But if it's only a picture or a pattern. I can do.

The message of the gospel is that Jesus comes to live within a person so that the pattern that he is established is a pattern that is fulfilled in the power that he provides. As we live in the presence of any grants save his people from evil and from helplessness saving people from the chains that tie us to our past providing what is necessary to live as he demands also point more, there may be a number of points but is the one I want to make since God is a seeking and saving God. Those who are God's children should be about the business of seeking to. That's why he turns to these fellows and he says wake up and see the harvest. Open your eyes I know the standard thing is four months. He says but I'm telling you it's now it's hard for me not to apply this, however, illegitimately I say summarize our waiting to get serious about this business until we get through this next phase. While when I complete my studies when I sell my company when I marry my fiancé when my children are gone. When I graduate.

All of these things that we think somehow or another are legitimate excuses, allowing us to sidestep the implications of simply doing whatever we do every day to the end that unbelieving people might become the committed followers of Jesus Christ is not necessarily that our circumstances are bound to be radically altered. Perhaps it is simply that the way in which we engage in what we do is radically changed because of our perspective, all all these lonely people. Where do they all come from all these lonely people.

Where do they all belong city says that's what I'm on about time on the balance, if we undertake such a commission seriously then it will mean that we emulate Jesus in this respect, Jesus does not come with a prepackaged formula to Nicodemus or to the woman of the well or indeed to anyone he gets everybody ultimately to the same place, but he is masterful in the way he really reaches his destination he doesn't use prepackaged language and he doesn't have some kind of standard shtick that he always uses as his introduction he starts with this lady where she is, where is this lady Leslie has got a thing about relationships in this lady probably got a thing about sex.

This lady is a contemporary lady she's been looking for love in all the wrong places.

She's had five husbands. We don't know the details. She has a live-in lover. Jesus treated with courtesy, with respect with dignity, but he does not sidestep the issue.

Go call your husband and come back. I don't have eyes been good. Now were going to talk about what we really need to talk about if you and I are going to take seriously the commission that women have to be prepared to talk to people about the areas that are represented in their life's relationship sex whatever might be to tread the narrow path between the idolization of sex and the denigration of sex, neither of which is biblical but to recognize that there isn't a magazine in the checkout that doesn't sell something on the basis of human sexuality to recognize that there's hardly a day passes whereby all of the imagery that is confounding, as visibly advertising is directly related to all of these things and we live in that world.

How are you going to handle this kind of woman while I can believe that you've had five husbands served gracefully. Goodness gracious.

One is bad enough. I hate the fly would be like. I think after about 540 got another guy in the house for goodness gracious, what are we to do with the fellow who, by his choices is taken himself completely outside the bonds of God's pattern and plan. And he's here today and he was wrestling with a homosexual lifestyle is very pleased.

But isn't.

We brave enough to exhibit love rather than hostility or to retreat in fear receiving and learn from Jesus love.

There is no love like the love of Jesus is no love like Jesus father, your love is a faithful, expressed in Jesus, we can learn from Jesus language family. No tribal language, no pious language no technical language not a bunch of jargon laid on the lady nothing that is disdainful, nothing that is embattled. None of that at all.

I don't know but I would imagine this lady was on a quest for freedom if you saw the New York Times. There's a picture of a lady there happy. I didn't know there were hardly any left, but that but she was there and she was on the rainbow on it was a rainbow day or the rain the weekend. Whatever it was they were all out there and in the described always people from I don't know where Santa Cruz or whatever and then all got together looked at it and I thought it looked pretty good to me in one sense, you can go there and be yourself.

You might even go there and find yourself, I would thing this lady would've liked that event looking for freedom looking for authenticity. Actually, maybe trying to find what it meant. Find out what it meant for her to be her and in that respect, she's a very contemporary woman and these are our friends, and these are our neighbors into them. We go with the good news that only in Christ is their true freedom to be found without being enslaved and only ultimately in Jesus is there kind of acceptance and community that will allow you to be who you really are under God while living in the discovery of his plan for your purity and I was a woman's discovery and with that we and II ended by putting down my Bible and I just sat for a moment or two and I said to myself I wonder.

I wonder if this woman ever made it to Jerusalem on the day that the sun turned turned dark. I wonder if this woman ever snuggled in with the rest of the brave women around the cross.

Pure conjecture on my part, but if she did and she looked up to the cross with the women there. She would've been present to hear the end of the story. If you like she would've heard Jesus say to the last I it is finished. She might've said to herself. When I told him all the sins I'd ever done and he said I've got you covered. Maybe this is what he meant, can it possibly be, she would have said that this Jesus is hanging there in shame so that I might stand here in glory because that's the gospel, he takes what he doesn't deserve our sins so that he might grant what we don't deserve salvation, forgiveness, freedom, hope, and all starts with A drink of water. Please and advances profoundly with this statement come and see a man who told me everything I ever did, and is the testimony of some of you, but not all, but it may be because everyone who believes in him may have eternal life taking the punishment he did not deserve. So the we could receive forgiveness and freedom to humbling thought about the sacrifice Jesus has made on our behalf. Today's message is titled come see a man your listing to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Please keep listing. Alister will be back in just a minute to close with prayer. If you'd like to learn more about what it means to accept the free gift of salvation that Jesus offers. We hope you'll take a minute and visit our website watch a brief video called the story. This is a beautifully animated presentation that will help you better understand the lifesaving message of the gospel. You'll find the video a Truth for Life.org/the story today's message is a reminder that meaningful conversations about the gospel can begin with simple questions.

Oftentimes, discussions with others happen because we've rehearsed the script, but because we are overwhelmed by our own experience of new life and we want to share that good news with others. If you wondered how you can develop a greater passion for telling people about Jesus.

We encourage you to read a book called facing a task unfinished by Roger Carswell. This is actually a 52 week devotional that brings together Scripture passages prayers lyrics from well-known hymns in this book Carswell explains that as we become more like Jesus. Through studying God's word. We develop an overwhelming desire for people to come to faith in Christ facing a task unfinished takes us beyond the how-to's of evangelism and encourages us instead to spend time praying and asking the Holy Spirit to guide and direct our efforts would love to send you a copy of this book today. When you make a generous one time gift or when you become one of our monthly truth partners true partners somebody who agrees to uphold this ministry through prayer and regular financial support. You choose the amount of your monthly donation. Whatever works for you.

Truth partners make it possible for people all around the world to hear God's word taught with clarity and relevance. On this program and be assured we teach the Bible every day of the year here at Truth for Life knowing that God's word can do God's work in the lives of all who listen. Remember to request your copy of facing a task unfinished when you become a true partner or when you make a one-time donation. Simply go to Truth for Life.org/truth partners or give us a call at 888-588-7884. Now here's Alister the closing prayer father we pray that as surely as the woman looked into the gaze of Christ and saw the wonder of his love, so that those who today are uncovered by his gaze may find in him, their only refuge that you will stir up our hearts as we think of the opportunities for the gospel that abound around us mail your grace and your mercy and your peace from father, son and Holy Spirit be our portion now throughout the hours of this day and forevermore. Then about Lapine. Thanks for joining us today. Be sure to listen again tomorrow for a new message in our series called a light in the darkness will learn how God's work was displayed in the life of a man who was born blind Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life Learning is for Living