Is He Seeking Us or Are We Seeking Him - Part 1

Leasing citizens seeking God. So say is that no one seeks out that Jesus came to seek the Bible contradicting itself today on Turning Point. Jeremiah clears away the confusion continues his series Jesus, you may not if you're thinking I'm so stay tuned as David uses today's message is he seeking us while we seeking him is a very interesting discussion because it's a very very pragmatic question. The task a lot that I don't how many times people asked me if we have a seeker sensitive church how we seeker sensitive or are we seeker driven and you I know what they mean by that, but I also know that there's an answer to that question that comes right from the Scripture and talk about that answer today is he seeking us, or are we seeking him our passage of Scripture's John chapter 4 and I will look at that in a few moments as we open our Bibles together.

Thank you so much for joining us today for our daily Bible study. We want you to be encouraged and blessed and strengthened and built up and that my prayer for all of us is that we come out of this this thing that were in right now much stronger than when we went in with our hands up high. I told a friend of mine who has this virus the other day you will get through this but you will never get over it. That's the way we should all feel about this will get through it. But Lord God, help us not to get over it because we need to remember everything we have learned during these challenging days. Well here we go with his he seeking us. Are we seeking today were going to examine a story that is well known in the Bible. It's about Jesus crossing all kinds of barriers going above and beyond to seek and to save someone is a story about our Lord's encounter with a woman. It is usually referred to as the woman at the well or the story of the Samaritan woman, and it is found recorded for us in the first 30 verses of John chapter 4. Normally we would stop and read the text, but this very long passage and so were going to read it together as we go through the story so no reading ahead.

Stay with me and were going to learn something today about the nature of our wonderful Lord message is really divided into three sections. First, were going to see how the Lord seeks us to learn how he saves us and then let alone how he sends us so first of all how the Lord seeks us the first nine verses of John chapter 4, I remember back in the early 90s as a pastor here. We went through this phase in the church but you know the church goes through phases of methodologies. How many of you remember the bus movement where everybody went to church on a bus nor kinds of stories about that old went through this phase and it was called a seeker movement and it was the idea that everybody out there is seeking after God and if we can just connect with them. We can draw them into the gospel, so we ended up with seeker churches now. What happened was it just went to see an young, aggressive pastors were doing everything you can imagine, it wasn't anything to do with what we normally knew his church to attract people to come to their services. I remember one church where the pastor wrote down the center aisle on a motorcycle in the service. Can you see me doing that. Another church with which I am very familiar had a very interesting series on prayer in order to illustrate the importance of prayer. They brought up beach ball into the pulpit and then they fill it out and if it landed on your lap. You got the right your little prayer request on the beach ball and kick it off to somebody else that's approaching, I've never heard anything like that before my life all kinds of things like that were done to attract people out there who are not normally attracted by the gospel and I remember as I traveled around from place to place. During those days people would ask me is shadow Mountain seeker sensitive church is seeker driven church to church is shadow Mountain and one day I was reading the Scripture and I read these words in Romans 311.

There is no one who seeks after God everybody ago. The Bible talks about sinners seeking God. Let's truly understand that and it also talks about God seeking sinners, but when you put the two of those together. It's pretty clear that the only way we can ever see him is if he seeks us first. It's kinda like the love quotient. We love him because he first loved us. Luke 1910 tells us exactly how this works for here is our Lord's mission statement as he came to this earth. 1910, for the son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. So now when people asked me if were seeker friendly church I sell yes our seekers Jesus and were pretty friendly with him. So that's how you answer that question. The Bible everywhere supports this wonderful truth.

Men and women that Jesus is the seeker he seeks after you and he seeks after me. We may think that we sought Jesus and came to him, but before we ever saw him.

He sought us he was first of all seeking after us and many people were honest when they became Christians and said I wasn't even looking for the Lord. He came and he got me sought after me.

So today we're going to look at a passage of Scripture and we want to see how our Lord seeks after us and what we learn from chapter 4 in the Gospel of John is that Jesus seeks after us no matter where we are, no matter what we are and no matter who we are. Jesus has no boundaries to his determination to come and bring us to himself. We set up walls between us.

We set up boundaries around our lives we say I'll go witness to those people. But I'm not witnessing to those people love this group, but I can't love that Jesus had no boundaries whatsoever. As you shall see as we go through this passage of Scripture together.

First of all, he seeks us past racial divides in the first six verses of John chapter 4 we read. Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus himself did not baptize but his disciples, Jesus left Judea, and departed again to Galilee, but he needed to go through Samaria so we came to a city of Samaria, which is called sidecar near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacobs well was there, Jesus therefore being wearied from his journey, sat by the well and it was about the sixth hour.

John tells us that Jesus is making a journey from Judea to Galilee. If you had a map, you would notice that to go from Judea to Galilee. The direct route is right through the center of Samaria but many of you may know that the Jews hated the Samaritans and no self-respecting Jew would ever go through Samaria for any reason they wouldn't take a journey way up around the tip of Samaria and then come back into Galilee so that they wouldn't have to walk anywhere on Samaritan ground. The Jews hated the Samaritans and the feeling was mutual. The bitter hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans's long-standing back in 721 BC the Assyrians came to the northern kingdom of Israel and swept many Israelites away in captivity to Assyria. The Assyrians also repopulated the region with people throughout their empire and the remaining Israelites were mixed in with the Persians and the other conquered peoples and paganism became mixed with countless other practices and Samaria became an infamous region known for its impurity in 587 BC, the Babylonians came and took the southern kingdom of Israel away in captivity and during the time that the southern kingdom of Israel was captive by the Babylonians.

They were of absolute leap pure Jewish blood. They never married with the Babylonians. Now get this picture, the Jews are returning to their homeland and the Israelites from the southern kingdom had not intermarried and began to hate the Israelites from the northern kingdom because when they settled after the Syrian captivity may intermarried with the Syrians and so a tremendous tension grew up between the pure Israelites who would come out of Babylonian captivity, but had not intermarried with the Babylonians and the Israelites who had been taken away by the Assyrians but married into the Assyrian culture all of the paganism and idolatry at all. So in their minds. Here was pure Israel and here was the impure corrupted Israelites and so the northern kingdom had nothing to do with the southern kingdom and the hatred was so great, they would really walk 100 miles out of their way not to step on the territory known as Samaria that we have a lot of racial hatred in our world today, but none of us any worse than that. That was pretty bad.

But notice when Jesus made his journey to Galilee, the shortest route was through Samaria and the Bible says that Jesus didn't take the detour go around the top of the land and come back in the Galilee, he went right through the center of Samaria, please note Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. He was an Orthodox Jew and he walked right through what the Jewish people thought was an unholy land made up of Jews who had intermarried with Assyrians Jesus was a Jew and the woman he was going to meet a woman he was seeking was a Samaritan.

But Jesus looked past the racial divide, and when he saw this woman at the well's I can't even see a Jew.

He didn't see a Samaritan, he saw a person for whom Christ died. Who needed to hear the gospel that we could get that in our hearts today that God cares little about the color of our skin or the tongue that we speak or are racial differences.

He died for the whole world and he sees the whole world just like he sees anyone person and we ought to have that view as well we ought not to say what I could minister to those people.

Jesus went across the racial barrier to touch the life of a needy woman. He not only seeks pass are racial barriers. He seeks pass our social divide verses seven and eight Thomas met a woman of Samaria came to draw water and Jesus said there give me a drink for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

When Jesus sat down at the well that day and talk with the Samaritan woman. He not only went past a racial divide. He went past a social divide in the culture in which Jesus was living in that day. A Jewish man never spoke to a woman in public. Believe it or not. They couldn't even talk to their wives or their sisters.

The only woman that a Jewish man could speak to in public was his daughter during Jesus day there was a group of Pharisees who not only refused to talk to a woman in public. They took it a step further and to look at a woman in public whenever they would see woman in the distance they would close their eyes and they became known as the bruised and bleeding Pharisees because they kept running into buildings and stones and rocks. That's a real true statement from history but Jesus was different. He was different than all of the people that he represented in Judaism throughout his earthly ministry he was regularly in the company of women. In fact, Jesus had many female disciples, which would have shocked his contemporaries.

When we consider the social times Jesus was living in the way he treated women was so different from the way everyone else treated women. Jesus elevated women to status way above what they were normally treated in his day in the Gospels include the examples of Jesus healing and forgiving women were ritually unclean Gentiles who were sinners. Women who had lost everything. He never rebuked them for acting like women and he never made fun of them or purposefully avoided them instead, Jesus welcomed women included women. He called women to receive salvation. He treated them like he treated everyone engaging them in conversation telling them about himself and offering them the plan of salvation.

So when Jesus went across Samaria to the well outside car and sat down. That day with the woman he's now violated two boundaries which control his day number 386 is past the cultural divide. Verse nine says the woman of Samaria said to him, how is it that you being a Jew, ask a drink for me, a Samaritan woman for Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. There you have it. Notice this in the right way. Jesus was a rule breaker. He was a cultural revolutionary. He shattered the norms of his day, and while his fellow Jews were taking alternative routes to avoid going through Samaria. He cut through the middle of this hostile territory. And while the average person would still clear about contagious leper Jesus would walk right up to him and reach out his hand and he became probably the first person in years to touch a dying leper. Jesus made a tax collector. His disciple, are you kidding me involved women in helping fund his ministry.

And everywhere you look he's crashing through the barriers that society was putting up around everyone.

Jesus healed the servant of a Roman soldier. Would you believe he featured a hated Samaritan as the hero, the one of the stories, the good Samaritan ever thought about that. He condemned the rich and the powerful and he lifted up the poor and the oppressed.

Jesus had come to see those left behind by everyone else from the AIDS Lord to the homeless shelter. No human being is an untouchable in the eyes of God. He did not come to pamper and pump up the found became to seek and save the lost. And for Jesus that's all that mattered.

They were human being who needed salvation. Should that not be our method as well. Should we not look at this world of men and women who are lost to meet Christ and realize nothing really matters. Except one thing.

Joel Jesus tell about Jesus, help them to know how to go to heaven. That's what Jesus did, then finally, this may be the most profound of all, he seeks his past racial divides past the social divide pass the cultural divide and finally passed the moral divide. Now we remind you again. Jesus was a rabbi. He was a teacher, we know from the story that the Samaritan woman was living in an immoral relationship. The Bible teaches us in John chapter 4 that this particular woman had been married to five different men and she was currently living with the sixth man who wasn't her husband. Yet here was the holiest man who ever walked on this earth. The Lord Jesus Christ.

The greatest rabbi in history and he sitting at a well speaking freely with her as though he was having a conversation among equals Jesus broke through the moral divide in pursuing this Samaritan woman.

Why, because Jesus did not come to save those who were holy Jesus came to save those who were sinners. The Bible says it this way in Mark and Luke. Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Jesus said I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Jesus didn't come to make religious people better.

Jesus came to make sinners saints looks as if this were not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Jesus, you may not know gladly broke all kinds of barriers to make new friends across racial, social, cultural and moral divides, so that he could seek and save the lost.

How Jesus seeks us when we ask you plainly today you have some unconfessed prejudices very easy today. In this culture to be prejudice. Are there people you simply just don't like going to seek the lost like Jesus, we have to overcome barriers and take the gospel to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the ends of the earth, and we must do so compelled by the radical love of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we are in eternity.

Someday all these things we disagree about right now on this earth will seem so petty and unimportant and will look back. Many of us for that period of time before he washes away all of our sinful thoughts and will remember how we sometimes treated people unfairly. Just because they were not like us. Jesus sets the tone for all the racial issues people want to talk about today for him. The only difference was the difference between a sinner saved by grace in a sinner that needs to be saved by grace. That was it. So that's how Jesus success and that's how were to seek others notice. Secondly, how Jesus saves us in the story in John four continues were about to see some things Jesus did with the Samaritan woman as he tried to reach her heart if you happen to be a person who likes to share your faith maybe you consider yourself an evangelist or a witness. There's no passage in the Scripture that you can turn to that will help you more than this one here is the way Jesus got to someone's heart. First of all, he identifies with our humanity.

First thing Jesus did upon meeting the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well was to ask her for a drink of water. Verse six as he sat down by the well because he was worried from walking such a long way had sent the disciples in the sidecar to buy food so Jesus was hungry and thirsty and wary in the humanity of Jesus could not have been more plain to see.

For that reason, the Samaritan woman identified with him not as God but as a fellow human being who needed some water and some rest. How many of you know that one God Almighty wanted to send love to us from heaven. He didn't send it in a book he didn't send it in the Holy Spirit, he sent his love to us in a human being. Someone just like we are to live and walked on this earth. And as we learned earlier, he will be forever in his humanity in heaven.

That is the reason God did that he sent someone to share with us his love and he sent the gift in such a way that we would identify with. We identify with Jesus we see him as we see ourselves. Yet he was apart from sin, so Jesus sat down that day at the well and he identified with this woman in his humanity the father sent the son into the world that we might identify with him more of this tomorrow as we finish up this discussion. Is he seeking us, or are we seeking him on Friday. Part one is he praying for us, or are we praying to him that I told you the beginning.

All of these questions have the same answer and the answer is yes. Both of these things are true, but we put them in a format that we did to peak your attention and driving deeper into the Scripture and into the knowledge of who Jesus is my friend.

If you've never accepted Jesus as your personal savior today. Don't let another day pass without having Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord will see right more information on the Jeremiah series. The Jesus you may not, please visit our website when we offer ways to help you stay can know monthly magazine Turning Points and L daily email. Sign up today Jeremiah/writing to ask for our copy of David's new book Jesus, you may not help weakening Christ, we discover the joy of your salvation in the amount just the Jeremiah study Bible and the English standard version and the new international as well as in standard large helpful blogs and articles by Dr. Jeremiah tells me doing this tomorrow as we continue the series.

The Jesus you may not hear him telling point with David Jeremiah from the