Grace for Broken People | Guest Speaker: Sam Rapp

My name is Sam Rapp, and again I am the student pastor here, which normally means that yeah, I'm the JV preacher, so y'all are getting that this morning.

But I always wear my best jacket to try to keep up, so that's what y'all get.

Um again, happy uh yeah, Master Sunday.

And if you're like me, you've probably been praying for Jordan Speith not to make another 12 on whole 12 again, uh praying for him to recover a little bit better this year.

But uh if you do have your Bibles, we'll be in the book of John, uh, chapter 4 this morning.

But here's what I want to do for us today uh on this week after Easter, right?

We got eight months until there's another fun Sunday service again, right?

Like we got a bunch of just eight months of you know normal church services.

So this morning, here's what I want to do.

I just want to extend an invitation to you.

And this is the invitation that you would take a step towards being more known, more honest, and ultimately experience greater life in the presence of Jesus Christ.

So that's the invitation.

You can you can take that, you can receive it, but but that's what's on the table for us this morning.

And if you have been following the news, uh I'm sure that you've probably heard about what went down in the Suez Canal, right?

There was this gigantic boat that was passing through the canal, planning on going all the way to Thailand, I'm pretty sure, and was bringing a bunch of goods.

But what happened is this gigantic boat got stuck, right?

So if we want to pull this picture up, this is the ship right here, right?

And this is it getting stuck.

So the ship is about 400 meters long, weighs 200,000 tons, and is about a quarter mile in length, right?

So why does this matter, right?

Why does it matter that this ship got stuck, that it got turned sideways, right?

So about 12% of global trade goes through the Suez Canal each and every day.

12%, more than a tenth of the world's economy passes through this route, right?

In other words, about nine billion dollars a day fly through that thing, whether it's with goods or containers or services, whatever.

Billions and billions of dollars pass through that canal every single day, right?

And so, because of that, when that ship got stuck, right, hundreds of thousands, if not even millions, of lives were affected by it, right?

Business was lost, business was delayed, Amazon had to do a whole big reboot that day because, I mean, you know, Amazon, they they ship everywhere, and so their stuff was lost, right, and delayed.

And it all comes down to this blockage, right?

There was this pathway that was blocked, and because of that, the fullness of the flow of that canal was stopped, right?

So what we see in our text this morning is that contrary to every expectation we have of Jesus Christ, we are both perfectly known by him and perfectly loved by him.

And that's not in just our cleanest spots of our life, right?

But we are known and loved perfectly in our brokenness, in our darkness, and in the places that we try to hide, right?

But the reason I even mention this story is because, man, if you're anything like me, if you're anything like me, I believe that we so often just allow lies and shame to block this flow of love, right?

To say that, man, if if Jesus knew about this part of my life, he wouldn't love me like I think he should, right?

We let these lies in.

And the result is a life that's not as satisfying, that's not as joy-filled, and ultimately not as free as Jesus has called us to.

So that's what's on the table.

That being said, let's let's jump into the book of John.

So we'll be in John, again, chapter 4, verses 3 through 15.

So, Word of God says this.

He, Jesus, left Judea and departed again for Galilee.

And he had to pass through Samaria.

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sikar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

It was about the sixth hour.

A woman from 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.

The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

And Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is asking 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 water with, and the well is deep.

Where do you get that living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob?

He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.

But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I may not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.

Let's pray together, and then let's let's keep jumping in.

Father, thank you for your word.

I pray, uh Lord, that as we sit under it this morning, Lord, that you, man, would just come in and speak to us, that you would invade every corner of our hearts, especially the more broken sides of us, the more hurting sides of us, the more shameful sides of us, Lord, that you would just, man, by your word and by your spirit, that you would come in and show us a deeper life, a deeper sense of your presence, and ultimately, Lord, that we would have more freedom and joy in the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

I don't know if you've ever looked much at Renaissance art paintings.

Uh, but one thing they love to do in this era of time was paint these beautiful, kind of angelic, ethereal pictures of Jesus Christ.

So here's one example of a painting that was done during the Renaissance era, right, of Jesus.

So one thing that I think is a little bit funny personally is that that guy's very white for a Middle Eastern Jewish guy, first of all.

But also, uh, one thing that I also notice is that, man, in the words of Matt Chandler, right, this Jesus does not look very helpful, does he?

He looks kind of far off, right?

Kind of angelic, kind of ethereal, not really up in the grime, not on the field playing with us, right?

And man, like if you're like me and when life throws these curveballs at you, when you go through these hard seasons, when suffering happens, right?

That kind of angelic, ethereal Jesus is not the one that you are going to look to for comfort, right?

For me, what I like to have is the Jesus that's down on the field, right, in the dirt with me, in the grime and in the pain with me.

The one that physically feels the pain with us, right?

The one whose heart aches alongside us in our aching.

And this is what we see in this text, right?

And if you're anything like me, when you think of Jesus, this is probably not the Jesus that you think of, right, in these passages.

The one that's, you know, exhausted from walking all day.

I mean, getting to the well, just dragging, right?

Thirsty, weary.

Probably didn't smell very good, right?

Probably had some B.O., right?

Like this is the Jesus that's in this text, and this is the Jesus that the Samaritan woman meets, right?

And this is especially interesting in light of the whole Gospel of John, right?

The Gospel of John is different than the other three.

This gospel focuses heavily on the divinity, the godness of Jesus Christ, right?

I mean, John 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.

I mean, these high and lifted up images of Jesus Christ, right?

And what we get in this text, again, is the really human side of Jesus, right?

And I love these kind of passages.

So Jesus asked for a drink of water, right?

He gets to this well, he's thirsty, he wants to drink of water, so he says, give me a drink.

And not unexpectedly, this Samaritan woman is like, You're a Jew.

I'm a Samaritan.

Why are you asking me for a drink of water, right?

Thing is that Jewish people in this day viewed Samaritans as like half-breeds, essentially.

They were less than, because Samaritans were half Jewish and half Gentile.

They were a mixed race, and so the Jewish people thought that they were unclean, thought that they were less than, and had this intense racism that they felt towards the Samaritan people group.

So when he goes up to her and asks her for this water, she is just blown away just at that, right?

She doesn't know he's the son of God yet.

She doesn't know he is the word made flesh yet.

All she knows is that this Jewish guy is asking her for water, right?

So he goes on.

If you knew, Samaritan woman, who it was who was asking you for water, you would have actually asked him for water and he'd give you living water.

So here's the stage, right?

This woman, the Samaritan woman, is here in the middle of the day, right?

When the sun was at its peak.

I mean, this is Samaria, right?

This is the Middle East where it's hot at noon, right?

I'm talking 95 degrees at noon, right?

Nobody went to the well at noon.

In these communities, especially for the woman of Samaria, going to the well was like their social hour, right?

It was the Lewis Park of Samaria, right?

Like that's where they went to have an afternoon or a morning with their girls, right?

So these women would go there in the morning or in the afternoon to hang out.

And so for this woman to come at noon shows that she is an outcast, right?

And not only that, she's an outcast among the outcast people group.

So she is as outcast as you can be, right?

She went to the well at noon because she was lonely.

She was shameful, right?

She was messy.

But what we see here is that Jesus didn't turn away from her mess, right?

But Jesus actually comes in and invades her deepest, most messy parts of her life, right?

So that brings us to point number one, which says this.

So in this in this passage, right?

Jesus just nails the gospel presentation, right?

Like he nails it.

In verse 15, the Samaritan woman was ready.

She's like, Yes, I want this living water, Jesus.

Give it to me, right?

And in sharing the gospel class, when you get there, like that's a home run, right?

Like that, you just slam dunk that thing in the gospel presentation.

And so it's like, man, like Jesus, you got her, dude.

Like, you don't need to go further in verse 16 here.

Like, I know you're the son of God, I know that you're, you know, the word made flesh.

You've always been, always will be, and all things you hold them together, but like, dude, like you had her, right?

Like, leave it, right?

But Jesus makes it awkward.

Let's look at verse 16.

Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband and come here.

The woman answered him, I have no husband.

Jesus said to her, You are right in saying, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands.

And the one you now have is not your husband.

What you have said is true.

The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.

So, do you ever go down rabbit trails on YouTube?

I don't know.

That might have dated me to some of you guys in here, but let me tell you what my morning routine looks like.

Okay, so uh Grace and I wake up, I make my coffee, uh, I get dressed, I brush my teeth, whatever, and then Grace and I sit in our living room and we read together.

We're normally really groggy, a little grumpy.

Uh we read some chapter of the Bible together.

It's normally like, yeah, kind of rushed.

And then I end up trying to pray a little bit.

Not very good at it, I'm trying.

We pray a little bit, and then she leaves, and then I have a few minutes before I head over here to do some work.

And during that time, I almost always end up on YouTube.

I don't know how I get there, but YouTube just calls my name and I end there for 10 minutes, okay?

So I'm on YouTube, and typically these things are like, you know, Georgia football recruiting videos or like master's highlights or you know, just yeah, sports stuff, right?

But sometimes I go down these weird trails, and recently I've been in this part of YouTube.

It's a kind of a community, right?

Russ is all about community, so this is my community, okay?

It's the Gordon Ramsay Kitchen Nightmares community, okay?

So that's where I ended up for the past like three, four weeks, okay?

So I'm sure you've heard who he is, but this is Gordon Ramsay, right?

Sweet guy, right?

So in Kitchen Nightmares, Gordon Ramsay goes into these failing restaurants, he orders food, sits at a table, acts like a guest, right?

And then he goes and inspects the kitchen, right?

And one thing that I've noticed, which is hilarious, is that he almost always like finds a chef or a manager that's lying about something, right?

Like the funny thing is the manager calls him in to help, and then he comes in and they still lie about what's actually going on, right?

So he's trying to help the problem, they're not letting him help them, right?

So there's this one episode.

This is one of the funniest things.

I've la I was laughing out loud in my living room alone, okay?

So it's so funny.

This is the head chef had four baking sheets of potatoes, right, that supposedly had been roasted in the oven.

Okay?

So Gordon Ramsay came over, he's pretty good at eating, right?

I mean, he knows his stuff.

So he gets there, he tries one, he's like, that's kind of bitter.

It kind of feels like it was deep fried.

And so he's like to the head chef, Did you deep fry these?

And then the head chef, for the next like five minutes straight, is convincing everybody in the kitchen and Gordon Ramsay that he did not deep fry these potatoes, right?

And you're like, Sam, this is a stupid story.

Just bear with me, we'll get there.

So Gordon goes over to the sous chef, right, the assistant chef, and he's the one that actually cooked the potatoes.

And he says, Hey man, did you deep fry these?

And the sous chef's like, uh, yes, all four of them, right?

All four of these.

And then he's like, Okay, so who told you to deep fry these?

He looks over at the head chef who just said they were roasted and says, Yeah, he did.

He told me to deep fry them.

Right?

And then the camera, it's the best part.

I was trying to find a screenshot of this for y'all, but I couldn't find it.

The camera pans over to the head chef, right, who just lied, bold faced to everybody in the kitchen, and he just had the best look on his face.

I mean, just like, oh shoot, right?

They just caught me red-handed, lying, right?

Because everything he was hiding in that moment, everything he just tried to convince the kitchen of, was exposed and put on the table, right?

In these verses we just read, Jesus takes this woman's deepest, darkest, most shameful secrets about her and just lays them out, right?

He just, I mean, he reads her mail in these verses, right?

He had her, right?

Just before this in verse 15.

She's like, man, I want this living water, I'm thirsty.

Give it to me.

And he's like, okay, yeah, go get your husband.

Right?

And he goes right at the part where she feels the most shame about.

He goes right at the part of her heart that she's trying to hide, that she's hurting the most about, that she's lying to try to cover up about.

And he's not doing this to make her feel shameful, right?

He's not doing this to try to make her feel even worse than she already does, but he's going in there because this is the scar that needs to heal, right?

This is the wound that she's been putting a band-aid on when it needs some stitches, right?

And he does that because he knows that there is life abundant for her when that wound heals, right?

And that brings us to point number two.

Point number two true joy and fee and freedom are experienced fully when we allow Jesus Christ into the midst of our mess and brokenness.

True joy and freedom are experienced fully when we allow Jesus into the midst of our mess and brokenness.

So Jesus says, hey, go get your husband.

He's like, Yes, I'll give you this living water, but like go get your husband first.

She says, I don't have a husband.

And you know, she doesn't know that Jesus knows what he knows yet, right?

Like he she doesn't know that he knows that she's had five.

So she's like, I don't have a husband, trying to deflect it.

She's trying to move him aside and say, no, Jesus, I want you at arm's length.

I like you here where I can get the living water, but you can't get all up in my grill, right?

I mean, imagine the shame she was feeling just with me for a second.

Going to the well to get water at midday by herself, right?

Keeping secrets all the time from everyone.

No one really knew her.

She was not known really by anyone, right?

And then she's sleeping with the guy she's with now, and they're not married.

Walking around this town, man, just feeling condemnation and looks of disgust at her as she goes through this town of Sakhar, right?

And then this random Jewish dude named Jesus, right, walks up and man, it just gets all of her secrets out on the table.

This guy she's never met before, maybe even never heard of before.

And you see what she did in verse 19?

She deflected again, right?

She says, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Yeah, you're right.

She doesn't believe that she can be loved.

That's the problem here.

She doesn't believe that if anyone knew this unlovable stuff in her heart, she doesn't believe that she could still be loved, right?

I don't know if you've ever felt like this.

Like keeping kind of like your your kind of bad sins, right, hidden, right?

Like you'll talk about, oh yeah, man, like I've just I'm not giving myself enough sleep, right?

Not enough self-help, right?

Like that's like that's kind of the confessions that we can like easily say, right?

But then we got like the dark stuff that's down here that we don't want anybody to know about, right?

Because we're not gonna be loved if they know about it.

It kind of feels like this to me.

There's this this meme that I really like.

Um this dog, right, eating or drinking his coffee, and the house is on fire, and he says, This is fine, right?

Um this woman in this story, that's kind of silly, but this woman in this story does not want Jesus into her mess, right?

Her life is just going up in flames, right?

Her heart is just a mess and is broken.

But she doesn't want to let Jesus in.

She didn't believe in the deepest parts of her that she could be loved.

She felt like she was unlovable, right?

She felt like she genuinely was the person that is unlovable, right?

And because of that, right, because she deflects and deflects and deflects Jesus' questions, she's missing out on true living water, right?

And that's point number three.

Full life, abundant life is found in the hearts of those who are secure in the restorative grace of Jesus Christ.

Remember what happens next in this story?

The Samaritan woman deflects again, right?

And then finally she gets it, right?

Finally, like Paul of Tarsus, her eyes are opened and she gets it, right?

Because finally she's like, okay, he is who he says he is.

He's not just a prophet, he's not just rabbi, right?

He is who he says he is, and then man, she is just in the face.

So much new joy, so much life, so much grace has filled her heart so that she is not the same person anymore.

She is running through this town of Sakar and telling everybody that she can about Jesus of Nazareth, right?

She's like, this guy just told me everything about who I she didn't know how to share the gospel yet, right?

But she's sharing it.

She's like, she never went to evangelism class, but she's running through the streets, telling every living person about this Jesus guy, because that's all she can do at this point, right?

She got exposed, he got all up in her business, and then she's like, world, listen to this, right?

And then people start to believe.

Why would she do this, right?

Potentially at the cost of being embarrassed, being ridiculed, maybe even being killed in this day, right?

Because of the security she now has.

That she's never had before.

She never tasted this security before, right?

She was the shameful, quiet woman who everybody looked at, thinking, oh, there goes, you know, five five-man Mindy over there, right?

Like that was the name I just caught out.

If your name's Mindy, forgive me.

But that's just it, like, I just grabbed that from the air.

But she she's walking through the town, everybody's shaming her, right?

Like, this is that woman.

She's trying to coast through every day, right?

Just making it to bedtime, right?

Without really being noticed, without anybody really knowing her heart, right?

Knowing her darkness.

So, what does this mean for us?

Right, we just celebrated Easter.

When I was doing my reading online, everybody said that the Sunday after Easter is like youth pastor or associate pastor Sunday, right?

Sunday after Easter.

So that's what we're at here today, right?

April 11th.

So, what do we do for the next eight months until Christmas, right?

This last week was like the big, big number one, and then Christmas is big number two, but what do we do for the next eight months, right?

So, what I'm hoping for, and this brings us back to the invitation, what I'm hoping for is that as we receive communion here in a few minutes, we sing some songs together, and then we go home.

That I mean, we would grow in our confidence, not not in our own abilities, but we grow in our confidence and security in knowing that in our darkest places that we are loved and known, right?

Not in our religious abilities, not in how good we are at reading our Bibles or studying or praying, right?

But that we would grow in confidence and have a richer, fuller experience of the grace of Jesus as we are known and loved in our broken places, right?

So let's just talk for two more minutes.

Maybe you've been struggling in some ways, right?

Maybe there's a part of your life that you're trying to hide.

If you're anything like me, maybe you're believing that, man, like, if anyone knew about this part of me, like I would not be loved here at Christ the Redeemer, right?

If anybody knew about this corner of my heart, I would not be loved.

Maybe that's a lie that we're believing this morning.

You know, yes.

Like, yeah, Sam, like I hear that what you're saying is true from this book, but man, you don't know about my story, Sam.

Like, you don't know about my past, right?

You don't know about this pornography addiction that I've been struggling with, right?

You don't know about, man, how often I try to numb my life by drinking a little bit too much, right?

Like you don't know about these things.

You don't know about how sad and hurting I've been trying to hide it from everybody, right?

You don't know about the exhaustion I've been feeling because of how hard I've been trying to be good enough, right?

Like you don't know these things about me, Sam.

That might be something that you're thinking.

And Jesus is saying, brother, sister, I died for that, right?

He didn't just die to make you a little bit better, right?

He died on the cross so that you could be brought to life, so that the darkest parts of you could be brought to light, and then therefore you experience greater joy, greater life, and greater peace in his presence, right?

That's the fullness of life that's on the table.

So here's the invitation one more time.

Come deeper into the grace of Jesus this morning.

I don't know what that looks like for you, but I just encourage you and I'm pleading with you to open yourself up to be more known by this Jesus guy, right?

To let him into the parts of you that you've never let him into before, right?

To let him bring to light and therefore bring you to life in these new places, right?

He died on the cross for the ugliest parts of you, not just the pretty nice parts, right?

He died for the ugliest, the most dark, the most painful wounds in your life.

And so he loves to save those places, right?

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank you so much for sending Jesus to be for us, Lord, what we could never be for ourselves, uh, to be, Lord, our peace, to be our justification before a holy God, Lord.

Thank you that you are the living and active God who is in our life, in our business, who loves us through our brokenness.

Lord, that thank you that we can have the confidence to not have to hide anymore.

That we don't have to try to be this person that we're not, especially here in the Bible Belt when everybody's just living the dream.

Lord, I just pray that you would show us what it looks like to be open, that you would let us in to deeper parts of ourselves.

And Lord, we know that this can't happen, we can't muster this up in ourselves.

So, Lord, we need your Holy Spirit to come in and invade our hearts.

And Lord, we love you and we trust that you only want a greater life, a greater, Lord, sense of your presence, and ultimately that we be more satisfied walking in communion with you, Lord.

God, thank you for Jesus.

Thank you for the cross.

Thank you for our resurrection that we can look forward to.

We love you.

We ask all this in the name of Jesus.

Amen.