Come and See

Morning 3CI. Some of you have said to me that

when I preach, it's difficult for you to keep up and that you

don't have enough time to make notes and you have to go back

and look at the recordings to do so.

And I just want to let you know that this morning is going to be

no different, so please pay attention.

Good one. We're continuing our series in

John and looking at encounters with Jesus where we see these

special moments that change everything.

And we have these moments in our lives, and sometimes these

moments can change our lives, but they don't look important at

the time. Maybe it's just a simple

conversation in a car, or maybe it's a moment that just landed

sideways and it's just stuck with you for years.

Or maybe it was a teacher that believed in you and nobody else

does. And in the moment, it didn't

feel very dramatic. So there were no fireworks going

off. There wasn't a Céline Dion

soundtrack in the background. It was just something simple.

But at that moment, even years later, you realize that in that

moment, something shifted in you.

And I want to ask you if you've ever had a moment that has

changed you without announcing that it was important.

I'm not talking about a conference or a retreat or one

of those life changing weekends with a lanyard and a coffee that

tastes like regret, but just something ordinary.

You know, Because some moments don't shout at us, they just

quietly rearrange the furniture of our soul.

One moment or one sentence or one encounter.

The Bible tells us something similar about Jesus because when

people encounter him, everything changes.

And when we read through the Gospel of John, if you pay

attention, you'll begin to notice something that John

doesn't just put down and record teachings, and he's not just

giving us a timeline of what Jesus did, and he's not writing

a biography the way that we would write a biography.

John writes like a witness. He writes like a man who saw

something that he can never Unsee.

And he's saying to us, let me show you what happens when

people meet him. And if we read John carefully,

you'll notice that Jesus is extremely patient with sinners

and is extremely confrontational with religious people.

Why is that? That's because sinners know that

they are thirsty, and religious people think that they are

hydrated. And the whole gospel of John

revolves around one question. What actually happens when

people meet Jesus? John tells us why he writes this

gospel in John 2031. It says these are written that

you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and

that by believing you may have life in his name.

Not information to know stuff, but life to receive.

And today I want to show you that every true encounter with

Jesus reveals the same three things.

First we encounter him, then he exposes our thirst, and then he

offers us living water or life because we live in this world

that believes that transformation comes from

information. If I just read more, if I watch

more, if I learn more, if I listen to another sermon or I

download another podcast, or I just learn a little bit more

theology, then then I'll change. But Scripture reveals something

deeper. It says transformation doesn't

come from information alone. It comes from encounter because

you can know all the facts about God and never actually meet him.

In James 2 verse 19 it says you believe that there is one God

James 2:19

good. Even the demons believe that and

shudder, which tells us that mere mental agreement is not the

same as living faith. Because you can grow up in the

church, you can know all the songs and the verses, you can

know when to stand up and sit down, and you can know how a

good Christian should sound. But you can still keep Jesus at

an arm's length when you do that.

And that's why the book of John feels different, because he

doesn't write like a historian. He writes like a witness.

He says, let me show you what happens when people actually

meet Jesus And John records encounter after encounter after

encounter. Different backgrounds, different

wounds, different needs, but the same Jesus.

And every encounter reveals something about the human

condition. And really quick, I just want to

recap everything we've covered from John one up until now and

just highlight some of these encounters that we've seen.

And John 1, we see that seekers encounter Jesus.

So we have two men that follow Jesus around.

They are curious, they're hovering and they're interested.

And then Jesus turns to them and asks in John 138, what do you

want? That's a dangerous question.

What do you want? Because everybody in this room

wants something, whether it's peace or healing or purpose, or

you just want a second chance, or you just don't want to fall

apart in public. What do you want?

And these men are on these men answer him by saying, Rabbi,

where are you staying? And that's not a question about

geography. That's a question about

nearness, saying, can we be with you?

Can we spend time with you? Can we stay where you are

staying? And Jesus answers them in John

139. He says come and see, not come

and debate, not come when you've sorted out your lives.

Just simply come and see. Because encounters with Jesus

cannot be explained from a distance.

They have to be encountered. And so we see Andrew meets Jesus

and he brings Peter and Philip meets Jesus and he goes to find

Nathaniel. And this is because real

encounters start to spread. And when people truly meet

Jesus, they don't go silent. Something in them says you have

to come and see this. So in John 2, that was seekers

encountering Jesus. John 2 we see religion

encounters Jesus. Jesus walks into the temple and

he starts flipping tables. Imagine that.

Don't know about you, but I've tried this once because it looks

so cool in the movies, right? And I don't know if my mom

remembers this, but I was about 11 or 12 years old sitting in

our living room having a a heated argument with them,

probably not getting getting my way about something.

And right at the apex of this argument, I thought, this is my

moment to make a statement. And I threw everything off the

table and I tried to flip it. I tried, it was too heavy, but I

tried to flip it. And then I just ran off into my

room. And I thought, statement made.

And then what followed was one of the the best hidings I've

ever got, right? That's the only time in my life

that I try to be more like Jesus.

And it didn't pay off. So I imagine Jesus walks into

this religious system and he just starts wrecking the

furniture. And that's because religion had

become a market and a system, and people were using the House

of God without seeing the heart of God.

And Jesus then says in John 2 verse 16, stop turning my

John 2:16

father's house into a market. And then in John 2 verse 19, he

John 2:19

says, destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three

days. And John tells us that Jesus was

talking about his body because the meaning is that the place

where people meet God is not primarily a building, but it's

Jesus. It's a person.

And Jesus is saying, you think the temple is where heaven and

earth meet. I am the temple where heaven and

earth meet. And so religion encounters Jesus

and it gets disrupted because Jesus will never allow himself

to be reduced to a ritual. Then in John 3, knowledge

encounters Jesus. Nicodemus comes at night.

He's a very respected and educated man with a lot of

status and understanding. But Jesus says to him in John 3

John 3:3

verse 3, very truly, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of

God unless they are born again. So Nicodemus thinks that what he

needed was more knowledge. But God says to him, you need a

new life, you need a new birth. And that's deeply offensive in

religious pride because it means you cannot think your way into

the Kingdom. You cannot behave or pedigree

yourself into the Kingdom. You have to receive life from

above. John 4 brokenness encounters

Jesus. We'll come back to this in a

second because you're more clearly than almost anywhere

else. God exposes thirst.

John 5 weakness encounters Jesus and Rory preached on this.

A man has been disabled for 38 years, almost 4 decades of

limitation. And in John 5 or 6, God says to

him, do you want to get well? It's a strange question because

of course he wants to get well. But Jesus asks that because he

knows something. He knows that sometimes people

can get so attached to their pattern, or so shaped by their

limitation, or so stuck and used to their survival that they

don't know any longer how to answer that question honestly.

So the man starts explaining the system.

He talks about the water and the pool and he how he can't get

there on time because when you've lived stuck long enough,

you start believing your hope is trapped in the same old system.

And then Jesus says in John 5 verse 8, get up, pick up your

John 5:8

mat and walk because the healing wasn't in the water, it was in

the presence of Jesus. John 6 provision encounters

Jesus. Wendy had an amazing preach on

this. The crowd start following Jesus

because he fed them. They wanted bread and miracles

and provisions. And in John 635 he says I am the

bread of life. And that's such a powerful

moment because they wanted food and he offered himself and the

people were looking for a gift, but he offered the giver.

And then what we see is some people start walking away from

that because that's what happens when we want what Jesus can do,

but we don't want Jesus himself. Then Fast forward to John 8.

We see judgment encounters Jesus.

A woman is caught in adultery and she's thrown in front of him

and she's used as an object in a religious trap because the

religious leaders wanted condemnation.

They want to use her sin as a weapon.

And Jesus says in John 8 verse 7, let any one of you who is

John 8:7

without sin be the first to throw a stone at her, and one by

one they leave. And then Jesus says to her in

John 811, neither do I condemn you, Go now and leave your life

of sin. So here we see an amazing

encounter of truth and grace. Not truth without grace, not

grace without truth, but truth and grace.

And over and over in John, every encounter reveals the same

reality, that life is not found in something, but it's found in

someone. And no one ever encounters Jesus

and remains neutral, right? Some of them started following,

Some of them wanted to kill him, but all of them had to make a

decision. And all of us have to make a

decision. And beneath all of these

different stories sets the same condition.

We are thirsty. The seekers are thirsty, the

religious are thirsty, the educated are thirsty, the broken

are thirsty, the weak the hungry, the condemned are

thirsty. Different faces, but same

thirst. So we see all of these

encounters in the Gospel of John and every encounter reveals

something deeper, our thirst, which brings us back to the well

in Samaria. And yeah, the whole human

condition is laid bare. We know the story.

John says in John 4 verse 4. Now he had to go through

John 4:4

Samaria, not wanted to. He had to, not because geography

forced him, but divine purpose did.

Someone was waiting. There was a meeting that had

already been arranged in heaven. And so this woman shows up to

the well in Samaria, and she shows up at noon in the middle

of the day. And that detail is extremely

important because women in that time, they didn't normally come

at noon. They came early in the morning

when it was cool, when they came together, talking to each other,

laughing in their active way and their Plato coffees, sharing

some time. But she came at noon in the heat

of the day. Why do we think that is?

It's because shame changes your schedule.

When you get tired of the looks and get tired of the whispers

and you get tired of the the side eyes and the stories, you

stop going to where people gather and you start choosing

isolation and you start managing your exposure.

So she comes at noon, which means she wasn't only physically

thirsty, but she was socially and spiritually thirsty.

And that's exactly where Jesus meets her, at the place of

shame, at the place of hiding and loneliness.

Because that's what Jesus does. He meets people in the marriage

that is breaking in the addiction that you are hiding in

the grief and the anxiety and the bitterness that you are

dressing yourselves in every single day.

He meets people in the secret shame and the private thirst.

And Jesus says to her in John 4, verse 7, will you give me a

John 4:7

drink? And she's surprised because at

that moment when Jesus does that, he oversteps a lot of

boundaries and crosses lines, social lines, ethnic lines,

gender lines, religious lines. Because in that time, Jews

didn't deal with Samaritans. They very much disliked each

other, even hated, kind of like you Bulls and Stormers fans.

Same, same men didn't initiate public conversations with women

and rabbis didn't normally move toward the morally complicated.

But Jesus does because Jesus is not controlled by human

categories. Then he says in John 4 verse 10,

John 4:10

if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a

drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you

living water. And she thinks Jesus is talking

about literal water. And honestly, that's us most of

the time because Jesus is talking spiritually and

eternally, and we are thinking materially and temporarily.

And then he says the line that exposes the whole human

condition in John 4/13, he says everyone who drinks this water

will be thirsty. Again referencing worldly water,

the well and CS Lewis once wrote, he said creatures are not

born with desire unless satisfaction for those desires

exists. A baby feels hunger?

Well, there's such a thing as food.

A duckling wants to swim? Well, there's such a thing as

water. If I find in myself a desire

which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most

probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

And this is what Jesus is exposing at the well.

Our desire, our thirst, and our thirst is not the problem.

Our thirst is the clue because it's pointing us in a direction

because the human soul was never satisfied, meant to be satisfied

by success or relationship or pleasure or approval.

It was designed to be satisfied by God himself and that's why

Jesus says whoever drinks the water I give them will never

thirst. And Jeremiah said the centuries

ago in two verse 13, he says my people have committed 2 sins.

They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have

dug their own systems, broken systems that cannot hold water.

And that's what we do. We forsake the spring and we

start digging wells. And we think this relationship

will satisfy me or this career or this amount of money or that

amount of approval. And for a little while it feels

like it works, until that thirst comes back again.

Because wells can never become springs.

We spend our lives digging wells, and Jesus came to give us

a spring. And This is why people that

often have everything, or seem like they have everything, are

still empty on the inside. Because the thirst of the soul

cannot be satisfied by anything less than God Himself.

So Jesus says in John 414. But whoever drinks the water I

give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them

will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal

life. Not just a drink, but a spring.

Jesus doesn't come to fill your bucket, He comes to change your

source. And that's the difference

between religion and Jesus, because religion says, try

harder, draw more water, come back tomorrow.

And Jesus says receive from me a life that flows from within.

And this is where the conversation gets a little bit

uncomfortable because the woman at the well starts to.

She tries to change the topic of the discussion.

She says, in John 420, our ancestors worshiped on this

mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must

worship is in Jerusalem. So in other words, she's saying,

hey, let's not dive into your question, but let's talk

theology. Let's, you know, debate religion

or argue systems. Where then should we actually

worship? And this is exactly what we do,

right? Jesus starts touching on the

real things in our life and we switch.

We want a more comfortable topic to discuss.

We want to discuss doctrines without surrendering our hearts.

We want to discuss and talk about worship styles and

denominations and political views and end time charts and

church preferences and the Greek word for this and the Hebrew

nuance for that, and who was wrong and who was right and

where should we worship and how should we worship?

And all along Jesus is just saying, I'm trying to get to

your heart. And encounters with Jesus do

that. They bypass the topics that we

want to discuss, and they go straight to the places that we

avoid. Tom Keller once said, if your

God never disagrees with you, you might just be worshipping an

idealized version of yourself. Because encounters with Jesus

don't comfort us, They confront us.

They offend us. They offend the parts of us that

want control and want to stay in charge.

And they offend the parts of us that want Jesus to fit into our

categories, the part of us that wants a Savior but doesn't want

a Lord. And I want to say this to you

today. I want to challenge you.

If your faith has never unsettled you, or it's never

exposed you, or it's never challenged you, or it's it's

never disrupted your plans and it's never confronted your sin

or demanded surrender from you, then it's possible that you

haven't encountered Jesus. You may have simply just

inherited tradition. And tradition can look very

convincing. It can dress nicely and it can

speak nicely and it can post nicely on social media and it

can come to Sunday services nicely.

But it will never bow. And this is where I think we

have to be very honest for all of Afrikaans amana osbura mana

was almost finance tratisi osbrod Moy faniera marani

reisfeni Titus alcatuera wurt the flue wurt and it was lua

pronto nosbahir from and sermon set.

The Bible opens bed casi and then the aunts en semi toff a

bed for Aunty ETA Maran Dono Lupi Branova in Seseni odor and

ansono settles via eni carc. And although I could mark most

that's that's what the manas, the sneaker, Luafnida Stradisi,

every person in John's gospel who encounters Jesus gets

disrupted because encounters with Jesus change everything.

And strangely, that's good news. We sang that that's good news

because the boxes we bowled for God are too small.

Jesus did not come to fit our systems, He came to give us

life. He says later in John 10 verse

John 10:10

10. I have come that they may have

life and have it to the full. Jesus doesn't just expose our

thirst, He gives us living water.

Because if all He ever did was expose our thirst, that would

crush us, right? If all he ever just did was

reveal our broken wells, it would leave us hopeless.

But Jesus never exposes thirst without offering life.

And that's why this is good news.

In John 7 verse 38, Jesus says whoever believes in me, as

John 7:38

Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from

within them. Not a cup, not a sip of water,

but rivers. And if we go back to the

Samaritan woman and watch what happens, she goes from there and

she leaves her water jar. And that's such a a beautiful

small piece of information. Why mention the jar?

Because that was the reason why she went to the well.

And John says she leaves it. Why?

Because once you experience or find the source, the bucket

stops becoming the point. She came to draw water, but she

left as a witness and she left there not hiding but proclaiming

and carrying news. She didn't first attend the

course before she went to go and speak to the village.

She didn't sign up for how to be more like Jesus one O 1.

She didn't clean up her act first.

She just runs back and she says in John 4 verse 29, come see a

John 4:29

man who told me everything I ever did.

Could this be the Messiah? Just come see a man that's

witness and it's real. I was thirsty.

I met someone. He saw me and he knew me, and

now I need you to come and see him.

And John 439 says many of the Samaritans from that town

believed in him because of the woman's testimony, Many because

God used the most unlikely person in the village to reach

the village. And if we look at this, we see

that encounters with Jesus produce witnesses.

And you don't have to be perfect to tell people about what Jesus

has done for you. You don't need to have a perfect

theology. You don't need to be perfect.

You don't have to have a flawless history.

You don't have to be an expert to become or to give testimony.

All you need is honesty. I was thirsty and I met someone

who knew. Stop disqualifying yourself by

being used by God because you didn't have a perfect past or

you're not qualified or you don't know enough.

The Samaritan woman blows all of that apart because God likes

using unlikely people. So like the Samaritan woman

going to the well. Where are you drinking these

days? What well are you returning to

trying to draw life from? Maybe it's success.

If I just get that promotion or this contract I'll be OK.

Or maybe it's relationship. If this person just loves me a

little bit more or if they see me then I'll be OK.

Or it's approval. If people recognize me or I

found my find my validation then I'll be OK.

It could even be distraction, scrolling, watching, numbness,

drinking, busyness, never being still enough to notice how

thirsty you really are. And This is why the Gospel of

John matters so much to us. Because Jesus is not just

addressing obvious sinners. He's addressing everybody.

The thirsty immoral, the thirsty respectable, thirsty broken, the

thirsty religious, thirsty, successful and thirsty ashamed.

All of us. And all he says is come and see.

Just come and see. Come to me is what Jesus says to

us. And when someone receives living

water, something else happens. Just like we said, we become

witness because living water is not meant to be bottled up.

It flows and Jesus says come to me.

So what happens is we encounter Jesus, He exposes our thirst, He

gives us living water, and then we go out to other people as

Clint mentioned, and we say come and see.

So Jesus says to us, come to me and we go out and we say come

and see. And maybe that's what God is

asking of us today. One of two things.

For some it's time to encounter him.

For others, it's time to tell someone else to come and see

because right now, some way, someone in your life is thirsty

and they might not say it out loud, but you can see it on

their faces and that you can hear it in their voices.

And the truth is that most people are not rejecting Jesus

as much as we think they do. They just simply haven't

encountered him yet. Reaches researchers did a study

on thousands of people, non church going people, and they

said if somebody that you knew invited you to church, would you

go? And 82% of them said yes, 82%

said yes. Just if someone invited them,

not argued or cornered them or pressured them, pressured,

pressured them, just a simple invitation, right?

And I think of next weekend, Easter weekend, I think we have

this amazing opportunity where the whole world stands still, to

remember that death did not have the final word, where living

water is not found in an idea or a place, but in a risen person.

And imagine what could happen if every person who has encountered

Jesus simply invites one person to come to next week's service.

The Samaritan woman didn't come back to town with a theological

lecture. She just came back with the

sentence. Come and see.

Come see the one who knew me and didn't run.

Come see the one who saw through me and still spoke to me.

Come see the one who exposed my thirst and gave me living water.

And maybe that's just, that's just all some of us need this

week. Don't try and fix someone.

Don't try and save someone. Just invite them.

Ask God to put one name on your heart this week and then just

have the courage to say come and see.

Because 1 encounter with Jesus can quietly rearrange the

furniture of your soul. And you never know.

Just imagine that your invitation quietly rearranges

the furniture of that person's soul forever.

Maybe today you realize that you've been around Jesus without

truly encountering Him, and maybe you've had tradition

without surrender, or maybe knowledge without life, or even

religion without intimacy. Jesus is still saying the same

thing today that he said in John 139.

Come and see. And he's still saying the same

thing he said in John 7. Let anyone who is thirsty come

to me and drink. Most of us spend our lives

digging wells, but Jesus came offering a spring.

So my invitation to you today, come and see, because 1

encounter with Jesus can change the entire direction of your

life. Amen.